Jerome Starkey reported earlier this year that Lake District artists, poets, painters and authors have been chosen as the faces of a new local currency. The Lakes Currency Project, an independent, private company run by Ken Royall, who lives near Windermere, will launch a paper currency with themed notes reflecting the culture, landscape and people of the area. The Lake […]
Can you help us build a better economy? Vacancy: Coordinator (jobshare) Localise West Midlands Salary: £24,757 pro rata Hours: 22.5 hours per week (negotiable) Location: Digbeth, Birmingham Deadline: 12 noon on Thursday 17th January 2019 You will be passionate and committed to fairer, more decentralised and less unequal economics, and to the role localisation can play […]
I’ve been in post as coordinator at Localise WM for sixteen years, and have decided the time has come to leave. For the last three years I’ve had an excellent jobshare colleague, Karen McCarthy, so am happy to be leaving the organisation in her hands as well as those of our board and my eventual replacement. We have of course […]
A year ago the residents of Hawes were in the news after launching their own Little White Bus in 2011 to meet the trains at Garsdale station seven miles away. Today they have a fleet of 10 minibuses that rely on 53 volunteer drivers and nine part-time staff, ferrying 65,000 passengers a year. They also have a Land Rover to […]
In the Friend, 19th October 2018, Clíodhna Mulhern remembers living in a market town in Ireland in the 1950s: “We shopped in small independent shops and our food was local: our vegetables came from neighbouring farms, always seasonal, and there was no other kind”. Edited extracts Butter, milk and cheese arrived at our garden gate on flatbed lorries from the local […]
I was fortunate enough to attend the Economics of Happiness conference 2018, in Bristol on the 19th and 20th of October. This series of international conferences are hailed as an ‘antidote to anger, contraction and despair’. I was immediately struck by the energy and optimism on display by delegates and speakers – and by the diverse group of people assembled. […]
The West Midlands Combined Authority is currently consulting on the Local Industrial Strategy for the West Midlands. This is your opportunity to influence economic policy in our region for the next decade. You can read the consultation document here https://www.wmca.org.uk/media/2591/west-midlands-industrial-strategy.pdf before completing the online survey here http://snapsurveys.wmca.org.uk/snapwebhost/s.asp?k=153812359492 Localise West Midlands believes that the Industrial strategy should promote a more inclusive economic blueprint […]
In similar vein to a recent post on this site, Helena Norberg-Hodge writes: Ever since the Brexit referendum was first announced, we have been bombarded by an array of starkly contradictory pronouncements – from the Leave camp’s now infamous claim that withdrawal from the EU would release £350 million a week for the NHS to the former Chancellor George Osborne’s […]
. Introducing a fifteen-page paper ‘A REBIRTH OF MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM’ IN BIRMINGHAM? by RICHARD HATCHER Speaking to Labour Councillors in Nottingham on 3 February 2018, Jeremy Corbyn said ‘Labour councils are taking measures to bring services back in-house and reject costly PFI-style models and to show the efficiency and resourcefulness of local government. …With amazing creativity in the toughest of […]
An inquiry into civil society, chaired by Julia Unwin, former chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, found that many poorer communities feel neglected. Ms Unwin said: “Across England people have told us that they feel ignored, and that decisions that directly affect their lives are taken without their involvement. A shift in power is needed so that the voice […]