don't bank on it

My cousin Comar has decided to reinvent himself. This week he receives his last paycheck when he packs in his City recruitment job and starts up a local food business, initially selling from a stall at the top of Ladbroke Grove in London. He has a big, permaculture ethics-based vision and I have no doubt he will end up creating his dream of a network of small local food enterprises.

I was telling him on Google Chat about feelings of outrage against the corporate tax dodgers and the banks (Barclays announced a 30% increase in annual profits to £6 billion this week). He pointed out that the government would not be willing or able to curtail their greed. And that no alternative to capitalism exists for us to segue over to. After batting back and forth the issues he pointed out that the best way forward is to no longer depend on any of these systems. Our job is to create effective alternatives.

Looking back, that seems to have been my life’s mission, to cut loose from The Man and help others to. I get a bit fed up with people who think that change has to come from the top. Change will only come from us, and there’s plenty we can do right now. We can change our bank to an ethical bank like the Cooperative. If we have spare money we can put it in an ethical bank like Triodos. We can change our energy supplier to Good Energy, so that all the electricity we use is from the sun and wind. Those are big, easy wins that also make us collectively more resilient.

The point is, together, we’ve got to get off the global money system as it is. Tony Greenham from the new economics foundation told a group of us in Better Banking group of Transition Town Lewes that the problem with banks is that they have unregulated permission to make money out of debt, which essentially transfers money from the poor to the rich (this great 3-minute cartoon says it all). Plus, banks are reluctant to loan to small businesses because there’s too much risk for relatively low rewards. A local money system, which the TTL group is investigating, would mean that money is lent to known people in known markets, by people who want to support other local people; this is what bank managers used to be for.

The banking system, which was designed to serve us, has completely betrayed us. But we can all choose better futures.

throw off the duvet

I’m amazed at how empowering DIY can be. The sudden drop in temperature has catalysed us into getting our house shipshape for the winter. Homebase now has a brilliant line in draughtproofing and insulation materials, and Bunces and Wenban- Smith do too, only a bit less choice. Last weekend we brought home two rolls of Carbon Zero loft insulation (for £10 total), sawed a little hatch in our bathroom ceiling and stuffed the roof void full of this wonderful stuff, a bit like candyfloss, spun from recycled bottles. This weekend we’re going to put our judgements aside (about not wanting to seem like poor students) and put double glazing film up on the bedroom windows. I’m more determined than ever, with the prospect of a second cold winter, to save up for double glazing throughout our house, which, like so many old Lewes houses, seems to be one big window.

Maybe I’m unconsciously aware of a great financial crash looming on the horizon. I’ve just read the nef booklet ‘Where did our money go?’ which describes the government and our economy/society as being inextricably linked with the banking industry and, so, unlikely ever to put in place the regulations needed to stop its suicidal growth at the taxpayer’s expense. It quotes Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England as saying, ‘Massive support extended to the banking sector around the world… has created possibly the biggest moral hazard in history’. Transition Town Lewes is going to be talking about this booklet and possible local solutions at an event next Thursday.

Attending a talk by Stoneleigh earlier this week only added to the impression of collapse as inevitable but also as a necessary part of the process of breaking through to healthier, local ways of running our society fairly on finite resources. As I wrote this summer, it really is time to prepare by getting out of debt where possible (and no, sorry, the banks will never forgive debt), to get interconnected and to start building resilience across the board. That means being strategic and investing our time and money into solutions – not escape plans!

So rather than snuggling under the duvet for the duration I’m going to dress up warm and get out there and engage with the snow and it all.