J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

Dave Mac,
I think it's 23 years since Chernobyl - April 1986. My husband and I were farming in Wales then/still are farming in Wales, so it is a subject I know a fair bit about, through the NFU and farming papers etc.

We weren't affected by it, because we farm in south-west Wales, and it was north Wales that experienced the fallout from Chernobyl (in rain). As far as I understand it, there are about 300 farms in north Wales still under restrictions because of it (plus a few in Scotland and north England).

They are allowed to graze their stock on the mountains, but the animals have to be tested for radiation levels before they go to slaughter. So, the farmers bring them down to the lower 'clean' pastures to graze for a few weeks to reduce the radiation levels to an acceptable level before slaughter. It creates a lot of trouble for these farmers because they have the government people there testing the stock, and it means they have to plan everything well ahead, and if they don't own any lowland of their own they have to rent some in and move the stock on to it. And if an animal tests too high for radiation they have to keep it back for a while until the level drops.

We are also strongly reminded of Chernobyl here locally, because every year a group of school children from Belarus (the area most affected by Chernobyl) come here on holiday to give them a break from the high radiation levels and the poor food and health care they experience at home. The charity that organises this for them says that it gives these children an extra 2 years of life. Apparently 4,000 people in the former USSR have died so far from cancer caused by Chernobyl.

Quite honestly I cannot believe how our government is again considering building more nuclear power plants, when they still haven't solved the problem of how to get rid of the radio-active waste.

Hydro-electric power creates its own environmental problems, but nothing on the scale of nuclear power.

Ally

Thanks Dave Mac for your reply. Your insurance is pretty cheap too!

Ally

Dave Mac,
Who's your insurance with?

Ally

Yes, it's about time the world started to use whatever alternative source of renewable energy is available in each location. Here, for example, they're now trialling one out at sea in the tidal race between one of our islands and the mainland.

I would expect, as oil gradually runs out and becomes very expensive (quite apart from the global warming issue) that increasing numbers of these projects will get going. To me, anyway, they are a much more sensible solution than nuclear power, since we still haven't managed to find a way of totally processing/safely storing the waste.

Ally

Zwee,
I think I only paid something like £60 for annual travel insurance, including ski-ing, for my daughter and myself, with the post office. This will cover our two ski-ing trips plus any other holidays we might decide to take. It's amazingly cheap. We will be ski-ing on the glacier at Tignes in October, and then in Courchevel in Feb.

Ally

Ian,
I forgot to say, if you don't know where your mystery great-uncle was born, you could buy the birth certificate (around £8 from the office of national statistics on-line) of the great-uncle you do know about and hope they were born in the same place. And if you can't find him on-line you could either go and look at the actual baptism parish registers for wherever it is, or pay someone else to go and look.

I have done a great deal of family history research myself and there is usually another way of getting around these things.

Ally

Ian,
That's why I suggested Ancestry. Depending on whether he had a 'common' surname or not, you can search without a Christian name through the births register on the internet. The more information you have the better - like approx year of birth, country and county of birth. You could also search their death register, and match it with the war graves records. It might take a while, but I'm sure you could find it.

Ally

I lost 3 great-uncles in WW1. One at Gallipoli, one somewhere in France, and one became a permanent invalid with shell-shock.

If you like reading something slightly bulkier - how about Tolstoy's War and Peace? I have a copy here if anyone wants to read it, plus de Gaulle's war memoirs and several other war-like historical books.

I have read the book 'All quiet on the Western Front' several times, plus seen the film, and it's all quite appalling. I have always been a pacifist.

Ian, I pay a yearly subscription to Ancestry, to help me with my historical/family research, so if you want me to find out something for you, just ask.

Ally