Just to let you know…
Buy Nothing Day 2009 will fall on Saturday 28th November…
BND - its recession proof!
We’ll be back soon…
CI Bad Company Awards 2008
Global consumer body announces winners of international Bad Company Awards. Tesco, Kellogg’s, Eli Lilly, Samsung and Toyota top the list of international brands guilty of abusing consumer rights.
As the festive shopping season reaches its peak, Consumers International (CI), the world federation of consumer organisations, today announced the winners of this year’s Bad Company Awards.
Now in its second year, the Bad Company Awards highlight irresponsible behaviour by the world’s leading brands, drawing attention to notable abuses of consumer rights over the past 12 months. Click here for more…
Grotty goods…
Stock up in November with loads of useless gift tat. Big margins. Very big margins. So what if you ruin millions of Christmas mornings when people expecting a thoughtful present get some over-packaged, low-grade toiletries? We’re here to help ourselves, not them. This is an extract from an investigation by The Independent, which has established that many stores have been using an under-the-counter, anti-customer service manual… Read it here…
How was it then?
Did you have a great BND? If you have pics or a report email bndpress@googlemail.com and we’ll blog it…
Should shopping be a patriotic duty?
“Should shopping be a patriotic duty?” the BBC asks. If so, I’m going to be one of the first traitors against the wall. I’m in Hoxton, clad in white, trying to look - as director for the day Neil Boorman puts it - “average”. I stare blankly into the camera and try my best to represent “you” - consuming, wasting, spending and splurging. I’m the “good consumer”, and now is certainly a good time to be a consumer. Retailers, economists, politicians and business men are repeating the mantra “consumer confidence” in the hope it will awaken some holy cash-cow of shopping. The government is tweaking everything from VAT to interest rates to get money flowing in and out of consumer pockets. Click here for more…
Buy Nothing, Do Something
Sam Thompson is a researcher and a consultant at nef (the new economics foundation) centre for well-being and writes; with timing so precipitous as to border on the comic, Chancellor Alistair Darling chose to announce a cut in VAT in the same week as Buy Nothing Day, today’s annual jamboree of anti-consumerism that urges us to forsake all consumer spending for 24 hours. Click here to more…
BUY NOTHING LIVES
This recession business is a godsend for us anti-consumers, but like Buy Nothing Day itself, it carries with it the risk of short-termism. The day after (or the year after) is liable to become an orgy of overcompensation, like a Catholic’s Easter egg hunt. It takes a lifetime of brainwashing to acquire the mental attitude necessary to sustain life, and especially good humour, without shopping. Luckily, that’s what I’ve had. The combination of my mother’s roots (Yorkshire) and experiences (The War), my father’s childhood (penniless refugee and schoolboy at ultra-flesh-denying Gordonstoun) and her diligent campaign, based on events too sordid to relate here, to regulate his life in every respect with the aim, - if at all possible - of sucking the last vestiges of self-indulgence and joy out of it, has made it a positive pleasure for me to welcome in the new Age of UnShopping.
My mother, like many of her generation, did her own version of recycling, in the hoarding not just of milk bottle tops, but greaseproof inners from cereal boxes, rubber bands, and, most cruelly, wrapping paper and string. Not for us the joyous riot of savagery on Christmas morning as we tore and scrunched our way to the booty. We sat and waited while my mother meticulously picked apart the eight double knots in the special string with which my grandmother had secured her brown paper parcel, folded the string, folded the brown paper, and then handed out the packages inside, which we then had to open one by one, in age order, being careful to inflict as little damage possible on the Christmas paper, so she could repurpose it for our stockings next year. In its favour, this regime extended the whole process far further than the anarchic scrum of most families, but it sucked the joy out of it too. Buying or, indeed, receiving presents, was not her best thing, either. Her Christmas list was liable to say something like: ‘Compost Bin. Terry’s Bitter Chocolate. Beige Tights’. Even the latter only needed to feature occasionally. I’m the only person I know who grew up thinking it was normal to darn your tights.
She was equally parsimonious with the family diet, becoming an epert at dividing things exactly into five - no wasteful leftovers for her. When we carved the mangel wurzels for Halloween – there were no pumpkins then – we knew to expect the discarded flesh, mashed up with a bit of butter and tasting only slightly charred, at supper the next day.
But that’s only the negative stuff. My mother was not a joyless creature; she just wasn’t a shopper. However, she was an enthusiastic maker, doer and participant. She sewed her own clothes and ours and knitted our jumpers. she made curtains, wallpapered, decorated and gardened. She made me a gypsy costume for one birthday and a doll’s house for another, despite being a very un-girly person herself.
And she played her violin. When my parents got married, all they possessed was my Dad’s piano and a bed. We all knew which of the two was the glue in their marriage. And in due course all three of us were dragooned into playing instruments to make up the numbers, which we all still do today.
Some of this was motivated by a desire to save money; but not all. She didn’t need to be an anti-consumerist because there was no such thing as consumerism. She just liked making things and doing them, more than buying them or watching them on TV. And she passed on to her children the same preferences.
