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

Edible Gardens Open Day is an annual event for Londoners to explore secret gardens, embark on an edible walking tour, or venture further afield to discover people growing in novel places. It’s now happening in other cities too.  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

One of the pleasures of autumn is gathering seeds. It’s a hopeful optimistic act that conjures up thoughts of the next spring, and by and large it’s pretty simple act. 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

In 2014 we had pigs for the first time. Up until then we had only had chickens. We don’t have a freezer in the woods and where you can eat a chicken before it goes off at fridge temperatures, a pig requires preserving. 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

Arriving at the beautiful setting of WOWO, I immediately knew I’d done the right thing ignoring cold-weather challenges to get myself to this workshop. Given the warmest of welcomes, we were invited to form a circle and take a moment to think about Read more

Stu Anderson lives at the end of a steep and stony track not far from Byron Bay in Northern New South Wales. His beautiful, hand-made home stands amongst others, surrounded by lush rainforest. Stu is one half of the father son team behind the Flow™Hive. 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

Visit the Home with the Solar Pergola. Ever since completing an A-level Physics project in upper school Neil Kennedy dreamed of creating an eco-home. In 2008 major renovations began on the Tring property that he and his wife and three children call home. 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

So what’s it like to own a Brompton? I had forgotten how great it was to own a Brompton, actually.  I am so used to mine, which I have had for 13 years, that if feels like a part of me and I guess I took it for granted – until it was in being repaired Read more