One would probably be right in assuming that one or two years ago most people’s economic knowledge might have hardly been sufficient to explain terms like inflation, base rate and recession.
But since credit started to crunch we have to cope with a flood of magic words like sub-prime mortgages, short selling, troubled assets and their relief, credit default swaps, toxic debts, just to name some of them. We are following evening shows about economic theory and the latest gossip on whether the recession might be L-, V-, U- or W-shaped.
Aren’t we starving for some (quantitative) easing from the flood of the purest of financial reality to leave it back to the well paid professionals even though we don’t understand the compensation they receive for dealing with such dry matters? Or do we actually enjoy the insight into a world we never thought about, but which seems to be essential to keep the economy ticking? Do we enjoy or disgust our new soberness? Or did we loose faith, because we feel no-one knows what he’s doing and it’s all a big hocus-pocus?
Make it yours before it dies! It turns out that running a pub is a tough business in times of economic downturn, smoking ban, cheap supermarket booze and all the rest of it. But it also turns out that local communities don’t care about the number crunching. And with 40 or so pubs closing every week, locals are determined to fight back to preserve their regular hang-out. They gather together in community companies to buy their pub and run it themselves. All over the country, locals take over not only their pubs, but also post offices, petrol stations and shops.
Do you think there is hope that individuality in businesses is on the rise? Could more and more places be able to escape from the big multinationals and their global marketing concepts which make so many places look and feel the same?
A recession is the perfect time to escape the vicious circle of speed which took over our lives, proclaim the ‘Slow Movement’ gurus. The Slow Revolution drips into all areas of live and there is talk about Slow Food, Slow Living, Slow Travel and Slow Sex. Their philosophy is very plausible: In modern live we are cramming as much as possible into every minute and race through live at the cost of health, relationships and the environment. But slowing down in awareness of the preciousness of every minute of our limited lifetime can help us to make our lives more enjoyable and sustainable.
Philosopher Guttorm Floistad summarizes the relation of Change and Slowness, stating:
“The only thing for certain is that everything changes. The rate of change increases. If you want to hang on you better speed up. That is the message of today. It could however be useful to remind everyone that our basic needs never change. The need to be seen and appreciated! It is the need to belong. The need for nearness and care, and for a little love! This is given only through slowness in human relations. In order to master changes, we have to recover slowness, reflection and togetherness. There we will find real renewal.”
Journalist, editor and poet Harry Eyres, who writes the Financial Times Slow Lane column, (find the full interview here) told me he believed that it will be very interesting to see whether more people turned to a slower lifestyle in the near future; a reason might be that money, which is the actual driver for many peoples restless lives, all of a sudden appeared not to be as solid as we always reckoned it was.
Rising awareness for Slowness led to the London Slow Down Festival. Curious about the subject I decided to join the Slow Walk, which was only one of the events during such festival.
On Friday, 24th April at around 5pm a group of around 80 people gathered together at the Victoria Embankment near Waterloo Bridge holding signboards, showing a yellow hand with a smiling face, saying Slow Down London, chatting and waiting for the first event of the first Slow Down London to start: A very slow stroll over Waterloo Bridge during rush hour.
Then the crowd started to move. When we reached the bridge it appear to me, that this would be far from a relaxed stroll: the participants of the slow walk where in a visibly good mood, slowly moving forward, whereas a bunch of reporters hastily ran around them with cameras, voice recorders, microphones and other heavy equipment. I hoped they would not come up to me because I did not feel like speaking in front of a camera and had been looking forward to a relaxing walk as the weather that day could not have been nicer: mild, beautiful warm and sunny. Also, as I am normally walking rather quickly I found it rather challenging to go now forward with the speed which would make it difficult to overtake a snail.
I took some pictures of the people and started to chat with the woman walking next to me. She told me she had helped organizing the walk and showed me how to do walking meditation. Then she kind of slowly rushed off to another part of the crowd where she intended to show how to really walk slowly instead of walking fast, standing and waiting a bit and then walking fast again for a bit, as some participants seemed to handle it.
Partisans, arm yourself with blades, seedbombs, crops and freshwater! You might join your local cell which has hatched the plan for the night. Or you might operate individually. Its easy: You grab one of those ugly spots of neglected land, crying out to be primped up by locals who care about their surrounding. Guerrilla Gardening is on the rise and the community is well organized.
On guerrillagardening.org combatants find all the right contacts and everything else they need for their battle to spread natural beauty into the concrete desert which is surrounding us. Be it gaps in public flowerbeds or spots of soil on roundabouts, footpaths and streets, there will always be a potential guerrilla gardener around who might exercise civil disobedience and plant all sort of colourful flowers. Guerrila gardening cells are gathering together on disused commercial areas and plant their veggies and flowers. Where access is hard to get, the guerrilleros even use seedbombs to spread fertility.
Do you support the idea of Guerilla Gardening?
