community

The power of social networks should not be underestimated. Researchers from Spain and Argentina have discovered that the characters in one of the most successful comic book series of all time, Marvel Comics (the home of X-Men, Spiderman and the Incredible Hulk, amongst many others), are prone to the same rules of social organisation as human beings.

By “social organisation” they mean the same patterns of interconnectedness between people that enable funny videos to become viral marketing phenomena online and which have been popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his ever-relevant book The Tipping Point. These rules of social organisation suggest amongst other things that we are all prone to “small world” phenomena, where any other person in the world is just six steps away within our social networks, and that these networks are scale free – no matter how big or how small our social communities, the same rules apply.

With regards to Marvel, researchers found these affects were in place quite “randomly” across all the thousands of different comics Marvel have released since the 1930s, written as they are by thousands of different authors and drawn by thousands of different illustrators. Somehow, out of unplanned narrative chaos, order has arisen – the same order and pattern of relationships as displayed by real human beings both in everyday life and in digital social networks like Myspace and Facebook. To quote the article in this month’s Nature:

Not only is the Marvel Universe a so-called ‘small world’, where just about any character can be linked to any other by just a few ‘degrees of separation’ (or friends-of-friends), but it is also a so-called scale-free world, where the distribution of links has a characteristic form that includes a few very highly connected individuals, who are particularly good networkers.

The Marvel Universe, like our own societies, is unplanned: it has grown from the work of many comic-book storywriters who have made no attempt to engineer any overall social network. It seems that this joint effort guided them not towards a random network, as might have been expected, but towards one that (somewhat) mirrors reality. The same thing seems to have happened in classical mythology.

This order-from-chaos makes an interesting point of comparison with DC Comics (the home of Batman and Superman) who have long taken the opposite approach: trying to organise their fictional universe both temporally and spatially into an organised whole, that’s caused more complexities of astrophysical dimensions than the collected works of Stephen Hawking. The DC “multiverse” works on what is in essence a theory of parallel universes: characters can exist simultaneously in different worlds and times and relationships with one another, and each multiplicity is documented. This leads to occasional points of crisis where the overlap of storylines and events in the different publications all become too head-spinning and have to be knitted together in one major storyline that, in effect, “reboots” the DC universe – starting the whole narrative of every character from a new fixed point, before spinning off towards chaos again. This approach is incredibly both incredibly clever (does even Proust have as complex a relationship with time as this?) and incredibly complex (could even Thomas Pynchon think up a temporal-spatial trip as big as this?).

The organic, evolutionary approach of Marvel feels intuitively more “right” somehow – by not attempting to be canonical in their approach, they’ve let their characters and narratives grow into “real” structures which, albeit unconsciously, mirror our own world – no matter how fantastic the adventures of the X-Men.

Why is this relevant? Well, I think it tells us a little bit about why readers can have an enduring love for their favourite fictional characters, and a lot about how we should start to think about new opportunities for publishing.

If the lives, however fantastic, of Wolverine or the Incredible Hulk are randomly obeying the same laws as our everyday lives, then you can see where some of the identification with those characters is coming from: they might have claws embedded in their flesh or incredible strength (and a rather nifty green skin-tone), but on a very important level, they are prone to the same unspoke social constraints as us.

There is much thinking in the publishing world about how to face up to the digital frontier of social networks and ways we might translate the fictions we already work with, and might work with in the future into digital content. This study of Marvel suggests we should be aware that the social relationships between fictional characters and between readers and those characters might need us to be quite clear about how social structures in both fiction and reality work to make the most of these opportunities.

This could affect the way we structure anything from a Facebook application to a collective fiction endeavour, meaning we don’t necessarily need to fully engineer a social structure, but enabling it to create itself.

By working out how best to facilitate fictional social networks, it might be that whole new universes like Marvels, enduring now for over 70 years, could spring into being.

Last month the US copyright board raised the royalties paid to musicians for the streaming of songs over the internet. This is bad news for internet radio stations, some of whom now face closure — but it raises some fascinating questions for the book business, for whom the new digital music world is an uncomfortable sign of challenges still to come.

Because amongst the voices raised against the hiked royalty rates is London based website Last.fm, a music recommendation engine. Visitors tell Last.fm what their favourite artists are — and the site uses the collected information to recommend new bands each user might like, and to play them sample tracks by the musicians it recommends. The huge popularity of this music social network means it can charge some eye-watering ad rates — the catch, of course, is that they pay royalties for each song visitors hear.

If all this sounds familiar, it’s because the last 12 months have seen the Last.fm recommendation model hit book publishing in a very big way. Led by LibraryThing and Shelfari, there are now as many as a dozen ‘Book Discovery’ sites encouraging readers to tell them what they’re reading — and receive recommendations, and reviews, in exchange. The sites generate revenue by a range of models: by advertising; by subscription; or by affiliate schemes with online retailers. For the first time, companies that are neither producers, publishers or retailers are making cash from readers online — and the most incredible thing is that, for now, they’re doing it with bibliographic data alone.

This simple fact – that new companies are now carving leisure activities out of content as simple as covers and ISBNs – proves that in the new digital economy everything has value. And these new kinds of businesses force the book industry to consider what other assets, currently made freely available, ought to be monetised. In short, what about the sample chapter?

Unlike their counterparts in the music world, the current batch of book discovery sites currently offer no book content, instead accompanying their recommendations with user generated reviews. But with ten or more sites now competing for the same audience, the search is on for the killer feature — and if the music tracks being played on Last.fm are anything to go by, offering sample book content will be pretty high on their shopping lists. How much better if, as well as reading a user review of a recommended book, I could sample a chapter too? How much longer would I stay online, and how much more ad cash might my visit generate? How much more likely am I to upgrade to a paid premium membership; or pick one site over another? Used in this way, any site which succeeded in aggregating a sample chapter from every novel ever published would have a catalogue of content as valuable as any literary journal, books supplement — or radio station.

Suddenly we’re in a situation where sample content, released with the intention of directly stimulating sales, might be monetised by non-retailing aggregators through a whole armful of business models that had not been anticipated even twelve months ago. The precedent long set in the music business (and affirmed last month) is that this kind of use would have to carry a royalty; that copyright content used outside of the strictest sales environments needs to be paid for. The fact that music radio has always been the number one driver of music sales has never obscured the fact that companies benefiting from music content ought to pay for it — and the ‘we offer free marketing’ excuse continues, in the digital age, to prove unacceptable.

But unlike the music world, the book industry does not have 100 years of experience dealing with broadcast media, nor 100 years of precedent on matters broadcast royalty. In fact, the book industry is only now discovering its own version of music radio, in the web of blogs, RSS feeds, and e-mails which broadcasts the written word further than ever before — and which actually serves to make the shortest chapters, extracts, even quotes more commercially viable than ever.

