It’s been a while since I posted a cutting. My wife and I have had a baby since I last posted one. Little Zach is doing well, by writing not so much. Here’s a somewhat facetious post about fractional reserve banking up on the Positive Money website.
Category Archives: writing
Ask not what bees can do for you…
As you may be aware, bee populations across the world have been in freefall over the last couple of years. The West Coast of the US has lost 70% of its bees, the East Coast 60%. British bees succumbed a little later, and last year 1 in 3 bees vanished.
The disappearances are known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and it is a mysterious phenomenon – bees just disappear, sometimes overnight, leaving the queen bee and the larvae alone. The worker bees are gone, and nobody is sure where they go or why.
Waking from the consumer dream
It’s 07:49am and I’m standing on an escalator, flanked on both sides by streaming commuters and flashing LCD screens. Easyjet suggest I go skiing. Armani want me to know that their new mobile phone has ‘night effect’, whatever that might be. I deserve more TV channels, and Virgin would love to supply them to me. I am barely an hour into my day, and already I have seen dozens of these visions of commodified happiness. Where, in all this buzz of hype, is the promise of real life?
The consumer dream is, in essence, the promise that happiness will come to us through our consumer choices. I will be a more fulfilled person if I have a larger house, a faster car, and newer clothes. I will feel better about myself, and others will like me more.
Latest work
Peak oil and National Security
for Celsias
A quarter of all mammals now endangered – the 2008 Red List
For Celsias
Metavista
Blogging services for theologian Colin Greene
UK creates new Department for Energy and Climate Change
for Celsias
Christmas resources website
for SGM Lifewords
Urban Wilderness – the spirituality of the city
with Church on the Corner, for Greenbelt Festival
Welcome
I am a freelance writer and project developer based in Luton. I specialise in news and features on consumerism, development, poverty, the environment, climate change and conservation. This website is a hub, an online scrapbook of projects. Have a browse, and if you want to collaborate, drop me a line.
Happy Birthday MWH
Make Wealth History is one today. I never noticed the anniversary of any other blog, but I’ve put so much into this one it feels worth celebrating. My reflections on our first year here.
Easter reflections from SGM Lifewords
Sneak preview of an Easter project I’m working on for SGM Lifewords.
All will be revealed in a few weeks, but you’ll want to sign up or you’ll miss out.
christmas resources from lifewords
Thought I’d better give a little plug to some work stuff. Every summer I end up spending a fair chunk of time working on Christmas materials, which is always a little bit strange. The lifewords christmas site for 08 is here, and it’s looking good.
The basic idea is to supply free christmas resources for churches, so we’ve got powerpoints, audio downloads, posters, invites, a rather nifty advent devotional thing, and bunch of other stuff.
We’ve also got the little story booklet, A Little Story About Something Big, written by yours truly and illustrated by very talented Japanese artist Chinatsu Sunaga.
Celsias
I’ve just starting contributing posts to Celsias, and my first two articles are online. Go and have a look:
The forest cannot be bought – how the land rights of indigenous tribes are key to forest conservation.
Ecosocialism – a more green red, and a more red green.
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The latest from Make Wealth History- Otter: Britain’s most sustainable breweryMy occasional building of the week series has included a station, an office block and a youth hostel, but no breweries yet. Since Otter Brewery in Devon has been named Britain’s most sustainable brewery by the Society of Independent Brewers, let’s correct that shall we? Otter is a small family business that has put sustainability [...]
- The future of meatIn the futuristic dystopia of Margaret Atwood’s novel Oryx and Crake, real farm animals are a rare luxury, and meat is industrially produced with genetically engineered growth units. Characters tuck into ChickieNobs’ Bucket’o'Nubbins, and at one point they encounter the creature from which said nubbins are grown. It’s described a […]
- What do you want to see in Osborne’s 2012 budget?I was on a business panel on local radio last night, and the opening question was this one: what would we like to see in George Osborne’s budget in a month’s time? It’s a question plenty of people are asking right now. It’s the season to get all your budget ideas out for discussion, and [...]
- Otter: Britain’s most sustainable brewery
