Things we’ve been reading and listening to this week that you might enjoy too:

READ: No More Plastic by Martin Dorey – a short and very readable collection of achievable quick-win actions every single one of us can take to reduce the plastic in our lives (and therefore in the world), this book is also full of gently provocative prompts to consider lots of bigger ethical, social justice and sustainability issues. One of the great new-to-me examples of positive actions to join in with is Morsbags (a kind of craftivism billed as ‘Sociable Guerilla Bagging’) which involves keeping fabric out of landfill by making it into shopping bags which you gift to strangers, thus helping cut down the number of plastic bags needed. Genius.

LISTEN: There’s only 2 days left to listen to Meeting the Man I Killed, a Seriously podcast from Radio 4. This is a remarkable piece of radio telling the story of a man who killed someone in a road traffic accident that wasn’t his fault. Through meeting people who knew the man that died, the driver tries to get to know the man he killed – in order to come to terms with both the accident and the far-reaching effects it has had on his life and sense of who he is. It’s thoughtful, moving (you will need tissues) and provocative – and says so much about humanity. (40 minute listen)

LISTEN: Another great podcast is Reasons to be Cheerful (by the way, anyone in Hull or Coventry might also be interested in Episode 26 which is about The Power of Culture) and this week I listened to a special bonus episode from a couple of weeks back, called “Reasons to be Pirate“. Here Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd are talking to Sam Conniff Allende about his new book Be More Pirate, discussing the positive (and accidentally rather progressive) rule-rewriting done by ‘Golden Age’ pirates organising in opposition to the status quo (slightly surprisingly this involves fair pay, cooperatives, social insurance and equal marriage). The book suggests what we can learn from pirates, and how we can apply some of their methods (but probably not the psychotic ones…) to make the modern world a better place. (37 minute listen)

Well, that’s it. I’d be interested to know if anyone read or listened to any of these (before or after the recommendation!) and, if so, what you made of them – leave a comment…?

JV