Unfettered growth

I don't know about you but I get very worried about economists who keep telling us that markets must grow in order to have success. Have they not worked out that we live on a sphere with limited resources?

There must come a time, it's just common sense, when we have to stop acquiring, we have to stop growing our aspirations, our belongings, our greed. Because it we don't do it voluntarily eventually it will catch up with us in a most unpleasant way.

I crave the day when a Chancellor of the Exchequer says we must maintain our current levels, we must make do and mend, we must grow the principle of re-use, re-manufacture, and build a truly sustainable and green economy. At the moment government ministers - especially those in favour of plastering the south east with high-density flats - use the word 'sustainability' all over the place with little regard to its true meaning.

They sprinkle they planning-speak proposals with it, while they advocate the building of nasty blocks of bleak housing. These they will built cheaply, not to last, but probably to be reviled and pulled down in an orgy of regeneration and even higher density development in another 30 years.

In a town near me a supermarket chain wants to pull down an enormous building that it only put up about 20 years ago. What for? To build an even bigger retail centre. And the shop - the enormous warehouse that passes for a shop - that is there already contains multiples. Multiples of everything, masses of choices for the same product; thousands - probably millions of lines - of things that none of us really need.

Is that the sort of growth that is really going to ensure that we can sustain our comfortable lifestyle? I very much doubt it.

Re-establishment of Common Sense

One of these days I really must set up the International Campaign for the Re-establishment of Common Sense. It would be applicable to so many areas of life.

Charity shopping - a state of mind

I'm positively addicted to charity shopping in so far that I try to buy everything I need, if I possibly can, in a charity shop. That's second-hand items - things people have worn already or already used. I have a psychological strategy about the whole transaction. I don't look on it as a purchase.

No, I approach it differently and get none of that "have I really spent that much on that?" negativity about it. I get two feel-good moments instead. First I decide what it is I like. Then I give a donation to the charity to coincide with the price ticket on the item and that makes me feel good. Giving freely without strings to a really good cause makes anyone feel a sense of purpose, satisfaction and pleasure.

The second feel-good moment comes when the assistant in the shop gives me the object of my desire, and they give it to me completely free. How generous of them, how nice, and how satisfying that I have the item now in my ownership.

That's two moments of immense pleasure derived from the transaction. I feel doubly good having given a donation to the charity and then to top it all, I receive the item for nothing.

I can thoroughly recommend this strategy. And the wonderful thing about it is that the larger the sum of money involved, the better the feel-good factor!