A century on from the birth of radio, book publishers are having to set their own precedents, and the decisions they’re making risk taking them in the opposite direction from the royalty system that continues to serve the music industry so well — the system which ensures businesses like Last.fm pay cash for their content. Because if there is any money to be made from the book recommendation sites — or indeed any other previously unforeseen model — the book sampling schemes run by Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others might be a major spanner in the works. Amazon, now part owners of Shelfari, could no doubt work in their Search Inside function with little difficulty; any site that stands to gain from sample content could link to the Google samples in an instant.

Whether this is a concern depends on your position as author, publisher or agent in the book world hierarchy: how much you have to gain, and how much to lose. It’s no accident that those waxing loudest about Google Book Search are STM and specialist non fiction publishers; and those most cautious the major fiction houses, with valuable brands and marketing spend of their own. The danger of giving up free content of any length to Google or anyone else is not that the whole strata of copyright will crash down around our ears: copyright will exist as long as there’s a government to enforce it. Rather, the industry needs to remember that the cost of free marketing might be the loss of new revenue streams which only now are starting to emerge. So is that a fair exchange or not?

I’m really interested to read in this morning’s Independent the revelation from Bloomsbury Chairman, Nigel Newton, of his company’s ambition to create a literary alternative to the likes of online communities such as YouTube and Bebo.

No one has yet done the same for books, especially in a way which will benefit all the main players in the book business

Cough. Because let’s not forget that this is the industry leader who said last year

[Google’s] quest to monetise for its own benefit the literature of the world must be stopped. So I call upon internet users worldwide to boycott the Google search engine until it ceases to scan books.

Back to the Bloomsbury set. First, it’s one heck of an ambition. In fact creating the MySpace of the books world (as the Bookseller puts it) is a more ambitious project than finding the next J K Rowling. (See here for evidence.) So this is no quick fix.

Second, I don’t deny there be gold in them there hills, Mr Newton, and if you do it, I’m either on board or I’m jealous.

Nevertheless, the question has to be asked, who needs this ‘literary alternative’ to MySpace or Bebo more? Readers and consumers of books, or the old players of the publishing industry looking with trepidation at the balance sheet and Brave New World of the Attention Economy? I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but from reader’s perspective, why split oneself in two? Is it not possible for discussion and enthusiasm about literature have a legitimate place in mainstream social networking, alongside music, film and other media?

It may be true that nobody has built a seriously trafficked online community in a way that would benefit all of the [current] main players in the book business, but to assert that nobody at all from outside the current cartel of stakeholders in the traditional book business is benefiting from new wave of social connectivity is something with which I’d have to take issue. I wonder if you’ve visited LibraryThing recently? (Founder Tim Spalding — not someone who gets out of bed with the aim of benefiting the ‘main players in the book business’, but someone who’s provided a compelling service and inspired a community which has now discussed, reviewed and catalogued 12 million books (and rising ) )

The fact is, as the minority of publishers who are actively committed to building up popular social community such as The Friday Project will contest, a profound shift in attitude has to take place if you’re to have any hope of success. This is the currency of goodwill, and whereas, say, LibraryThing or FridayCities has it in spades, a large part of me wonders if the majority of existing players in the book business possess enough goodwill to sustain the kind of traffic and loyalty Bebo garners, let alone the understanding that for the populace of such communities, the aim is not to benefit main industry players or company shareholders, but to enjoy; to get traction for one’s own appetites and friends. And that, notwithstanding subscription, the most likely source of any revenue from such communities is (close your ears, literary people) advertising.

It’s not easy to forget the article in the Guardian last year, arguing that Google Book Search is an indecent use of literature, and that advertising near literature would be crass.

If you click on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens in Google Book Search, you may find yourself taking an unexpected journey. Google’s ambient advertising programme hotlinks to a dating agency. How crass is that?

How crass is seeing an advert next to Dickens text? Well, I’d say about as crass as reading Dickens in its original 19th century context — in the commercial advertising-funded periodicals and newsprint.

But the stance that Google book search shouldn’t be about advertising seems to me to be missing the point about new media. In fact, for the vast majority of authors today, Google Book Search is all about (free) advertising. Not in the context of becoming a ‘crass’ billboard for other products, but in the very real sense of getting their work to market in the new attention economy. Most writers – perhaps those not lucky enough to secure the services of a publisher’s marketing department – worry about getting people to acknowledge the existence of their work, let alone go the next step and buy it. For most writers, becoming the result of a Google Book Search IS the advert, bringing thousands of potential customers directly to your product.

Search engine optimization is big business. As anyone who maintains a website or who aims to build a community to rival Bebo should testify, getting decent and consistent rankings in search engine results is not straightforward — in fact for most web developers, it’s the Holy Grail. Nevertheless in that same article arguing against Google Book Search, it is written that

Search engines can find the same content on publishers’ websites in a nanosecond.

Well yeees, maybe if your site is built right and verifies properly, the search engine can find it, but it can also find it and rank it 584,520 on the list. Which any author of a self-respecting publishing company wanting to earn a crust cannot not be satisfied with.
(Besides, according to many publishers’ call to arms last year, aren’t we all now boycotting Google, one of the most efficient search engines, and any anything else that uses Google API?)

The basic fact is, if you want to bring something to market, you have to let people encounter it. And that means letting people find your product, right? I simply don’t buy the argument that ‘no one will write much in future if they don’t receive money for it because books are suddenly free on the net.’

For that to hold, you have to ignore a huge body of evidence to the contrary (see here) plus continue to misrepresent the fact that, as far as Google Book Search is concerned, nobody is giving away whole copyrighted books for free. With works in copyright, for a third party to reveal a snippet of your work is not an infringement of copyright. Back to the historic argument against, and something I’ve heard from several industry people:

What Google is doing to books is, by contrast, positively indecent. It is a good search engine, frequently used by all of us. I for one would like to see it keep to that core business.

But, you know what? I, for one, suspect Google would too.

Google Book Search increases the value of Google search proposition. That’s why they are doing it. All evidence points towards this being the case. How to say this? I strongly suspect Google’s march into the 21st century and world domination doesn’t depend on selling copies of Dickens, but on selling advertising. Incidentally, the only thing that makes me pause for thought with GBS project is the scarcity of advertising, not the proliferation of it. If I were a Google shareholder rather than a Bloomsbury one, I’d be somewhat underwhelmed by the level of advertising on GBS.

Meanwhile, from a user’s perspective, they are offering an extension to this ‘good search engine service’, by providing a book search service, of value that might be equivalent to the role of the library to the populace 100 years ago.

