Info, news & debate

Co-operatives


the Big Solar Co-op

Jon Hallé: Introducing the Big Solar Co-op, and how you can help renewables and the co-op sector

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Today I’m speaking with Jon Hallé. We go back about 20 years. You ran courses on how to make biodiesel for Lowimpact, back in the early noughties, and you authored a book for us about making biodiesel, that sold about 15k copies in the first year. It caught the zeitgeist then, but of course diesel

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Help get solar onto more roofs in your community: Big Solar Co-op

How you can help get solar onto more roofs in your community: the Big Solar Co-op

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As it’s Community Energy Fortnight, I thought I’d have a word with my old mate Jon Hallé, who used to run Lowimpact’s ‘How to Make Biodiesel’ courses in the early noughties (and authored a book of the same title with us), and since then has gone on to found Sharenergy, who have helped over 100

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What kind of work do we want to do?

What kind of work do we want to do? Is working with our hands passé?

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There’s an approach to life that sees craft jobs, or smallholding and food production, including baking, brewing and beekeeping, as well as any kind of job that involves manual work and dexterity as somehow retrograde and passé, and that ‘work’ now means mainly putting on a suit and travelling to an office to do something-or-other

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Colne Valley Co-operative Care: building a toolkit to help develop a national network of social care co-ops

Creating a national network of social care co-ops: Graham Mitchell of Co-operative Care Colne Valley

Today I’m talking with Graham Mitchell, of Co-operative Care Colne Valley. He’s part of a group starting a social care co-op in the Colne Valley, West Yorkshire, and they’re also building a toolkit / step-by-step guide for people to start a social care coop in their own community. I’m interested in how this toolkit can

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Why we need social care co-ops

Why we need social care co-ops: Graham Mitchell of Co-operative Care Colne Valley

Today I’m talking with Graham Mitchell, of Co-operative Care Colne Valley. He’s part of a group starting a social care co-op in the Colne Valley, West Yorkshire, and they’re also building a toolkit / step-by-step guide for people to start social care co-ops in their own community. I’m interested in how this toolkit can help

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The Case for Community Wealth Building

‘The Case for Community Wealth Building’: review

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This is the first of three articles in three days about ‘community wealth building’ (CWB) and mutual credit. Today we’re explaining community wealth building, and reviewing a book: The Case for Community Wealth Building. Tomorrow we’ll blog about how mutual credit can help post-Covid communities, and on Monday, Dil Green continues the theme, explaining how

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Keeping small businesses alive during the coronavirus economic crisis

Keeping small businesses alive during the coronavirus / economic crisis

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The coronavirus crisis is causing an economic crash that will only get worse. Research has indicated that a shortage of money will mean that up to a million UK small businesses may close in the coming months. To prevent the devastation of small businesses, and therefore our communities, there needs to be an alternative means

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Together we can build a new economy

Coming together to build a new economy: Matthew Slater, barefoot economist and Credit Commons co-designer, Part 2

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In part 1 I described why a resilient economy needs be to separate from the failing capitalist juggernaut and that we need to start by finding new economic partners from without the Market.

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Debbie Clarke of Unicorn Grocery shares the Grow your own Grocery guide

How to start a co-operative grocery in your town: Debbie Clarke of Unicorn Grocery, Part 2

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This is Part 2 of an interview with Debbie Clarke of Unicorn Grocery – a co-operative grocery store in Manchester. In Part 1, I talked with Debbie about what it’s like to work in a co-operative grocery. Here we talk about the “Grow your own Grocery” guide that her co-op has produced for people who

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Can we vote our way to a better society?

Disillusioned with the parliamentary route to a better society? Here’s an alternative.

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Before the election in December, I had a ‘lively debate’ with a friend – an old-school Labour supporter and Corbynite – who was trying to convince me that the only way that we can have an effective social safety net is by voting in a genuinely redistributive party, taxing the rich properly and spreading wealth

Read more about Disillusioned with the parliamentary route to a better society? Here’s an alternative.