Hamish Campbell

Published Date 7/21/15 9:35 PM

All the quotes are from Oscar Wild.

“If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.” LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN

The chattering classes are a problem, they are a clear and present block on social change, they colonise successful grassroots movements. They take up dominant mind share and spend all of the institutional funding on pointless fashion/NGO projects.

Middle class privilege and education dulled by post-modernist “thinking” combine to make their voices loud and persuasive in the blandness of surtatety. They smother the creative sparks in the dampness of their passions, mind space is watered to a diluteness that kills the thinking of movements, the slightest change is dampened and reversed.

“Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everybody in good society holds exactly the same opinions.”
THE REMARKABLE ROCKET

The chattering classes while being generally lovely people are a problem for the very needed possibility of an alternative to our current society. And its hard to right or talk about this issue with out seaming petty.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”  DE PROFUNDIS

What is to be done? Think the can be overlapping strategy’s to address this, one would be small affinity groups working on different project based on common standereds so they interact and build on each other. The other would be the old left postative discrimination – though this it self is often “captured”. Ideas please?

“Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST

Published Date 7/16/15 3:20 PM

Am thinking of running a workshop on small scale solar power.

Here is an example of a cheap set-up that will run your large smart phone (and charge a tablet)

This a Samsung Note phone to give you an idea of the size.

The panel is rate at 1amp were the 6000mAh pass through USB battery is rated at 2.1amp’s

Thus the set-up will charge your phone as fast as if it was plugged into the wall, using the battery as a reserve of power to achieve this.

This is a light weight and cheap solution costing less than £40 a realy usefull travel and adventure tool.

Published Date 7/16/15 3:08 PM

Am thinking about running a workshop on portable solar power.

This is 32w folding solar panel with a battery pass through DC to DC transformer and 13′ video editing laptop running adobe CS.

All Folds up and fits in a laptop bag.

The solar costs £200-250 and you need a relatively expensive ultra book with 3D graphics card to do CS editing. Portable solar will struggle to power a full sized editing laptop. Total cost just over £1000

Published Date 7/7/15 10:50 AM

Boaters are a vibrant minority culture living a parallel life in the heart of our cities and countryside. They are currently under threat from Insidious gentrification. The Village Hall Butty will give them a space to gather and celebrate their community. The aim is to create a floating village hall for boaters, local residents and the myriad of people who visit the towpath every year. Through social events, skill sharing workshops, regular clubs and other activities – they aim to create a vital hub for information and advice with a focus on promoting sustainable living, integrating communities and protecting and enjoying the waterways.

To make this communal space on the London waterway a reality we need to raise the Crowdfunder target of £5000 in a few days time. We have raised more than half of our target now and funds are being sought via www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-village-butty

The brainchild of Alice Cade, Ian Horrocks and James Bentley, seasoned boaters who have lived on the canals and rivers for many years, the event aims to bring together the boating and land based community to enjoy and celebrate the waterways and the variety of people who use them.

Please help keep the village hall afloat for the local community to enjoy for years to come. Find us on Facebook www.facebook.com/thevillagebutty or Crowdfunder www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-village-butty

One of the regular “jam on the butty sessions” the butty providing a space for local acoustic music

Published Date 6/26/15 5:46 PM

Update

They have raised just over half the funding and the is still 11 days to go (appeal ending 15th July 2015)

Events on all week, big day https://www.facebook.com/events/1680993855468109/

Please support this project by directly donating or sharing this post with your friends and relatives.

The longest and friendliest village in the UK is actually the London Canal Network. Its a tight-knit community of eccentrics and iconoclasts, mums and kids, working people and retires, a cross section of life live in a continuously roving/changing mix.

For the last 3 years or so James (and the Butty) have been providing a floating gathering place for this community, while trying to make a living as a events space. He was becoming exorsted and the sums went adding up so he decided to sell the Butty a few months ago, the was a uproar from the community of boaters who had been relying on this resources, a couple Alice and Ian decided to take on the project and grow it into a not for profit company – the Village Butty Project was born.