Audacious and guilty of putting interests of community over those of the ‘main players of the book business’ it might be, but illegal or indecent it is not.

So, for the fact that Bloomsbury’s experienced and many-bodied web/tech team exists today, and for the chance that, with today’s announcement, the industry is about to see the light, I’m all set to get past last year and cheer them on – I really hope this works. But just for today, whilst the news is fresh at least, I just can’t square the ambition to build a community comparable to MySpace with 2006′s conviction that literature must be separate, and treated with kid gloves.

(the views of Kate Hyde are her own and are not necessarily a reflection of those of the company that hosts and pays for 5th Estate)

Radio Diaries is committed to helps people produce their own oral histories. They work with people to document their own lives for public radio: teenagers, seniors, prison inmates and others whose voices are rarely heard. We help people share their stories—and their lives—in their own words, creating documentaries that are powerful, surprising, intimate and timeless.

The project trains diarists to be radio reporters and gives them a tape recorder for between three months to two years. The diarists conduct interviews, keep an audio journal, and record the sounds of daily life. Most will collect over 30 hours of raw tape. The material is then edited to produce a radio documentary for the National Public Radio show All Things Considered.

Technical Tips for producing your own radio diary

1. Get comfortable with the equipment
Play around with the recording device (minidisc recorder, DAT machine, tape recorder) on your own until you are very familiar with all the buttons and knobs. It’s important to do this before you begin; if you’re relaxed with the recorder and the microphone, the people you’re interviewing will be too.

2. Get organized
Always make sure you have enough minidiscs, DATs or cassettes and an extra set of batteries. Don’t leave long cables hanging out, or you’ll have to spend time untangling everything. Get a shoulder bag to hold everything. The more prepared you are, the more you can concentrate on the important things.

3 Do a test
Always do a test before you begin. Record a few seconds, then play it back to make sure the sound is good.

4. Label your tapes and disks
Always label everything before you start. When you’re in the field it’s easy to forget and tape over something you’ve just recorded. (It happens.) And after you’re done recording, pop out the safety tabs to make sure you don’t erase over anything.

5. Always wear your headphones
Recording without headphones is like a photographer taking pictures without looking through the viewfinder. Headphones help you focus on exactly what you’re recording. If something sounds weird, stop and check it out.

6. Beware of the pause button
When recording, make sure the tape is rolling and that you’re not in pause mode. Don’t use the pause button. It’s a very tricky little button it can make you think you are recording when you’re not.

7. Keep the microphone close
The most important thing of all: keep the microphone close to the sound source (your mouth or the mouth of the person you’re interviewing). About 5-6 inches is good, the length of your outstretched hand. If it’s any farther away you will still be able to hear what people say, but the recording will lose its power and intimacy. It’s also best to keep the microphone a little bit below the mouth to avoid the “popping P” sound.

8. Collect good sounds
Every time you record, collect all the specific sounds you can think of: dogs barking, doors slamming, the radio being turned on, the sound of your blender, or even your mum snoring. Be creative. You will use these sounds later when you produce the story.

9. Record everything
Long pauses are okay. Umms are okay. Saying stupid and embarrassing things is okay. Often the stuff you think is weird, worthless, or that you initially want to edit out, will end up being the best and most surprising parts of the story.

Taken from the oral history guide for young people, the “Teen Reporter Handbook”, published by Radio Diaries and available on its website.

Act now!

1. Listen to Thembi’s story. (23mins).
One of the most successful radio diaries is Thembi’s story. Thembi is a South African teenager. For more than a year, she kept a radio diary capturing the small details of her life that tell a larger story: her first conversation with her mother about AIDS; a visit to the township clinic to apply for life-saving drugs; facing neighbors and friends as they slowly learn her status; a moment of quiet, late-night dancing at home with her boyfriend. www.radiodiaries.org/aidsdiary

2. Become a radio diarist.
Get a recorder and create your own radio diary — of aspects of your life, such as going green, tackling obesity, setting up a band… or of how you are trying to change the world.

Every morning we get a buzz discovering that people from Quebec or Mongolia or Barnes have visited 5th Estate. It would be nice to share that…so we’ve created a (currently pretty hidden) corner of 5th Estate, where you can add yourself to our map and say hello to everyone else who’s found it too.

http://fifthestate.co.uk/5th-estaters-map/

I’m thinking it might be an interesting experiment to create one of these maps each for some of the books we publish, so if you finish reading a novel and want to see who else has, and maybe talk to them about it, you can put yourself on the map. hmm.

Am liking the early days of Londonstani‘s MySpace.

I’m glad there’s access to the first chapter. The novel got a range of reactions at hardback. Most people who’ve read the book so far really, really digged it, and wrote to 4th Estate folk or Gautam to say so, but a few people had quite a, erm, vigorous reaction to it and the debate got quite heated. OK I’ll be honest here – a proportion of the mainstream media violently hated it.

But we did some basic research online, and Londonstani was getting a pretty great press. The novel in hardback was really well thought of by bloggers and online reviewers, especially younger people – maybe 70-85% was positive-verging-on-passionate. People – a whole healthy load of people – enjoyed Londonstani.

I guess it is a love it or hate it book, and that’s no bad thing at all.

But it’s good to see that people can now make up their own minds about it in paperback. Who’s this book for? Who gets to say whether a book is ‘working’ for them or not? I guess the next few months’ action will say quite a lot.

Borough market is London’s oldest market.

It was established on the south bank of the Thames when the Romans build the first London Bridge and people have been trading on this site for over 2000 years. It’s a beautiful undercover food market and a truly wonderful part of London’s history.

We often visit the market for research, photography and feedback for our books, and many of our food writing authors, such as Nigel Slater, Giorgio Locatelli and Joanna Blythman are fans.

Some bright spark (I would use another term myself….) has decided to expand the railway line running through the roof of the market, which will also involve knocking down 23 of the beautiful listed and unlisted buildings in the closely surrounding area.

They already have planning permission , but are waiting funding and there is a strong local campaign to put a stop to it.

If you know and love the market in its present state, please sign the petition to prevent this from happening.

The plans, photographs and the petition are on the following: www.sabmac.co.uk

Unfortunately not a lot of people are aware of it so please sign it and pass it on to anyone else you know who loves this great bit of London heritage… AND LOCATION OF MONMOUTH COFFEE AND THE BEST MOZARELLA IN THE WORLD and that’s only two perfect things about Borough!

The Internet has become a large marketplace where companies pay to have customers visit their websites. The companies pay a few pennies when visitors to their website click on text and image links. The total revenue generated from this adds up to around $14 billion per year.

A number of services have been designed to direct some of this revenue to charity. Some benefit a pre-selected list of charities. Others generate money for any charity — which can include yours if you register, the amount you receive being based on the amount of clicking undertaken by you and your supporters.

