Setting my targets

OK, so I've put my head above the parapet by asking:

"... for all of us, if we are going to make changes in our energy, we need targets. What are yours?"

I've been poking my church too, with its £9,000 annual bill but with no temperature monitoring in place. We have plenty of radiator thermostats, but a lot of user fingergepoken and no clear temperature indication. How much does that bill justify on upgraded monitoring and control?

My flat's electricity consumption was 2,475kWh/year over four years (2003-07), but measuring it over the last four weeks, it's down 33% to 1,650kWh/year. However, that's with just me in residence. A mixture of low energy lightbulbs, not leaving things on standby, not overfilling the kettle and so on. But you could also say that, by not having a lodger the usage per person has actually gone up!

This is actually a big issue. The percentage of one person households in Scotland has been rising steadily ...

• 1981 22%
• 1991 29%
• 2001 33%
• 2006 34%

[Source : General Register Office report - Estimates of households and dwellings in Scotland, 2007 - Table 9]

Looking to the future, according to the latest Household Projections for Scotland issued by the General Register Office for Scotland, the government thinks this will continue to rise:

Between 2004 and 2024, the number of households consisting of just one adult will increase from 770,000 to over a million – making up over 40 per cent of all households in Scotland. The total number of households is projected to increase by 13 per cent to 2.5 million - an average of 14,800 additional households per year.

Meanwhile, my gas consumption has gone down year by year, which perhaps reflects different tenants ...
* 2003-05 Natasha 13,749kWh/year
* 2005-07 Jacqueline and Liana 13,067kWh/year
* 2007-09 Jacqueline and Sarah ... and Neil 11,988kWh/year

But that's still only a 13% decrease. Where do I start with a target? Firstly, get a lodger so I can divide my household usage by two! Beyond that, should I replace the boiler with a more efficient one even although there will not be a commercially attractive payback? How much energy does the new boiler cost to make?

But initially the key step is monitoring - knowing where it goes - so as to pick up the easy steps first. For example, there is a lot of rubbish talked about devices using energy while on standby. Some do - others use nothing. I plan to use my power meter to see just where the electricity is going, and to upgrade some of my building insulation (although there is a limit as to what you can do with my 1903 building.

I've also suggested that my church considers a 10% year-on-year reduction. Would we be prepared to commit ourselves as a holistic community to three steps:

• reducing the CCE energy usage (kWh/year - ) by 10% over the previous year (2008 = base year), each year for the next ten years. Thus by 2018 it will be 35% of 2008 level. Perhaps we could omit electricity from renewable sources under certain circumstances.
• a target of 70 CCE households signing up to reduce their domestic energy usage by 10% over the previous year, with the option to sign up for transport too.
• provide signposts to sources of support for those who sign up, including organising basic seminars and services on auditing your usage and preparing an action plan.

Disconnecting usage from payment

In my Money Clinic work, I would like to even out people's payments over the months, so the idea of paying a regular amount each month for gas and electricity seems a good idea. Especially since you get the lowest rate for regular monthly direct debits. But there's a problem. It places a disconnect between usage and payment.

We also suggest a greater use of cash so that you feel the value of what you are spending, but this regular monthly payment for energy breaks the link. It's as though Tescos would offer me a monthly direct debit of my recent average expenditure and then let me put everything on the tab each time I go round. That's not an idea I would welcome - I would rather be on PAYG.

What I find is three problems.

• You have overpaid into the "Bank of Scottish Gas" without realising it. One client started paying four times as much because of a duff meter reading, and was amazed to realise that the increase in regular payments from £20 a month to £80 a month was not a price increase but a mistake ... and that he could get several hundred pounds back.
• Or you are underpaying each month because of estimated readings, and then get a big shock when the utility company finally takes a reading and sends you a bill which tips you into debt. One client, a guy from a lovely warm country, had moved to Edinburgh, rented a flat, paid four quarterly bills based on estimated readings, and then finally received a bill for a four figure sum. The companies are getting more flak for taking too much by direct debit, but I would far rather they erred on the side of keeping your account in credit than giving you a nasty shock later.
• There is a lot more in the financial press about saving by switching supplier than being in control and saving by reducing your consumption. Surprise, surprise. Because the financial press is making money out of the roundabout of movers. One supplier has been giving £70 cashback to switchers recently! Ultimately, we all pay this money out of our bills, so those who stay with one supplier lose out.

