Author: Midsteeple Quarter

The auction was held on Tuesday 5th Feb. Below is the tweet from the Midsteeple Quarter team after Lot 74 – their High Street –  came up for bidding. The team had raised £15,000+ from a crowdfunding initiative in the days beforehand…..

@midstquarter

Dunno what just happened – we got well and truly gubbed… the winning bid was £140,000 – we were nowhere near that. Sorry guys, we gave it everything and do did everyone that supported us #Scunnered #ReclaimTheHighStreet

@midstquarter

In the big picture our aim was to support new approaches to our High Street. If someone else is bringing investment and believes in Dumfries – then that is to be warmly welcomed. We’re ready to work together and share our vision with anyone. #MakingDumfries

There is something a bit unsavoury about a community’s High Street being put up for auction in a fancy hotel in Knightsbridge. We can only hope that the new owner isn’t going to sit on the property and do nothing – as the pension fund did for so many years. If that is what happens, perhaps the new Compulsory Sale Orders will have become a device that communities can take advantage of .

Great effort, Midsteeple Quarter. Keep it going.

Author: Maikel Kuijpers, The Conversation

The circular economy is typically seen as the progressive alternative to our wasteful linear economy, where raw materials are used to make the products that feed today’s rampant consumerist hunger, which are then thrown away. The idea of the circular economy only took off in the 1980s, but this doesn’t mean that the practices at the core of a circular economy, such as repairing, recycling, refurbishing, or repurposing, are equally novel. All of these strategies have the aim of keeping materials in use – whether as objects or as their raw components – for as long as possible. And all are hardly revolutionary.

The repurposing of objects and materials may be as old as tool use itself. In Palaeolithic times, smaller flint tools were made from old hand-axes. People in the Neolithic period had no problem reusing standing stones to construct their tombs, such as seen in Locmariaquerin France. Even ceramics, made from clay and therefore available in abundance, were frequently recycled. Old pottery was often ground down to powder and used in the clay for new pots. On Minoan Crete, this ceramic powder, known as grog, was also used to manufacture the mudbricks from which houses were built.

At the Bronze Age site in Hungary where I excavate, spindle whorls made from broken pot fragments turn up regularly. Large stones at this site pose an interpretative dilemma because of their continuous reuse and repurposing, from grindstone to anvil and doorstep to wall support. In fact, up until the 20th century, repair, reuse, and repurposing were common ways of dealing with material culture. The dominance of the wasteful linear economy is a real historical anomaly in terms of resource use.

But we should be careful not to fall into the trap of the “noble savage”. Our ancestors were no ecological saints. They polluted their surroundings through mining, burned down entire forests, and they too created massive amounts of waste. Just look at Monte Testaccio, a large artificial hill in Rome made up entirely out of broken amphorae.

 When things are in abundance, people easily accept a wasteful and exploitative attitude. But for most of the past, most things were not in abundance, and so a core practice of a circular economy was adopted. This did not happen due to ideological motivation, but out of necessity.

Archaeologists typically don’t use the terminology of the circular economy, and describe the above examples simply, as reuse. This might partly explain why the deep roots of core practices of the circular economy are not discussed more widely. The same is also true of recycling.

When one adopts a very broad definition of recycling (thinking of it, for example, as the use of previously discarded artefacts), the origins of this practice can be traced all the way back to the Palaeolithic period. But let’s focus here on the understanding of recycling as is employed today. This is a practice in which waste (used objects) is completely converted, becoming the raw material of new products.

This practice of complete transformation also entered the repertoire of human behaviour far earlier than you may think. It became the core practice of an economy as long ago as the Bronze Age.

From about 2500BC, prehistoric people started to combine copper and tin on a regular basis, making metal known as bronze. The mass adoption of this artificial material caused significant shifts. Societies reoriented themselves economically because making bronze meant moving materials over long distances. Connecting sources with end users led to an intensification of trade. For these reasons, the Bronze Age is considered to be a formative epoch in the formation of Europe, in which we witness the emergence of pan-European exchange networks and large-scale trade.

Bronze also made people think in new ways. The process of metalworking differs markedly from other, earlier, crafts. Wood and stone carving involve the removal of material, which is why they are known as reductive technologies. Basketry, weaving, and pottery, meanwhile, are additive technologies. Bronze is different in that it is a transformative technology. The raw material is melted down to a liquid state and poured into a mould. Moulds were the very first blueprints, documenting the design of an object to be produced – and reproduced. This may not sound very exciting to us now but for the prehistoric people involved this must have a been a groundbreaking way of working materials.

Just imagine, if your stone axe broke, you could repurpose the pieces, but you would not be able to remake that axe. In contrast, if your bronze axe broke, you could remelt it and produce the same axe with the same quality, again. Recycling, as a core economic practice, was invented in the Bronze Age.

Bronze was not the first metal to be used in such a way; the origins of metal use start with pure copper being hammered into shape. But it is only at the beginning of the Bronze Age that recycling starts to take place on a large scale.

From the Middle Bronze Age onwards, all over Europe, bronze was being recycled. We know this because archaeologists have analysed the metal composition of hundreds of objects, showing the depletion of certain elements, as a result of frequent recycling. In addition, “old” metal was traded. A shipwreck discovered off the coast of Dover carried a large amount of French bronze objects dated to 1100BC, destined to be recycled in the UK.