Select a Search Engine which offers this service, sign up and then start surfing. Choose the service by how will the Search Engine will work for you and whether you want to support your own charity or just pick one from a list or support the “charity of the month”.

The Search Engine collects its share the of the advertising pennies generated, and redirects a proportion to charities. Over a year and with lots of your supporters doing it, the amount you raise can really add up.

Take action
Sign up and start searching. Do a bit more to change the world — without it costing you a penny.

In the USA
GoodSearch uses a Yahoo search engine, and you can direct the money to any charity or school you choose.
www.goodsearch.com http://www.goodsearch.com

Jikolp uses Google, and has a monthly charity. December’s charity was Greenpeace’s “Stop Climate Change”.
http://jikolp.com

GoodTree combines results from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, and has a list of causes and charities that you can choose from.
www.goodtree.com

In the UK
Everyclick is a search engine based on Ask. Half the revenue generated is given to charity. Each participating charity receives a proportion to the site income depending on how many searches its supporters make. If a site user does not select a specific charity to benefit, the income generated is used to benefit all charities registered with Everyclick on a pro rata basis. www.everyclick.com

Next time you visit your MP, you should ask them their policy on fat rascals and tarts. If they’re with David Cameron, they should be right behind them.

I’m talking of course not about members of the Tory cabinet c.1980s nor more recent members of government, but about David Cameron’s call today at the Oxford Farming Conference for a bit of ‘food patriotism’.

As I’m sure we’ll hear on this evening’s news, the leader of the opposition said today that Britain should follow the lead of other EU countries which had stood up for local producers more effectively than these shores:

While we were obliterating our local food heritage – often by heavy handed government diktat – countries like France and Italy were preserving theirs … People elsewhere in Europe are far more likely to treasure – and eat – food that is produced in their home region. Britain needs a revolution in our thinking to recover that habit.

We couldn’t agree more, Dave.

We’re pretty proud of our Sweet Stout here at 5th Estate (no that’s not the cuddly new Conservative nickname for him, it’s a dark headed beer from Guernsey).

Which is why we brought out The Taste of Britain this autumn. Feeling all patriotic and revolutionary at once, I sent him a copy of the book along with a letter today:

You might be interested to hear that this book first emerged out of an EU sponsored survey in the mid 1990s. Whilst the British volume remained a modest project…the French version ran to some 26 volumes and was a national bestseller. The hope is that we can now redress the balance a bit.

Hope he replies. Or even better, can now tell Mr Paxman the difference between a knob from Norfolk and one from Dorset.

One of the ironies of the utopia experiment is that preparations for this exercise in “primitive living” have involved more administration and red-tape than anything I’ve ever done before.

I’ve been taking advantage of the winter months to make some headway with these less appetising aspects of the project, since the few hours of daylight and the inclement weather conditions have severely reduced the scope for outdoor work.

Of all the various administrative tasks, the two that have been taking up most time are securing planning permission and drawing up the schedule of visits for the volunteers. I first wrote to the local planning office in August for some preliminary advice, and was shocked by their reply.

It seemed we would need planning permission for the change of use of the barn (as it will be used for accommodation), for the septic tank and drainage system, the yurts, the shower and toilet facilities, and for the wooden “meeting space” beside the river (which one of the volunteers, Adam, has baptised “cafe utopia” — what a great name!). In other words, we would need permission for virtually everything!

It took me several months to prepare all the documents for the full application for planning permission, but eventually I got it all together and posted off a big parcel to the planning office. Needless to say, they replied to say that it wasn’t enough, and asked for more information. I’ve also got to talk to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) regarding a discharge consent for the drainage system, as we want to discharge waste water, via the reed-bed, to the river.

The other administrative task that’s been causing me a few headaches is drawing up the schedule of visits for volunteers to the utopia experiment. I drew up a big table, with ten rows (one for each slots at TUE) and lots of columns (one for each week). I then went through all the applications that I had received so far (a total of 83) and looked at the dates that people said they would be available.

I then put names into the relevant slots, trying all the time to ensure that there would always be a good balance (equal numbers of men and women, a good mix of ages and skills) and overlap (so there’s never a week in which everyone leaves at the same time). This was very hard, and took a lot of time and thought, but with a lot of help I finally produced a workable schedule for the first six months of TUE.

I then started sending out emails to the people I had booked in for the first couple of months. I sent out twenty-two emails, and so far have only got replies to eight of them. Of those eight replies, three people accepted the dates I suggested for their visit, three said they could not come on the dates I suggested and asked for different dates, one person is still checking to see if they can come on the dates I suggested, and one said he could no longer take part in the experiment.

It quickly dawned on me that the way I was approaching the matter of scheduling visits by volunteers was not very efficient. For a lot of volunteers, it’s been a while since they sent in their applications and they are no longer available on the dates they originally suggested. Some did not even suggest particular dates at all. So I’ve had a re-think, and a chat with Agric, another volunteer, and we’ve decided to set up an online database for people to say when they are available to come to TUE. I will check the availability database every few days and, if there is space at the relevant dates, I will contact those who have submitted their data to suggest an arrival and departure date. I’m hoping that this will help make the scheduling easier, but whether it really does or not remains to be seen.

Thankfully, dealing with all the administrative tasks hasn’t completely deprived me of all opportunity for the physical stuff outdoors — a kind of work which I approach with more relish than ever after all the red tape, no matter how cold it is, a kind of work that William Morris aptly called “easy-hard work”. I’ve been putting up fences with my friends Mike and Rick to cordon off a new area for the two sows, one of whom I suspect may be pregnant again.

As we bang in the fence posts, and stretch the wire, I exult in the joy of physical effort. This is just so much more FUN than filling in forms and drawing up schedules! This is what the utopia experiment is really about.

The significance of the recent, very public fallings out at the Soil Association should not be underestimated. When highly respected organic pioneers who have been part of the bedrock of the Soil Association- such as Lawrence Woodward and Peter Kindersley- say that the Association has lost the plot, then this needs to be taken very seriously.

Over the last two decades, the Soil Association had managed to build itself a credible image as the gold standard for certifying organic food. By sticking to tight, rigorous standards, it had managed to distinguish itself from ‘Rent-A-Cert’ organisations less committed to deep green organic principles which operate a much less demanding, weaker set of organic standards. The Soil Association stood for integrity.

Recently, fearful of being left behind in the rush to get organic food on the shelf, the Soil Association seems to have lost its nerve and has made the mistake of relaxing some of its standards. The drift away from the Soil Association’s once core principles is exemplified by its decision to certify farmed fish as organic. All it has done here is to lend its name to a slightly less malign version of intensive aquaculture. This is the sort of muddled, compromised, pragmatic approach one expects from bodies like the RSPCA’s Freedom Foods, not the Soil Association.

