Transition Culture has moved
I no longer blog on this site. You can now find me, my general blogs, and the work I am doing researching my forthcoming book on imagination, on my new blog.
Come find me at robhopkins.net
Well, not so much fun as funny. Robert Newman is, alongside Mark Thomas, a new breed of comic. He sees the time he has on the stage with an audience as an opportunity not only to make them laugh but also to make them think. His show, **Apocalypso Now**, recently released on CD, makes geopolitics, US global hegemony and peak oil something you can both be enlightened about while rolling around laughing. I particularly liked
I intend, as a rule, to avoid any party politics on **Transition Culture**. However, just as a one-off, I feel compelled to address the issue. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ and ‘Tory environmentalists’ are what are commonly known as **oxymorons**. If you aren’t familiar with the term oxymoron have a look at this. David Cameron, their new leader, is trying to regain the middle ground of people who are naturally Tories, who go to Farmers Markets and recycle their bottles. Nick Cohen in Sunday’s Observer in an article called ‘It’s farcical how Cameron has rescued Blair’s ideas from the rubbish dump’, does a good job of pointing out that somehow it just doesn’t wash. Anyone who lived through the Thatcher years would be hard put to see them as green in any way.
However, some people with green leanings are already talking about going to the Tories as the green party of choice. In the same issue of The Observer
**Powerhouse**, a new journal for those working in the industry has just been launched. The first issue is available free, but from then on it costs a storming £195 per year (for 24 issues). This is not a journal aimed at the man in the street, rather at those within this emerging industry, hence its price. I shall try and get the library here to subscribe, and then let you know about any useful articles it contains. The sample copy contains a few interesting bits and bobs, take a look.
**Lesson 5. What Could Have Been Done Better…**
This is not really something I should be writing really, this is more something that the people who have taken the **Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan** (KEDAP) on or the residents of Kinsale should be writing, but I will give some thoughts that I have had on the subject. As previous posts have set out, the KEDAP arose from a programme of community brainstorming, awareness raising, the work of the students and the inputs of various people in the area with ideas to offer. It has gone on to end up being approved by the Town Council, and is leading to some interesting developments. But if we had our time over, what might we have done differently?
Here’s a great article called From Dissent to Descent, worthy of mention for its title alone (wish I’d thought of that!), which appeared on UK Watch‘s site, but which also had some very kind things to say about **Transition Culture** and the energy descent planning approach. Did a very nice job of putting this work in a larger context.