As a political term, we might want to keep the circular economy in the present, but the practices that are part of it have long been part of human existence. In this respect, the Bronze Age could be seen as the first example of a circular economy in practice. Bronze was a main material of this period, and its economy revolved around recycling. Recognise this, and we start seeing that it is not the circular economy that is novel. Rather, it is the linear, and wasteful economy that is the anomaly.

The beauty of this is that we can put the past to good use. The core values of a circular economy are rooted in our past and in this manner, they can help shape and inspire a modern craftsmanship that fundamentally should revolve around sustainability and durability.

Author: Mark Smith, The Herald

THERE’S a label on Ferguslie Park and it’s a pretty hard one to remove. You probably know what it says: “deprivation”, “early deaths”, “the poorest part of Scotland”. Jamie Mallan, who works in the area, remembers the first time he came here. He got in a taxi and said ‘Ferguslie Park, please’ and the driver sucked air through his teeth and shook his head. “You don’t want to go there,” he said. Because that’s how labels work: they stick and do damage.

However, within a few minutes of arriving in Ferguslie Park, in the north-west of Paisley, I spot another label. It’s on the wall of the community centre and it’s spelled out in letters of purple, blue and yellow. It says “Feegie wummin are a breed o their ain”. Laura Connor, who is a Feegie woman, takes me over to the poster and stands in front of it for a photograph. This is more like it, she says. A label to stick on top of the other one.

I’m going to be talking more to Laura today, and Jamie, and other people about how you can start to change all of this and improve Ferguslie Park. The lessons come fast: names, words and descriptions matter; the biggest impact of poverty is not financial, it’s psychological; often, the best people to fix poverty are women, not men. And then there’s this lesson: Scotland might be one of the richest countries in the world, but an idea from the one of poorest countries might have something important to teach us.

The idea started in India and involves setting up groups of people to save small amounts of money each week. Self-reliant groups, as they’re called, can give small loans to members in times of crisis; the members also use the money to develop small businesses which can in time generate an income. The money saved each week could be as low as 50p, but the theory is that if you get a lot of individuals together, you can start to make a difference to a community.

I saw the idea working for myself a few years ago when I was in Bangladesh. Travelling with Christian Aid, I went to the Gopalgonj district of the country and sat in on a meeting of a self-reliant group in one of the villages. It’s hard to forget what the women said. One told me that when they were individuals they were like single sticks that could break. “But when we are united,” she said, “we cannot break.” Most of the women had set up little businesses selling handicrafts and it was starting to make a difference.

But could the idea work here in Scotland, where the circumstances are different? That’s what I’m in Ferguslie Park to find out and Laura Connor is keen to tell me more about the small business she’s started to sell home-made soaps. Laura, who’s 37, grew up in Cumbernauld but has lived in Ferguslie for 11 years. She’s sometimes struggled with self-confidence. She was born with a dislocated hip so has struggled with disability. Finding work has also not been easy. In recent years, she’s applied for many, many jobs but has been unsuccessful. She says herself: “I needed something in my life.”

Laura’s partner also does not work so money is tight. Laura has two sons, one four and one ten years old, and she often has to say no to them. One of them wanted a game the other day at £4.99, but Laura had to say he couldn’t have it. She has to budget to within an inch of her life to survive on the benefits she receives. “My oldest understands the situation,” she says, “He will ask for stuff and try his luck but it’s about saying no, you can’t get that.”

Laura says the self-reliant group to which she belongs has started to change that situation, albeit in a small way. She pays for the materials for her soaps by saving small amounts – the set-up cost was around £100 – and has now sold some of them, through her Facebook page and events at the Tannahill community centre in Ferguslie. It all has to be balanced with her benefits as any earnings can have an effect on them, but the small amounts are making a difference – and not just financially.

“I was getting frustrated with life,” says Laura. “But I’m happier now. I’m a person again. We all bounce off each other at the group. And we support each other. I had no confidence but I’ve had a lot of support and I know they’ll be there for me.”

What Laura says pretty much gets to the heart of the idea of self-reliant groups; it also raises some surprising truths about poverty that don’t have much to do with money, although no one is denying the reality of the financial situation for many people in the area. Jamie Mallan, who works for Ferguslie Park Housing Association and the man who was warned about the area by the taxi driver, says the financial crash of ten years ago meant services simply disappeared from Ferguslie Park. He’s also very worried about the introduction of Universal Credit.

“We’re hearing stories of single parents having their benefits cut, just chopped,” he says. “We’re hearing stories of individuals who have been unemployed and are going to have to wait four weeks for any payments. We’re hearing stories of children having their disability living allowance cut but their disability is still there. I’m really scared about the changes that are taking place.”

But Jamie, and others, say that it’s not all about money and that there’s a big psychological and mental element to poverty. “Millions upon millions of pounds has been pumped into Ferguslie Park to help regenerate it and develop it,” says Jamie, “but the issues we face are complex and constantly changing. The things that really make the area deprived are health and access to services. People don’t go to the doctor when they should. Life expectancy is much lower and as people get older they have more and more conditions. But I think part of it is the psyche, that for the past 30 years you’ve been told you’re the most deprived community in Scotland. Why should you raise your expectations?”

Professor John McKendrick of Glasgow Caledonian University, who is one of Scotland’s leading authorities on poverty, agrees with this take on the subject, and thinks self-reliant groups can make a significant contribution to tackling it.

