I went to an interesting talk at the RSA today by James Wallman who has just published a book called ‘Stuffocation’. His basic argument was that in the society of scarcity of around a generation ago, what mattered in life was having more stuff – i.e. in a society of scarcity, materialism is not a
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I was at the Compass Change:How? conference today and was struck by a few things in a discussion we had about ‘why it’s so hard getting people to change’. By this it meant getting members of the public to take action for a more progressive, sustainable (etc.) world. The first thing that struck me was
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At ChangeStar, we’ve recently been doing a bit of ‘secret shopping’ with some charities – making donations to them and seeing how they communicate with us as a result. It’s a real eye-opener and shows that lots of organisations have work to do on their communication plans – one charity has already sent us 3
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A report in The Guardian today notes that a Newcastle United footballer has got into hot water with his club for refusing to wear the club shirt bearing the name of the club sponsor Wonga. He’s apparently “refusing to promote the money-lending company on religious grounds and has offered to wear an unbranded shirt or
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I had a much-needed day off recently and decided to visit a few places in London – like the London Library (wonderful) and Westminster Abbey (claustrophobic in its conservativism). I ended up at the Westfield shopping centre at Shepherd’s Bush to meet a friend for dinner before going to a gig, and I had to
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My dislike of advertising grows stronger by the day – partly because of the corrosive and limiting effect it can have on people’s lives, worldviews and aspirations, but also partly because of the insulting, manipulative rubbish that the industry continues to pump out. Take this new McDonald’s ad for example – peddling the idea that
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I’m now a couple of weeks into my new time management regime (as are one or two others who are trying it out) and I’m quite pleased with how it’s going! A few caveats have occurred to me over the last few days on the advice in the previous post though: It’s all about discipline
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One of the most challenging things to deal with in my work life is the number of things there are to do – from the mundane but important stuff to the meaty, interesting and fulfilling stuff. It can be a real challenge to make sure that I’m getting to do a bit of the interesting
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I’ve just been to see AC Grayling talk about Humanism at the Lewes Speakers Festival. It’s reminded me of a point I’ve been thinking about for a while. As religion becomes less of a central force in people’s lives (in the UK at least) there is, for many people, a ‘religion-shaped hole’ in their lives.
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I’m in the process of writing a booklet for our forthcoming ‘Story of Energy’ project at Life Squared, and my suspicions are proving correct – it’s almost impossible to find a simple description of what a real 1 planet lifestyle would look like for the ordinary individual. Fill in a footprint calculator (like Bioregional’s) and
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