Why is this ? Perhaps the Soil Association has become unhealthy flattered by its growing influence. It seems to measure this in terms of volumes of organic food sold and is pleased to see organic food being accepted into the mainstream. But the pursuit of mass distribution means getting into bed with the supermarkets. Their interest in organic lines is purely commercial. It makes them money and it greens their corporate image. They want organic food because it sells, but they want it on the cheap. Dealing with the traditional, high-minded organic grower with smallish quantities of product is a pain in the backside for them. So they put pressure on their conventional producers to diversify into organic lines. Then these opportunist producers, who share few or none of the organic movement’s founding values, simply shop around for the most dilute set of organic standards they can find. Make no mistake that when Tesco boss, Sir Terry Leahy says that the organic movement has got to become more ‘professional’, that is shorthand for dropping standards.

Worldwide, the industrialisation of organic food is speeding up. Organic food production is gradually being moved away from principled people who believed that organics was an all-round radical alternative to a globalized food system predicated on pesticides, environmental damage and animal suffering, to Johnny-Cum-Latelys who want to get in on the organic act.

This is why the Soil Association should stick to its cherished, fundamental principles. Consumers need the Soil Association to stand by its founding ideals and operate irreproachable, clear-cut standards that differentiate it from the organic stampede. If it doesn’t, it throws away all the goodwill and trust that it has so carefully nurtured in the organic brand. Already, that old Groundhog Day chorus, ‘Can we REALLY trust organic food?’, has started up again, a chorus that the Soil Association will now find harder to answer than ever before.

It’s been four months since I first arrived in utopia. Well, it’s not really utopia, which means nowhere, but the site of the utopia experiment, which will begin in April next year.

The utopia experiment is an attempt to simulate and imagine what life might be like if, as some scientists predict, global civilisation collapses during the twenty-first century. Lasting eighteen months, from April 2007 to September 2008, volunteers of all ages and walks of life will pretend that they are living in the future — around the year 2040 — by which time a combination of climate change, the end of cheap oil, and other threats to the contemporary world order have led to the demise of industrial civilisation and a return to pre-industrial lifestyles. This scenario has already been explored in a number of novels, but the volunteers will attempt to go further than these literary excursions by acting out the dilemmas they pose in real life.

The utopia experiment can therefore be seen as a kind of “experimental futurology”; just as experimental archaeologists try to learn, for example, about different types of flint tools through the hands-on approach of actually making them, so the volunteers will try to learn about life in a post-apocalyptic world by pretending that they are already living in one.

The four months I’ve been here have been very exciting – and very busy. With the help of a few volunteers who lived on site for varying amounts of time, I’ve put up two yurts and a cooking/eating area we call “cafe utopia”. We also dug our first vegetable patch, sowed our winter crop, put up fences, looked after pigs (and killed a few to eat), and a hundred other things. It’s been a huge learning curve.

At the end of October, we had some of the heaviest rainfall and strongest winds in this part of the world in over 40 years. At one point, the chimneys blew off both the yurts – but that was the worst of the damage, and it was easily fixed. I was very pleased that the yurts survived such extreme weather. If they can survive that, they should be robust enough to survive throughout the experiment.

It’s still early days, and the experiment proper will not begin until April next year, but the preparations so far have already helped me think more carefully about what life might be like in the aftermath of a global collapse. Such an event would lead to the deaths of billions of people, but not the end of the human race. Some people would survive the end of the industrial age by reverting to a preindustrial lifestyle.

The enormity of such a scenario makes it hard to imagine. Some science fiction writers have sketched out visions of a post-industrial world characterised by small rural communities. But futurology is a notoriously difficult enterprise, especially when guided only by the unaided imagination. If we want to know what life might be like in the aftermath of a global collapse, it is necessary to do more than just read science fiction. It is also necessary to act it out, to conduct a simulation. This is the purpose of the utopia experiment.

There are some aspects of life after a global collapse that are quite easy to predict. The survivors would, for example, have to re-learn many old crafts that were widespread before the industrial revolution, such as weaving and smelting. They would also have to learn to defend themselves against attacks by hostile strangers. But there are other aspects of post-apocalyptic living that it is much harder to guess at, and which the utopia experiment will explore.

For example, would the survivors try to rebuild civilisation just as it was before the crash (as happens in that awful film, The Postman)? Or would they pause for a moment to reflect on what went wrong with that particular historical experiment, and attempt to build a different kind of society? In the latter case, which bits of the old collapsed civilisation would they try to preserve, and which would they relegate to the dustbin of history? Which bits of modern technology would they keep, and which would they abandon? Which cultural artifacts — which books, music, works of art — would they preserve for posterity, and which would they consider not worth preserving?

Different groups would no doubt behave in different ways. But some, at least, might act like oases of culture and learning amidst the ruins of the old civilisation. In this respect, they might be secular equivalents of the European monasteries which preserved the great books of classical antiquity throughout the Dark Ages, and so enabled future generations to enjoy these ancient treasures.

By simulating life in a post-apocalyptic community, we might be able to test an intriguing hypothesis — that, far from being a disaster, life after the collapse of modern civilisation might not be so bad as some people fear. Might it be, in fact, a second chance for humanity, an opportunity to escape from the awful state we’ve got ourselves into? Might global collapse turn out to be the most promising route to utopia?

China’s one-dog policy

In Beijing, the authorities have just imposed a one-pet policy. The stated reason for this is to stop the rise of rabies.

The Ministry of Health says the disease is more prevalent than TB and AIDS in terms of fatalities, and second only to the common cold. During the first nine months of 2006, China recorded 2,254 rabies cases, almost all fatal, up 30% from 2005.

Dangerous and large dogs will also be banned. Anyone keeping an unlicensed dog will face prosecution, and dog control officials will be destroying surplus pets.

“Now that people have money we want to enjoy it. Dogs are part of our life.” Since 2003 the number of registered dogs in Beijing more than tripled to 534,000 while the number of unlicensed dogs is probably several times that figure.

Pet Paradise is an exclusive doggie hotel which opened in February 2006. Canines can watch cartoons before their bedtime. Owner Liu Mingli explains, “Chinese dogs are used to having television on at home in the evening.” The posh kennel offers 30 private rooms fitted with air-conditioning at a rate of US$10 per night, which is about the same cost as a cheap hotel room. Liu is planning next to build a swimming pool for the dogs.

Responsible pet ownership

There are lots of issues around pet ownership, from fouling pavements, consuming unnecessary resources, abandonment and health and safety issues around irresponsible ownership.

