The Idler

Do Good Lives Have to Cost The Earth?

The New Economics Foundation’s excellent new collection of essays is out now. Do Good Lives Have To Cost The Earth? is an inspiring anthology with polemics from Oliver James, Rosie Boycott, Colin Tudge and Idler ed Tom Hodgkinson. It offers a cheerful reflection on the possibilities of a life beyond capitalism.

Buy it here from Amazon

Tom at Tapeley

Tom Hodgkinson is giving a talk at Tapeley Park in North Devon as the guest of North Devon Active Youth. It’s one of their Reel Indi film nights, and they are showing The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream, Gregory Greene’s 2004 movie on peak oil. Sponsored by Marshford Organics. www.myspace.com/northdevonactiveyouth

Wednesday 6 February, Tapeley Park, Nr Instow, North Devon.
7pm, £2 suggested donation

Adbusters says: “Slow down”

Here is a nice little film from Adbusters magazine to launch their Slow Down Week:

http://www.adbusters.org/media/flash/slow_down_week/

Tom’s Facebook Piece

Here is a link to my piece on Facebook, published yesterday in the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

TH

Country Diary 72: Breaking the Law

WELL, you try and do something good and you only get hassle. Yesterday morning we had a knock at the door from our local environmental health officer. He had come round to tell us that according to a law that was brought in two years ago, what we had done with our pigs—that is to say, have them killed at home— was illegal. You are not allowed to kill and eat your own pigs. The law says that you have to take them to the slaughterhouse. This is, they say, so they can be checked by the slaughterhouse for disease. We argued that it is surely more humane to have them killed at home, because the pig does not suffer the stress of being bundled into a van and then lined up on the racks in an unfamiliar place and killed. He actually agreed that meat that has been killed at home, stress-free, tastes better than meat that has gone through the abattoir. So that is why our meat tasted so good: because it was killed at home. But that is illegal now. Our meat is illegal. So that means that pork that tastes as pork is meant to taste is now illegal. No one will be able to try it unless they don’t mind outlawing themselves. Also, an age-old custom has been outlawed. For millennia, smallholders have killed and eaten their own pigs. It is the basis of the cottage life. And today around the round, from Mexico to Moldavia to Uruguay to Africa to Vanuatu, country people kill and eat their own pigs. But we are no longer allowed to do this in the UK, where they would prefer we eat meat that has been appallingly treated in factory farms than compassionately and humanely give the pigs and happy life and an instant death. And surely the it is a basic human right, to raise and kill and eat and share your own animals. Insane, truly insane.

ENDS

A Country Diary 71: A Vandal in the Veg Patch

Monday 7 January 2008

OF ALL THE animals we’ve had here, by far the most useless, costly, time-consuming, toilsome and stressful has been the pony. What an absurd indulgence. We have to rent its field, feed it, give it hay, take it in and out every day. It wears expensive coats and needs a visit from the farrier every few months. It is constantly escaping into the farmer’s fields, causing him a nuisance and us to go wandering around with a bucket of horse nuts, trying to bring it back. It breaks into the dairy and eats things and smashes things up and then looks hurt and affronted when you try and get it out of there. I reckon it costs us about £1,500 a year. Victoria never, ever, rides it. Nor do the children, even though we bought them little riding hats, another great expense. It is too small for me to ride. The most use it gets is perhaps once or twice a year when Victoria gives a bunch of children a pony ride. It also needs a lot of clearing up after, a job which tends to get delayed, resulting in a yard full of horseshit.

But now the pony has done something really inexcusable. Yesterday it broke into the vegetable patch and ate it. Yes, ate every single cabbage (six of them), every single broccoli plant (there were five and they were doing very nicely). All the remaining Brussells sprouts plants, gone. That’s like a year of work and thought and planning all gone to waste. The leek bed is trampled to nothingness. There are giant hoof holes all over the place. I am livid. When I saw the devastation I flung the compost bucket at the fence in a fury. “The pony’s eaten my fucking vegetable patch,” I said to Victoria on returning to the house.

I really can’t see many plus sides. I suppose it’s quite pretty to look at. I suppose also that you could argue that it provides manure, but living on a cow farm, that’s hardly something we’re short of. For what we spend on it, we could employ a gardener to come in one morning a week and do all the vegetables. Instead we have this creature which actively destroys my gardening work. Last year it ate all my carefully pruned roses when Victoria let it into the front garden.

No, it’s been nothing but trouble. Last night we wrote out a list of our annual costs. After rent, council tax and motor cars, I’d say the pony came pretty high. Actually, that’s not quite true. We calculated our annual booze bill at something like £3,500. Surely though, booze is simply not something that can be economised on? Victoria needs good wine and I need a lot of beer. It’s medecine, it’s the stuff of life.

I think one answer would be to brew our own beer. That would save a fortune. We should also use the excess parsnips to make parsnip wine. And maybe then we could buy a cart for the pony and drive round making deliveries and selling our own home-produced alcohol products. That would kill two birds with one stone. Right now that pony is simply not earning its keep.

Well, one easy cost-saver would be to sell my van. That has been another ridiculous indulgence, and costs me something approaching five grand each year. I could get taxis to the station each time I go to London and still save four thousand pounds a year. The van must go.

Another thought for making money out of the pony was to offer horse and cart rides to tourists who are visiting Woody Bay station, but find it a disappointingly long distance from Woody Bay itself. The pony could take them from station to beach car park, and back. Maybe this is an enterprise that Arthur could operate.

Something’s got to change.

ENDS