Wedding dress

…republican myself, but my mum has bought herself a new dress to watch the royal wedding in. Bless.

Climate change and the case for co-operation

Thanks Pat for sending me the link to this excellent short interview with Professor Tim Flannery, climate change academic, on co-operation and co-evolution.

Mayo days

Barbecue days are here again

Don’t be cruel to a vegetebuel

The ultimate green song – ‘remember that a lettuce has a heart’.

My Dad used to sing me this song – and I have been known to inflict on my kids too. This is a Youtube of the original.

(thanks David)

Member owned

A welcome new website, concerned co-operators, is up for co-operative members and activists keen to safeguard and grow the democratic credentials of the co-operative movement.

And the winner is…

I have been in a seminar at the London Business School on the scope for innovation prizes. Early prizes like this were the longitude prize set in 1714, which made navigation safe, and the food preservation prize, soon after the French Revolution, which introduced food in cans.

There are essentially two types of prizes – ones that stress competition and ones that build community, for example through a sense of a shared challenge. Threw up lots of ideas for the co-operative sector … and some cautionary warnings!

Please sign up

The co-operative movement is today launching a new ethical campaign with a mass petition on equality.

The Daily Mirror added it’s voice to our launch, along with over 25 prominent organisations that are supporting the petition, including Friends of the Earth, National Union of Students, Mother’s Union, Groundwork, National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the National Childbirth Trust and the Equality Trust.

Please sign the petition – it takes only a moment – and I’d ask you please to forward the petition to friends, colleagues and family.

Inequality is at the highest level in the UK since records began – and that is in a global context too where we are slipping behind on development targets. It is time to share.

From Japan

A message through from Taka of the inspiring Seikatsu Consumer Co-operative in Japan.

“We have neither overcome the nuclear crisis nor have established the facilities for emergency supply at the suffered areas. Even the ways of the participation of the Japanese volunteer has faced many difficulties.

The scale of the disaster must be one of the biggest natural disasters in our history. Therefore, I would like to ask for the financial campaign for future reconstruction by the people in solidarity, cooperation and working together between Japanese and Asian friends.

Moreover, I would like to suggest you all that please call for a worldwide discussion about a fundamental review of alternative way of life and production.

The world people has to be known that the life style and production style of the advanced countries including Japan have already been not sustainable through the fact of this disaster in Japan.

Therefore please expand the view point of alternative energy and life style for our future and for next generation.
We should do some real actions to change of our long-term life styles as practice in each communities and societies in the world.”

Daff life

These are three photos taken over the last three Sundays in Greenwich, some of the 250,000 daffodils perennial to the park.