“Most of your life is not to do with money,” he says. “Money is just the transactions and then you’ve got to live your life. If you’re hearing messages on daytime TV mocking you, or there are adverts about ‘must-haves’ or suggesting you’re not worthy if you don’t consume, that can’t help but have an impact on you. You will feel more distant from the things that are deemed important and every day. The biggest impact of poverty is not financial, it’s psychological.”

Professor McKendrick believes this means self-reliant groups can have an impact. “It makes it tolerable, that sense of purpose,” he says. “You can also be getting out and meeting people because isolation is another issue. All those softer benefits that can be quite difficult to measure.” However, in terms of the finance, Professor McKendrick says the idea is not going to move people out of poverty in vast numbers. There are also clearly limits to what it can do to tackle poverty on a grand scale – last month, Grameen Foundation Scotland, the charity which provided micro-credit business loans in deprived communities, collapsed after its debts became insurmountable.

And aren’t there other dangers in the self-reliant idea? Isn’t it uncomfortably close to telling people to pull their socks up or get on their bikes, the idea that the answer lies in the individual rather than government? Professor McKendrick says there are risks and we talk about Darren McGarvey, the writer whose book about his poor upbringing in Glasgow, Poverty Safari, also promotes the idea that individual responsibility is part of the solution to poverty.

“There is a danger of highlighting a person like Darren and saying he can do it, why can’t you do it?” says Professor McKendrick. “We can’t absolve responsibility as a collective and say it’s the responsibility of the individual to become independent and reliant – for a variety of reasons, people find themselves in difficult circumstances and I think there is a collective responsibility to create an environment that allows people to nurture and to grow when they need it and it’s not the same time for everybody. You have to provide support that enables people to become self-reliant.”

The people I speak to about the self-reliant group in Ferguslie Park feel that the group has done that for them – there are now four small businesses up and running – but they also hope that it can help change the image of the area too – to tackle that label that sticks stubbornly to it. Laura Connor for one is frustrated by it. “It has its issues, this area,” she says, “but it is a lovely community and we definitely don’t agree with the bad press it gets.”

Jamie Mallan says one of the problems is that the same pictures of run-down buildings appear again and again in the press whereas, in fact, much of the housing stock is very good.

That’s certainly the impression I get going round the community. Most of the houses – not all – are very like the ones you would find in countless other Scottish communities and are in good condition. There are also plans to pull down some of the poorest housing on the Tannahill estate and replace them with 1000 new council homes.

But everyone agrees that new houses are not an answer in themselves and that the self-reliant groups can play a role. At the moment, there are around 50 people being helped by the group in Ferguslie Park – it’s also significant that most of those who take part are women. I remember a woman in Bangladesh quoting Napoleon to me: “give me an educated mother and I’ll give you an educated nation” and that’s the theory behind the groups – if women benefit, the positive effects are likely to be felt much wider.

You can see it already with Laura. “It’s already having an effect on my sons,” she says. “They could see I had no confidence but I’m doing something and they’re excited for me; I feel a lot more confident and they can see that. And they might think that they could do it themselves later on.” This is maybe the most important effect of the self-reliant groups – the effect it might have on the sons and daughters of those who take part. In Laura’s words, it’s important to pass something on to her children, and she is.

Author: The Ferret

An extreme far right group modelled on Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists plans to put candidates up for community council seats in Scotland.

The New British Union (NBU) idolises British fascist Mosley whose violent supporters wore Nazi-style uniforms in the 1930s and were known as Blackshirts.

The openly fascist group is recruiting on Twitter and is led by Gary Raikes, the British National Party’s former leader in Scotland.

An official NBU document seen by The Ferret reveals that NBU plans to stand supporters as independent candidates to build support locally across the UK.

The document explains what Raikes terms as the “Quiet Revolution”. It says: “The important action is that cells should try to center (sic) around a member willing to stand in parish/local elections as independent candidates and help get them elected.

“Blackshirt cells will develop into Blackshirt units in every village, town and city in the UK. The idea is to build fascist cells of two to five people in as many places as possible.”

The document adds: “The action is true, grassroots style politics – fostering change nationwide, from the local level. The fundamental application of this philosophy is the induction of true British nationalists in all forms and level of local government.

“We at the NBU have recognised that obtaining appointment to parish and community councils is both a symbolic, and practically necessary starting point, in the pursuit of this philosophy of action.

“The NBU is a young movement, yet already has a handful of parish councillors, and one county councillor we also have a number of our people about to take up seats on Scottish community councils.”

Raikes formed the NBU in 2013 after leaving the BNP. He was also a member of the anti-Muslim group, Britain First, led by Scottish Loyalist, Jim Dowson.

At the 2007 Scottish Parliament election Raikes was a BNP candidate for the North East Scotland region. In 2015 the NBU claimed it was targeting Elgin politically prompting a backlash from locals.

The NBU uses Nazi iconography while Raikes posts sinister propaganda videos of himself speaking while dressed in a black uniform. Another video on the NBU site is of far right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, who is an advisor to UKIP.

Yaxley-Lennon is a former BNP supporter and football hooligan who has been convicted of multiple crimes including mortgage fraud and assault.

In one video Raikes says he is trying to “unite the right”.

Unite Against Fascism said: “Thankfully the far right in Britain is divided, whether this numpty has the ability to unite them remains to be seen. What can be seen from NBU website is that Tommy Robinson is the lightning rod that they are trying to use to unite the far right.

