Layer 479 . . . Towns, Cities, Communities, Big Lunches, Urban Riots, Gandhi, Hazare, Tim Smit, Heligan, Totnes and Naomi Klein

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There's been an interesting series of programmes on BBC TV this summer on the subject of towns. As something of an amateur geographer it was compulsory viewing for me, in spite of the irritating presenter - his false bonhomie & chumminess, and his ridiculous shortie double breasted macintosh that he'd insisted on wearing throughout the series and had about nine pockets and two epaulettes too many.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013n5gl/TOWN_with_Nicholas_Crane_Totnes/

Previous programmes have focused on towns such as Ludlow and Scarborough - last night's was on Totnes, which is becoming well known as the first of the 'transition towns' in Britain. The key idea in these programmes is that it's possible to live more on a human scale in a town, which is less of an anthill than a city, but has more to offer than a village.

http://www.transitiontowntotnes.org/content/transition-town-totnes-newsletter-54-may-2011

This final programme, however, floated the idea that people need to rediscover a sense of community within cities, or within particular communities within cities. A typical London borough, therefore, such as Hackney or Islington or Tottenham, can have its own sense of community, and within those boroughs there are specific areas that can generate their own sense of community - Stoke Newington, Clapton, Dalston, Canonbury, Barnsbury, Angel, etc.

We can even take it down to street level - and I've written in the past about brilliant street parties that have taken place in my own locality - in response to the brilliant Tim Smit's idea of a "Big Lunch". http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2010/07/layer-333-radio-4-reasons-to-be.html

In a typical street of Victorian terraced houses there as so many people and so many families it's possible to generate an amazing sense of community if people live there long enough. There are many wonderful streets where people love living and do indeed stick around for many years.

Tim Smit was also featured on TV this week in a superb documentary - beautifully filmed and edited - about the Lost Gardens of Heligan. It was Tim who discovered the abandoned estate in Cornwall, and who brought it back to life - which he subsequently wrote a book about. It was also Mr Smit who raised the money for and built the Eden Project.  He's quite a guy.

http://howtomakeadifference.net/2010/06/14/tim-smit/

http://www.edenproject.com/media/big-lunch-3d-art-pr.php

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/06/food-big-lunch-production

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tim-smit-breaking-bread-together-will-break-down-community-barriers-1658946.html

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The last time I went to see Naomi Klein speak at a public meeting was a few months ago  in Totnes. She was there to study the Transition Town concept. Unfortunately the meeting was spoiled by a few typical locals who insisted on turning the meeting into something resembling a hall full of small discussion groups so that they could listen to themselves talking rather than pay attention to what the sublime Ms Klein had to say. Ordinarily I wouldn't have cared particularly - and if the 'workshops' and the 'brainstorming' had turned out to be dull then I'd gladly have gone down to the nearest pub and left them to it. Unfortunately, when the guest speaker lives in Canada and rarely gets to England, let alone Totnes, then it just seemed like a missed opportunity. What a pity there were no civic leaders present who had the presence of mind to stand up and say to the gathering that they really could listen to one another at any old time, whereas Naomi Klein was in town just for the day . . .

Naomi wrote a brilliant piece this week on the subject of England's urban riots:

Looting with the lights on


We keep hearing England's riots weren't political – but looters know that their elites have been committing daylight robbery

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/17/looing-with-lights-off

Argentina's mass looting was called el saqueo – the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country's elites had done by selling off the country's national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatisation deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centres would not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the real gangsters were the ones in charge.


England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn't theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behaviour.


This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G8 and G20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuition fees, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatisations of public assets and decreasing pensions – mix the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about the need to give up these "entitlements"? The bankers and hedge-fund managers, of course.


This is the global saqueo, a time of great taking. Fuelled by a pathological sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears, however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94% of millionaires were afraid of "violence in the streets". This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.


Of course London's riots weren't a political protest. But the people committing night-time robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious. The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously offered – a union job, a good affordable education – being rapidly sealed off. The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our increasingly fortressed borders.


Cameron's response to the riots is to make this locking-out literal: evictions from public housing, threats to cut off communication tools and outrageous jail terms (five months to a woman for receiving a stolen pair of shorts). The message is once again being sent: disappear, and do it quietly.


At last year's G20 "austerity summit" in Toronto, the protests turned into riots and multiple cop cars burned. It was nothing by London 2011 standards, but it was still shocking to us Canadians. The big controversy then was that the government had spent $675m on summit "security" (yet they still couldn't seem to put out those fires). At the time, many of us pointed out that the pricey new arsenal that the police had acquired – water cannons, sound cannons, teargas and rubber bullets – wasn't just meant for the protesters in the streets. Its long-term use would be to discipline the poor, who in the new era of austerity would have dangerously little to lose.


This is what Cameron got wrong: you can't cut police budgets at the same time as you cut everything else. Because when you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance – whether organised protests or spontaneous looting. And that's not politics. It's physics.

