The New Year

This year, I have decided to live by the values taught to me by being part of The Woodcraft Folk. The Woodcraft Folk is a youth group, which has no relation to crafting wood. I could not find any aims and principles on it's webpage, but on its webiste at:  http://www.woodcraft.org.uk/ it talks about reducing world debt, global conflict and sustainable development and developing young people's confidence and ability to act in society.

I would like to follow on from what they taught me, by

1) learning more about what is happening in politics, forming opinions on what I have read, and act upon them via such means as writing to MPs and the media, expressing my opinions to others, marches etc. Knowing what is going on in the news would be a good start.
2) taking more advantage of the wonderful countryside we have around Leeds and learning more about nature. I would really like to do some more climbing outside on the Yorkshire Gritstone, do some fossil hunting, do walking more in the countryside and learn more about mushrooms and identifying them.
3) being more sustainable. Not wasting food, growing my own food. My girlfriend is teaching me how to make wine, so I would like to get to the stage this year where I am confident enough to makeown. And lastly I would like to start cycling to work again. The reasons for this being, it takes the same amount of time as on the bus, i hate waiting for the bus and I really dislike First buses. I know First is subsidised by the government and that it is sad that people have to work bank holidays but I think I do not understand why 4 people getting a taxi is cheaper than getting the bus, and it was irresponsible to stop a large number of bus services on New Year's Eve as this left a lot of people with the only option to get home being to get a taxi (a service which is strained after midnight at the weekend as it is) and to not run at all on New Year's day.

I have created this blog as a method of motivating myself to undertake fun challenges related to the above three bullet points. At some points I hope this is interesting and gives informative adivice on fun things to do, how to make wine, stuff i've learned and my opinions on things (however misguided later on they then appear to be). At other points, no doubt it will probably be boring and relate to no one apart from myself. Also you may have noticed that although the Woodcraft Folk is a youth organisation I have made no mention to help out at one of the groups. I would like to do this at some point but at the momet am a little nervous about doing so.