But of course, it’s never the easy way. It takes willpower and determination to force your children into practising the violin, or starve them into learning to cook for themselves, or ignore their piteous complaints of the ridicule to which your home-made garments are subjecting them at school (actually, this is unfair – she made me a smocked mini-dress once that was the envy of the entirety of the whole class). And you’ll probably be dead before they in turn realise how much pleasure they get from these hard-won skills – and how much money they save.
Luckily, she also passed on that will power – or, at least, the heavy burden of moral responsibility that achieves the same end. Excuse me while I go and tell my son about the coltan in his PS3…
Read more at www.mrsnormal.com
Just for the love of it
Now here is an idea,l which is good for the environment, will reduce consumption and could save us all money.
Welcome to the world’s fastest growing alternative economy!
Save money, reduce your carbon footprint and make great new friends!
Get jobs done for free while you learn new skills.
Share skills, tools, spaces and land.
Share tips, information or ask freeconomic questions in our new forum!
The aim of the Freeconomy Community is to get people together locally through the simple act of sharing. It’s obviously completely FREE - Click here for more…
Ebay is so yesterday!
OurSwaps, have a mission to make swapping anything and everything an easy and enjoyable experience. Joining OurSwaps and listing your items is completely free - and it’s the only online marketplace where you buy nothing but get something! Why not give it a try? Click here for more…
Shop & Buy song…
ERIC MADDERN is an Australian born singer songwriter and storyteller. He is one of the leading eco-musicians in the UK, his first album of original songs entitled ‘Full of Life, Earth Songs for All’ delighted listeners young and old. He’s written a Buy Nothing song - for more of Eric Maddern’s music visit Last.fm
Economist shuns money for a year
A Bristol man is set to begin a year-long social experiment by living without money.
Economic graduate Mark Boyle, 29, plans to live off the land and waste products of society, while building mutually- beneficial relationships with people.
Mr Boyle said he believed it was “the disconnection we have with what we consume that is the primary cause of the wasteful culture we live in today.
Click here for more…
Stop Your Shopping Song…
Peter Lundy has recorded this fab song - ’Stop Your Shopping’, Get your free BND tune at… http://pharaohhousecrash.blogspot.com
Darling wants ’shopocalypse’ now!
Buy Nothing Day is more poignant this year than ever before… Spend, spend, spend!! That seems to be the British government’s rather optimistic plan for yanking the rudder on the country’s economic supertanker before it glides inexorably into the jagged rocks of financial ruin. Cut interest rates. Cut taxes, cut anything, so long as it puts money back in the pocket of the British consumer. Read more here…
Bristol UWE students EVENT…
Just wanted to send a quick email to let you know that Bristol UWE students from the society People and Planet are going to be running a free shop in the centre of Broadmead! There will be a marquee where we will be giving away clothes, bric a brac and hopefully have some live music and circus skills going on. Starts at 11 and finishing around 4ish and we will be based inbetween the Galleries and Cabot circus (close to Ann Summers!). We’re looking for other volunteers to get involved handing out flyers, provide entertainment and just to come along and have a laugh! Also if anyone has anything they want to get rid of then bring it along! Attached are some pics from our event last year.
If anyone wants to find out more info please contact me on lisatozer@hotmail.com.
Cheers!
Lisa
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th November – Topshop Oxford Street
Credit Crunch!
Ladies and Gentlemen we are proud to announce the restyling fashion
mash-up event of the year! In the light of the current economic crisis
and the outrage over the sweatshop conditions that most high street
brands make their clothes in, the swapshop is your chance to re-vamp
your wardrobe with a free conscience! Leaping away from the drudgery
of big corporate fashion with it’s dodgy business practices and spend
spend spend attitude, the Topshop swapshop takes fashion back to it’s
roots.
Simply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wearing an outfit you wish
to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, marvel as hundreds of fashion
moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.
Meet on the lower ground floor by the red telephone box, pretend to shop until the stroke of two, then strike up conversations with the people around you and let the swapping begin!
Fancy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fancy trading my t-shirt for it?
After a hectic re-working of your look you can then walk proudly back
onto the streets of London town with a new wardrobe and not having
spent a single penny.
You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.
The SpACe HiJaCKerS
The Renegade Economist
Fred Harrison is one of a band of renegade thinkers who challenge the misinformation being purveyed by once trusted political and financial institutions.
Governments and central bankers are scrambling to understand how they allowed the global financial crisis to occur. They rationalise these events (to avoid blame being pinned on them) while searching for ways to mitigate the damage inflicted on the global economy.
In 1997 Harrison warned Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that the British economy was heading for disaster. They didn’t listen. He then spent a decade telling politicians and central bankers how to avoid the looming crisis. They didn’t listen. www.renegadeeconomist.com
Not shopping for a year
When Samantha Weinberg decided to give up shopping for ethical reasons, she little realised that it would coincide with the global credit crunch. Read her story here…
THE SHOPOCALYPSE
It’s here! The new album! Work started on this set of songs two years ago - most of the tracks were recorded in one big room at Excello Studios in Brooklyn. The choir singing at one end and the band playing at the other. This album hopes to capture the live spirit and still get really fine studio quality tracks. These tunes have been sung all over the world, in malls, on sidewalks and in jail cells too. The dance tunes are special late night subversion opportunities, slip them in that party mix. Want more? click here…
Put simply...
Download the 2008 Poster