“Although the slogans and emblems of the NBU look old fashioned from the 1930’s we can see when they were used last year in the the “unite the right” rally in Charlottesville in America that they can become potent once again.

“‘Never again’ was the popular slogan after the second world war against fascism. We should never forget that and never give these dangerous idiots an inch.”

Scottish Greens justice spokesperson John Finnie MSP said: “It’s a sad reality that the Brexit mess created by the Tories has given confidence to those with extreme right-wing views. However, I’ve no doubt that communities across Scotland will continue to reject these dangerous and deluded groups who couldn’t organise a bun fight in a bakery.”

Raikes said: “We are not supporters of Tommy Robinson. We supported that specific issue not the man. We have been recruiting for six years. Social media is just one way of doing that. I fully expect you to deliver a bias twisted report detached from reality and know I will not be disappointed.

“British blackshirts fought and died for Britain in the last war just one of the many facts ignored by people like you. If you have read our website then you will know we are not a hate group we are simply offering people an alternative to failed democracy and a chance to discover the truth about Mosley and his ideas.”

Background Story on Sociocracy

Sociocracy is a novel, socially responsible system of governance originated in The Netherlands.  In 1945 Kees Boeke, a Dutch educator and pacifist, adapted Quaker egalitarian principles for secular organisations: Sociocracy allows us to give and receive effective leadership while remaining peers. [from SoFA website]

Gerard Endenburg, a pupil of Kees Boeke became a skilled engineer and developed the vision into a body of well-tested procedures and practical principles using his family’s electrical contractor firm as a living laboratory.  Still going after 60 years, it has no traditional owner: the first “free company.”

Today, a wide range of organizations in other European countries, Brazil, and the United States use Sociocracy.  Ranging from manufacturing companies to health care organizations, to a public school system, and a growing number of voluntary organisations, they find benefit in Dynamic Governance.

More at Sociocracy For All https://www.sociocracyforall.org/sociocracy/

With short 4 minute video at https://youtu.be/l3zFWpntExg

What is Sociocracy all about?

In the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network we have been exploring how we can improve our collaborative processes for community-led change.  Drawing on positive experiences with local and European networks that have adopted Sociocratic decision-making – also known as Dynamic Governance – we have slowly picked up some of the principles of working together … and we find them helpful! 

So, when we heard that a leading light, and co-founder of Sociocracy For All, was going to be in Britain, we asked Jerry Koch-Gonzalez to share his experience with us in Scotland.  Hence a Sociocracy Training Weekend set for Sat 23 / Sun 24 Feb 2019 in Edinburgh.

Movements for change can sometimes be difficult places.  There’s the imperative to promote social justice against the odds, the very different amount of time and effort that people can put in, the tyranny of structureless-ness and the pressures of burnout. 

Sometimes old structures don’t work.  If your organisation is looking for new approaches, a few different ways of doing things to unleash members’ creativity, and help get things done, then see if two or even three people could attend one or both of these sessions:

Introduction: Sat 23 February https://sofa23feb.eventbrite.co.uk

Implementation: Sun 24 February https://sofa24feb.eventbrite.co.uk 

Author: Megan MacInnes, Scottish Land Commissioner

Land Commissioner Megan MacInnes looks at the proposed new Rights Act.

At the end of last year – and possibly lost amidst political headlines and the pre-Christmas rush – First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced a seismic shift for human rights in Scotland, which could have profound impacts for land reform.

The 10th December is International Human Rights Day and in 2018 marked the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. It was also the day on which the First Minister’s Advisory Group on Human Rights Leadership published its recommendations for how Scotland can become an international human rights leader. The recommendations focus on the adoption and implementation of a new Rights Act; a statutory framework for human rights which for the first time would include economic, social and cultural rights, as well as environmental rights.

It is these economic, social and cultural rights which are the human rights most closely associated with land. Therefore, the fact that the First Minister has set up a task force to take the recommendations forward, could mean big changes for progressive land reform and the work of the Scottish Land Commission.

Until recently conversations about human rights and land reform in Scotland focused on how the protection of private property rights were hindering land reform. However, with the consideration of economic, social and cultural rights included first within the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act in 2015 and then the Land Reform (Scotland) Act in 2016, this relationship has been rebalanced.

As described in the Land Lines discussion paper published by the Commission: “the human rights focus shifted from avoiding human rights violations to actively pursuing positive human rights impacts. This … envisages using, and in some cases unlocking, land in pursuit of the progressive evolution of human rights, particularly ESC [economic, social and cultural] rights.”

Within the economic, social and cultural rights it is the rights to food and adequate housing which are most closely dependent on individuals, families and communities having access to and secure tenure over land, and thus the progress of land reform. Other rights associated with land include the right to physical and mental health, right to education and right to take part in cultural life.

But what does this mean in practice? Referring to human rights can strengthen a communities’ case for improvements in services – the Leith housing project involved tenants becoming aware of and exercising their right to adequate housing as a means to improve their housing conditions. Human rights can also help identify connections between land and wider social, cultural and economic trends. The community acquisition of 17,000 acres of land on the Isle of Harris by the West Harris Trust in 2010 reversed trends of depopulation and seasonal, unsustainable housing and employment opportunities, thereby having a positive impact on economic, social and cultural rights. Conversely, the negative impacts of long-term derelict land on individuals and communities are well documented, restricting their ability to meet important needs – rights – such as affordable housing or cultural facilities.

