Hamish Campbell

Published Date 8/16/14 11:05 PM

The 5 levels of gentrification

1 – a poor area has a new transport link to mainstream society, interesting/creative people move in for the cheap rents and the real indigenous culture.

2 – the first enterprises open, islands in the indigenous normal, a second wave of interesting people arrive and create a community around these spaces as well as colonising the indigenous business that are shifting to there spending/focus.

3 – the area is at its hight of interesting, being a healthy fusion of the old and the new, the first wave of business become the foundation. This fusion of the old and the new lasts for a while.

4 – a dulling wave of more affluent people start to arrive, new exploitative business open and push the remaining indigences business out by raising rents. The original social enterprise creative business either have to commercialise or close.

5 – the indigenous community can no longer afford to function in there home and start to be pushed out by rent increases and alienation. The conservative affluent start to force the creative areas to quieten and conform to their norms quickly/slowly killing creativity in the area. Property prices rise agen in reaction to this.

Gentrification is complete, the area is now in the mainstream. Rinse and repeat.

For the comady version of this post

Published Date 8/12/14 12:47 AM

This vibrant and healthy subculture is under considerable threat from gentrification being pushed by the neon-liberal agenda. Boaters with out moorings are largely liberation, which means they are a pushover for sustained bureaucracy, they will fight as individuals and drop away one by one sulking like children or retreating to the drugged periphery to bitch. As long as the change is slow and forcefully they have little power to resist – if the is a big push against them they can combine for a short time and push back as they are competent people, but this will soon falter as they gain ground against the bureaucrats.

How will this community survive the next 5-10 years is a real question that needs answers.

Published Date 8/9/14 11:28 AM

Was asked to speck out basic solar for this boat. They don’t use a lot of electricity so a small set-up would help keep there battery’s topped up and healthy and they could add more latter if needed.  

As it has so much free roof space might as well go for framed panels as they are cheaper. Would need to check the panel size and space around the mushroom vents and find a way to get the cable into the boat to the battery box.

Depending on the cable run, for a short run to the battery’s I would recommend this basic simple 12v set

http://www.bimblesolar.com/offgrid/12v/12v-165w-20amppt

For longer cable runs this one might be better.

http://www.bimblesolar.com/offgrid/24v/24v-165w-10amppt

The advantage of 24v is less voltage drop from long cables the disadvantage is complexity, you are mixing 12v and 24v so could be messy if fixing things with out experience.

You would need to make some custom cables and connectors and secure the run from the panel to the battery box. http://www.bimblesolar.com/extras/6mmcable this cable will allow you to add more panels with out re-wiring.

Published Date 7/9/14 4:13 PM

The boating community in the UK is in a privileged position compared to many parts of our over controlled society, you can moor up and stay most places for free on a reasonably priced yearly licence. However this rare freedom is constantly under threat.

The is an issue with privatisation of open public space not only from company’s and government’s but also from our fellow boater “community”. This can come from individuals working with The Canal & River Trust (CRT) to set-up for profit or even “community moorings” or people who find out of way spots and make them there “own” and then try and control these pieces of open public spaces as private spaces.

Of course with everything the is a balances of the good and the bad. CRT have an agenda to maximize revenue for the “public” spaces they own and this will be pushed over all agreed mooring projects so the is a clear danger here for us losing public mooring space to private mooring space even with “community mooring” projects and for profit moorings in “public” are always bad.

The DIY spaces can be good were people take responsibility for cleaning and caring and opening up a little used public space. But often go bad due to unsustainable use of the spaces opened up, piles of trash and anti-social behaver are common as are threats of violence often feed by drunkenness. This brings as bad a “closing” of a public space as more traditional state or private enterprise privatisation.

As boaters we currently have a some lee way to make things work better than they often do, lets see what happens.

Published Date 6/5/14 6:17 PM

Here is a list of components to get basic solar power working on a converted liveabord lifeboat.

Can get from here or here  for about £130 each, will need two.

Then you have a choices of 2 different type of charge controller, possibly unreliably but more efficient MPPT or a bog standard cheap PWM controller – to start out I would probably go for the cheap controller.

MPPT have to import from china here or here  for around £80

Or a very cheap basic controller here for around £12

Then you would need a length of 6mm cable and a pear of MC4 combiners

The boat currently has 4 starter battery wired up into 2 separate redundant 24V banks, I would re-wire one of these as 12v and use that for a while.

todo

Have to test a all the wires and find out what is 12v and what 24v

Have to find out which bank of battery is live

Fitting out

Then get some 3 way car cigarette splinters, good soled wire and 5m of LED lighting strip, more info here

Published Date 5/14/14 3:27 PM

Am planing to do workshops on “journalism with the tool in your pocket” and “solar power for everyone” over the summer at protest camps, festivals and conferences. Am working with a number of other people to do this. But… the is generally a but… 

For the Solar workshops I have a young man who is competent and has energy, but needs to learn the skills of organising, teaching and most importantly internalise the importance of simplicity, getting there slowly.

Published Date 4/22/14 1:15 PM

I have decided not to get involved in this activist tech gathering even though it is completely on the subjects that are core to my work. I had tried to interact but with no noticeable affect. 

The is a failer of imagination in almost all atavist tech that shapes a blankness in ideas and almost no real action. Its not that the ideas and campaigns are not important as some of them clearly are, it is more limited framework that these things are addressed with.

This gathering reminds me of the Rebellious Media Conference from a few years back which took up a lot of my time and had no affect what so ever. On balance the RMC damaged the declining alt-media by taking focus and energy, am worried that this gathering will lead to the same outcome.

If you wont to get involved in real alternative tech in action, and while doing thinking about the bigger picture try http://activisttech.org or the develoment side try this http://hamishcampbell.com/en/home/-/blogs/the-tech-manifesto-of-the-omn