The Ideas of the Century

What I remember most about Norwich was "The Sale of the Century", hosted by Nicholas Parsons, which ran for many years, and was very popular. The top prize was - typically for days of typical consumption - usually a car, on which would be draped various lovely females in skimpy adornment, but which were not, unfortunately, part of the prize - I was a teenager at the time!

But I've just seen "View from the West"

http://st-ouennais.livejournal.com/35797.html

"A flavour of what the Real Jersey 2035 event could be like..."

which has a You-tube clip of the start of the conference at Norwich on "transition culture".

The full site is here:
http://transitionnorwich.org

and well worth a look. One subsection

http://transitionnorwich.org/PeakOil.htm

has the following comments on the end of cheap oil and implications of peak oil for the local economy:

What are the implications of this shortage of oil, and the rising oil price, for our everyday lives? Some examples include:
- Travel will become more expensive, and air travel may quickly return to be a luxury enjoyed only by the very rich;
- Food is already becoming more expensive, as our modern food system uses around 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce each calorie of food on our plates; and as food crops and land are diverted to make biofuels;
- The economy will suffer as households and businesses, struggling to pay for food, utilities and petrol, default on mortgages and other loans, leading to a credit crunch.


Transition Norwich is looking at how Norwich can adapt and change from a dependency culture on oil to more independent and self-supporting; it is also looking at the problems of climate change for the locale.

It is what Jersey should be doing now, to prepare for the future, looking at the big picture, rather than tackling just local problems and hoping the big problems will somehow go away. They won't!