Nigel Says
Welcome to Nigel’s Blog. The only place to keep up-to-date with what I’m doing, and thinking. I’m going to post below, with the newest at the top.
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July 7th
Apologies a month has passed! Lots happening with the building progressing, building at the Game Fair ready for ‘Exploring the Rural Future’ and, not least, the amazing result at the Green Apple Awards. We knew that we had won a Green Apple but no idea if it was a bronze, silver or gold so to win a gold, the Green Champion and the Champion of Champion came as quite a suprise.
Also disaster, for me at least…
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June 7th
Returned from an excellent conference at New Lanark held in the social enterprise hotel and the plenaries in the hall used by Robert Owen. A truly amazing setting. Well done Colin and team. Very interesting developments from Austria and I shall certainly looking at producing bio-extract, a sort of miracle forumula, that is cleaning up the Royal Canal in Thailand. A very international gathering promoting social capital as per Puttnam at Harvard.
Gordon Brown intends to keep in control despite the ‘ups and downs’ of the past few weeks. Did I miss something?
To read the full article click here
June 3rd again!
Wow two in one day!
In answer to comment by Thomas – we have used nothing but a laundrette for 14 years now. I would add to the efficiency issue that is also about quality of life for the family. Collecting your washing and ironing once a week gives us more time to do what we want to do.
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June 3rd
Yet another long gap but I have been writing papers for conferences and could not face writing anything else. I am not the most disciplined when it comes to routine, and I include ‘blog’ writing in this. Perhaps I should try to be brief (haha) as a way of being more regular in my comments. Listening to the radio this morning two things struck, not counting the daily tales from the ‘river bank’ at Westminster.
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14th May
Apologies for the delay but it has been a hectic two or three weeks. The Social enterprise Summit with four cabinet ministers this week was largely positive. But…
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28th May
I find it very disheartening when people who should know better deny any implication of human activity on climate. I don’t know if it is Al Gore’s ‘inconvenient’ truth, inability to understand large numbers, 6.5 billion for instance, or simply ignorance. The view seems to be particularly common in the over 60’s and yet nearly all scientists and certainly all peer reviewed science indicates virtual certanty. The implications are so serious that not to act seems foolish in the extreme.
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13th April
You have to admire the great David Attenborough, prepared to come out very publicly and say what any sensible biologist is thinking – that humans are a species out of balance with their ecosystem. The subject of population growth is an area where most people, particularly politicians, dare not go and yet it is the heart of the crisis we face. We (humans) seem virtually incapable of thinking logically when it comes to our own numbers. The population of the planet has gone from 2 billion to 6.5 billion in less than one (western) lifetime and is expected to go to 9.5 billion by the middle of this century. Completely unsustainable!
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10th April
Hi everyone I’m early its only 10th April. This is new to me and will be my views not the views of Hill Holt Wood. I expect that my contributions will be intermittent, influenced by what I am up to and also what I pick up from the media, particularly Radio 4 and the Today programme.
This is a good starting point
Comments
Comment from Thomas Fischbacher
Time 11 May 2009 at 14:10
Nigel,
I think a key issue concerning the problem of denial is that we – i.e. all of society – would be well advised to invest some of our effort into education about the psychological mechanisms related to self-justification. We do know quite a fair bit about this by now, thanks to research in social psychology that has been going on since the 60s. There is no question that there are many potent, proven, detail strategies out there to address our needs as human people in a much saner way than we do today – and the earlier we start to switch over to them, the better. (Had we done so thirty years ago, it would have been very easy.) The question is: what stops us? It certainly is not that the viability of appropriate approaches would have to be
established first – people like you saw to that, and I have endless admiration for what you achieved over at HHW. The way I see it,the one big issue here is that, collectively, we do not understand the role of self-deception sufficiently well yet to actively work on the implementation of wide-ranging strategies in order to work around its harmful effects.
From Allan Savory, I learned to pay close attention to the question of the weakest link. Climate-wise, I think this is the widespread lack of a sound understanding of the “tricks of the human mind” related to self-deception. But this is something that is easily fixed by teaching a few basics. (I am quite actively involved with that at present.) One book I can highly recommend is: “Mistakes were made, but not by me” by social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Everybody I have met so far who read it called it eye-opening.
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best wishes, Thomas
Comment from Jem
Time 20 May 2009 at 12:39
Hi Nigel my partner and i are starting a social enterprise in Rotherham South Yorks. We are building a yurt and would like to do basicaly the same thing that Hill Holt Wood is doing and manage a local woodland as well as workshops and residentials in environmental art. I would like to know if you could give us some advice and info on how to go about obtaining woodlands and grants and such. I realise you must be very busy but i would really appreciate your help and advice. Thanks Jem
Comment from Thomas Fischbacher
Time 3 June 2009 at 14:04
Concerning the idea of micro-generation, one often hears the credo that this “would defeat efficiencies of scale”. Isn’t it interesting to observe how the “ideology of efficiency gains for big operations” is used so selectively by professional economists – “micro-generation is bad, because there are ’scaling efficiency gains’ with large power plants” on the one hand vs. “it is an important achievement of industrialisation that every household has an own washing machine and we have one lawn mower per every 100 square yards of lawn”. I.e. don’t talk about “economics of scale” when it would lead to a reduction in need of household appliances, as this bad, bad idea would seriously eat into the profits of industry.
I am fairly sure by now we could live not just just as well, but even better, with less than 10% the tech we are used to have around us.
Prize question: what efficiency advantages can you think of that would come from having one or two laundries in every street, rather than one washing machine in every household, which most of the time is busy occupying precious space?
Comment from Thomas Fischbacher
Time 8 June 2009 at 23:00
Nigel,
I am slightly intrigued by your slightly comment that your “key word is Trust”, I wonder if there *may* be a rather technical interpretation to this, say in the sense of “unit discretionary trust with a trust deed that requires its trustees to be members of an association which links membership to mandatory adherence to a set of ethical principles…”. If so, I am all ears. If not, we may have something to jointly look into…
Comment from Charles Meynell
Time 24 April 2009 at 12:31
Nigel – I applaud your pragmatism & utilitarianism! They happen to concur with my own. I am also very impressed with your enterprise in HHW and I hope to be able to make a personal visit in the very near future. As you will see from the web site I am involved with sustainable construction and may be able to give you more practical help. ATB CM