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The correct response to the political situation, as I've said so many times, is peaceful, non-violent protest and demonstration - walk like an Egyptian. Talk like Tahrir, or Tiananmen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahrir_Square

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_Revolution_of_2011

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989

Gandhi was the first to use non-violent mass protest as a means of making political demands. There's a new movement happening in India based on Gandhi's ideas and example. And a man called Anna.

Indian corruption: Gandhi's mantle


Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement is posing an increasingly serious challenge to the Indian government

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/17/anna-hazare-gandhi-india-corruption

Editorial


The practical and sometimes dirty business of power-seeking and deal-making has in the past been countered in Indian politics by periodic impulses to transform society root and branch. This dualism was famously embodied in the divide between Nehru and Gandhi, partners but also rivals in the Indian independence movement.


The two men had profoundly different ideas on the direction in which India ought to go, Nehru seeing a future India as a great industrial and military power, while Gandhi wanted a society which would keep the worst aspects of modernity at bay while transcending caste, class and religious differences.


Anna Hazare, the 74-year-old former soldier whose anti-corruption movement is posing an increasingly serious challenge to the Indian government, has certainly borrowed both style and technique from the Mahatma. He wears plain white clothes, if not the actual homespun on which Gandhi insisted. Like Gandhi, he fasts. Like Gandhi, he goes to prison – and sometimes refuses to come out. Like Gandhi, he has a model village, in his case in his home state of Maharashtra. Like Gandhi, he is against tobacco, alcohol and other drugs. Like Gandhi he has mobilised large numbers of Indians, many thousands of whom have been demonstrating in New Delhi and other cities after Manmohan Singh's government made the mistake of arresting him two days ago. Anger at corruption, of both the grand and the petty kind, has never been so intense.


The basic issue is simple. Mr Hazare and his followers want a powerful anti-corruption agency established, something that various governments had promised in the past. The prime minister pushed legislation to create such an agency, but without giving it powers to investigate the senior judiciary and the prime minister's office, or to pursue the lower- level officials who make life an expensive hell for Indians seeking driving licences, passports and other documents. Mr Hazare will not accept this, while Mr Singh says democracy is being subverted.


Mr Hazare does not have, or aspire to, anything like Gandhi's stature. He does not confront, as Gandhi did, his followers' complicity in social evils, an aspect of his career underlined by the subtitle – His Struggle With India – of a recent book on Gandhi. But Mr Hazare has found an issue – and is exerting a leverage which on balance must be good for India.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/anna-hazare
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Layer 333 . . . Radio 4, Reasons to be Cheerful, and a Big Lunch

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I heard on the radio recently someone saying, with absolute authority, "We can never get rid of aggression and jealousy in human beings . . . "

Really? The good news is that we have techniques for controlling these destructive emotions - techniques which centre on learning to be emotionally, socially and spiritually intelligent. We're just waiting, some of us, for our school system to enable our children to develop these intelligences in any thorough and significant way - and to do it day after day, throughout each day. Thank goodness it's already happening in more enlightened countries.

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Possibly the best antidotes to destructive emotions are laughter and music. People like the Dalai Lama and the Zen masters laugh a lot.

I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue is back to its very best - Mondays at 6.30 on R4. Jack Dee is turning out to be a very good choice for the successor to Humph. Maybe the humour in this programme isn't for everyone, but if you think it might be hilarious to hear two people playing "Sisters" as a duet for swanee whistle and kazoo - tune in now.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnwb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%27m_Sorry_I_Haven%27t_a_Clue

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Desert Island Discs was superb this week - Tim Robbins is a very interesting guy, and has brilliant taste in music. Springsteen, Joni, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye and more.

During the programme he recalled his dad's band, The Highwaymen, and their version of Donovan's 'Universal Soldier':

http://www.lyricsdomain.com/4/donovan/universal_soldier.html

Repeated on Friday, but also on the website.

The BBC website for DID gets better and better:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t0ztc#synopsis

Unfortunately Tim's track of Ry Cooder with V.M. Bhatt isn't available on Spotify, but I noticed other Ry Cooder classics are there - especially Theme from Southern Comfort, Get Rhythm and The Very Thing That Makes You Rich. So are The Bourgeois Blues, Across The Borderline, and The Way We Make A Broken Heart.

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Big Society, Big Lunch

This year's Big Lunch Day was Sunday 18th July. This is only its second year, but it could grow into a national phenomenon. So what is it? I hear you ask.

http://www.thebiglunch.com/index.php

The Big what?

It’s a one-day get together with your neighbours on Sunday 18th July 2010. It can be anything from a simple lunch to a full-blown street party with DJs and a home cooked feast.

Why be involved?

You’ll enjoy it. Food, music and laughter tastes, sounds and feels better with others.

