A B C

I spent most of yesterday keeping up with Jon Snow's tweets about what was happening in Brussels.  The things I talked about in the last blog Greece defaulting, Italy beginning to shake are happening;  soon Greece will default on the entire loan because they won't be able to repay even 40% of the debt and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Italy's government doesn't fall and Berlusconi leaves office.  Then I lay awake most of the night thinking about what I can do.  Doesn't that sound arrogant, I am not an economist, when I was young I could hardly add up and now I am trying to untangle the mess we are in and make suggestions that are practical.
In the last blog I wrote a little bit about the "people of the abyss".  The Victorians loathed, feared and shunned them.  I started thinking again about our "people of the abyss" they are not the poor they are the ultra rich, the power brokers, the food and commodities speculators, the bankers - they are the feral criminal class and we need to try and break their hold on our society.  I am not advocating revolution or violence.  I am saying A B C.      A is for Allotments.  Very few of us have small holdings or allotments which would let us be self sufficient but as I said in "Days of Thrift" most of us have yards or little gardens and all of us have window sills where we can grow vegetables in pots or grow bags or perma tunnels if we have enough room in the garden.  A grow bag will support tomatoes, herbs, potatoes (look at all the different sites on the internet where you can get information).
This leads onto B.  B is for Barter, you can barter the excess produce for other goods and services.  Because no money is involved you don't have to declare anything to the dole office if you are on any benefits.  I would love someone to hoover my floors, I find this the hardest of the cleaning jobs because I find it difficult to stand for any length of time.  I may not have grown any fruit or veg to trade but I can offer to help someone with their reading or writing, help write a CV, edit a story or piece of writing you may have done and I can swap an hour of help with a child's homework (unless it is maths or foreign languages) for an hours hoovering.  I am going to send a flyer to every house in my street explaining what I think we can do together and see if anyone wants to join me, I am just going to cover my street, this is a small scale operation; each street can organise their own Barter and support their own neighbours.  I will let you know what happens.
C is for Credit Unions.  Take the money and its manipulation away from the bankers and their offshore tax havens. Credit unions are financial co-operatives owned and managed by the members who use them. They offer a convenient way to save and the opportunity to access low cost loans and a range of other benefits including stopping desperate people using loan sharks or those dishonest companies with the friendly names that advertise on television giving a helpful loan with an APR of 2,000%.

Members of a credit union save in a common fund. This fund can be then used to make low interest loans to the credit union's members. All interest on loan repayments is reinvested in the credit union and nothing leaves the community. Many credit unions now offer a range of services including Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs), insurance products, budgeting and debt management advice.  I know not everyone can save anything at the moment because "moneys too tight to mention" but this a way for the community to take control away from the City of London.
I can hear people saying what you are talking about is so little, a tiny bandage on gangrene what about job losses and pensions being degraded, high university fees and now they want to be able to dismiss someone from a job if the boss "doesn't like you".  We can only start from where we are.  Although its not fashionable to quote Mao he said "a journey of a thousand miles starts with one step" and that was a man who knew about walking a long way.

food share, whose share?

