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My dear colleague, 60, is retiring this Christmas. In his own words 'It is the end of my working life and I shall now spend more time with friends and family. This couple retired at the age of 30 after investing a considerable amount of money in private pension, giving them sufficient return to sustain themselves for next x years. They can now focus on the projects they want to work on rather than working for any corporation as an employee. He is 75 and would not stop creating and innovating. Retiring is out of the question. It keeps him young at heart and sharp in his thoughts. 'Should you retire early or not?'is not the right question to ask The question should be 'Why retiring?' Retiring is not dissimilar to quitting when it is chosen or getting fired when it is imposed. Better quitting early to follow dreams of a lifetime... better not retiring when you are already living the dream...

It's ironic that it should be called our carbon footprint when it's our feet that could do much to reduce it! Embrace sustainable travel or be polygamous transport guru. One less journey by car, one more day in public transport, Firming those legs more often on a bike, walking to the corner shop, joining a carsharing scheme or a car club carclub. Even small changes will make a big difference visit: www.sustrans.org/shrinkingyourcarbonfootprint

Can you live over 3 months with only 33 items in your wardrobe? If you are tempted follow the link to learn more - Click here It is now a couple of weeks I am doing the project 333. I went through my wardrobe, accessories, shoes and bags and selected 33 items to use for the next three months. It was easier than I thought probably because I was already wearing most of the time the same outfits.. Inconsciouly minimalist at heart... . I am becoming more enthused by minimalism and I shall be going to Birmingham to attend the Minimalists Tour on October 17th to hear about Josh and Ryan's journey. If you are planning to go too from Leicester, give me a shout. As a gift to you, few line of wisdom and all the best in your journey: Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. Lao Tzu

All we needed was to put a notice on StreetBank inviting others to meet up in Café Bruxelles to share hopes, concerns and next steps to make Streetbank more prominent in Leicester.  In just a couple of hours we received 5 replies.  The gift economy is already present, all it need is a bit of a nudge for it to achieve critical mass. Hope are high. Have a go in your own town! For more details on the Meet-up in Leicester Click here

I never quite thought that the negative thoughts going through my mind were signs of paranoia. After reading Paranoia - the 21st century fear by Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman , it is clear, I am paranoid like everybody else. I don't believe people want to intentionally harm me but I do recognise being sometimes suspicious. I bring together a set of safety behaviours to get away from any uncomfortable social situations. Unfortunately, the plan sometimes does not work and what I feared all along just become reality. In the book, the questions asked are as follow: is paranoia a modern phenomenon or has it always been with us? what causes it? and what can we do about it Media has the powerful role of bringing drama into our lives, security camera are decorating our streets and social media makes virtual reality even more believable. We cannot stop wondering whether paranoia is becoming a more acute modern phenomenon. It has nevertheless always been with us all along and ca

The latest Permaculture session I had was 'Money Futures'. We discussed the reasons why we need Money, the impact of money on the global and living world. Questions were asked about the other alternatives of money and whether we could do without it. It became clear that the discussion was a difficult one to have as we recognise our needs to belong. We recognise our needs to improve our surroundings. We recognise how much unskilled and clueless we were. We recognise the power of money in making our wishes reality by filling the gap of our own inabilities. Human relationship is probably the most expensive commodity. It forces some to enter the rat-race for happiness and belonging. It is an unfortunate conclusion. Luckily enough, it is not the end of the story. There are many alternatives to money and the gift economy is actually in scale a lot more prominent that people might think. It is not promoted on television but for sure it exists. Join a voluntary group, knock

Can you live in a community? Martin lives in a community. He has four children, a wife. He bought a piece of land and build a house. Apart from his family, he lives with 10 other individuals. He is ecstatic by the experience. He is happy for his children who have the chance to be surrounded by individuals who have different knowledge and expertise on a wide-range of subjects. It takes a village to raise a child His children are growing in confidence by being inquisitive, asking questions and learning valuable social skills in communicating with the 'elders' Such testimony inspired me to think more thoroughly about where, how and with whom I should raise my own. Any advices on home-schooling and community-living?

Collaborative Consumption is the new black. So, please give it a go! The unfortunate thing with those new platforms such as Streetbank , timebank, landsharing etc. is that if they does not achieve critical mass, no one can rip the full benefit of its offering. So even if you do not want to borrow anything from the various dvds collection that you can find on  Streetbank , borrow still. I ended up watching the full season of the killing, a thriller serie produced by the danish. it was absolutely awesome and I've met in turn a lovely lady. I gave myself the target of sharing a new item once a day on  Streetbank  and leaflet my neighbours before the end of the month! What about you?

Every year or so, I refresh my memory by watching Steve Job' address at Stanford University graduation ceremony. He mentioned about looking in the past to connect the dots in order to foresee the future. As human being, we are quite bias in trying to imagine the future. It is not our forte. However when looking in the past, we can easily go through retrospection and give ourselves new challenges and tasks in the NOW to create a better future. It is within our living memory that innovation lay and it is in giving meaning to experiences that we can reshape history. Let's begin by swimming back in the sea of our memories...

