Generous Blog Entries

Geoff Crawford – featured member

2009-06-30T12:48:29Z

Our featured Generous member for July 2009 is Geoff Crawford. Geoff’s been part of the Generous community since its early days. We grabbed five minutes on the phone with Geoff to talk Generous things – like chickens.

You can download an MP3 of our conversation with Geoff here (3.4 MB) or you can stream the audio in your browser here using the player below:

Geoff blogged about getting his chickens on the Generous site here – and his wonderful ongoing blog about the chicken-keeping adventure is here.

Remember, we can all tell our Generous stories by making our profiles as full as they can be (including adding photos – go to ‘Profile’ once you’re logged in) and by leaving comments and tips below the actions, news and blogs on the site. It all helps us to get to know each other better. It all helps build the wisdom of the crowd.

Love miles

2009-06-19T11:04:31Z

This week is a special week. My little boys have their aunty, my sister, with them for a few days. She arrived on the twins’ birthday last weekend and she’ll leave next Sunday. They love her so much. She brings them great gifts – carefully and lovingly chosen; gifts that keep them busy for hours. But even if she didn’t bring them wonderful things they’d still be enthralled: she has a way with children.

The problem is, this kind and lovely aunty lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and we live in Gloucestershire. So what’s the ‘problem’ with that? Well. It’s all to do with flying. It’s where changing our ‘default settings’ to try and be a more Generous family rubs up most sharply against the things we really want to do.

My father was American, so I have lots of family in the States. I have visited most of them in my younger days and I would like my boys to be able to do the same. But what I know now – that I didn’t even give a second thought back then – is that flying is the single most damaging contributor to global warming that I can make direct decisions about.

Since belonging the Generous community I have only made one return flight to the Middle East. On average before that – I joined Generous in 2004 – I would fly perhaps every other year. This reduction is partly due to the fact we started having children in 2004 (and we’ve barely stopped since). But it is also a conscious thing; something we’re cutting back on as we read the conversations on the Generous website and talk with Generous friends in the flesh.

But when those you love are separated from you by a plane journey, ethics and generosity get a little muddled. George Monbiot writes about this in his book, Heat, and he’s coined a great phrase to speak into the dilemma: ‘love miles’.

Love miles are the distances we will want to travel to keep in touch with our nearest and dearest. He argues that it’s only natural – indeed, morally right – that we will want to travel to see them. But at the same time he argues that it is also morally wrong to make these journeys, if we care about the planet.

This conundrum is one I feel in a very real way this week as I see my boys with their aunty and know there will come a day all-too-soon now when they will start to ask to go and see her. And, when they do, I can hardly use The Wire as a defence for not letting them go (Baltimore being such a dangerous city and all)!

More than a conundrum, this is, as Monbiot would say himself, a moral dilemma. In the end, making an effort to live a Generous life is a moral decision that will entail myriad moral choices in its wake.

But before I get too precious about all this I need to remember that ‘to fly or not to fly’ is a line from a modern day drama that only a fraction of the world’s population ever get to play a part in.

You can read more about Monbiot’s view on flying and love miles in an article he wrote for the Guardian back in 2006 and you can see him speaking about it much more recently at a OneWorld.net event this January (go to 1 minute and 50 seconds in).

Heat, by George Monbiot, was published by Penguin in 2007.
His website in support of the book is here.

Related actions
Sign the flight pledge
Holiday generously (go by train)
Offset your airmiles

Flickr photosource – thanks WTL photos

Generous wrinkles?

2009-06-15T09:39:07Z

Do adverts on the telly stop us being ‘Generous’? When we suffer yet another commercial break that inconveniently interrupts what we were attempting to enjoy, does it matter? Do we kid ourselves when we say that we just ignore them; that they don’t have any influence over us … that they don’t alter our efforts to shop less, to buy local/fair trade/organic/eco-friendly, etc?