The RSPCA, Britain’s biggest organisation promoting animal welfare and campaigning for animal rights has a cyberpet game for young people to explore the issues of pet ownership. It says this:

There are a lot of important things to think about when deciding whether or not to get a pet. Will you be able to afford food and vet’s bills? Do you have time to play with it? To help you think about these things, and of course for a bit of fun, why not adopt an RSPCA Cyberpet. Play with it, feed it and watch it grow. If you treat it well, it will grow up to be strong, healthy and happy, but if you don’t look after your Cyberpet, the RSPCA will come and take it away from you!

Find out more at: http://rspcapet.onlinemagic.com/intro.html

Owning a virtual pet

There are alternatives to owning a real-life pet. You can get an electronic toy such as a Tamagotchi, which gives you your own pet to feed, walk and look after. You can adopt a virtual pet on-line. You can join a virtual pet community, play games and enter into competitions with other virtual pet owners.

Welcome to the wonderful world of cyberpets. Check out the following website for links into this world: www.virtualpet.com/vp/links/links.htm

Best in show…

Have you ever dreamed of having your own quality dogs to raise, feed, groom, train, breed, and show? ShowDog.Com brings this opportunity to you through its one-of-a-kind virtual dog simulation game.

Join hundreds of other kennel owners as you get your own dogs and bitches ready to compete in the show ring. You choose from 163 different breeds; whether it be Great Dane, Beagle, Whippet, or Poodle, there is a breed for you. See them grow from puppy to Champion!

Choose to enter your dogs in all-breed, specialty shows, or both. Each judge has their own standards and preferences regarding a “true” champion. Do you wish to use a handler to show your dog or handle him or her yourself? It is all up to you! How well your kennel performs is up to you and the decisions you make.
You are the breeder, owner, handler, trainer, and groomer of your show dogs. You get to manage and budget the rations of food your dogs receive, how you breed your dogs, which shows you enter, and much, much more.

“ShowDog.com has something for everyone. Whether you’ve been showing real dogs for years, have never shown a dog in your life, or even have never owned a real animal, this game is fun, challenging, and a unique experience.”

www.showdog.com

The Virtual Pet Project

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are collecting stories from virtual pet owners around the world. If you are an adult or a child, and have any kind of virtual or digital creature or toy, tell them about your experience with it. These are some of the questions they are interested in:

1. What kinds of things do you and your creature, pet, or doll do together?
2. Do you feel that you have a special relationship with it?
3. What do you like (and not like) about it?
4. What is it like to be a caretaker for a virtual creature, pet, or doll?
5. How do friends, family members, and live pets react to your toy and to you spending time with it?
6. Is your creature smart? Does it have feelings? Does it think? How do you know?

Send an email to virtualpets@mit.edu

Drinking fairly traded coffee is better than not, as more money flows back to the coffee producers. But here’s an African-led initiative where the profits are shared with producer communities.

The Rwenzori Coffee Company was founded in 2002 by Andrew Rugasira, a Ugandan entrepreneur. Andrew believes that Trade Not Aid is the best strategy for African economic and social development. Aid stifles creativity and results in crippling dependency, whilst trade provides opportunities for wealth creation and economic empowerment.

Rwenzori buys its Arabica coffee from a network of 10,000 coffee growers throughout Uganda and sells it under the GOOD African Coffee brand.

We recognise growers, employees, shareholders and the environment as primary stakeholders. Together they represent our quadruple bottom line. Our farmers are driven, smart and interested in generating economic opportunities and creating wealth by trading their coffee. We don’t just pay them a premium price, they haggle and fight for it, they deserve it and what’s more, it makes economic sense to pay it.

Rwenzori shares its profits on a 50:50 basis with growers and their communities. It is supporting farmers to form producer organisations, giving them technology such as coffee pulpers, washing baskets and drying trays and providing training in best practices to improve the quality and profitability of their crops.

The community programmes supports orphanages, healthcare and education projects. Partners include Ssanyu Babies Home, Tender Mercies (Uganda), Save Africa’s Children which runs 125 orphanages across Africa and community programmes organised by the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

Rwenzori is planning to open coffee houses in the UK as well as in Uganda and South Africa.

www.rwenzoricoffee.com
www.goodafrican.com

Rwenzori Coffee Company (Pty) Ltd
P.O. Box 1718, Kampala, Uganda

Distributed in the UK by LDH (La Doria) Ltd
519 North gate, Alconbury Airfield, Alconbury,Huntingdon PE28 4WX
Tel: 01480 424000 enquiries@ldhltd.com

Two interesting examples of organisations using the mechanisms of existing popular websites to create revenue. These examples show that sometimes if you think intelligently and creatively about how things work now, you can work the system. In these two cases, for good cause. Enter the ‘fundraising hack’.

The video you’re watching above is a video by Creative Commons, the first nonprofit organization to raise money through online video sharing. Apart from it being a very informative and (I think) pretty cool creation, it’s also shared here for a reason. CC say

We’ve uploaded our short videos to Revver … Revver attaches a short ad at the end of each video on its network. When a viewer clicks on the ad, Revver splits the resulting ad revenue with the video’s creator. Usually, it’s a 50/50 split, but Revver is generously giving Creative Commons 100% of the money our videos make through the end of our fundraising campaign on December 31, 2006.

Meanwhile, this week Worldchanging organised a group hack of Amazon.com on 1st November. The plan was simple: co-ordinate potential readers of its Al Gore-endorsed new book to simultaneously purchase the book from Amazon on 1/11, and in so doing catapult the book to the top of the amazon bestseller list, thereby ‘hacking’ the usual route to besteller status. Guess what?

It reached number 12 in the bestseller chart. (As I write this, dropped only a little to 33.)

Perhaps almost as joyful is to see the obvious fun everyone’s enjoying whilst purchasing Worldchanging: A User’s Guide to the 21st Century.

Nice work, Worldchanging.

Has anyone got more ideas? (and can please we borrow them?)

In 1782, the Scottish soldier John Oswald arrived in Bombay eager to fight for the East India Company. But after witnessing Britain’s savage treatment of the natives, Oswald quit his post and went on a walkabout among the Indians. Under the influence of his newfound Hindu hosts, Oswald cast aside the haggis and roast beef of his homeland and converted to vegetarianism.

With ideological fervour he attacked the human oppressors who were guilty of exploiting both humans and animals alike. In his own country, he realised, the Scottish Highlanders were being forcefully evicted by the meat-gorging rich in a greedy quest to provide their animals with more grazing.

By the time Oswald finally returned to Britain, he had become, according to one contemporary, “a convert so much to the Hindu faith, that the ferocity of the young soldier of fortune sunk into the mild philosophic manners of the Hindoo Brahmin”. Oswald’s next career move was to join the French Revolution with a proclamation that the republican fraternité should be extended to the animal kingdom, before grape-shot laid him and his utopian dreams to rest.

