PowerSwitch

Some time in August this year Powerswitch James managed to set up a proper filter for registration on this site.

Up until then Mike Pepler and more recently me had been reviewing each registration and assessing whether we thought they were genuine individuals or opportunist spammers trying to bump up their website ratings. Anyone who we thought were fakes were deleted but naturally we always erred on the side of caution as we didn't want to delete "real" people.

The new software has made it pretty much impossible to register without proper intent.

Therefore I thought that it would be interesting to look at membership registration as it is now a more reliable indicator of interest in this site.

We currently have 705 registered members on this site.

In the two and a bit months of September, October and November we have a total of 77 new members, all of which we can count as genuine.

This number equates to nearly 11% of our total membership.

September - 25 new members

October - 34 new members

November so far, - 18 new members

I have noticed a lot of great new members recently contributing to the forum.

It's fantastic to have so much new and thoughtful input!

Hello! *waves* I am new, might as well introduce myself. I'm currently living in a flat in a not terribly nice council block, with not much likelihood of changing that. Have been peak aware for around a year, and have been reading this forum and others, and books, and so on. I'm a single mum, but have a boyfriend who doesn't live with us, he's not terribly convinced by all this peak oil stuff, which is tricky.

Currently I'm focusing on paying off debts and preparing for possible power cuts or fuel protests this winter - I've got a nice thick duvet on its way to me, and have begun stocking the kitchen cupboard with non-perishables and bread flour/yeast and so on, including a certain amount of things which will be edible without heating them up. Have bought candles and a couple of LED lamps and solar powered battery charger thingy for the mobile phone. Thinking of ordering a kelly kettle or something like that for cooking if there are power cuts. I've paid off approx ?5k of a total of ?8k of crap consumer debt over the past year, including ?3k which I inherited from my grandmother, I'm hoping (assuming no major SHsTF) to finish paying that off in the next year.

I have mental and physical health problems/disabilities, which adds another layer of fun to it all, but oh well, I'm just doing what I can.

Hi Anwen and welcome to Powerswitch!

Our numbers are small but growing . . . that's got to be a good thing!

Welcome to PowerSwitch Anwen. The more PO aware nutters we can muster the better.

Aurora wrote:Welcome to PowerSwitch Anwen. The more PO aware nutters we can muster the better.

Hurrah! I've been on the PS Facebook group for a while, as well, and two of my very bestest friends are quite involved in all this sort of thing, went to the event thingum a few months ago *waves hands around vaguely to indicate hoping that you know what I mean*

Anwen wrote: Hurrah! I've been on the PS Facebook group for a while,

Found you and poked you

I like your preparations to date Anwen. Nice and simple, and practical.

Shira and jmb have helped me figure out things I can do (aside from run around screaming!) and we've brainstormed the types of stuff that's worth stocking up on, given where I live and etc (i.e. fourth floor flat with not much space for storing food). Hurrah! We've also been swapping books back and forth, which keeps the DODGY TAX AVOIDERS bill down

Pippa wrote:
.....Therefore I thought that it would be interesting to look at membership registration as it is now a more reliable indicator of interest in this site.

We currently have 705 registered members on this site.

In the two and a bit months of September, October and November we have a total of 77 new members, all of which we can count as genuine.

This number equates to nearly 11% of our total membership.

September - 25 new members

October - 34 new members

November so far, - 18 new members

Time for an update,

November so far - 42 new members (and still a little time for a few more to come in.

Pippa wrote:

Pippa wrote:
.....Therefore I thought that it would be interesting to look at membership registration as it is now a more reliable indicator of interest in this site.

We currently have 705 registered members on this site.

In the two and a bit months of September, October and November we have a total of 77 new members, all of which we can count as genuine.

This number equates to nearly 11% of our total membership.

September - 25 new members

October - 34 new members

November so far, - 18 new members

Time for an update,

November so far - 42 new members (and still a little time for a few more to come in.

That's good. The message is definitely spreading.

hi, i've been lurking for a few weeks here, i'm also a single mum living on the edge of the peak district. ive been worrying about peak oil for several years, but just lately things seem to be heating up (?) on so many fronts, i thought id make an effort to find out more about what other people think in the UK. im american, but have been living here for about fifteen years. funnily enough, im from portland oregon...the place constantly being mentioned as peak-aware...sigh!! would like to go home now but have two kids with an english father who wont entertain anything like letting them leave. saying that, american politics are pretty scarey. but then again, UK population levels are downright frightening!

as far as preparations go, ive got a small business growing local organic cut flowers which i sell at farmers markets, and hope to slowly convert into a community-supported agriculture scheme. meanwhile flowers certainly pay the bills! except in winter when i resort to drudgery...

i grow alot of our food and home educate my kids, in the hopes that they'll learn something that might serve them well in times to come. we're lucky enough to live in the countryside, and have negligable debt. slowly, we're getting ourselves organised.

im very interested in community schemes such as the transition town initiatives, and have helped organise some local meetings~ hard work in a small conservative farming village i can tell you!

glad to be here and appreciate all the astute and witty comments...

:--) temerity

Hi Temerity. Interested to here about the organic cut flower trade. We've been thinking about trying that. Most of the cut flowers available here seem to come in big lorries from Holland having previously come by plane from East Africa. What do you grow?

Hi Temerity, I'm an ex flower grower myself, and through Farmers Markets too. Welcome. About now we'd be cutting and stripping the twisted willow for sale as christmas decs.

Well Biff if you want to make money you'll have to do it without staff, or they'll keep it all. Forget wholesalers, forget florists, you won't make a damn penny out of them. You can make a crust on the Farmers Markets, supplying weddings, that sort of thing. We use to do ok out of the telly now and then, our gladdies were the star of a Down to Earth episode.
Low start up costs but you will find it hard work.

Hi Temerity

Im from Ashbourne, which may or may not be somewhere near you

Give me a shout if you are near and fancy getting a Transition Town going