Shopping For Our Lives?

First 'real' day of the year 2019.  Dragged the kids out of their beds and got them to school.  Walked the dog twice as far as usual to offset the Christmas food overload.  Started on house jobs - actually moving immense piles of 'stuff' around the place.  And had a look at Instagram.

Now, I do look at Instagram most days (probably too many!).  But today my blog post is directly influenced (that Instafamous word) by Instagram.  For a good while, I have been following a hashtag called #mystylephotochallenge  It is all for fun but it brings together a whole community of interesting women.  The wonderful organisers @mystylephotochallenge post a monthly list of the themes for each day and followers interpret the themes as they want.  It can be fashion, humour, landscape, a film.  Whatever you want to share.  It is mostly fashion-related though and for this January/February, #mystylephotochallenge has linked with another hashtag #50daysofshoppingmywardrobe  (organised by @joannewalker62)

The idea of shopping your wardrobe has been gaining much currency and there are a variety of hashtags, influencer, bloggers, whatever pushing the reduce, reuse, recycle agenda in fashion.  Stacey Dooley's Fashion's Dirty Secrets BBC documentary* last year brought much needed impetus to the movement.  Our desire for fast fashion, for cheap jeans, for the latest look is contributing big time to the environmental problems on our planet.  

Yet - at the same time, we are supposed to be shopping to 'save the high street'.  Shopping to help local retailers.  Shopping to help our communities.  I myself posted on Instagram last year about the decimation and under-investment in my home town's high street.  Our out-of-town shopping centre has since also been severely affected.  It is confusing.  We don't want to lose the shops and yet it is quite clear that we all have too much stuff.  We can all declutter as much as we like for spring but where is it all going to go?  We like to think we can 'send it all to charity' or put on eBay or Depop.  But how much is going to landfill?  And won't we just fill the gaps in our cupboards?

I was whittering at a friend who has an independent shop about all this before Christmas.  I think I was probably really annoying.  Because they are living it, this weird and worrying juxtaposition.  It is their livelihood.  Whereas I am just confused by what to do and how this is going to pan out so was pondering out loud.

When I was a child, we still had mobile shops that came to our housing estate.  Right into my teens, there was still the Alpine pop lorry that delivered drinks.  Those were seen as innovations by the older generation though.  Until I first went to France in 1981 I had never seen a hypermarket.  The 'freezer centre' was amazing enough to us - potato croquette, anyone? Now, all of our supermarkets are so overly massive that they are renting out floor space to other retailers in an effort to curb their costs.  And whatever happened to Knickerbox, Tie Rack, Sock Shop, the Sweater Shop, et al?  I don't think their demise was due to online retailers?  

I have definitely bought less this last six months, since watching the above mentioned documentary.  It is a really thought-provoking piece.  But an interesting point was made on my Instagram after I said I had felt bad at shopping in Primark for the first time in a month, after watching the programme.  The comment was about the jobs which 'fast fashion' provides in so many countries.  At great environmental cost and definitely not at decent wage levels.  But still some kind of income for so many people who have next to nothing.  And what about those employed in retail in developed countries?  Plus, wages are low and prices for so many things are high everywhere.  Many, many people really need cheap consumer goods.  Just ask those who are having to go to the food bank, those who cannot afford school shoes for their children despite living in an apparently advanced society.

I don't have any answers.  I will be shopping my wardrobe for 50 days but I wouldn't dream of judging those who are still buying.  It is quite clear that something is going to have to give but as to what...  We can only hope, here in the UK, that the changes which are surely coming will not be on the scale of the Seventies and Eighties upheavals in employment and consumption.  I fear Brexit  - deal or no deal - may be what pushes the retail sector into freefall though.

* Note:  when creating the BBC link, I noticed that the documentary is on Last Chance and will leave BBC iPlayer on Wednesday 9 January.  Download!

The List

Oh dear.  It has been months again since posting.  Almost every day I think of topics but I just haven't been able to bring myself to write.  So I have been thinking about why this is.  I love writing this blog once I get going on a post.  And I have come to the conclusion that there is just too much that bothers me in the world at the moment:  

My fears about Trump are playing out - and then some.  Immigration, environment idiocy, war mongering, his general stupidity, his tweets, his attitude towards the rest of the world in general, the frankly endless list is horrific.

There is no sign that Brexit will be stopped.  Even in the current uncertainty about 'the deal' I have no real hope that the madness will be ended by us Remaining.  I actually feel sorry for Theresa May.  A new emotion to feel sorry for a Tory. 

The environment.  I have tried really hard at  home this year to do more recycling and buy less stuff and all of that.  But then you read articles and watch programmes which tell you that no progress is being made at all.  That most of what you think you are recycling is not being properly recycled.  That the Indian Ocean is flooded with plastic.  That we are losing species/forests/water ever day. 

Universal credit in the UK.  What a joke.  More people than ever are below the poverty line.  More people are homeless.  The NHS is collapsing.  Education is chronically underfunded.  But our government is spending billions on Brexit.  £4.5 million of taxpayers' money was apparently spent to renovate an apartment for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  Imagine what £4.5 million extra could do for one Local Education Authority?  One tiny example amongst thousands...

I could keep going ad infinitum.  Do you see what I mean?  Depressing.