For this to become sustainable and independent the Butty needs a companion boat to move it, provide catering, light and working space. The is now a fund raise going on to make this happen. The boat has been sourced, the money is need to renovate into being the companion space to make the village hall Butty a self standing project. To keep this invaluable resource working on the “cut”.

You can help, clink on the links to find out more and directly support the project:

Go fund me link

Failbook link

Published Date 6/25/15 2:41 PM

A thinking allowed DRAFT

Was sitting on me boat roof with a bottle of wine talking to me publisher friend about the video activism book, with a refocuses she would be up for helping to publishing it.

From my point of view it need to be based on the complete lack of current grassroots media.

So needs to start by answering what is grass roots media.

* DIY culture, bit of history
* balancing the wider picture, voices balancing, roots, steams and flowers.
* this means majority but not exclusively from the roots to balance traditional and NGO media.

Building networks (ecosystems) – (the flower medow whole)
* the value of the open web (the soil)
* use and abuse the spiders web of corporate “social media” and hosting (the bugs)
* linking and embedding aggregation (openmedia network project) (the growth)

How dose it differ from:
Traditional media
NGO media/Community media
“new media” and “social media”

[we need to briefly slorter each of these]

Then all the video templates and how to’s etc. The body.

Then at the end a chapter on sustainability in the “sharing age”
* monetisation is distributed and DIY (not centralised) sharing gets you distribution its up to you to sought out motorisation if you wont.

Then need a concushern  rallying cry that people can/should  rebuild a “unbranded” network.

To recap as a old testament biblical epic

Build a alter to the grassroots

Saluter the failings of the past as a blood offerings

Then temple workshops on the “cult” ways

Concluding with a fable on cult responsibility’s

Ending with lift our voices in song to a courus of how the world should be.

The is a possible schizophrenia here were it makes sense to dull the book down to expand the audience to the NGO’s and education as they have the cash – but then the would be little difference to the other 3-4 failed pointless books out their facking and selling out “grassroots media” to “publishers”. That would be both sad and bad outcome.

After thought:

Published Date 6/12/15 2:35 PM

The are two current worthwhile grassroots “openspace” projects am involved with. Both have a lot of potential but both are more likely to fail for obverses and avoidable reasons. Lets look at both in turn:

The Hive Dalston is an interesting hybrid project crossing the activist and corporate divide. Its a legal social centre using temporally empty buildings to build community projects. It came out of a long history of doing the same thing by squatting the same sought of buildings.

The Village Butty is a the shifting of an existing boater infrastructure from an individual to the wider community to make it sustainable. Its a village hall for the longest/friendlies village in the world, the London canals.

Why are the both more likely fail on their current course?

The Hive is a balances between the top down of the corporate worlds and the bottom up of the activist/community world. This could/needs to be healthy, currently it is not, the corporate world view is pushing over the community, thus pushing the community out of the space… currently its an echoing shallow space. With out the community having “ownership” in all its messiness the space will/is drifting into barren NGO land. And in the medium/long term NGO’s need funding to subsist, with out funding burn out and failer is not far away.

The Village Butty is initially a more hopeful project. The issue it faces is the libertarian nature of the boater community, its hard to bring and hold boaters together to make anything permanent, its by its nature a shifting/money poor community. The nice couple who have take on on this task and starting to show the strain, lots of talk of support and mostly transient action is a course for burn out. In their crowed funding they are reaching out to the boaters themselves, were instead they need to reach out the wider mainstream community who “romanticizes” boaters. This “outside” demographic easily has the money to support the project were the cash poor boaters them selves do not.

So to recap my thoughts, both projects could/can save themselves from “burn out” by shifting structure/outreach. I will go and have a chat to them both and see what happens.

