Approaching One Hundred - and Biting Through

The stampeding horses create a turbulent and luxurious supply of oxygen for the skull-fire, but now and again the wild beasts pause for water, and the air stills and the raging mindstorm subsides to mere smoldering.  There is time to look around.

Gosh! This blog will soon be seven years old!  The hundredth post is nigh! A brief review suggests that some of the past may still be useful in the present, or even later, so while the horses are becalmed, an opportunity to provide some shortcuts backwards, just in case:

The Eleven Most Read

Economics of Enough Blog Posts 

One

A diatribe against the shallow nonsense of corporate networking, and a plea for authenticity in our exchanges with others

Two
A more analytical piece which uses an example from the UK property market to illustrate how meeting the short term requirements of financial markets results directly in outcomes that are bad for ordinary people and the places where they live

Three
Derived from a presentation given to the International Water Association, eleven 'top tips for scenario planning' 

Four
A theory of social and economic change in four-and-a-bit diagrams, justifying the ethical position 'On being a good grain of sand'

Five
An argument from deep inside the economics of enough, summarised for and presented to the Schumacher Institute conference in 2013 and entitled 'Beyond Consumerism: A Design Challenge'

Six
A pair of poems, the first of which was set in the Olympic Stadium in 2012 and appeared in the magazine Smoke.

Seven
A short prose poem explaining why I shall not be writing the book 'Deshopping Society'

Eight
A piece examining a striking result arising from some elementary economics on supply and demand in the UK energy market, the only explanation for which is a political process utterly in thrall to the wishes of big corporates 

Nine
A poem, second in a still-to-be-completed trilogy, contrasting some yearned-for or hoped-for human behaviours with the commodified simulacra we currently endure

Ten
A sketched  proposition for an aggressive, dramatic and self-funding policy to save thousands of lives each year in London by banning all commercial diesel vehicles from within the M25 from 2023

Magic Eleven
I dreamt, at a UCL seminar, that London would be a sustainable city in 2062 if there was more singing and less shopping.  The talk became a chapter in a book, as well as this blog, and last week saw the publication of 'Sustainable London? The future of a global city' in which, in the concluding chapter, the editors Rob Imrie and Loretta Lees re-print the essay and write:

'These ideas [of care and inclusion] are embedded in Fell's (2012) persuasive outline of an alternative, progressive way of re-conceiving London's future, based, in part, on a context of care, in which a flourishing and inclusive society depends on significantly different, de-materialized relationships emerging to those shaping contemporary social and political agendas.

For Fell (2012) a sustainable future for London means questioning the logics of development and modernization.  It should not mean business-as-usual development, which is not able to respond to, or even recognise as part of its modus operandum, the complexities of creating a caring and nurturing place for all to live.  

Instead, people-sensitised approaches to London's sustainability ought to include appropriate guarantees of individuals' welfare, the provision of good quality social housing, public transport, education and health and the development of a caring, collective future for Londoners rather than one mired in so-called preparedness and individualism.'




At which point, the restless whinnying of sated equines signals the end of the pause and the resumption of oxygen-red flow.  And, if not yet singing, I'm certainly humming...

[If there's a photo down here it was added August 2017 as part of blog refresh.  Photo is either mine or is linked to where I found it. Make of either what you will.]