Oswald was one of many revolutionary vegetarians, from the 18th century to the 21st, who imbibed the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In 1755, Rousseau had argued that because animals shared with humans the capacity for sensation, they at least had the right to be protected from “unnecessary” maltreatment. The majority, meanwhile, maintained that animals had no value except insofar as they were useful to humans. In Jewish and Christian societies, this animal-unfriendly view had been bolstered by the Bible’s testimony of God’s words to Noah: “the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth … Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you” (Genesis, 9:2-3).

Two-and-a-half centuries after Rousseau’s declaration, vegetarians and carnivores are still locked in battle. But there is a pressing case for these warring camps to lay aside their differences and unite against a problem that affects us all. For one of the greatest threats to the welfare of animals, to biodiversity and to humans comes from the same single source: the perverse state of the modern meat industry. Viewed from a holistic ecological perspective, some meat -such as conscientiously hunted animals – involves less suffering and environmental damage than arable agriculture; while both of these are significantly less harmful than indiscriminately purchasing meat on the market.

Vegetarianism and veganism remain powerful protests against modern society’s disregard for the interests of other animals. But even among the most sincere defenders of animal rights there is no room for self-righteousness. Though the stomachs of vegetarians may not be graves for dead animals, the purest vegan is still indirectly complicit in hidden forms of slaughter. To use the phrase of one early 19th-century carnivore, apparently innocent vegetarian foods “are ushered into the world on the spoils of the slain”.

Let us ignore for the moment the lives of microbes and invertebrates. Seasonally ploughing and harvesting crops will mash up a few moles, slice through a burrow of field mice and crush any ground-nesting bird chicks. Far more significant, however, is the creation of the field in the first place: an act that replaces entire ecosystems, along with all their animal inhabitants.

Inevitable as these side-effects of agriculture are, we do have the opportunity to minimise them significantly – and it is here that the argument against meat becomes compelling. In the 18th and 19th centuries, when populations were growing exponentially and the environment was visibly suffering, both vegetarians and carnivores voiced their worry that meat production required more land than that of vegetables. A sustainable approach to food production – as Rousseau, and later Percy Bysshe Shelley, pointed out – had to involve maximising the number of people that could be fed from each unit of cultivated land. Since then, however, commercial meat production has progressed in the opposite direction, by appropriating more and more of the world’s available acreage. Between a third and a half of the world’s arable harvest is now given over to feed animals. Most of the crop’s nutritional content (which could otherwise have gone to feed humans) is thereby effectively converted into faeces, inedible tissue and heat. Much of the destruction of wildlife and the countryside – Britain’s hedges and meadows and the 200m hectares of tropical rainforest since the 1960s – has been committed to supply the inefficient demands of the meat and dairy industry.

Combatants in the “bloodless revolution” against meat-eating have historically had impossibly idealistic aims; but it is still less realistic to believe that we can continue this profligacy indefinitely. The cries of demographers centuries ago are now backed up by the World Health Organisation and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation: on an acre of arable crops, they say, enough food can be grown for up to 20 people; use an acre to produce beef and the number drops to just one. It takes an estimated 100,000 litres of precious water to produce a kilogram of beef, compared with 500 litres for a kilogram of potatoes. According to the dramatic figures of Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel, beef requires up to 27 times more energy to produce than plant protein, suggesting that a blindingly simple way of tackling global warming would be to revert to a vegetable-based diet. Climate change is further ratcheted up by a menagerie of 20 billion farm animals exuding plumes of the potent greenhouse gas methane.
Brazil’s Amazonian and Cerrado ecosystems, meanwhile, have been devastated by the advance of cattle ranching and, more recently, soya cultivation, 80% of which is used for animal feed. Most people would not like to chew their way through a heap of endangered monkeys, birds, beetles and plants (or people, for that matter): and yet that is effectively what we do when we buy meat without ensuring the provenance of the feed it was fattened on. Until meat is produced in a sensible fashion, vegetarians will continue to occupy the higher moral ground. At the very least, policy-makers and consumers should be thinking of meat-eating in the same way that we have learned to regard fossil fuel consumption: we cannot eliminate it, but we should at least reduce it.

Fortunately, there is meat on the market that evades many of these problems. As human pastoralists discovered 8,000 years ago, raising animals can be an efficient way of harnessing otherwise unusable resources such as grass. Well-managed hill-farming of cattle and sheep with minimal grain-feeding can even contribute positively to local ecologies, such as heathland, where animals keep down bracken, tree saplings and grasses, allowing the rarer habitat of heather to dominate. New farm subsidies will encourage such practices, thus making them more economically viable.

Feeding unused vegetable matter to animals is another way of turning waste into food, rather than food into waste. As a teenager I raised pigs and chickens on surplus collected from the school kitchens, a local baker, and a vegetable market. The resulting pork was – and would be still if new waste legislation can be negotiated – thoroughly good food, and highly amenable to large-scale application. Witness the recently launched business Fareshare 1st, which will divert some of Britain’s enormous quantities of surplus food into animal feed. If we could think past the idea that meat is murder, we would see that raising animals in this way actually reduces humanity’s heavy ecological footprint.

Heartless though it may seem to some, among the least harmful things to eat are sustainably culled wild animals. In the absence of natural predators, deer populations in parts of Britain have reached such dense numbers that the woodlands they browse fail to regenerate. Rabbits also are in no danger of being wiped out, and the non-native grey squirrel (whose palatability Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall highlighted by employing its culinary name, the “flightless partridge”), can be a pest to forestry as well as a threat to red squirrels. Harvesting animals from the wild will never yield the quantity of the modern meat industry: but it will not cause the waste of valuable resources and pollution inherent in that industry either. Local councils in the Highlands are encouraging school canteens to serve “Bambi-burgers” to absorb the 70,000 red deer culled each year, thus providing children with a local, free-range meat that has a fraction of the fat and cholesterol of beef.

For centuries, hunting for sport has been vilified. But as a method of gathering food, at least hunting brings the consumer and the consumed into closer contact. It may not accord with the Indian doctrine of non-violence that Oswald embraced, but neither is culling animals necessarily representative of th e west’s traditionally rapacious attitude to nature. Exchanging a daily feast of ordinary shop meat for more vegetables and an occasional venison steak would be a difficult choice for most; but if we could imaginatively close the distance between ourselves and the world’s impoverished people and the environment that suffer as a result of our food choices, it might be possible. It would also be healthier and far tastier. Which is why, along with the wild blackberries and the horseradish I picked and dug from a grassy verge in Somerset, I recently served guests with sausages made from a deer I shot in the preceding days.

