economics

When Transition folk take part in visioning a better world, technologies like wind and water turbines and solar panels usually play a big role in providing the energy needs we imagine for our homes and communities.  Many of us also use mobile phones, personal computers and ipads as we develop our transition visions, activities and practical projects. I’m using one now.

The coin you see below was the Lancaster Half Penny issued in 1794 at the behest of a Mr Ecclestone, a local trader and eccentric.  Made of copper it was not currency but a token tradeable in the local area and one of many tokens in use in Lancashire, and indeed all across England in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth

It can be no accident that the main Sunday session of this year’s conference involved the visioning of a high street, the creation of a bustling hub of the everyday businesses and services we imagined to be central to the Transitioned Town of the future.&nbs

The British love their woodlands; if there was ever any doubt about that, the outraged protests when this tory government suggested selling off publicly owned forests, made this very clear. But how these woods are valued today is very different to how they were valued in the past.

The current job market is not particularly enticing for young, enthusiastic, inexperienced and transition-minded individuals. Young people across the country are struggling to get any kind of job, let alone a meaningful one, and once you do get a job there are no guarantees you are going to get to keep it.

All politics is local but not all local politics is democratic. This fact hit home Wednesday when over 100 Totnesians marched through the centre of town up to the local seat of power to demonstrate loud and clear that the town of Totnes overwhelmingly opposes the economic invasion by a large corporate coffee chain.  

Here in Totnes, we’re in one of those periods where everything seems to be happening all at once. It’s a blessing and a curse. A blessing, of course, because there’s an abundance of compelling projects underway drawing new energy and shiny new faces into the mix. A curse, for me at least, because it means there will be some fun I’ll have to miss.