"Food Share" is a national, volunteer driven charity which links food growers with local charities. It started in Cambridge where £1,000.
00 worth of fruit and vegetables were donated to a local children's hospice over a 3 months period.  This is a wonderful idea.  The need for food banks is growing, more people than ever, often people in full time employment, are having to resort to soup kitchens and food banks.  I never thought I would write a sentence like this talking about soup kitchens  and charity in one of the richest countries in the world in 2011.
We are continually told the worst is over, the economy will grow and the private sector will create jobs.  I totally disagree, we haven't even seen the beginning of the "bad times" most people still have some resources;  they still have a job although it's hanging by a thread and the hours have been cut, there is a little bit of spare money either on a card, in the bank or post office or a piggy bank sat on a shelf in the kitchen.  The winter hasn't started yet so most of us haven't put the heating on yet or budgetted for Christmas yet, "yet" being the operative word.
"People of the Abyss" used to be the term the Victorians used about the poor, I started thinking about what pushes you over the cliff so that you can't meet the bills and how easy it is to find yourself in that situation.  One of my cats is ill, she will have to go to the vets and I am looking at a bill of probably a hundred pounds or more.  Of course she will go to the vets and I will make a deal with them to pay the fees off over the coming months, I've done it before I don't feel any embarressment explaining that I can't meet the whole bill in one payment.  Lots of people are facing those sorts of situations everyday and I joke about mine saying I wrote a book called "Days of Thrift" which I published on Amazon as an ebook looking at being unemployed, broke and facing hard times in our modern society and now as an unemployed single woman with an incurable disease I am living in my book.
The question is what can be done?  I think this is a wonderful charity and they are doing great work but a lot more needs be done in a more regulated way.  I think supermarkets should give the food they would throw away at the end of the day or when the sell by date is reached to the local food banks, charities like "Food Share" or soup kitchens.  A law should be passed requiring them to do this.  The reason given by the supermarkets for not voluntarily doing this, which is very clever, is that it is a health and safety issue - they don't want to give food which is not safe to eat to the hungry. In my book I looked at "skip diving"  and discussed sorting through the bins full of perfectly edible food and how you can gain access to these food mountains .
I hope this charity goes from strength to strength and I am going to set up a petition on line asking for a law to be passed to require supermarkets to donate their left over food to charity, when I have that set up I will blog the details.
Sometimes I feel like Cassandra, everything I have talked about for years in some cases (my neice has borne the brunt of my rantettes), written about, shouted at the television about and worried about is starting to manifest itself and this last round of "quantative easing" or "credit easing" which is just another bank bail out under a different name shows how badly things are developing.  The economy flat lining and unemployment rising are the actual and visible proof of government policies which are not working and shows us all what an ignorant, clueless government we have - the coalition has no clear idea of what to do next about the problems our country faces, no compassion towards its people just the catch phrase "we are all in it together" nor wisdom to guide the EU as it faces problems such as the crisis about to explode when Greece defaults on its repayments and Italy begins to slide too, Germany won't keep picking up the pieces forever.
We the people are going to have to look to ourselves by organising, demonstrating, lobbying, signing petitions, joining UK Uncut and let's use the few decent MPs in Parliament to protect us and change the direction the ideology of the ConDems is taking us in so that we can re-construct a fairer society where "to each according to their needs and from each according to their abilities" really means something.  Until then food banks, food share and soup kitchens are going to be a life line for millions of people.  See you on the bread line.
 

 

it's enough to make you swear

A definition of madness is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different outcome each time.
This morning I signed the petition to protect our countryside, protect the badgers from a cull and stop the government plans for building on green belt land.
I signed the petitions after I watched David Cameron speak to Andrew Marr explaining his ideas for selling off council houses and building one new house for each one sold off.  Oh, please give me strength and find the will to live, I shall end up raiding my secret stache of choccie bars and over dosing on flake bars in despair. 
I banged on and on about regenerating our housing stock in my book "Days of Thrift" (sold as an ebook on Amazon) and in previous blogs.  We do not need to be building houses on green belt land, we can renovate the boarded up shops on the High Street, provide social housing and re-invigorate the local communities, there are thousands of empty houses which could be taken into the housing stock providing thousands of hours of work for builders and all the surrounding trades as the empty houses are made good for habitation and there is plenty of "brown site" land to use.  The green belt does not need to be used nor should the regulations and laws protecting the countryside be weakened or removed.
The bland self satisfied voice of David Cameron explaining in his earnest "head boy" manner (he always uses the same cliches and hand movements when talking to the "Great Unwashed" who don't understand how intelligent he is and how enlightened his proposals are) his ridiculous idea to allow bill boards to be erected anywhere in the countryside made me shout four letter words at the television (why is it that every time there is a conservative government in power I end up swearing like a trooper, I never swore half as much at Tony Blair and he did a lot of things I vehemently opposed and I consider him a war criminal as well so I definitely did not support Labour in a lot of their decisions).
I ask that everyone sign the petition to protect our countryside, we have such a beautiful land and we have to fight to protect it, again.