I am truly a beginner in economics. By reading Positive Money book 'Modernising Money' by Ben Dyson and Andrew Jackson, my eyes and brain are getting wide open to new possibilities. My interest grew in the work of Minsky and encouraged me to read more about Keynes. Keynes economics promote the view that in the long run economics system converge into an equilibrium with the support of the government. Nevertheless you cannot help the role of banks in the system and wonder after reading the following quote: “But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.”   (Keynes, 1923) This implied that economists did not comprehend why we had a financial crisis and collapse.  Minsky with  his model 'Financial Instability Hypothesis' strive to answer this question.  The

Zone 00 is an attempt in Permaculture design to describe the self in vast system divided in zones. If you were to redesign your garden for example, zone 5 could be the area for the wildlife to strive whilst zone 0 could be your house. Zone 00 is personal and is defined by our actions, experiences, choices. The question was asked if we had to take away from the zone 00: - the most important relationship we have - the object we most cherish - the best memory we have - the favourite part of our body What would be left? Some answered a feeling of pain and isolation. Other answered the soul and/or essence. I thought for a moment. For me the answer was  an idea . N'oubliez pas que dans le mensonge, il y a le songe mais dans la verité il n'y a pas grand chose Do not forget that in a lie (fabrication), there is a fiction (a dream) but in the truth, there is nothing much. The realisation of the truth give us greater freedom in creating our own reality. The story we tel

I recently participated in  a focus group for a master dissertation. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the strategies implemented by Transition groups to encourage the spread of low carbon communities. One of the question asked was how does Transition Leicester engage with communities? The truth of the matter is that Transition do not engage with communities. Transition engage with individuals who want to use our platform to express their vision for the future as well as their own identities. Communities only emerge out from individuals desires' for cohesion and belonging. It is within frame of reference or gathering of voices that connecions are created. As Seth Godin put it, we are not crowdsourcing energy, we are bobsourcing .

I just wanted to share an extract of a recent article I've read on Linken In (Click here for full article) about a graduating mba delivering an extroardinary speech at Harvard graduation ceremony.  It is uplifting in many ways. Yes, we should not pursue those long studies to just be the slave of envy and desires. Yes, we have to strive to be the poet and entrepreneur of freedom, love and peace for those who stand by us and for those to come after us regardless of the recognition and/or credit we might not get and the odds we might encounter because the world depends on us. “As we leave this place for the last time, some as Baker Scholars and some by the seat of our pants, we take up the work of not just making a living but of making a life. For if all we have learned here are Four Ps, and Five Forces and Six Sigma, we will prove William Faulkner right, that we labor under a curse, that we live not for love but for lust, for defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, for

With the housing bubble tamed down by the bank of England, the latest bulletin confirming that the bank are creating money out of thin air and the psychological effect debt has on reducing feelings of empathy amongst human kinds, here are a number of resources if you want to learn more about the money system: Videos The Positive Money Channel:  https://www.youtube.com/user/PositiveMoneyUK A Crash Course : http://www.peakprosperity.com/ crashcourse With the part more concerned with money starting here:  http://www.peakprosperity.com/ crashcourse/chapter-6-what- money Money as Debt :  http://www.rinf.tv/video/money-debt A Century of Challenges  : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJKZT5TNjYw  Sacred Economics : https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=EEZkQv25uEs Keiser report with David Graeber : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T17h6tNzoM Books: Modernising Money - Andrew Jackson and Ben Dyson 5000 years of debt - David Graeber Website http://streetschooleconomics.wo

Adventures lead us further and farther from the truth. Regrets and misery blur the secrets of the past.  Selective memories erase the reasons why we fell apart but reminiscences remind us how one make us feel.  When we encounter one another, old behaviours reappear as if the pandora box got opened once more.  I wish I could rewrite history for enemies to become allies and for forfeiture to become reciprocity.  Unfortunately, no opportunity was given to tie the knot between those and I. No bigger project than our egos has brought us together. If making life on this planet a better place for you and I was the only scheme of things, we would not need heroes, zeroes, enemies and friends since empathy will be the only way forward.  Isn't it within our encounter with death and immorality that we finally understand the insignificance of our internal arguments?  Let's be together for the time being and begin.

A landmark  G8  initiative ' The New Alliance for Food Security' to boost agriculture and relieve poverty has been damned as a new form of colonialism after African governments agreed to change seed, land and tax laws to favour private investors over small farmers. The alliance is being paid with hundred's of millions of pounds of our taxpayers'money to help the corporate like Unilever, Monsanto and Diageo to take over African land, seeds and agriculture. It is quite shocking to hear that this is the way the UK is spending Aid budget rather than supporting the African farmers who produce 70% of the countries food. Yesterday evening at the Christchurch on Clarendon Park Road in Leicester, I had the chance to assist to an event organised by the World Development Movement where I learnt more about this particular issue. Two speakers were present and below is a summary of the elements they cover. 1) Christine Haigh, Food Policy Officer from World Development