Take the recent hype over the cream that claims to get rid of your wrinkles, by No.7. When the ‘news’ broke recently, that scientists had done a study and found that for once, a beauty product’s claims were accurate, the result was predictable. In the Boots’ outlet at Liverpool Street, London, over 400 bottles were sold within 90 minutes of the store opening.

But those of us who are hardcore Generous shoppers aren’t so gullible.
No, we’re not.
Are we?
Errrr… yes, just a bit.

When last in Boots (and I’m rarely in there) I passed a huge display of said product. I paused. I have wrinkles. As they say in the States: do the math! Now, please bear in mind I am not one to splash out on beauty products of any sort and don’t even wear make up. The essentials I do buy tend to be of the generous sort. But I paused, picked up a bottle of said product, held it for a few seconds, thought about my skin and the fantasy of turning back time… then realised it was twenty quid and swiftly returned it to its display.

Proof, then, that adverts have power, even over those of us who consider ourselves immune. What if it had cost two quid – would I have bought it? Please don’t ask me that as I’m trying to put the whole sorry episode behind me. But beware – we’re only human, and while we know that wasting money is not helpful to us, or to people and planet at large, sometimes we’re more susceptible to clever advertising than we realise.

And sometimes we just have to learn to re-name our wrinkles ‘laughter lines’, and move on.

Is anyone out there?

2009-06-03T09:37:54Z

Recently, I was fortunate enough to hear a very well respected economist talk about the ‘road to recovery’ (or not). To give you some idea of his status, he is a professor at the London School of Economics, an ex-member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, a former economist for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and a regular blogger on the FT. Bloomberg even sent a camera crew to the event to relay his presentation live to all of their trading desks (this was in the light of the UK receiving a downgrading by one of the major ratings agencies the day before).

He was duly controversial and quite funny (not a normal characteristic for an economist), but one of his comments was quite intriguing. He talked about financial institutions ‘losing their moral bearings’ and the need for them to regain trust. Banks ‘need to look in the mirror and practise an earnest look’, he argued. It got me thinking about how the whole trust issue is becoming more important – not just for banks, but for other public figures in the business world (don’t even mention MPs and draining moats or duck palaces).

Will we trust Tesco Bank more than Barclays? Who are the role models we look up to in business? In an age where failure is rewarded by huge pension pay-offs (although Sir Fred Goodwin has now apparently been excluded from his local golf club – tough, eh?) is there anyone out there? Do we have to look to part-time activists like Bono to find people with integrity? In an era where many corporations are talking corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ‘green’ agendas, why is it so hard to believe them?

The fundamental question here is whether capitalism has actually failed – and there is a lot of talk recently that it has. I think there is a distinction between ‘financial capitalism’ – the kind that we have seen over the last nine months with excessive risk-taking and little or no accountability – and the other emerging option ‘state-owned capitalism’ – where the risk-takers have ended up! Is there not a third way? I wonder if the likes of John Lewis are successful because they are partnership-based and everyone shares (in some way) in any profits made. I used to work for a company that was owned by its employees and although it was a tough, competitive environment, people were rewarded fairly for their efforts, even to the point where I still receive the odd cheque even now, based on investments in new ventures while I worked there (and that was over five years ago). I remember the chairman of M&S (many years ago – and this is a paraphrase) saying that ‘honesty is always the best long-term policy – and the most profitable one’. The founders of Google – Larry Page and Sergey Brin – have a great corporate motto: ‘don’t be evil’. Now I’d prefer something a bit more positive, but it’s a good start.

If business in the future want to be distinctive, it’s not enough to be offering great prices or competitive products (important though that is). It’s about whether you think they put your interests first, rather than their own; and whether you can believe what they tell you, based on their actions not their words. I don’t think this will be an optional extra. Ironically, the companies that are doing that now are the ones who appear to be riding out the current recession. But we could do with a few more.

So, I ask again – and perhaps you might like to comment and dialogue with me on this: In an era where many corporations are talking corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ‘green’ agendas, why is it so hard to believe them? And who are the role models we look up to in business now?