We need to help people on a tight budget to find a way of keeping track of their energy usage, in a way that is tied to payments. For some people, phoning in a reading whenever they get an estimated reading and getting the bill reissued is the best way. For others, the best way is the good old prepayment meter.

But, ultimately, one big newsline is missing - learning to look at how, both as a society and as individuals, we actually use less. And for all of us, if we are going to make changes in our energy consumption, we need to set targets. What are yours?

Anither bit fixed

OK, this x-ray isn't my shoulder, it's from the internet.

I had a good visit to the orthopaedic outpatients department on Wednesday, where I had a series of X-rays which confirmed my rotator cuff tendonitis. This is where the tendon which runs between the ball and the overhanging shoulder blade gets trapped in the small space between the two bones. Because it has been around a while, there are clear calcium deposits in the inflamed area.

So I had a corticosteroid injection, to give it a chance to heal up, and by today it is certainly feeling much better. I have to go back in two months. If repeated injections are not enough, the next step is to do some engineering repairs and plane a bit off the underside of the shoulderblade to make a bit more room for the tendon. That sounds sore ...

Community: the new distraction?

I've been at a short conference for church leaders, where Wes Sutton of the Church.co.uk Network was speaking. A lot of it was about engaging with the community - which, of course, is a trendy thing to talk about. Asking questions like "Is God more at work in the community than in the church?" If so, is it because he is seeking that which is lost? Or because he is more welcome there? That suggestion would be based on the observation that while we are an increasing secular society, we are also a deeply spiritual one.

One of the favoured approaches to evangelism in this environment is the creation of community that not only looks after its own but also cares for the needs of those around. This is mission which is about calling people to become followers of Jesus; it's not (or not just) about getting their souls to heaven.

So we major on community. We try and fail ... and so seek distractions from the fact that our reality doesn't work. What struck me was when Wes asked if community was the new distraction. Has it become the fixit which will make us feel good?

Alan Hirsch writes about something else which he calls communitas in his book "The Forgotten Ways". He defines it as "that unique experience of togetherness that really happens only among a group of people inspired by the vision of a better world [and who are] actually attempting to do something about it." (p278) While the energies of a community are primarily directed inward, the energies of a group of people on a common journey are primarily directed outward and forward - "me for the community and the community for the world." (p236)

Hirsch writes more about liminality and communitas in his blog here.

In the book, he explores the middle class culture - and its preoccupation with not only safety and security but also comfort and convenience. We move from the missional idea of "me for the community and the community for the world" to the more consumerist "the community for me."

(Illustration from The Ongoing adventures of ASBO Jesus)

Hirsch's response was close to Wes's message to us today - what is the opposite of faith? Certainty. Because if you have certainty, it doesn't need faith. Peter would not have been exercising faith in getting out of the boat to try out the walking on water bit if he had been certain that it would work! So to exercise faith we need to move away from certainty.

Hirsch proposes that we need a conscious "move towards the edge of chaos ... away from stability and equilibrium towards a condition of open-ness and creativity." (p232) We need to be more prepared to accept risk, because "risk is the price we pay for genune adventure, and ... without adventure, civilisation is in full decline. The same is equally true of the church. And once again, it is largely because we have structured community in isolation from any real engagement with the world. We are missing a communitas element because we are missing the missional component that takes us out of our safety zones into risky engagement with the world." (p231)

Meanwhile, back to Wes who summed up by asking three questions:

• What is it we are doing which relates to our vision of a better world?
• What is it we are doing for the community?
• What is it that the community is doing for the world?

The Age of Stupid

Went to see the new climate change film at the weekend.