As a result of this rebalancing of human rights and land reform, human rights support rather than hinder progress. The right to property is recognised as not being absolute and can be limited in pursuit of the public interest and balanced against other human rights. The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2016 requires Minsters to have regard for economic, social and cultural rights in preparing the Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement and Guidance on Community Engagement, as well as in decisions relating to the community right to buy for sustainable development.

The Land Rights and Responsibilities Statement, published in September 2017 by the Scottish Government, articulates for the first time that along with rights to land come responsibilities; to your neighbours, your community and the wider public. The Statement adopts a human rights approach to land rights and responsibilities with the intention of improving the connection between land (in rural and urban areas) and the Government’s wider objectives of inclusive and sustainable economic growth and social justice.

The Rights Act can bring in to statute the protection and respect for economic, social and cultural rights which currently exist only in policy. What is being proposed is not just a technical but practical and most importantly accountable; it creates a new task force, provides capacity building and introduces human rights-based indicators for our National Performance Framework. This highlights the importance of human rights in Scotland’s future and enables public bodies like the Land Commission to place them at the heart of our programme of work.

Like the Advisory Group, I will end by handing over to Eleanor Roosevelt, the key architect of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights; “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home ….. so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm or office where he works.” What can be closer to home than the rights to having food on the table and a roof over our head? And land is critical to both.

Author: Linda Somerville

Drawing on her Leith experience, Linda Somerville argues there are new and effective ways of organising

The good citizens of Leith are currently in uproar at plans to demolish a two-storey art deco sandstone building at the bottom of Leith Walk. Until recently, the proposed development site contained much loved local businesses and social enterprises in the row of art deco shops. The £50m development includes a 471-bed student accommodation complex with hotel, restaurant, retail units and 53 ‘affordable’ homes. The developer believes it has gone above and beyond with both community consultation and by providing ‘affordable’ housing in the development. Under current legislation, developers are not required to provide any ‘affordable’ housing in purpose built student accommodation – exposing why student flats appear to be filling any gap sites available in our cities.

Leithers became aware of this in spring last year and in the eight months since the campaign has gathered 12,000 signatures against the demolition, supported residents to formally object to the proposals with over 3,500 objections lodged on the council planning portal and hosted large and lively public meetings with hundreds of Leithers. The campaign has received wide spread support from leading artists including Irvine Welsh, Young Fathers, the Proclaimers and cross party support from local councillors, MSPs, MPs with Jeremy Corbyn calling the campaign ‘iconic’ during his recent meeting with community groups in Edinburgh.

While there is wide and solid support for saving the building and influencing the development, a number of underlying issues have contributed to the uproar around this proposal. Housing in Edinburgh has always topped the rest of Scotland for expensiveness and Leith filled the affordability gap with lower rents and flats for sale is an area that was often overlooked by many. The growing number of tourists and short-term lets have pushed Edinburgh’s housing into a crisis with basic rents set at over £1,000 per month. The local authority’s economic reliance on tourism and higher education has tipped the balance with hotels and student accommodation peppering an ever widening area.

While the developers may have ticked the community consultation box, locals don’t feel they have had a say in what happens in the area nor had their concerns listened to when raised. Scotland’s flawed planning process limits community involvement and has no right of appeal for communities, only for the developer. The lack of agency is widely felt and represents the disconnect with elected representatives that many working class communities face.

None of this is unique to Leith or Edinburgh with communities across Scotland and Britain facing similar challenges as big business dictates what happens on our doorstep. The campaign has received enquiries from Canada to Berlin as journalists and academics examine how working class populations are faring in our changing cities.   

The lack of trust in the political and planning process highlights failures in our local democracy. The model is transactional where each citizen is asked to give a vote in return for a commitment. There is no ownership of decisions for voters, no power transferred to communities, just a hope that the winner will follow through on its promise. Local democracy needs to be overhauled to bring decision making closer to people, with smaller constituencies, more power held locally and support for communities to, as the Electoral Reform Society Scotland calls it, ‘Act like you own the Place’.

While we don’t know the outcome of the planning process yet and the focus is still on stopping the demolition to Save Leith Walk, the energy, spirit and creativity of the campaign has emboldened locals to think more strategically about their area and what they want from Our Leith Walk.

All too often campaigns are focused on opposition and use mobilising tactics with a strategy based on increased numbers and a centralised structure. This campaign has utilised community organising tools to consider how to agree objectives, examine where power lies and offer a way to build our power in the community. With consensus decision making and distributed responsibility for activity, there is no committee or rigid structures that are often associated with campaigning and the left. It feels like an experiment, and in many ways it is.

As the impacts of neo-liberalism sweep through our towns and cities and the economy shakes before Brexit and the next financial crash, we need to defend and develop our communities and ensure the toxicity of the far right does not gain ground. Scotland needs a community organising strategy. Community organising can provide the key to a diverse and lively local democracy bringing people together to make the changes they want to see. We need trained community organisers, a network for campaigners for peer to peer learning, opportunities to problem solve together, consider how technology helps or hinders us as well as share tools and tactics that win.

A movement of community organising provides a different way of campaigning, recognising that this will also challenge some of the power structures and practices within the left that are too reliant upon models that centralise power and ensure that certain skills and experience stay at the top table. Creating a community organising movement would be transformative across Scotland as individuals and groups are brought together, heard and supported to build collective power and make the change they want to see.