Annie Porthouse – featured member

2009-06-01T10:34:08Z

Our featured Generous member for June 2009 is Annie Porthouse. Annie’s another of our community who’s been part of the adventure since its early days. We snatched a five-minute telephone conversation with her about her Generous passions and struggles.

You can download an MP3 of our conversation with Annie here (4.3 MB) or you can stream the audio in your browser here using the player below:

Annie’s Generous profile is here.
And her website and blog are here.

Familiarity breeds content

2009-05-15T08:57:03Z

Talk at the school gate in these credit-crunched times often turns to how much it costs to keep our little ones happy – to keep them amused, occupied. A trip here; a visit there; a film at the cinema; a bite to eat. It all adds up. Apparently.

Then recently, at a storytelling night I was at round a camp fire (see the Generous action about having a ‘power cut party’), I heard a friend remembering his childhood: day after day, hour after hour (when he wasn’t in school or in bed) spent in the same patch of woodland behind his home. He described, in persuasive detail, how his familiarity with that small bit of nature led him into a world of enchantment and content. And how he still draws on the memory of that time to sustain him now when things get tough.

I often think – with a sigh, perhaps – that a Generous life might be a slightly contracted one; one that involves less travel (or, at least, travel by different means and with a different mindset). I am often struck by the fact that a Generous life will probably mean a more local life than perhaps we had grown up expecting. Perhaps.

But perhaps this is all the answer to our bemoaning our credit card bills listing things we’ve done to keep our children happy: perhaps all this going to places and seeing things is not what’s needed. Perhaps our little people (as lots of us were in the past) would be as happy to muck around in their gardens (if we have them), woods (if we live near them), or at their local parks.

Of course, I’m glossing over all the (perceived) ‘stranger danger’ concerns that stalk modern day parenting – and the fact that there are so many more cars now than when most of us were young. But the principle remains: we somehow need to (re)learn the knack of our immediate surroundings – be they rural or urban, or a mix of the two – funding our imaginations and our spirits. It’s better for our bank balances, better for the planet and, ultimately, better for our wellbeing.

When it comes to people, the old adage – ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ – is sadly often true. But I’m convinced that to live a more Generous life, we will have to learn to turn that saying on its head; to drawn comfort and contentment from what surrounds us; from what we have easy access to; from what is familiar.

And if you do still need to take the family out and you don’t want to break the bank, then take a look at our Holiday Generously action which carries links to lots of Free Days Out websites.

Pictured: the twins having fun with hats and trugs.

The Benefits of Recession?

2009-05-11T08:16:31Z

On a recent long weekend, I actually had a bit of time on my hands to relax – which meant I got a few more things to do around the house (naturally).

One activity was to take our dog, Reggie, for a walk. He’s a rescue dog and getting quite old now, so he is nowhere near as frisky as he used to be when we first got him. He’s a hunting dog (the technical name is Grande Petit Bassett Griffon Vendeen – it’s French apparently) and he loves nothing better than to run after squirrels, even though he never catches one!

Consequently, taking him on a small block for a walk takes about two or three times as long as it used to. However, we are fortunate enough to live near a forest, some fields and a pretty bluebell meadow and I figured it was a lovely evening so I would take Reggie for a long walk through the woods and nearby barley fields – even though I had a feeling that I might actually arrive back home about three days later…

As I crossed the barley field I remembered that there was a planning application to take over the land and convert it into a couple of cricket pitches – complete with pavilion – and even some tennis courts. There’s only one small lane into this field and it would not be able to support the heavy traffic that would come down it if the application went ahead. Anyway, to cut a long story short I found out that the application was abandoned due to economic pressures.

As I slowly walked Reggie back through the woods, I stopped for a moment to appreciate the sunlight coming through the trees and admire the view over the fields as dusk approached. It was a beautiful moment and I think I must have got lost in reverie as next thing I know there’s a female dog-walker staring at me from afar (probably thinking I’m quite mad to be standing still in a wood looking into the distance). But it struck me – there must be some good things coming out of this recession? I found one. How about you?

Pictured: Peter’s dog Reggie, Christmas ’08.