My brother is not politically or philosophically motivated, not particularly well read, and doesn’t keep up with current affairs. Most people are like that. Let’s call them ‘the mainstream’, if that’s not disrespectful. I don’t think it is – he’s my brother, after all. Read more

Here’s the story – Enfield borough has received £30 million in funding from Transport for London to install dedicated cycle lanes on some of its main roads, removing on-street parking, adding zebra crossings and trees. Read more

You can now get white sliced bread in supermarkets for around 50p a loaf; or you can get hand-baked, organic loaves from independent bakers for around £3.50. We can also bake our own bread. What’s the best option, do you think? Read more

You must know by now about Class War‘s ‘attack’ on hipster cereal cafe ‘Cereal Killer‘. It wasn’t much of an attack, to be honest – no-one was hurt and they were open again the next day. But were they right to target Cereal Killer in their anger about the gentrification of Shoreditch? Read more

On Saturday I dropped into a ‘Restart’ party near to where I live in Tooting. If you don’t know what a Restart party is – they’re a group of techies who raise funds to be able to hold events in various locations where the public can turn up with broken electrical goods and be trained… Continue reading ‘Restart’ parties: prolong the life of your electrical goods and pick up some useful skills in the process Read more

First, to reiterate something that has been pointed out on this site many times – the corporate empire is global and governments are national, and that fact alone means that national governments are in no position to challenge the corporate sector. Read more

The biggest objection from the European public to the proposed TTIP trade deal (see here if you don’t know about it) is that multinational corporations will be able to sue elected governments (national or local) if it can be shown that legislation reduces corporate profits in any way. Read more

Hilarious infographic by SumOfUs on what ‘transparency’ means in TTIP negotiations. But of course it isn’t funny at all. We’d like to see an economy of small businesses Read more

I joined Redfield Community in Buckinghamshire in 1996 and lived there for 13 years. It’s a Victorian mansion in 18 acres of woodland, fields, gardens and orchards – a registered housing co-op with around 15 adults and 8 kids on average, although people come and go. Read more

Mark Boyle, the ‘Moneyless Man‘ came to visit last Wednesday. It was the first time we’d met, although we’ve exchanged emails for years. As I suspected I would, I found him to be an inspirational character. Read more

This guy is a genius. His name is Miklos Antal – I’d never heard of him before, but his every word cuts through the nonsense that lies at the heart of classical economic theory. Read more

Isn’t that a bit inconsistent? If we think that vegetarianism or veganism is a good idea, how can we also think that keeping animals – most of which are kept for meat – is a good idea too? Read more

TTIP (the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) is a trade deal between the US and the EU, being carried out right now, in secret, ostensibly to co-ordinate and standardise legislation and to provide clarity, stability and confidence for companies that would like to invest in other countries, and to stimulate growth. Read more

We had solar panels installed on our flat roof on a London terraced home one year ago. The panels are attached to plastic tubs filled with ballast. During the daytime, we use the electricity as it’s generated, so we make sure we use the washing machine / charge phones / anything else we can think of… Continue reading Low-impact & the city 3: our solar pv system is one year old – how’s it performed? Read more

Here’s a rash statement, but I believe it to be true. Most people these days know, either rationally or intuitively, that humanity is heading in the wrong direction. If you ask people whether we’ve seen the back of ecological calamaties, financial collapses, corruption, poverty or war Read more

Three things have happened to me recently that have made me realise that local, independent and/or community-owned businesses have been put at a huge disadvantage as regards regulations that cover their activities, and the independent sector is being unnecessarily penalised for the damaging activities of the corporate sector. Read more

This is an account of my visit to two ujamaa villages in Tanzania in the early 1990s, plus a lot more background information on the system itself. The ujamaa system has since been dismantled after pressure from the World Bank, but at its height, 20 million people out of a total population of 24 million… Continue reading More details of the ujamaa collective village system in Tanzania (from first-hand experience) Read more

Like all environmental / social change organisations, we’d like humans to live in a sustainable system. But unlike many other organisations, we clearly state that we’d like that system to be non-corporate. What do we mean? Read more

We got back from a holiday in a yurt at Old Chapel Farm in Powys last night. We were bowled over, and this article is a little advert for yurt holidays on farms and smallholdings in the UK, although several of the points below are specific to Old Chapel. Read more

I Iive with my partner in a terraced house in London, and we have a garden. So we have to work out what we want the garden for. Do we want to use it to impress people, to give it a ‘make-over’, to make it orderly and tidy, or to produce food? We’ve decided that… Continue reading Low-impact & the city 2: what are urban gardens for? Read more