9 Jan 2008
In an episode of the Alan Partridge radio show, one of his guests is a Lord, who had just written his autobiography (Partridge: “you’ve just published your autobiography. What’s that about?”). The statesman in question has a strong reputation for being outspoken and outrageous, and he ends up having a heart attack and dying live on the show. During the interview, Partridge asks him why he has always been such an outspoken advocate for pornography. The Lord replies “what a man chooses to do, in the privacy of his own attic, is his concern and no-one else’s”. Over the last few days of the Christmas break, I spent a few days in my loft, but for far more laudable motives. I did however experience the strangely delightful solitary pleasure that can only be achieved by insulating one’s own loft.
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8 Jan 2008
**7. How conscious are participants of the crucial need for frugality, that a sustainable and just world cannot have affluent lifestyles, that sufficiency must be the concern…and that living frugally and self-sufficiently can be highly satisfying? I think this is the most difficult problem here; there is no sign whatsoever that the squandering affluent way needs to be questioned. Maybe the best way to make a difference is to begin with the reality of peak oil, and soon people will realise that the affluence will go with the oil??**
Indeed. I think peak oil is a very powerful tool for putting a mirror up to communities to ask, “where has the resilience in this community gone?”, and for focusing the mind on how vulnerable we have become. It is my experience that there is little mileage in telling people that they will need to live more frugally, but that what is much more powerful is to take people through a thinking process where they arrive at that conclusion themselves, which is one of the key aspects of what Transition Intiatives do.
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7 Jan 2008
Happy New Year folks and welcome back to Transition Culture. The final touches are being put to what is now definitely called **The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience**, and I can now give you an advance taste of the wonder that it will be. On the right you can see the cover, and by clicking here you can download what’s called the blad. A blad (blad stands for Book Layout and Design) is a sample of the book that is produced for distributors, bookshops and salespeople to give them a flavour of it. Until the full book emerges late February, this’ll give you a sense of what’s coming…
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In an episode of the Alan Partridge radio show, one of his guests is a Lord, who had just written his autobiography (Partridge: “you’ve just published your autobiography. What’s that about?”). The statesman in question has a strong reputation for being outspoken and outrageous, and he ends up having a heart attack and dying live on the show. During the interview, Partridge asks him why he has always been such an outspoken advocate for pornography. The Lord replies “what a man chooses to do, in the privacy of his own attic, is his concern and no-one else’s”. Over the last few days of the Christmas break, I spent a few days in my loft, but for far more laudable motives. I did however experience the strangely delightful solitary pleasure that can only be achieved by insulating one’s own loft.