The Big Lunch began life as a wild seed at The Eden Project. We believe the world can get better by working together, with nature, optimism and common sense.

We know that when people get together, we become more positive and start to sort out some serious stuff. By simply having some fun on one day in July, we can build new friendships that we can enjoy for the rest of the year.

The Big Lunch is a chance for different generations and backgrounds to hear each other out and share stories, skills and interests. It's the start of a journey into rebuilding our communities. We call this phenomenon ‘human warming’.

Make isolation history

For most of us, doing The Big Lunch is simply about having fun and sending a message to the establishment that we're not all going to hell in a handcart. But there are many of us who lead lonely lives or at least more isolated or anonymous lives than we’d like. The stats don’t make easy reading but if we want to turn them around, we need to hear them:

    * Two million more single person households by 2019.
    * More rich, poor and ethnic ghettos than ever before.
    * 7% annual drop in trust between neighbours from 2003-05.
    * Social trust in the UK halved and now among the lowest in Europe.

So, you might think a street party is the last thing you’d do to tackle crime, domestic violence, homelessness or children in poverty. But as a catalyst facing up to tough issues, it works, as anyone who took part last year knows. When doors open up, people open up and neighbourhoods open up, from sleepy hamlets to hyper estates.

Why the Eden Project kick-started The Big Lunch

We believe the world can get better by working together, with nature, optimism and common sense. We took a former china clay pit and turned it into a landscape capable of sustaining plants from all over the world to prove the point.

Ten years on, we’re developing more wild ideas to help us face up to the challenges of the toughest century on record. Global warming needs human warming. The odd light bulb here and there won’t work. Ideas like The Big Lunch just might if we join up our efforts. Change the way we live, do the things we know we should, and we’ll leave the planet in a ripe state for our children, their children, and so on.

Eden is all about projects, we believe in experiments that live, eat, breathe and with luck, thrive. Eden is a celebration of life. People say it puts champagne in your veins, which sounds a lot more fun than chlorophyll. Although Eden kick-started The Big Lunch (and are working hard to help it grow year on year), we’re resisting the temptation to own or control the day. We want to keep it organic, create a mood, a rumour.

As we said, it’s your party.

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As far as I can see, pretty much anything that Tim Smit gets involved in turns out to be pretty special - The Lost Gardens of Heligan, The Eden Project, and now The Big Lunch.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Smit


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/06/food-big-lunch-production

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/tim-smit-breaking-bread-together-will-break-down-community-barriers-1658946.html

http://howtomakeadifference.net/2010/06/tim-smit/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6719642.ece

So does the event live up to its billing? The 'lunch' I was invited to certainly did.

Seeing a typical London street completely empty of vehicles is an experience in itself. As someone said - they're surprisingly W I D E.

In the centre of the street, within a simple frame of wooden planks, a ton of sand created a brilliant beach for the kids to play on, right next to two large blow-up paddling pools. They had even covered them with a huge colourful sunshade, strung between four houses. What could be more brilliant for kids than to come out of their houses in bare feet and swimming cossies, carrying buckets and spades, and get busy on their very own beach?

Someone had set up a DJ station in front of his house, using the street's own community wi-fi to play a Spotify feed through laptops and big speakers - an amazing variety of brilliant music - all day long, and into the evening, at which point there was literally dancing in the street - some of it very tipsy.

Everyone contributed food - either in dishes and casseroles, or to be cooked on the barbeques. Feed the world!

Someone had organised a bunch of people - adults and children - to play a variety of instruments and lead everyone in singing some favourite songs. Who knew so many neighbours had such musical talent? There were guitars, cellos, recorders, drums and various percussion.

The sun shone, and people actually mingled and talked to one another. All the generations together, from four months to well over eighty. I met a young guy who has a recording studio set up at home, and an older guy who's really into the local live music scene, who readily offered to pick out some places to introduce me to. Someone else reminded me that it's really worth keeping in touch with the Vortex.

As darkness descended, sitting on the front steps of the houses, even my cynical son agreed that it was a brilliant day, and people ought to live like this every week - not just on a single day of the year. By then his own son was soundly asleep upstairs, having spent the whole day toddling from beach to pool and from person to person. His dog was also sleeping contentedly, having had endless fussing and food from practically everyone there. A very happy Staffie.

People got to know one another, and got to know one another's children, and dogs. It was a day full of sunshine, music, laughter, amusement, entertainment, conversation, good food, good beer and good wine.

Exactly as it says on the Big Lunch label.

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Big Society

David Cameron reveals 'big society' vision – and denies it is just cost cutting


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/19/david-cameron-big-society-launch

Cameron also outlined three strands of the big society agenda. These included social action for which the government had to foster a culture of voluntarism and philanthropy. There was also public service reform – getting rid of centralised bureaucracy "that wastes money and undermines morale" – and community empowerment, "creating communities with oomph", the neighbourhoods being "in charge of their own destiny".

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