12 January 2021

Starts: 19:00
Ends: 20:30

Tuesday January 12      7.00 - 8.30

Organised and hosted by Transition Town Bridport and Seeding our Future

Our food supply is more fragile than it appears. Some 40% of our food comes from abroad, and depends on good harvests, stable climate and frictionless borders.  Covid, Climate Change and Brexit are make feeding Britain even more precarious.

90% of our food is controlled by just 8 companies (Tesco’s controls around 30%).  Farmers and other producers only get 5-6% of the value of the food UK self-sufficiency has declined from 80% from 60% in the last thirty years.  Over 8 million people in Britain are in food poverty.  The food supply is highly unequal, and ‘cheap’ food is often unnutritious and stuffed with sugars and starch.

In this zoom meeting we will look at some solutions to these problems as they relate to Bridport.

• Caroline Walker will present an overview of UK’s current fragile food security, and how we can respond, drawing on Tim Lang’s book, Feeding Britain.
• Robert Golden will speak about his forthcoming film, This Good Earth, due to be premiered on 21 January, which explores links between food security and the climate crisis.
• Kathy Dare of Bridport Local Food Group will explain BLFG’s plans for 2021.
• Sarah Wilberforce of Transition Town Bridport will report on the Edible Garden project at St Mary’s School and the glut stall initiative.
• Alan Heeks will give highlights of Seeding our Future’s local initiatives on food security, including Ambassador Allotments, a possible Bridport Food Hub, and plans to launch the Dorset Diet.

There is no charge for this event, but places are limited, and you will need to register via Eventbrite.

12 January 2021

Starts: 19:30

Tuesday 12 January          7.30        online

In our second look at some of the key economic questions which activists need to understand better, Richard Murphy, an acknowledged expert on taxation, will talk about government funding, concentrating on how to fund state activity using modern monetary theory as a base.

Richard is a chartered accountant and a political economist. Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London and Director of Tax Research UK, Richard was a co-founder of the Tax Justice Network and Green New Deal, as well as the Fair Tax Mark. He is the founder-director of the Corporate Accountability Network. You can read more about him, and by him at taxresearch.org.uk .

Register  (free)

Background: ECONOMICS FOR ACTIVISTS

There’s an urgent need to support economic literacy across Scotland, particularly amongst environmental and social activists, so that we are all better placed to challenge the status quo and actively participate in developing alternatives. While increasing numbers of people are convinced of the need for system change, most of us have very limited understanding of how current economic and financial systems work and maintain business as usual. This makes it very difficult to challenge economic orthodoxy.

As a start, we are offering this short interactive online programme of webinars to generate discussion and which enables participants to gain confidence for critical engagement and action.

The sessions will consist of a 30-40 minute talk followed by a Q&A and breakouts in which participants discuss what they have heard. We are inviting speakers who have a ‘big picture’ grasp of economics from a radical perspective and who have proposals for how to leverage transformation to respond to the following questions:

• How does economics work and why isn’t it getting us the results we want?
• What other ways can we organise our economies that would work better?
• What practical initiatives or experiments are showing how this could work?

LOOKING AHEAD

The programme is primarily intended for activists wanting to radically transform the system, so if you are involved in environmental, labour, social justice, human rights or peace campaigning we hope that you will join us.