Bringing us back to earth with a bump

...or thankfully not in the literal sense, as was anticipated could be the case for planes flying over UK and European airspace in the last few days.

No doubt the ash crisis has been an enormous inconvenience for a huge number of people, hundreds of thousands of which are still stranded in places they no longer wish to be.
I know a few still struggling to get back to Blighty but the resolve shown by many more in working their way closer to home has been admirable to say the least (plus expensive in a lot of cases).

Now I do not wish to poke the embers further but in some ways, I don't think this volcano erruption in Iceland has necessarily been a bad thing (aside from people's financial losses); no one has died from it, and it has quite simply, put us back in our places and made us realise it is not us who are in charge in this world.

What have we realised? Well, it is much nicer having quieter skies and hearing the birds again for starters, and do we generally need to undertake the amount of trips we do take? Even with the advances in online conferencing, there are thousands of business trips being made daily, and at a random guess, I would imagine a good 50% could be done via telecon facilities etc.
There will be disruptions to businesses awaiting goods from overseas, from food commodities to pharmaceuticals so getting goods to our our shelves may very well see a knock on effect soon.

It has shown us quite simply how much we depend on and are used to the availability of air travel.

Maybe now we ought to re-assess what we really need without relying on air travel.
Do we need all these food imports, could we not simply grow our own and eat in accordance with the seasons? Use sites like Sparegound or Landshare and take charge of your food production, it actually feels pretty good to do that!
Could we not generally save on travel costs and car share where possible, I know a lot of people have already offered such services via twitter and other social media during this 'crisis' .
Look to buy local or UK produced products whenever possible.
Holiday in the UK! Get some money pumping back into the UK economy, we have a fantastic and beautiful country and we all ought to appreciate it a bit more. Dust down that tent and get some fresh air in the lungs!
Enough people have shown that UK 'plucky resolve' this last few days, ..we are not a bad bunch at all.

p.s. as to how some newspapers can somehow lay blame onto Gordon Brown for this is laughable. Journalism at its very worst.


http://www.spareground.co.uk/