Published Date 6/2/15 5:37 PM

If you are taking your small USB powered devices off grid for a week or so then you will need a way to keep them powered up. In this review I look at 2 small folding solar panels. Both will charge a “dumb phone” or a normal smart phone and can charge larger phones or tablets for occasional use.

We have the Goalzero Nomad 7 from the USA and the smaller and cheaper UK based Bimbalesolar panel (A badged china import)

Both have approximately the same power output but the is a large price difference. The Slightly lower powered Bimble panel (6W) is a few years newer than the US panel (7W) thus smaller due to the use of 20% efficient cells compared to 17% for the older panel

The Nomad 7 has a light wait plastic regulator/plug box and has both USB and a 12v output (3-4W) which could be useful for trickle charging lead acid 12v battery’s. But not much everyday use for this function.

• Weight: 16.2 oz (460 g)
• Dimensions (unfolded): 9 x 1.5 x 17 in (22.9 x 3.8 x 43.2 cm)
• Dimensions (folded): 9 x 1.5 x 6.5 in (22.9 x 3.8 x 16.5 cm)

The Cheaper panel has a heavy folded metal box.

Extend Size: 200 x 400 x 20mm
Folded Size: 200 x 155 x 26mm
Weight: 250g

Is the size and large price diffrence worth it?

Nomad 7 £80

Bimblesolar £28

The build quality of the Goalzero panel is excellent, with custom components throughout, and it will likely survive for longer with hard use. While the Bimblesolar panel has good build quality and will like survive OK. The cheaper panel might prove to be easer to repair if it fails as it is made with standard components. Both will work fine to charge your small USB device.

On balance the price, and to a lesser extent the size differences makes the Bimblesolar panel the clear winner between the two.

How to use:

If you can turn your device off to charge it as this will reduce charging time. (some devices will not turn off while pluged in such as iphone’s)

Use a power pass through USB battery pack to store power while your charging your devices. You must look hard for “power pass though” and pay slightly more for this feature.

Keep your expensive electronics dry, cool, in the shade and out of site.

Take care of your USB cables as they are fragile. If you can use the cable that the device came with as each cable is actually different and can alter charging times. Shorter cabals are better than longer cables in general.

Published Date 4/27/15 3:32 PM

There are many outstanding questions on the competency of the Honours student loan company. There will be a growing issue around this incompetency driving individuals into bankruptcy though charges on their student loans.

Let’s outline my own current experience. Because of the time I was at university my student loans were shared between the two student loan companies. This has caused a lot of issues over the time of the loan that were never dealt with, even though they were repeatedly agreed to be dealt with.

For more than 15 years the Honours student loan has been failing in its agreement to synchronise and cross check the deferment of my student loans. Each year (that’s more than 15 times) after manually getting this check to happen they have agreed that this would not happen next year. Every time they have failed to fulfil this agreement, and each year the same problems of getting them to do the cross checking happened.

When one company’s loan is deferred, the other should also be deferred: basic stuff that should not be a problem. In the final year before the loans were written off, the other loan company refused to communicate that the loan was already deferred because this deferment only had 3 months left to run. I pointed out their clear responsibility for this being an issue due to the loans becoming out of sync due to their repeated negligence. My point was it was a issue directly created by them: thus it was their responsibility to clear this up. Although there were constant phone calls from them they made no attempt to address this and have not yet sent me a meaningful reply to this issue of responsibility.

At the very least I would like this basic issue of how a responsible company can agree to do a basic service, then not do this service, repeatedly leaving me with the possibility of being bankrupted by their failures. Instead of this basic honesty, they are currently avoiding this issue and moving to push me into bankruptcy by calling the loan due in whole, even though it should have already been writern off completely.

The £489 in charges and interest outstanding during the period is a direct result of their failure and they have still not addressed this basic complaint. I am still waiting for a reply to this issue of their negligence being DIRECTLY responsible for the outstanding charges and the failure to write off this loan on the due date.

I look forward to a meaningful reply to this.