Aspire not to have more, but to be more
The above quote is from Archbishop Oscar Romero. It has recently become a bumper-sticker in the US for fans of steady-state economics. Romero was a hero of the Central American Liberation Theology movement and someone I heard about as a child because my stepfather was a Liberation Theologian and writer and was active in Central...
Project Cameron – in search of an idea?
In a thoughtful recent New Statesman article, Dominic Sandbrook berated the politics of our age saying that above all “one thing is missing, perhaps the most important thing of all: the big idea…there is little evidence that the general public has lost its appetite for big ideas.” And of Cameron he said “it is almost...
Low-fly zone
I have not flown for many years. I don’t fly because I feel that for me, knowing what I do about climate change and equity, it would be immoral to fly. I try and encourage others not to fly also. I believe very much in the ‘be the change’ philosophy of Gandhi. I believe its...
Rules Gone Wrong
Sir Andrew Foster, former CEO of The Audit Commission, called this week for what seemed like a radical (and welcome) inversion of the relationship between Citizen and State. The State, he argued, has continued to build years, if not generations, of increasingly irrelevant policies based on the fundamental principles of the Welfare State without offering...
Politics is dead – long live citizen-power
At last some honesty from a politician. David Milliband has delivered a Mea Culpa and come clean saying that transport has not “fundamentally changed”, a shift in power from Whitehall to local government “has not yet happened” and, on the environment, “our low carbon revolution is still to come”. He also admitted that “the traditional...
Broken Rules and The Courage of Conscience
Sandel and Steare may sound like two characters out of a ‘70s cop series. Instead, here are two philosophers both demanding a fundamental re-appraisal of the old hierarchies and the rules by which we let ourselves be governed. I have posted before on Roger Steare’s ‘Ethicability‘ and the ascendancy from a childish ethos of Rule...
Back to the ‘70s and The Good Life?
David Cameron has told us we are entering an ‘age of austerity’, a time where we need to focus on ‘more for less’. He is mainly talking about an increase in public goods through less public service and more efficiency. What he should be talking about is a theme he seems to have lost of...
Phoenix enterprises
A great new report and work program from John Elkington’s new outfit Volans. The concept is that the future we talk about in Chapter Four is most promising for new Phoenix Enterprises which will emerge from the flames of the Perfect Storm’s crucible. As we say in the book, many of the current incumbents of...
We the Citizens
You are NOT what you buy Everyday we are bombarded with messages saying ‘buy this and you will be happier, fitter or sexier.’ The message of the online Wiki book (www.citizenrenaissance.com) that I am writing with my friend, Robert Phillips, is that ‘you are NOT what you buy.’ We are for a shift away from...
