A BRIT fix

This week coincided with the release of Netflix’ third season of ‘The Crown’. There are ten episodes. We paced ourself with two episodes per night. I was impressed with the human back story and the quality of the BBC production. It brought back memories of England in the late ‘60s, the political drama within the context of the lives of the Royal Family.

More relevant to life in rural Nova Scotia was the opportunity to watch the YouTube video of George Monbiot ‘A new politics for an age of crisis’.

Monbiot is a journalist, who writes for the Guardian. This particular video is of a talk, he delivered in London earlier this year, based on his book, of the same title, Out of the Wreckage: a new politics for an age of crisis.

Some of his messages resonated with life in the Annapolis Valley.

1) create a politics of ‘belonging’ and the reality of community;
2) he identifies four steps:
a) rich participatory culture within a geographic region;
b) participatory democracy;
c) economic democracy;
d) the commons and community land trust.

As Monbiot states at the beginning of his talk, we have a failure of imagination to transform politics. We need a new narrative or story.

Fortunately, our local Lawrencetown library can deliver Monbiot’s latest book, through its interlibrary loan service.

Acknowledgements

Heather has shared the BRIT fix moment with me. Edward has added the necessary video link.