Tales from the Sock Drawer

All together now…

oneredsock — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:55:51 +0000

United we stand, divided we fall.

It’s an old phrase, well-worn, comfortable in the mouth.

Things are changing. That is to say, if you’re luck enough to be in the ‘west’ (which kind of depends on where in the world your map starts), and able to watch, or even take part in the Occupy movement, things might be changing.

Of course, if you’re in that position you’re lucky. You probably have access to clean water, food, health care, education, a roof over your head (whether you choose to sleep under it or not)… the list goes on. This puts you head and shoulders in front of billions of the world’s poor. Count your blessings.

And then pass them on.

It is your duty to pass your blessings on.

Whether you have billions of dollars, or stale crumbs. If you are reading this blog post, you are blessed. Not because of what I’m writing – because someone taught you to read!

I don’t care if you’re a person of faith or of non. I don’t care if you choose to think of duty as a religious issue, a social contract or a way of giving your selfish genes the best possible chance of reproduction.

Part of doing that is supporting your fellows in whatever way you can.

Today is the Day of Action in the UK – the big bad day of the National Strike. It’s been looming for a while, and all the while it’s been coming, the ‘powers that be’ have been doing their hardest to split ‘us’ (the voting public) into private vs public (as if public sector employees aren’t taxpayers too!). That’s not fostering solidarity – that’s not standing together. That’s dividing us so we fall.

“The government’s plan to ask employees to work longer and pay more is a political choice, not an economic necessity,” says George Eaton in the New Statesman.

We tell our kids all the time, you can’t make yourself bigger by bringing the other person down. Why on earth is it supposed to work differently with this? Making things worse for people in the public sector isn’t going to make them any better for those in the private sector or the third sector or no sector at all.

I can’t go on strike; I’m self-employed. But I am going on a march later this morning. Because I think we need our public sector. Imperfect as it is, it’s better than there not being one. I want people to want to work in the public sector, to be committed to it, to work hard for it and stay in it, building careers’ worth of experience – because they’re working for me, so that I can have a better life. They’re working for all of us, so we can have libraries and travel on decent roads, and have our rubbish collected, and know that someone will help if our house burns down or gets burgled or we get sick. So that we can have communications with other countries on a governmental level, so that planes don’t crash in the air above us, so we can have public swimming baths and parks, and all the myriad of other things that make life pretty darn amazing in this country.

The Occupy movement and the national strikes have their roots in the same ground. The current way of working is broken and needs a major rethink. We need to work together to come up with a new solution, not get distracted fighting over the scraps the broken system throws us.

"We Are All In This Together" By Molly Crabapple and John Leavitt. From OccupyDesign.org

What’s in a name?

oneredsock — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:26:52 +0000

A while ago I mentioned an initiative to help home owners facing eviction through repossession to stay in their homes. It’s the brain child of Richard Lo, who put it together under the name Grace Solutions. There’s a website where you can learn a little more about it (www.gracesolutions.org), but essentially the idea is to form a cooperative (a bit like a credit union or an old style building society) in which members (investors) supply the money to buy outright the home of a family facing eviction through repossession. The former owner then rents the home from the cooperative for five years, at the end of which they have the option to move on, continue renting, or buy the home back.

Because the cooperative paid for the house in full there is no mortgage to pay so only the costs of maintaining the property and running the scheme need to be covered. The rent can therefore be lower than on the general rental market, which helps the former owner get back on their feet quicker. The investors in the cooperative get their money back when the property sells, with their gain coming from any gain in the sale value of the property.

The technicalities are numerous as one should expect with this sort of initiative, but from what I’ve seen so far the scheme looks very promising.

So now I have two questions for you…

What do we call it?

After thinking around a few ideas, our preferred name is ‘Home Savers Trust’ but we want to test it on ‘real’ people. Just click on the answer(s) that most closely correspond with what you think below. (You can only vote once.)

View This Poll

Where would you go to find advice if you were facing eviction?

Please tick all that apply. (Again, you can only vote once.)

View This Poll

Thanks very much! I’ll let you know how we get on.

In the mean time, if you’d like to know more about the initiative, or you’d like to help out, please get in touch!

(ps I got the image from this post on the American site b2bbuzz.org)

May you live in interesting times

oneredsock — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:04:31 +0000

Apparently, the title to this post is an ancient Chinese curse.

I’m not sure how true that is, but times sure are interesting at the moment. With revolutions and uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria and Libya, demonstrations in Iran, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Sudan and even China, not to mention those planned (according to Twitter) in Cameroon, Benin and Morocco, my mind has kept coming back to wondering what will happen in Zimbabwe.

