h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Cass,
You and I do, sometimes, seem to think along similar lines. Back in the 1980's when I was briefly involved in local politics in what was then called Humberside, there was a group of formerly homeless young people in Hull who created a co-operative business called Gyroscope. They would purchase semi-derelict houses in the older part of the city, do them up, and let them out at affordable rents to otherwise homeless youngsters. I was reminded of this when I read recently that there are around 750,000 empty houses currently in the UK and something like 2 million people on housing waiting lists. There must also be plenty of unemployed building workers. Put them together and we can start your revolution!

Hi Plotinlaois;
Yes. There is much that can/could be done. Funnily enough our local borough is planning a major school reorganisation; and this prompted me recently to look out my own alternative plan for the borough that I wrote in 1980-the last time that it was done.

I also looked out one of my rare published articles "Should Education Be Useless". I suppose I was influenced then by a seminar study that I had done at University on the relationship between work and education in Soviet Planning, and suggested that there were all kinds of things that schools could do to enhance communal life in a real,rather than theoretical way, not least- as a subsequent headline given to the published extract of another article put it- in setting up "The Comprehensive Cash and Carry".


It led to a a couple of invitations from a local branch of the Cooperative Movement, in which I explained the old Victorian concepts of (a) self-help, and (b) the value of an education in real life skills. Apart from totally changing the course of life of a young man to whom I explained my concept of England's tradition of "Extra-parliamentary democracy" like many of my intitiatives it sank apparently without trace.

In fact an important part of my DIO revolution is based upon that old bit of Cranmer's Prayer Book that says that God is present "whenever two or three are gathered together in His name". If we think of "God" as the non-embodiment of an essence of power to change things, we get the truth that whenever people really find common cause they really can "make a change". In fact I have annoyed some people on the Rugby 606 site by a post "Packing Down Together" that asserts that rugby clubs, like any other group-identity that has real vitality (Churches Mosques etc- commercial enterprises), will/could have something to offer during the bad times ahead that I have compared in another post to another "Home Front".

I believe that GB is going to make this kind of connection too in his New Year speech.

The problem in the kind of scheme that you recommend is that, any attempt to do it on a large-scale would tend to raise the age-old problem of market distortion and resentment about "undercutting" from both Labour and Capital. This is what happened with many experiments in Christian Socialism. My Labour Investment concept, however,( especially as developed within an Indian contex) would allow for a leap-forward in renewable energy that would do for modern Britain what the Tennessee Valley Authority Scheme did for the USA during the New Deal.

"rugby clubs ... will/could have something to offer during the bad times"
A concept long ago put into practice in Ireland by the GAA! (in case you need a translation GAA stands for Gaelic Athletic Association, the voluntary/co-operative body that administers the major sporting activities of Gaelic Football, Hurling and Camogie (the Ladies' version of the same games))

Plotinlaois
Yes. Rugby clubs have a long tradition of being much more, as I pointed out on 606 Rugby- a poster from Cornwall earlier in the year had spelled out in some detail how all the different teams in a still amateur set-up provided the backbone for a whole thriving social network... And I know that Bath Rugby Club had a long-tradition of trying to guide its schoolboy players into suitable careers.London clubs had useful "ties" in the City.

Of course the roots of all this go back at least to the "Pals" battalions that volunteered "en masse" for the First World War. Hopefully people will be able to find that kind of spirit once again.

But, in line with something that I have been harping on about, my French father-in-law remarked yesterday, having been driven back into London from the Chilterns, how different driving is in England than in France. It all seemed so easy to him as "we drivers" merely accommodated each other in my Lord Clarendon's English spirit of "Good Naturedness". Not making a drama out of a crisis, is not always the French way.

Cass