ed's website

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After putting in a Freedom Of Information request, the minutes for the East Sussex County Council Pension Fund Investment Panel - from 1974 to 2007 - have been released for the first time. As I noted in my analysis of the minutes:

After writing a couple of blog posts (one and two) about how Cranks could be clearer about its politics for its members and the general public, I was happy to see when I went in the other day that there were three sheets of paper on the wall explaining the politics of the place.

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My friend, Lisa Lewinsohn, has just written her thesis at the Centre for Alternative Technology on Planning Policy and Low Impact Developments - What are the planning barriers to low impact developments in rural areas in Britain and how might they be overcome? (.pdf 1.4MB).

As I said in my last blog post, after I sent an email to the Cranks mailing list we discussed the politics of Cranks in one of our bi-weekly meetings. I haven't been able to post these thoughts up sooner because I have been offline for a month building a roundhouse with Tony Wrench in South West Wales. More on that later, but for now..

I have been helping out in Cranks, a community bike workshop in Brighton, since last September. A few days ago I sent the email below to our mailing list about the politics of Cranks. I thought I'd put it online because it reflects some of my current thinking as well as giving an insiders view of Cranks. Yesterday we discussed some of the points in the email in a group meeting. I'll be posting in a few days some of the outcomes from the meeting and my thoughts on them.

Have been editing the wikipedia page on workers' co-operatives. Over the next few years, I will try help make it into a great source of information on workers' co-ops. I've already made some very substantial changes, which will hopefully stay - and be improved upon - over time.

When you search for workers' co-operatives in Google it is the first thing that comes up.

I recently went to the Wilde Clinic for gay and bisexual men to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). If you didn't know it already, I have slept with both men and women, but mostly women. I'd had no symptoms of disease but thought it was about time to get tested (it had been around 5 years) as well as my last ex-girlfriend insisting that she wouldn't give me a blowjob unless she was sure I didn't have anything infectious. Unfortunately the relationship ended, but my desire to know didn't.

I rang up on a Monday and was able to get an appointment that Wednesday for a "Sexual health MOT." I was going to get the works. After cycling to the clinic, I filled in a form at reception, which amongst other things let me decide whether my GP could access the results of the test. I ticked the 'No' box because of potential insurance, mortagage and privacy reasons.

Anyone who reads this blog will know about my obsession with co-operatives (especially workers' co-ops). Therefore, it was amazing to attend the national co-operative congress over the last 3 days. I emailed the organisers a few weeks ago telling them that I definitely could not afford the £500 they were asking for attendance by non-member delegates and pleaded with them to let me come for a reduced rate or for nothing (see my email to them at the bottom of this blog). After a multitude of phone calls, the event organiser told me the day before the congress started that it was fine for me to come for free.

Below are my notes from a talk I recently went to at Sussex University by Derek Wall, Principal Speaker of the Green Party, on 'Real Alternatives to Capitalism'. The talk was very thought provoking although I do wish he had expanded on the politics and power of introducing some of the alternatives he suggested (for example, how the hell do you get from an 'exchange value' system to a 'use value' system?)

Before you read it, please note that Derek expands on the points he made in the talk in his blog post on Real Alternatives to Capitalism as well as in his book BABYLON AND BEYOND: The Economics of Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Globalist and Radical Green Movements

(you can watch it on a bigger screen at google video)