Linda Somerville is Director of NUS Scotland, and lives and works in Leith. She has been a key figure in the Save Leith Walk campaign (https://saveleithwalk.org/). She is on twitter @lindasomerville

Author: Timon Moss, CommonSpace

Timon Moss, a housing researcher and planner, outlines his vision for a community-led housing model in Scotland, showing real-life examples from the rest of UK and further afield and highlighting legal impediments in Scotland to this model flourishing here

The Scottish Government is currently consulting on Housing Beyond 2021, a housing strategy intended to provide consistency and sustainable housing delivery over the next 20 years. Scotland needs a vision that will bring community groups into the housing mix and think innovatively as to how it can address the shortfall in affordable housing. My recent research highlighted a need to reassess both Scotland’s approach to self-built housing and community bodies relationship with housing policy.

Housing units built for the majority of the population is a pressing policy problem in Scotland as in the rest of the UK. Since the Localism Act 2011, which launched Community Right to Buy in England and Wales, policymakers have slowly advanced bringing community bodies into the housebuilding mix. This draws on pilot schemes launched by non-profits and cooperative housing associations, based on a financial model of mutual equity-based ownership known as Mutual Home Ownership Societies (MHOS), seen best in the cohousing project LILAC in Leeds.

MHOS draws inspiration from a Community Land Trusts in the USA where land is owned in trust by a community body and the freehold is released under the collective interests of its residents, often at prices proportionate to local salaries. Elsewhere, in Germany, non-profit organisations known as ‘Baugruppes’ are achieving long-term affordability and bespoke housing through innovative governance models which allow the community to decide how the neighbourhood invests in itself. The Welsh Government are supporting the Wales Cooperative Centre (WCC) to expand community-led housing construction using similar models. Their aim is to build 20,000 housing units by 2021; this would account for 45 per cent of annual dwelling completions in Wales if realised.  For Scotland, particularly its urban areas, no plans on this scale have been made, although there have been some proposals for implementing similar forms of community ownership.

LILAC have been pioneers of this model of Mutual Home Ownership Societies, which allows residents to purchase shares through their lease in a way proportionate to their incomes. This model allows for the price of the housing to be set in proportion to the income of the family, while rewarding wealthier tenants for providing more investment through higher rates of shares. Communities would democratically decide on the management their residences and commonspace. Though the model is currently in its infancy, versions of this have already been applied elsewhere, notably in Stroud and Liverpool (Granby4Streets).

There are shortfalls with cooperative housing in that it does not address housing to the lowest income members of society in the short-to-medium term, being that the model currently requires early investment and resources that are largely unavailable to those from the most deprived communities. And such models should not replace social housing completely from the housing mix. Community-led housing aims are often along social and environmental sustainability lines, building low-carbon community housing and giving long-term protection to the community body from gentrification and policies such as right-to-buy which hindered the viability for many small-scale housing associations.

While the exact model seen in LILAC Leeds requires major legislative shifts in Scotland due to the unique nature of its land law, Scottish policymakers need to catch up with the rest of the UK in creating favourable circumstances for community-led housing. Most models rely on a distinction between leasehold and freehold to ensure community ownership is maintained. However, Scottish land law, until recently based on a modernised form of feu payments, has not yet allowed for this distinction.

My research found that a clause of the Long Leases (Scotland) Act 2012 to grant Community Bodies the right to grant residential leases beyond 20 years could create the legal space to provide meaningful investments for tenants in this new form of housing association. However, there are easier policy focuses to make. Community Land Scotland suggests in a recent report on urban land building a stronger network of third sectors organisations in a manner similar to The CLT Network in England and Wales. The body provides legal and seed capital support to community developments to guide early support. Such bodies need to work with Housing Associations to assist community-level delivery. And with the continued rollout of Community Right to Buy, it’s possible that more opportunities could soon exist. But a housing strategy, possibly with statutory targets, will be needed to encourage more community-built housing.

Proposals to back community-led approaches to affordable homes featured in the Scottish Greens recent election manifesto. Elsewhere, Labour shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has recently appeared to endorse community land trusts as a means of democratising the sector. Regardless, current responses to issues of home ownership in Scotland remain largely reactive as a result. Such adjustments could assist Scotland’s astonishingly low rate of self-build housing, which remains considerably lower than the European average, and create housing neighbourhoods centred around the needs of the local community.

Author: Senscot

Summary report

The Scottish Government is committed to developing a national strategy to address loneliness. The proposed strategy aims to reduce social isolation – partly by encouraging the development of networks and developing new connections in communities across Scotland.

The strategy also has a strong focus on challenging the social and economic determinants that cause people to become isolated – and eventually lonely. Social Enterprise Network (SEN) members expressed an interest in coming together on this in 2017. Senscot subsequently hosted a SEN meeting to discuss social enterprise and social isolation – followed by a Community Learning Exchange visit to ROAR – Connections for Life. Based in Renfrewshire, ROAR is a social enterprise which provides of preventative, health and wellbeing services for older people through the development of community opportunities to connect people.

Further work with SEN members in this area included a Briefing Paper, Loneliness and Social Isolation: the Role of Social Enterprise, which looks at the contribution social enterprises are making at a community level to reduce the most acute causes and symptoms of social isolation. The Briefing includes case studies of five SEN members – CFINE; Lingo Flamingo; ROAR; The No.1 Befriending Agency; and Badenoch & Strathspey Community Transport Company.

