2. Roger Levett »
2.1 Mary and Julia: morning
Mary is woken by the alarm clock in the dark at 6.30, Julia by birdsong and sunlight at 7.30. Mary jumps up anxiously straight away: she knows she’s going to need every minute. She rouses the kids (drowsy and complaining after a late night on their computers), deals with a complicated argument over who had [...]
Read more »2.2 Mary and Julia: afternoon
Mary drives to the supermarket in her lunch break. It’s a rush, but if she doesn’t replenish the Sugarpuffs next breakfast will be terrible. The prawn wrap she grabs for lunch is fragrant and tangy with Thai lemon grass and fresh coriander, but she hardly notices as she bolts it on the hurried drive back [...]
Read more »2.3 Mary and Julia: evening
Mary doesn’t leave the office till 6.30. She’s been too knackered to do anything useful for the last hour, but the firm is losing business to Chinese competitors and will have to shed staff, so it is not wise ever to appear less than keen. By the time she gets home her kids have microwaved [...]
Read more »2.4 A different way of life?
Of course these two lives are simplified caricatures which beg many questions. What about the benefits of material prosperity and consumer choice? Didn’t our parents and grandparents live rather like Julia, find it limited and constricting, and struggle and work all their lives so that we could live more like Mary? This essay holds no [...]
Read more »2.5 Where’s the catch?
Julia’s world is terrible for economic growth. People consume far less, and they make more of what they do consume for themselves or each other, so it doesn’t figure in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or related measures. They have less stuff, and make it last longer. An economy like this might be a third, or [...]
Read more »2.6 A different economy
Time banks and Local Exchange and Trading Schemes, in which people build up credit in local currencies by doing neighbourly things for each other, have been around for a while. They have tended to thrive in places like Stroud and Totnes for the exchange of aromatherapy for baby massage. We need to leave behind the [...]
Read more »2.7 A different society
I was recently walking along a linear park (ex railway line) in a suburb when I came on a council worker trimming trees with a telescopic strimmer attached to a tractor. This was producing a lot of noise and dust, leaving branches torn and smashed, and left a mound of mixed-up rubbish which was evidently [...]
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