So I have been focussing a bit more on things closer to home.  On being grateful for what I already have.  On thinking about what small things I can continue to do to help, so that at least I can look my kids in the eye and say 'we tried to fix this'.

With that in mind, could I ask you to make a donation this Christmas to a cause which means something to you?  (Not your beer fund or your ASOS account (!) either.)  A food bank, a shelter, a wildlife charity, an age concern group.  Even a local church or school.  Or to the Remain campaign.  Or subscribe to a fact checking site online and help to keep fake news at bay.  Then send a card or email in support of that cause to your MP or council.

We can't change the world right now, immediately.  It's going to take time and planning for the big problems but I am determined not to be overwhelmed.  I hope you are too.

Home Sweet Home

Not posted in a while.  Been lots happening both personally and in the news of course.  But despite starting two or three posts, I just wasn't feeling it.

However, today I went for a short drive around the area where I used to live.  So I thought I would briefly muse on that.  I have very rarely gone back since I left home completely.  It is not a particularly nice town and I had little attachment to any friends who had not also left.  Maybe one or two but that was it.  My parents divorced a short time after I left and that was that.  House gone, no need to visit the place.

There were a couple of things which really struck me today, in the suburbs where I was brought up.  The first was the complete de-greening of the place.  Nearly every lawn where we had played has been turned into a double driveway.  Many trees and hedges have vanished.  And a lot of grass verges have been co-opted into people's properties - and therefore their driveways.  It wasn't a posh neighbourhood but I remember it as leafy and pleasant.  It was rather odd to be confronted with such mass environmental change and it worries me to think how many other places are now the same. 

The other very clear situation was house building on a large scale.  Developers have finally managed to get access behind some of the classic 'ribbon development' roads on the outskirts and are taking full advantage.  But none of it looked to be 'affordable housing'.  And I could not see how the infrastructure is going to manage.  New schools and roads will be desperately needed from what I could see.  And the huge swathes of fields which have gone was quite shocking when you had not been there for such a long time.

It all appeared to be a microcosm of the sorts of issues facing many towns in the UK.  Not enough housing for those on lower incomes, lack of investment in everything needed to sustain modern life apart from these houses, the one hospital is on the other side of the town.  And the car is king.  It is already king in the existing estates and will have to be king on the new ones because you will not be able to get anywhere without one. The only public transport is buses.  Similar issues are happening where I live now.  

Once again on this blog, I must go back to 'this is not a poor country'.  We have money.  It is just not being spent properly.  Theresa May leapt to the defence of the NHS when Trump attacked it.  Brilliant.  Now spend some money on it.  Ministers pondering on the housing crisis - sink estates, hundreds of people in B&Bs, the issues following the Grenfell tragedy, etc?  Cancel Trident and spend the money on houses - council houses.  As for the environmental changes I saw, I don't see how, at present, we can escape from the car trap.  Homes are built further and further away from facilities but there is no other transport.  Many houses accommodate at least two working adults.  Unfortunately, it is the green in our lives which is having to give way.

Actually, I lived in that place for so long that I remember there being fields in places which are now thirty to forty year old estates.  Change has to happen.  Of course.  But I don't think nearly enough thought is being given to the planning situation now and that is something which should worry us all.

Weather He Exists

As the rolling news coverage is showing, our planet is undergoing, once again, extreme weather to say the least.  And as ever, Donald Trump's commentary language is about as simplistic as it gets.  The use of the words 'bad', 'good', 'very' are his go-to descriptives for everything though, aren't they?

However, even a greater intellect than Trump (no comment on how difficult it would be to find a person of more intellect - other than 'try the nursery') would struggle to describe something so extreme which they completely deny should be happening.

What puzzles me about the American Right is how you align extreme Christian religion with the denial of global warming.  If you are Creationist, what do you think is happening to the planet?  If you believe wholeheartedly - word for word - in the Bible, you must, for example, believe that Noah was told by God to build the Ark to save the animals 'two by two' (hey, there's a song there) while He flooded the place.

If it is not global warming, what is happening to our weather, our temperatures, our sea levels?  Is 'God' doing this?  And if so, why?  What are we being punished for?

Personally, I think the writers of the story of Noah were telling - a long time after the event - of a situation caused by a some kind of planetary issue.  And in another example, the plagues described as descending on Egypt were to do with extreme weather.  More likely explanations surely?

As a teenager, I was very involved in the Methodist Church.  Many of those who I went to youth events with subsequently entered the ministry or worked for the church in other capacities.  For me, I did greatly enjoy my time and I hope I took a moral compass from it.  I did believe in religion to an extent.  But it was not unquestioning.  And I have never thought that God created the world in seven days, etc etc.  To me, these tales are clearly a way of making sense of history passed down to the writers, of the world around the writers, of the unknown.

Or is there something we, the little people, are missing here?  There is film called 2012.  It is a disaster movie based on the idea that extreme sea level rises cause catastrophic flooding on the Earth. The only humans to survive are those who have places on giant space-ship-like vessels which have been secretly built.  And the places on those ships go mainly to the wealthy and those in government.

I am sorry if this is all getting a bit David Icke for you.  But having now watched fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes in the space of a week, I am even more terrified by Trump and co's refusal to believe in the need to mend out ways.  By their actual reversal of the measures which have so far been taken - and which never went far enough in the first place.  We, and not God, are most definitely killing our beautiful and bountiful planet.