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 community energy schemes to launch, using wind, solar, hydro and biomass. We’ll publish an interview with Jon soon, but first I wanted to tell you about his latest venture – the Big Solar Co-op (BSC) Read more …

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 in sectors such as finance, advertising, sales, fashion or PR. Read more …

Here’s a quick and dirty history of money. Since I’ve been involved in the mutual credit world, I’ve been reading various ‘history of money’ texts, and so I thought I’d organise the notes I’ve taken into a blog article. It’s a half-hour read, to accompany our new ‘Low-impact money’ topic, and I think it gives a good overview of monetary history – but leaving out nonsense like ‘money evolved from barter’, or ‘Kings introduced coins so that their subjects could trade more easily’. If you think anything is wrong, missing or needs more explanation, do let me know in the comments. Read more …

You’re invited to join our presentation on the ‘Credit Commons’ – a protocol to connect and unite mutual credit groups globally – on Friday 4 June from 4-5.30pm. Sign up here. Read more …

Nature, democracy and community aren’t partisan issues. No-one sensible, of any political persuasion, speaks out against them. They’re essential for human well-being. But they’re being destroyed, and disunity wastes energy and prevents us from being able to do anything about it. Read more …

Nothing we do to try to move to a sustainable, healthy and democratic society will work as long as we have the current money system, because money has two conflicting functions. It can be used to buy and sell things, and it can be used to store, hoard, accumulate and become wealthy with. As long as that’s the case, money will gravitate towards stored wealth, because money attracts money and gives access to the political system. Read more …

I’m writing a book – published by Chelsea Green next January – about the possibility of building a new economy around a moneyless, mutual credit core, at a time when money is going to be scarce. I’m often told that the best way to get new ideas across is with a story. Read more …

It seems pretty obvious that there’s a giant economic slump on the way that’s going to sweep away millions of small and medium-sized businesses around the world, so that Amazon can step in to continue to try to take over the entire global economy. Read more …

We’ve been liaising with Simon Grant, of the P2P Foundation Wiki, and making plans for turning Lowimpact.org into a wiki. We already have a network of specialists who provide information for our topics and respond to visitors’ queries. We want to expand this network, as well as the number of topics we cover. Read more …

I have a contract to produce a book about growing a new economy, in communities, with mutual credit at the core. This article is a listing of key resources: video interviews I’ve done with relevant people whilst researching the book, plus articles and websites providing additional information. Read more …

I’ve got a book deal with Chelsea Green, which is quite scary. They like my writing style, but the content needs a bit of translating for a wide audience. The Covid pandemic provided the stimulus to bring together a group of specialists to form ‘Mutual Credit Services’ (new website coming soon). My role is in the ‘propaganda department’ – hence the book. The book is about building a new economy with mutual credit at the core. Read more …

OK, so this isn’t really about squirrels or pigeons – it’s about any animal; we’re back to the veganism vs meat-eating discussion. But just focusing on squirrels and pigeons for the moment, I guess everyone accepts that they are of course food for other animals. They’re in a food chain, after all. Pine martens don’t need to wrestle with this question – squirrels are most definitely food for them. And sparrow hawks don’t need to ask about pigeons – or squirrels either, for that matter. It’s about whether they’re acceptable food for humans. You can make up your own mind when it comes to you. You can decide that you’re never going to eat squirrels or pigeons – but do you have the right to dictate to others that they shouldn’t eat them either? Read more …

Today I’m talking with Claire Stocks of Chorlton Bike Deliveries and Matt Nicholson of York Collective. Both are bicycle courier co-operatives. Read more …

Industrial agriculture and giant monoculture farms dominate our food sector. But does it have to be that way? Could and should we build a new kind of food system based on small farms? This new book, ‘A Small Farm Future’ published by Chelsea Green, outlines what a post-covid, post-capitalist society might look like, built around a repopulated countryside of small farmers. Read more …

Just to be clear, I’m only talking about institutional, power hierarchies here, not hierarchies based on beauty, knowledge, intelligence, ability, respect etc. Those hierarchies are inevitable, of course, and life would probably be quite boring without them. Read more …

Having worked in the environmental field for 30 years, I’ve watched the situation get worse every year, to the point that it might already be irreversible, and we don’t know what damage it’s going to do to us, exactly. That’s pretty insane, and so Read more …

Maybe David Graeber’s death can challenge us to take a few minutes to think about the demonisation of the word anarchism. I believe that the two fundamental assumptions of anarchism are correct – that: Read more …

Industrial agriculture is cruel to animals, cruel to people who work in it, it damages the environment and concentrates wealth in very few hands. I guess if you’re reading this, you know that already, and I don’t have to explain it. The problem is, it’s still there, doing its vile stuff every day. What do we do about it? Read more …

The world is run by and for billionaires. If you’d prefer it to be run democratically, for all of us, then don’t be fooled by the ‘Great Reset’ – a request by the corporate and financial sectors for governments to give them taxpayers’ money to take more control. Read more …

Here’s a little story for anyone who’s noticed that things aren’t going too well in our communities. Small businesses are going under, unemployment is on the rise and money’s becoming scarce. Read more …