The Pockets and Prospects project follows on from this work. Initially approached by Scottish Communities Alliance (SCA) to delve further into this, we were funded by the Scottish Government via SCA’s community capacity and resilience programme. This enabled us to work with SEN members to explore and develop an approach that would maximise the contribution of social enterprise in this area. Recognising the value in connecting with Glasgow’s Campaign to End Loneliness (Scottish pilot of the UK Campaign) and ensuring we met the fund criteria, we partnered with Glasgow SEN to develop this work.

Senscot and GSEN then worked with SEN members to coordinate a ‘programme of activities’ that would be available for community anchor organisations to purchase and offer to their local community. This developed in to a ‘pick and mix’ programme offering a diverse range of activities and provided an opportunity for social enterprises to develop a collaborative approach to tacking loneliness and social isolation – and to mitigate the impact of welfare refor

How the Pockets & Prospects activities have addressed loneliness & social isolation.

1. Providing an opportunity for people to leave their homes.

2. Bringing people together to participate in a whole range of activities, ranging from small groups to larger social events.

3. Spending time with peers, participating in an enjoyable activity, strengthened connections and created a natural peer support environment.

4. Having others listen to them and enjoy their stories made people feel valued and helped them recognise that they have a lot to contribute to society, rather than ‘sitting on the side-lines looking in’ – as is regularly described.

5. Coming together with other people, participants enjoyed one another’s company. This helped them to recognise that they share a lot of things in common, giving them a sense of belonging.

6. Taking part in activities gave people something new to discuss with family, friends, carers etc as many advised they don’t feel they have anything new or interesting to talk about, which in turn increases feelings of loneliness.

7. Activities give people something to look forward to, often adding structure to their day – providing a sense of purpose for some.

8. Friendships and friendship circles have developed through engaging in activities, with this being especially important for people who live on their own.

9. Encouraging people to engage in more activities and meet new people in the community.

10. Providing opportunities to get more involved and participate in the local community

Get full report

Author: The Independent

This is how UN scientists are preparing for the end of capitalism.

As the era of cheap energy comes to an end, capitalist thinking is struggling to solve the huge problems facing humanity. So how do we respond?

Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources.

Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems these are not really separate crises at all.

These crises are part of the same fundamental transition. The new era is characterised by inefficient fossil fuel production and escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age.

Those are the implications of a new background paper prepared by a team of Finnish biophysicists who were asked to provide research that would feed into the drafting of the UN Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), which will be released in 2019.

For the “first time in human history”, the paper says, capitalist economies are “shifting to energy sources that are less energy efficient.” Producing usable energy (“exergy”) to keep powering “both basic and non-basic human activities” in industrial civilisation “will require more, not less, effort”.

At the same time, our hunger for energy is driving what the paper refers to as “sink costs.” The greater our energy and material use, the more waste we generate, and so the greater the environmental costs. Though they can be ignored for a while, eventually those environmental costs translate directly into economic costs as it becomes more and more difficult to ignore their impacts on our societies.

And the biggest “sink cost”, of course, is climate change: “Sink costs are also rising; economies have used up the capacity of planetary ecosystems to handle the waste generated by energy and material use. Climate change is the most pronounced sink cost.”

Overall, the amount of energy we can extract, compared to the energy we are using to extract it, is decreasing “across the spectrum – unconventional oils, nuclear and renewables return less energy in generation than conventional oils, whose production has peaked – and societies need to abandon fossil fuels because of their impact on the climate.”

A copy of the paper, available on the website of the BIOS Research Unit in Finland, was sent to me by lead author Dr Paavo Järvensivu, a ‘biophysical economist’ – a rare, but emerging breed of economist exploring the role of energy and materials in fuelling economic activity.

The UN’s GSDR is being drafted by an independent group of scientists (IGS) appointed by the UN Secretary general. The IGS is supported by a range of UN agencies including the UN Secretariat, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the UN Environment Programme, the UN Development Programme, the UN Conference on Trade and Development and the World Bank.

The paper, co-authored by Dr Järvensivu with the rest of the BIOS team, was commissioned by the UN’s IGS specifically to feed into the chapter on ‘Transformation: the Economy’. Invited background documents are used as the basis of the GSDR, but what ends up in the final report will not be known until it is released next year.

The BIOS paper suggests that much of the political and economic volatility we have seen in recent years has a root cause in this creeping ecological crisis. As the ecological and economic costs of industrial overconsumption continue to rise, the constant economic growth we have become accustomed to is now in jeopardy. That, in turn, has exerted massive strain on our politics.

But the underlying issues are still unacknowledged and unrecognised by policymakers.

“We live in an era of turmoil and profound change in the energetic and material underpinnings of economies. The era of cheap energy is coming to an end,” says the paper.

Conventional economic models, the Finnish scientists note, “almost completely disregard the energetic and material dimensions of the economy.”

The scientists refer to the pioneering work of systems ecologist Professor Charles Hall of the State University of New York with economist Professor Kent Klitgaard from Wells College. This year, Hall and Klitgaard released an updated edition of their seminal book, Energy and the Wealth of Nations: An Introduction to BioPhysical Economics.

Hall and Klitgaard are highly critical of mainstream capitalist economic theory, which they say has become divorced from some of the most fundamental principles of science. They refer to the concept of “energy return on investment” (EROI) as a key indicator of the shift into a new age of difficult energy. EROI is a simple ratio that measures how much energy we use to extract more energy.

