And if you want to get all Latin about things, praemonitus praemunitus. I'm currently lacking the va-va-voom to write a full-blown post about the global economy, the veritable shitstorm that's been whirling into life within it, and the websites you should be watching to get a grasp on what the hell's going on & what to do, but I couldn't let this pass by without bringing it to the attention of as many as possible. If you're a Facebook chum of mine, you'll already be sick of the sound of this, but for those poor souls who aren't, the BBC's business editor Robert Peston today published what I think is a first for the BBC News bloggers - a 6 page PDF report of surprising scope titled The New Capitalism.
Basically it's an overview of the almighty economic clusterfuck that's only really grabbed mainstream attention over the last few months, yet has been brewing for years, written with clarity and care. As a summary of what can be an impossibly complex and slippery subject, it's probably the best I've written, especially from a man-on-the-street perspective. The use of PDF is interesting, allowing the piece to be much longer than would normally be found on a BBC News article or blog, and it's to the BBC's credit that it okayed this rather than making do with some ultra-simplified post. While obviously written with a UK audience in mind, I'd recommend this to pretty much everyone who doesn't want to keep their head in the sand.
A word of caution. If you've not been exposed to many of the financial news sources over the last year (Peston being the most mainstream example), you may find this a depressing, possibly crushing read. It's as clear a warning that our current standard of living, built on a foundation of crumbling credit, that's been presented as the norm for the last two decades is not only unsustainable environmentally (which we've known for yonks, yet carried on regardless) but economically as well. As Pesto succintly puts it:
To put it in crude terms, for much of the past decade, millions of Chinese slaved away on near subsistence wages and still managed to save, both as a nation (China swanks £1,400bn in foreign exchange reserves) and as individuals. And to a large extent they were working to improve our living standards, because they made more and more of the stuff we wanted at cheaper and cheaper prices - and clever bankers took their savings and lent the cash to us, so that we could buy the houses we cherished, the cars we desired, the flat-screen TVs. [...] Tragically, they toiled for our prosperity – or we lived high on the hog while they fattened the pigs for us – for too long. Which is partly why the return to equilibrium, to a more balanced global economy, is happening in a horribly painful way that's impoverishing millions of people.
When as a country you've been living way beyond your means for so long it becomes the norm, the only way you've known, that equilibrium, that balanced global economy, is going to hurt in ways that directly affect all our individual lives. As you extrapolate further what this all really means in the real world, it gets scarier, as does the overwhelming sense of forces at work that are utterly out of your control. It's not just the nationalised banks. It's not just Woolworths. And the limits to come will be set by both economics and environment as they gradually become inseparable (see peak oil for a prime example of this). Yet as with those sober scientific reports on climate change and predictions for the coming decades, surely it's better to be aware and prepare as much as you can than to turn away, let the majority of the media keep doing what it has to do (that is, sell you stuff while you're still able to buy) and then shriek with shock further down the line "why didn't anyone tell us?" while the lights flicker and the shelves lie empty. (God, it's so easy to sound hysterical about this...)
Well, there's plenty of people already telling us, and these are the key websites I've been keeping my eye on. (Keep an eye on the 'Portents' submenu on the right-hand-side of this blog if you ever want a reminder) To be honest, Pesto is a ray of hippy-dippy banker-hugging sunshine compared to what you'll read on some of these sites - your mileage for depressingly believable predictions of near-apocalyptic civilisation crashes may vary. But, as with climate change, think of this as a prime example of hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. Well, within reason - that's a road that leads to survivalist blogs, often somewhat obsessed with weaponry, a path we really don't want to be heading down.
Sharon Astyk: Writer, teacher and farmer, with one book already out and another on the way, practicing what she preaches. Posts can be personal descriptions of modern farmlife, advice on food preservation and storage or examinations of economic instability. Excellent writing, personal and well researched, certainly worth adding to your RSS feed. An education.
The Automatic Earth: The biggie, not for the faint-hearted. Ultimately a daily collation of key economic news stories from across the world that day, brought together onto one page and given an introduction. The scope is staggering, and too much for casual reading, but even a brief scan through reveals patterns, pointers, potents. Certainly the most doom-laden of the blogs I read.
Doors of Perception: Pointed me to the Automatic Earth, being somewhere between TAE and Worldchanging. The focus, similar to Bruce Sterling's Veridian Design, is primarily on global design innovation, but this includes social and environmental subjects. Not so economy-based, but certainly relevant to those curious to make plans for the future that extend beyond holing up in a cave with a shotgun and a crate of Spam.
The Oil Drum / Energy Bulletin: Similar to TAE but with a harder focus on energy, with a particularly beady eye on peak oil.
Clusterfuck Nation: Who could resist that name? The blog of Jim Kunstler, writer of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century, I only just clued on to this one at the weekend. Looks promising.
There's a few others, but it's time for bed and that's quite enough gloom for one post, though it's touched on issues I'd love to go into more at a later date (especially in tandem with the dusty Vox blog and my island dream). Anyway, go and watch 40 seconds of the Clangers trying to understand politics.
This bizarre ongoing run of under-the-weatherness that's been bugging me for weeks has today manifested itself in superdense globules of thick green ectoplasm embedded in my throat, leaving me unable to speak beyond a whisper. Earlier this morning I coughed up a veritable mass of the stuff into my hand, where it lay quivering like an Ood brain. Nice. I binned it, but in retrospect maybe I should've tried to establish contact. Much to my frothing annoyance, this all means I'm in no shape to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds in Glasgow tomorrow, so we've reluctantly popped them up for sale at face value. (ooh, they just sold.) Fuck's sake, this'll be the second Nick Cave gig we've bought tickets for then missed - ah well, third time's a charm. I'm counting on seven days of refreshing sea air in Orkney to slap my immune system into action, otherwise I'll just have to retire from the civil service on ill health with the sniffles.