How – when I gazed down my rifle-telescope at the exquisite animal grazing in the woods, twitching the flies away with its ears – did I manage to pull the trigger that ended its life? Although I have been culling deer for 13 years, it is still hard. But I did so by contrasting that one direct individual kill with the innumerable less visible victims of arable agriculture, and by remembering that at the last big party I attended there were barbecued prawns – farmed on bulldozed mangroves, fattened on over-exploited fish stocks, transported away from a hungry part of the world and served to an overfed elite. That I pulled the trigger no doubt came as a shock to some. But I hope that even the most dedicated vegetarian can withhold their fury, while hardened carnivores learn, as a matter of urgency, to limit their wanton destruction of the world’s ecologies.

This article © The Guardian/Tristram Stuart, author of The Bloodless Revolution.

Good news, everyone.

Aside from reading a newspaper, the most popular commuting activity for the evening is reading a book. According to the Metro newspaper Urban Life survey, just passed to me by our marketing people, 51% of people asked like to read a book. (Yes, books have a clear 33% lead over being unconscious.)

Thought provoking. I’ve often wondered what happens when you leave a book on a commuter train/bus. If half the people commuting want to read a book, then it’s got quite a good chance of being picked up.

Is a few copies of a book being picked up for free and shared a good thing? I think there’s a strong case to be made. It’s not a dissimilar model from libraries, surely? We distribute a number of review copies free of charge to industry insiders, so why not do so with a potential new fan of the author who’ll really appreciate the work and spread the word?

Let’s suppose for a minute a third of that 51% of people (like me) forget on a regular basis to carry their book and are wishing they had something (oh please anything) to read, and then a third of the remaining, non-reading, 49% will pick up something out of sheer boredom, even if it is a book: that’s a good amount of potential people to adopt your book.

Against this group of people, factor in the diligent litter-pickers* and cleaners on the commuter train. Who will get to the book first: the reader or the waste disposal unit?

So this week I’m trying an experiment, with a little help from BookCrossing.com, a really interesting community site that helps members to release books into the wild and then tracks their progress, just like a balloon race. The fact that it has half a million members and huge word-of-mouth potential shouldn’t go unnoticed by writers.

I’m releasing 5 finished copies of a paperback into the ‘wild’. To stand a good chance, I picked a book I think is genuinely excellent reading (I won’t tell you which yet, it will spoil the surprise, but, trust me, it is outstanding).

If you find one of the handful of copies I released and, as a result, you’re reading this, it’s a happy urban miracle so why not leave a comment here as well as on BookCrossing? Let us know how the book (and you) are doing out there in commuterland. I’m intrigued to know if books get passed on, thrown away or kept by the original owner.

And because I always got really excited about balloon races, the first person to show me that a released book has gone over 100 miles gets a prize (I’m trusting you to tell me the truth as well as the BCID, here).

I’ll let you know what happens.

*I did wonder for a while if it was Ok to leave a book lying about for a few minutes on a train. Is it litter? (If you’re from a transport company, can you let me know how you view this?) Bookcrossing.com have this to say:

Aw, come on. Nobody considers books “litter” (we could do focus groups to prove this, but you’ll have to take our word for it here). Also, it’s nearly impossible to throw a book away; it’s just one of those objects with some special kind of intrinsic value that tells you it’s to be saved, to be treasured. So lighten up! What’s the worst that could happen… you might see a few books on park benches, or bus seats, or diner tables? Make the world one big library! Or take the safer, more conventional route… just pass them on so they can touch more lives.

This week — fifthestate’s first — has been a delightfully busy one. It’s also been fairly hectic for anyone working on The Taste of Britain, a newly published compendium of regional produce from the British Isles, and my personal tip off for a great Christmas present if you’re already a bit stuck.

The previous publisher of the book, Tom Jaine, has been whisked around various radio stations to record interviews on the topic of Britain’s food traditions — he even made the news on Wednesday night.

Listen again to Tom Jaine’s very entertaining appearance on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight.

Once interviewers have got over the initial shock factor of there being an identifiable British food heritage worthy of note, a question that crops up regularly is: what is our culinary tradition? Who are we?

Tom has suggested that, from a historian’s perspective, one can look to food culture as a means of broadly determining what the nation’s identity was, and perhaps still is. To nations such as France food tradition and the idea of AOC goes some distance to carving out an idea of what it has previously meant to be French. Could it be that the stuff we eat could help define the future fabric of the British Isles?

The Taste of Britain is a compendium of foods whose origins on these shores date back at least three generations. I wonder if in another three generations time, the book will look very different. Personally, I think that The Taste of Britain 2106 would be an exciting prospect. But I also suspect that it will be a far harder thing to pin down.

So, in a week that saw Jack Straw write in the Lancashire Telegraph that he’d rather women constituents lifted the veil (apparently 93% of Britons polled agree with him), the question of a common cultural identity lifts its head again — perhaps these days it never goes away.

The voices of those sceptical of multiculturalism are sounding louder — in fact, next week Michael Burleigh will post at fifthestate on the subject

The government’s predictable response to this on-going emergency is to form yet further committees of the likeminded, where the voices of anyone sceptical of multiculturalism are unrepresented…Let’s have some ‘unity’ officers, versed in what makes this country sufficiently attractive for the huge numbers of people seeking to live here.

Nevertheless, if you concur with former Labour home secretary Roy Jenkins, that integration is “not a flattening process of assimilation but equal opportunity accompanied by … an atmosphere of mutual tolerance”, you’ll join me in the hope that The Taste of Britain a hundred years hence will be able to stretch to the 27 volumes that France made on its first edition.

Rob the Rubbish: “I decided right from the start that I would not get angry about litter. I would just pick it up.”

Robin Kevan (also known as Rob the Rubbish) is a 61-year old retired social worker. Almost every day he’s out first thing in the morning in the tiny Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells picking up litter. After breakfast he sets in his car to clean up the surrounding mountains. Word has spread. Rob began to get invitations to clean up other mountains — Ben Nevis, Scotland’s highest; Snowdon, Wales’s highest. Armed with a pick-up stick, yellow jacket and bin bags, he does the biz. He’s now been invited to clean up Everest base camp.

He started as one man with time on his hands and a determination to do something about a problem that was bugging him. He has now become a ‘world expert’ and a ‘one-man brand’.

Rob is a shining example of the ‘just-do-it’ and ‘change the world’ ethos of 365 Ways to Change the World. It’s amazing how you can do something quite simple, such as picking up rubbish, then become the “world expert” on it with your own brand and website. Find out more about Rob at: www.robtherubbish.com

I’d like more ideas, examples and intersting websites for how to make our local communities cleaner, brighter, safer… Please send them to me at norton [at ] civa.org.uk.