I wrote in one of my articles recently about the National Science and Engineering Week which is the 12th – 21st March. I wanted to draw your attention to it again in order to encourage people to look at their website and take part in some of the activities. The United Nations has declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity. Biodiversity describes the variety of life on Earth and that variety is essential for sustaining our natural living systems or ecosystems that provides us with fuel, food, health, wealth and all our vital services. We have been destroying our biodiversity at a terrible rate and once a species is lost it is gone for good.
One of the initiatives for the week is ‘Save our Species’ in order to do this we need to make sure we maintain ‘undisturbed undergrowth so that species can thrive in their natural habit.
You can join a poll to help save one of the ‘Star Species’ as identified by the National Science and Engineering Week. They are the corncrake, hazel dormouse, greater horseshoe bat, stag beetle and the common bluebell. If you want to take part follow the following link
http://www.whatonearth.org.uk/saveourspecies
.
I don't know if you caught news about the Child Migration Exhibition that has been held recently in Westminster Hall, in the Houses of Parliament. This explained in a deeply moving way Britain's reprehensible history of shipping 130,000 children after the Second World to British Colonies, to help develop them but also to get rid of what was seen as an unnecessary social problem in the UK.
The exhibition produced by the Department of Health in conjunction with the Child Migrants Trust to coincide with the national apology being made to child migrants ran from 22 February to 5 March 2010.
The exhibition focused on those children who, between 1945 and 1967, were sent from Britain to Australia, Canada, Zimbabwe and New Zealand and other former colonies. The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, made an official apology on behalf of Britain to all child migrants on Wednesday 24 February.
There is also now a £6m Family Restoration Fund available to reunite families and friends some of whom have only just found out about each other. For details of this please feel free to contact my office.
A terrible time in our history now being fully recognised for the wrong we did to so many people for so long.
Next Monday, 22nd February marks the start of Fairtrade Fortnight. The theme this year is the ‘Big Swap’ encouraging us as consumers to look out for and swap to Fairtrade equivalent products. There is an enormous range of products available with the Fairtrade Mark, and I am very pleased that we are seeing an increasing number of ‘big brands’ sourcing fairtrade materials and carrying the Fairtrade mark – including Tate and Lyle sugar, Cadbury Dairy Milk and most recently Nestle’s standard size four finger KitKat. And this year a range of over 50 cosmetic products are available.
Last year many of us who support the Fairtrade movement were concerned that with the economic recession the demand for Fairtrade goods would fall, but fortunately that has not been the case and demand for Fairtrade continues to grow at an average of about 40 per cent per year. A staggering seven out of ten households buy Fairtrade goods.
I hope that a huge number of people will take the challenge of the ‘big swap’ and make the lives of people a lot less fortunate than we are just a little better.
Look out for the Fairtrade Mark when you shop for coffee, tea, herbal teas, chocolate, cocoa, sugar, bananas, grapes, pineapples, mangoes, avocados, apples, pears, plums, grapefruit, lemons, oranges, satsumas, clementines, mandarins, lychees, coconuts, dried fruit, juices, smoothies, biscuits, cakes & snacks, honey, jams & preserves, chutney & sauces, rice, quinoa, herbs & spices, seeds, nuts & nut oil, wines, beers, rum, confectionary, muesli, cereal bars, yoghurt, ice-cream, flowers, sports balls, sugar body scrub and cotton products including clothing, homeware, cloth toys, cotton wool, olive oil and beauty products!
The 1st – 7th February is World Salt Awareness Week, which has become an annual event since 2005. The focus of the week this year is ‘Salt and Your Health’. We are all increasingly aware of the warnings about reducing salt in our diets. Clear labelling means we know much more about the amount of salt there is in our processed food. The much used words ‘reduced salt’ tell us the product has been developed and improved and of course has less salt.
Salt can and does damage our health it is linked with health conditions such as strokes and heart failure. As well there is increased evidence linking high salt diets with stomach cancer, osteoporosis, obesity, kidney stones and kidney disease. But of course, we do need some salt in our diets.
I don’t watch very many ‘celebrity chef’ programmes, I am however a great fan of Rob Rees our local chef not just his food but also of course the excellent work that he does to improve health through food.
I hope that this week everyone will take that little bit more time to read food labels and check out the salt levels in their food and have a happy balanced diet.
This year the theme for World Wetlands Day is ‘Wetlands, biodiversity and climate change.’ And the slogan for the day ‘Caring for wetlands – an answer to climate change.’
I am a great supporter of the work undertaken at Slimbridge Wildlife and Wetlands Trust and have visited them on many occasions to find out more about their work. It is vital that across the whole world we do respect the importance of or wetlands and all other eco-systems that exist in the world as our survival depends upon them.
I remember listening to a news item before Christmas, someone from Slimbridge was being interviewed on the Today Programme when they were predicting that we would face a very cold spell of weather as some of the wild geese (I think) were arriving at Slimbridge earlier that normal which was generally an indication that it was going to be very cold!
Now that hopefully the cold spell is over and we look forward to spring a visit to Slimbridge might be a good day out.
If anyone remembers hearing the same news item and can up date me on some of my facts please could you do so via the comments box!