Do you want to share your experiences as a Guerilla Gardener? You can send us your pictures to info@novinow.net.
Credit crunch and no money for designer clothes?
Wear designer patches instead!
Selling, buying and mending used clothes is not only more sustainable than buying new clothes and throwing it away after a while. It is certainly much more creative and individual.
Support the idea of sustainable clothing by proudly wearing these elbow patches!
The quotation marks on the patches frame the wearer like a statement.
To order a pair of hand screen printed designer patches for £7 plus porto use the form here.
Fancy creating your own patches?
Come to the Novinow Patches Event at the Central Saint Martins BA Graphic Design Degree Show 2009 London.
Check out the Participate! Events Schedule for times and location here.
‚Eat the rich’ and ‚Burn a banker’ are some of the slogans recently heard which symbolize the current public anger. Bank employees needed to turn up at work in jeans and unshaved to avoid getting lynched by an angry mob of anti G20 protesters. So-called ‘smug-bag millionaires’, who were speculating with other people’s money seem to get away with large pay-offs and bonuses despite their failure and the tax payer having to pick up the bill. Such appreciation seems to be public consensus and polls suggest that most people request banker’s pay should be cut. Politicians proved successful in a crack-down on tax heavens where the wealthy hide fortunes from the fiscus.
But where is the public opinion going? Do we appreciate the benefits which modern finance has brought to the economy over the last decade and do we just request some sort of shared responsibility with regards to the risks and rewards from its managers? Or do we go further and feel disgust for a whole industry? Or might we get grumpy with all the rich, as people did in previous recessions? Will we soon include sport stars, entertainers and entrepreneurs on our list of hated rich people?
Prohibition on narcotics celebrated its hundredth birthday recently. What did it achieve? Gangsterism flourishes on all levels of an illegal industry worth around $320 billion a year. Imagine the massive costs of combat against all drug related crime. Look at emerging countries such as Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan which are in the tough grip of the drug cartels. Despite all such consequences drug consumption did not fall.
The Economist believes the 100-year struggle was not only pointless but also illiberal and murderous. The paper questions why we transformed the issue from a public-health problem into a law-and-order problem and suggests to legalise a regulated and taxed drug trade. Tax proceeds could then be used for education about the risks of drug taking and to treat addiction.
If you dont take illegal drugs, then ask yourself: Would you do so, if it wasnt forbidden? The answer is probably: No.
Do you think we should stick with prohibition as there is still a theoretical chance that it prevents us and our children from taking drugs? Or are you prepared to trade off such chance of prevention through prohibition against the one of massive crime reduction? Or do you think it’s acually prohibition which makes drugs interesting in the first place, and so has an opposite effect? Do you think education can achieve even more than prohibition?
Squatting seems to be a credible form of housing in the current public mood, says Barbara Ellen of the Observer. The press reports frequently about evicted people who squat their former homes. So called Posh Squatting seems to be fashionable. More and more artists squat place to live, work and exhibit. This even happens in prime locations. Remember only last years TheDa! Collective which took over some multimillion-pound mansions in Mayfair.
Do you agree that squatting is widely accepted in the current days? Do you feel that a more left-wing approach to life is coming back? Might this be just some necessity in an economic downturn? Or could it be that this crisis changes our appreciation for squatting as a sustainable form of living for a bit longer?
Do you want to take a trip into your psyche by means of literature, philosophy, psychotherapy or visual arts rather than buying another gadget? The economic standstill might have given you time to think about your working life and you might seek some guidance to reconcile whether you still find it fulfilling.
The School of Life offers for its clients a range of services to think about their concerns. Some of the services themselves, such as bibliotherapy (whereby a bibliotherapist prescribes you or your children books depending on your concerns or interests), or short courses on subjects such as Love, Play, Work, or Family might not be new. But the idea of bringing together literateurs, psychotherapists, philosophers and artists in a designed and intimate London prime location to offer services meant to expand peoples minds is definitely unique.
Do you think people are withdrawing from blind consumerism and draw more attention to their psychological and intellectual desires? Do you think we will see more of those services even when the green shoots are finally sprouting and when people are rushing back into the treadmills?
In current times we are realizing the full extent of globalization. We are realizing as well that there seems to be no clear understanding among the world’s leaders as to how to tackle the world’s challenges. Politicians from different nations gather together trying to find solutions, so last at the G20 summit in London.
But also citizens from around the world should do so, thought the initiators of We20. The internet platform We20 provides the facilities for people to organize meetings on specific current challenges. The ambitious objective is for its members to come up with solutions to the global economic crisis. We20 was already promoted on the G20 summit website and it promises its users to create the bridge between them and the G20 leaders. And so We20 members are gathering together in virtual meetings and places such as Second Life, but also in real places and chew over the world’s current problems.
Do you know W20 or are you a current user? Are there events you want to share with the Novinow community? Do you want to share any solutions W20 users came up with?