“For the last century, all we had to do was to pump more and more oil out of the ground,” say Hall and Klitgaard. Decades ago, fossil fuels had very high EROI values – a little bit of energy allowed us to extract large amounts of oil, gas and coal.

But as I’ve previously reported, this is no longer the case. Now we’re using more and more energy to extract smaller quantities of fossil fuels. Which means higher production costs to produce what we need to keep the economy rolling. The stuff is still there in the ground – billions of barrels worth to be sure, easily enough to fry the climate several times over.

But it’s harder and more expensive to get out. And the environmental costs of doing so are rising dramatically, as we’ve caught a glimpse of with this summer’s global heatwave.

These costs are not recognised by capitalist markets. They literally cannot be seen. Earlier in August, billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham – who has a track record of consistently calling financial bubbles – released an update to his April 2013 analysis, The Race of Our Lives.

The new paper provides a bruising indictment of contemporary capitalism’s complicity in the ecological crisis. Grantham’s verdict is that “capitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems” – namely, the systematic depletion of planetary ecosystems and environmental resources:

“The replacement cost of the copper, phosphate, oil, and soil – and so on – that we use is not even considered. If it were, it’s likely that the last 10 or 20 years (for the developed world, anyway) has seen no true profit at all, no increase in income, but the reverse.”

Efforts to account for these so-called ‘externalities’ by calculating their actual costs have been well-meaning, but have had negligible impact on the actual operation of capitalist markets.

In short, according to Grantham, “we face a form of capitalism that has hardened its focus to short-term profit maximisation with little or no apparent interest in social good.”

Yet for all his prescience and critical insights, Grantham misses the most fundamental factor in the great unravelling in which we now find ourselves: the transition to a low EROI future in which we simply cannot extract the same levels of energy and material surplus that we did decades ago.

Grantham’s blind eye is mirrored by the British economics journalist Paul Mason in his book Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future, who theorises that information technology is paving the way for the emancipation of labour by reducing the costs of knowledge production – and potentially other kinds of production that will be transformed by AI, blockchain, and so on – to zero. Thus, he says, will emerge a utopian ‘postcapitalist’ age of mass abundance, beyond the price system and rules of capitalism.

It sounds peachy, but Mason completely ignores the colossal, exponentially increasing physical infrastructure for the ‘internet-of-things’. His digital uprising is projected to consume evermore vast quantities of energy (as much as one-fifth of global electricity by 2025), producing 14 per cent of global carbon emissions by 2040.

Most observers, then, have no idea of the current biophysical realities – that the driving force of the transition to postcapitalism is the end of the age that made endless growth capitalism possible in the first place: the age of abundant, cheap energy.

And so we have moved into a new, unpredictable and unprecedented space in which the conventional economic toolbox has no answers. As slow economic growth simmers along, central banks have resorted to negative interest rates and buying up huge quantities of public debt to keep our economies rolling. But what happens after these measures are exhausted? Governments and bankers are running out of options.

 “It can be safely said that no widely applicable economic models have been developed specifically for the upcoming era,” write the Finnish scientists for the UN drafting process.

Having identified the gap, they lay out the opportunities for transition. But capitalist markets will not be capable of facilitating the required changes – governments will need to step up, and institutions will need to actively shape markets to fit the goals of human survival.

“More expensive energy doesn’t necessarily lead to economic collapse,” lead author Paavo Järvensivu says. “Of course, people won’t have the same consumption opportunities, there’s not enough cheap energy available for that, but they are not automatically led to unemployment and misery either.”

In this low EROI future, we simply have to accept the hard fact that we will not be able to sustain current levels of economic growth. “Meeting current or growing levels of energy need in the next few decades with low-carbon solutions will be extremely difficult, if not impossible,” the paper finds. The economic transition must involve efforts “to lower total energy use.”

Key areas to achieve this include transport, food and construction. City planning needs to adapt to the promotion of walking and biking, a shift toward public transport, as well as the electrification of transport. Homes and workplaces will become more connected and localised. Meanwhile, international freight transport and aviation cannot continue to grow at current rates.

As with transport, the global food system will need to be overhauled. Climate change and oil-intensive agriculture have unearthed the dangers of countries becoming dependent on food imports from a few main production areas. A shift towards food self-sufficiency across both poorer and richer countries will be essential. And ultimately, dairy and meat should make way for largely plant-based diets.

The construction industry’s focus on energy-intensive manufacturing, dominated by concrete and steel, should be replaced by alternative materials. The BIOS paper recommends a return to the use of long-lasting wood buildings, which can help to store carbon, but other options such as biochar might be effective too.

But capitalist markets will not be capable of facilitating the required changes – governments will need to step up, and institutions will need to actively shape markets to fit the goals of human survival. Right now, the prospects for this look slim. But the new paper argues that either way, change is coming.

Whether or not this system still comprises a form of capitalism is ultimately a semantic question. It depends on how you define capitalism.

“Capitalism, in that situation, is not like ours now,” said Järvensivu. “Economic activity is driven by meaning – maintaining equal possibilities for the good life while lowering emissions dramatically – rather than profit, and the meaning is politically, collectively constructed. Well, I think this is the best conceivable case in terms of modern state and market institutions. It can’t happen without considerable reframing of economic-political thinking, however.”