I recently read Nick Shaxson’s excellent book which explores the extent of off-shore banking in the world, shocking stuff. I was honoured to be able to interview Nick recently, you can either listen to our conversation below, or read the transcript. You can find out more about the book here.
Nick, thanks very much for joining us. For people who haven’t read Treasure Islands, can you describe for us its key findings?
There are a couple of main conclusions. One is that the offshore system of tax havens is much much bigger and much more central to the global economy than almost anybody had thought. It’s seen in the popular imagination as an exotic sideshow to the global economy. But really since the era of globalisation began in the 1970s the offshore system of tax havens has been growing much much faster than the supposedly onshore economy.
A while ago here we posted the video to Rebecca Mayes’ song ‘The Lights’, her beautiful song written for the closing credits of ‘In Transition 2.0′ (the one everyone goes out after the film singing). I am delighted to announce that the song is today released as a single, and is now available via. iTunes. Here is what Rebecca says about it: “I’ve registered it with the UK charts so if enough of us buy it this week we’ll get into the top 40! If you’re outside the UK try and buy it through a UK distributor so it will count towards the charts. All proceeds go to the Transition Network. Tell your friends, family and local radio stations! Thanks so much for watching the video which has had over 3,000 hits – if you missed it first time you can check it out below.
I wrote a while ago about Transition Network’s recent one day conversation on ‘Peak Money and Economic Resilience’, and how it had included a session where people from Portugal, Ireland and Greece gave a sense of what is happening in each place. Filipa Pimentel, who is co-ordinating the networking of the national Transition hubs, spoke about Portugal, and about how the economic crisis is shaping how Transition is emerging there. Filipa was in Totnes recently, and I caught up with her for a quick interview at the station as she waited for her train home. Here it is:
Thanks to everyone who entered the competition to win a copy of Martin Crawford’s fabulous new book. The correct answers were that there are no such things as ‘Monckton’s sausage chives’ or ‘Abyssinian exploding carrots’, although frankly I have to say that that is an enormous shame. So the winners, who clearly already know far too much about perennial vegetables for their own good, are Carol Brandon, Paul Martin, Judith Cunnison, Louise Reynolds Doughty and Maxine Grant. Congratulations all. I’ll be in touch for your postal addresses. Have a great weekend.
Let’s start with something I came across on YouTube, the caption just says “We are students from 4th of ESO and we are in a project about Transition Towns. Hope you like it :) !” Turns out it is the students from the High School Joan Segura i Valls, in Santa Coloma de Queralt (Catalonia) (see right) who did a project on Transition (they talked to Rob Hopkins by Skype), set up Transition Santa Colomba, and are going great guns. After they finished their school project, they were given a video camera. What did they come up with?
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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Nick, thanks very much for joining us. For people who haven’t read Treasure Islands, can you describe for us its key findings?