Well today I received two pieces of news. Both worry me enormously.

The first piece of news

Mrs Jessica Mandeya was found dead at her home in Mrewa Mission District yesterday morning (Sunday 20th Feb 2011). It appears that she died on Friday but because she lives alone she wasn’t discovered until friends went to meet her to walk to church yesterday morning.

It also appears that she was murdered.

Who was Mrs Mandeya? A rabble-rousing political activist? No. She was an 89-year old Anglican priest.

Why was she murdered? In all likelihood, because she belonged to the Diocese of Harare CPCA. In the days and weeks leading up to her death, she’d been threatened with violence because she consistently refused to join the breakaway congregations of Dr Kunonga, the ex-communicated ex-Bishop of Harare, who happens also to be a strong supporter of President Robert Mugabe.

The history behind all this is complicated. A bit of digging online will get you most of it, if you’d like more let me know and I’ll write it up. But regardless of how we’ve come to this place, we’re here. Church members and Kunonga’s replacement as Bishop in Harare, Chad Gandiya, are living in fear for their lives, because they’re part of the ‘wrong’ congregation.

The second piece of news

Several (reports vary between 46 and 54) people, including Munyaradzi Gwisai (leader of the International Socialist Organisation (ISO) Zimbabwe and ex-member of the MDC), were arrested in Harare over the weekend for attending a “subversive” meeting, at which footage of the Egyptian uprising was shown and discussed. There are also reports that “the alleged ‘ring leaders,’… have been severely beaten by police.”

Predictably, those arrested have denied accusations they were planning anti-government protests, claiming instead to have been holding and academic debate, but the provincial police spokesperson, Inspector James Sabau, confirmed that Zimbabwean authorities will not tolerate any uprising and will clamp down on any plotters. “It has been said before by our commanders and I will also say it that the Egyptian style (revolution) has no place in Zimbabwe and it will not take place here,” he said. We have responsible citizens as compared to the irresponsible citizens in other countries – hence it (revolt) will not work.”

The arrests appear to a be a small part of a wider plan of containment. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa has spoken of “an escalation of intimidation tactics by ZANU-PF,” to remind people who’s in charge and what might happen if they start getting ideas from the reports they’re watching on Al Jazeera news.

Why am I writing this?

Because for a long time Zimbabwe was ‘the big story’ and now it’s not. I’ve been back 6 months and barely heard or seen it in the news. As the media gaze shifts about, looking for the next uprising, the next story, I hope it’s gaze will, some point soon, fall again on Zimbabwe. I pray it does so without the need for the bloody horror that will proabably come with any uprising in the country.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t be watching what’s going on, in Egypt, in Iran, in Libya. We should be. I’ve been glued to my Twitter stream for days. We should stand witness to the struggle of our brothers and sister (becasue that is who they are) and we should be asking difficult questions of our own leaders – about what they’re doing to help and how culpable they (and, by extension, we) are in the first place. But we need also to find practical ways to show our solidarity with ‘the people’ of this world. We can donate money, through organisations like USPG and the International Red Cross/Red Crescent. We can donate skills, share first aid knowledge, use blogs and tweets to raise awareness. We can put pressure on our leaders, our banks, our big multi-nationals, each other.

But I wanted to do something now. This isn’t something. This is me looking for something.

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Edit: Seconds after I posted this I read the following…

Following links took me to a press release which appears to have gone live last week (19th Feb) and calls on “Organizations and groups to self organize and come out in large numbers” on Tuesday, 1st March at 11:00am.

Our time gets more interesting by the day.

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All new OneRedSock Cards!

oneredsock — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 09:55:45 +0000

I’ve been doing crafty things for a long time now and my stash has reached the stage where it’s going to have to start paying for itself.

As part of my quest to start earning a living on my terms, I’m about to start selling cards through The Cat’s Miaou, a sweet little gift boutique here in Edinburgh, crammed full with gorgeous goodies. Then I realised I could also sell them online! So, I’m launching my own little card shop with a special Valentine offer.

If you’re not into Valentine’s Day – good for you, more power to your elbow, you probably shouldn’t read the rest of this post because it’ll make you cross. But you might like this if you want to keep reading something.

If however, you’d quite like to send someone a little something to let them know that someone thinks they’re ace, then pop over and have a look to see if any of these cards will do the trick.

And if you’d like to have one sent annoymously (it is tradition after all), send me the message you would like written in the card (along with the address of your special someone) and I’ll send it direct from here. Each card is individually priced, with and without the sending service. Simply fill in the form at the bottom of the Cards page to submit your order and I’ll invoice you through PayPal.

Let me know what you think of the designs – hope you like them!

View the collection