In further news, London has clearly gone off its tits and elected the Snork Maiden as Mayor of the city. Boris Johnson... he's the sort of candidate that Nathan Barley would vote for, isn't he? All those berks who've wibbled on internet message boards about how he'll make politics "interesting" rather put me in mind of a certain curse. And the BNP getting a seat on the Assembly? What the hell is going on down there? With every week I get more and more depressed with the state of British politics - it's increasingly hopeless, cynical, bitter, fractious, mired in inactivity and doing us absolutely no good as a nation, yet there's nothing I can see happening to turn things around. I'd love to think Compass really could make a difference, but it's hard to believe it. On darker days I find myself thinking where both Scotland and the UK in general will be heading over the next couple of decades and really don't like the results. No wonder I keep looking at Svalbard with a weird longing, but I'd be happy to make do with Scandinavia.
Alan Johnston freed after 114 days kidnapped in solitary confinement - what a truly cracking piece of news to wake up to today. It's been wonderful to watch footage of people at the BBC, really genuinely touching, cheering as that giant poster on Television Centre came down. And seeing his parents & sister talking to him on the phone this evening (at the end of this clip) brought a wobbly old lump to the throat, especially the understated "have a word with your mum - chin up son." When the rumours came through weeks back of his execution they were horrifying but depressingly believable, so easy to imagine grim digitised images of his killing leaking through the internet. Instead, this superb journalist is out, free and on the way back to Scotland. Any kind of happy ending seems so rare in reality, so savour the moment.
Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images
UPDATE: Quick off the mark, Manic at Bloggerheads has produced this button to replace the old one. Diamond!
Graphic nabbed from here, the below quotes from BBC News.
MAY 2001
Once in a while, I'm standing here, doing something. And I think: 'What in the world am I doing here?' It's a big surprise.
FEBRUARY 2002
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.
OCTOBER 2002
[Osama Bin Laden is] either alive and well or alive and not too well or not alive.
MARCH 2003
We know where they [Iraq's WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.
2004
It seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth, to say what we know, to say what we don't know, and recognise that we're dealing with people that are perfectly willing to, to lie to the world to attempt to further their case and to the extent people lie of, ultimately they are caught lying and they lose their credibility and one would think it wouldn't take very long for that to happen dealing with people like this.
How long? About six years.
UPDATE: The Daily Show's splendid tribute to the oaf can be seen here. Marvellous stuff.
A little bit of catching up on this curiously sunny afternoon in Edinburgh, leaves in nearby trees glistening in the light, a warm breeze brushing through the flat, sunshine shimmering off the Water of Leith...
The Lass has written a nice summarised post of our Orkney jaunt a few weeks back. I'll get round to one meself sometime soon, though that could be 'soon' in geological terms. All her photographs are online, as are all my drawings and most of the snaps.
It's been a tremendously social month-and-a-bit, starting off with Stu & Andrea popping over for a weekend before trundling over to lovely lovely Skye - Stu's account starts here, continues here and we're now waiting to hear all about The Three Chimneys. In the meantime there's a fine wodge of photographs from Our Favourite Isle. We had a great weekend, with Saturday night seeing a selection of V-SCOT popping over to ours for all sorts of culinary delights and obscure nerdish chatter and Sunday night marked with a gorgeous meal at diddy right-on ethical eaterie Iglu.
Last weekend saw the visit of my old college chum Marilou, who I haven't seen since, crikey, 2003. Unlike muggins here, she made good use of her animation skills from college and has gone on to make a living from animation in Brussels (you'll see her name pop up in the credits for Belleville Rendezvous) winning awards in the process. A real pleasure to see her again, chatting away as though Bournemouth and Ballyfermot were only yesterday. She came laden down with Belgian beer and chocolate (this may now become a statutory requirement for all visitors), including a genuine & utterly ludicrous Kwak glass - oh, there'll be photos of this bizarre piece of glass-blowing, you'll see.
For our part, we introduced her to the marvels of Peckhams, Chewin' the Fat, L'Aquila Bianca, the Farmers Market, £5 CDs at Fopp, the Water of Leith, Red Cuillin and The Wicker Man (the original, obviously). It was also great to watch she and the Lass nattering about knitting throughout the weekend, Chazzer gently leading our guest through more ambitious patterns, bizarrely huge needles and chunky wool.
Despite a hellish bus journey and late arrival at the session, I had a pretty good time at life drawing on Saturday afternoon. Being late, the only available view was a pretty dull profile of the body, so I focused on the head for the whole session. Despite being narked during the first hour and on the cusp of leaving, I stuck around and ended up producing my best portrait yet using soft Conté pastels. It's up for sale on Etsy now, as are three animal drawings from the last year - lion, tiger, camel. I quite like 'em, but whether they can stand out from the massive heided multitudes remains to be seen.
Anyhoo, Mum's visiting this weekend (I've just got all the hoovering and toilet-scrubbing done) so it'll be a couple of days 'til the next post. Until then, here's a highly recommended clip from The Daily Show at it's finest that'll make you laugh, gasp and calculate how many days 'til the next American presidential election, c/o One Good Move.
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