The Age of Stupid is a drama-documentary which stars Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching archive footage from 2008 and asking: why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance? The world premiere was on 15 March in a solar-powered cinema tent in Leicester Square.

I felt that it was aimed more at turning those who are already open to change into activists ahead of the December summit in Copenhagen, rather than convincing the sceptics who want to continue as before, regardless of the consequences.

Ken Livingstone has said: "Every single person in the country should be forcibly made to watch this film." Nice idea, Ken. How do we manage that one?

Perhaps I'll let you off the whole film if you watch the trailer. Or perhaps you could then arrange to go to a screening with your friends.

As the website says,

"The number of bums on seats in these first few crucial days determines whether the film is picked up by more cinemas in week two.... or dumped in the bin. Which then determines the size of the DVD and TV deals which follow. And, just to ratchet up the pressure event more, the success or failure of the UK release then determines whether international distributors decide to release in their countries... which then determines whether the Not Stupid campaign does or doesn't get global momentum and does or doesn't influence the politicians who will be deciding all our fates at Copenhagen... so no pressure then."

Watch it. Then you can decide whether to give Ken's approach a chance.

Geek runner

I passed my tests back at the hospital last Thursday. So they don't want to see me again, and have cleared me to go and do whatever I want. I suppose that includes running up and down hills in Kashmir checking out springs, should I be so minded.

So yesterday I headed out on my 4.5 mile run, but with the benefit of a rev counter on the dashboard. My Polar heart rate monitor sends a signal to what looks like a wrist watch, shows me my heart rate, and records the average and maximum rates. Instead of running to my usual "puff limit", I ran the first two miles within quite a low heart rate limit - and hence quite slow, before lifting the tempo a little on the return leg.

Is it looking after myself, or just another opportunity to be geeky?

Juxtaposition 3 - Local perspective, global perspective

Three perspectives on poverty arrived together this weekend ...

On Saturday, I was attending a discussion and lunch in a lenten series arranged by two local churches. The speaker was Liz Henderson, the minister of Richmond Craigmillar church , in an area of Edinburgh which has a reputation for being "poor".

Then I was reading a new post on Oxfam's UK Poverty Post. There's some very thought provoking stuff on there, not least a 2006 Oxfam video of street reactions to questions on poverty. But the post on Thursday links to the blog of Duncan Green, the head of research for Oxfam GB, where he highlights a new study by the World Bank called ‘The Moving Out of Poverty Study’.

Some of what he writes I quote here:

If the [World Bank's earlier] book was about the statics of poverty – what it is, what it feels like etc, this is about the dynamics – how people rise and fall out of poverty and why. To find out, the Bank researchers talked to 60,000 people in over 500 communities in 15 developing countries, using everything from focus groups to collecting life stories and asking people to design their own local definitions of poverty and wealth.

The results are fascinating ... taking it at face value, here is a taste of its findings:

1. Poor people put the poverty line at around $2 a day, not $1: ... when compared to conventional poverty indicators, [the line] came out fairly consistently near the $2 a day mark.

[My comment: Funny, isn't it, that 2:1 ratio ... "unemployment benefits were 20% of average earnings in 1979, but are only 10% now" - Oxfam UKPP 17 March 2009]

2. Oscar Lewis was wrong: there is no ‘culture of poverty’: ‘Poor people are not listless, passive and alienated. ‘Instead, they take initiatives, often pursuing many small ventures simultaneously to survive and get ahead. Some do manage to move out of poverty.'

3. Poverty is a condition/experience, not a permanent characteristic. The numbers moving out of and into poverty are much higher than the net result (poverty falling or rising) suggests.

4. ‘Power within’ can be a vital first step: ‘inner strength and confidence emerge time and again as a key factor in moving out of poverty. Moreover, self-confidence increases quickly as poor people experience some success. …. [this is] important for how development is done. Development interventions should be carried out in ways that respect and increase—rather than detract from—people’s confidence in themselves and their families.

5. ‘Equal opportunity remains a dream… Poor people face agonizingly limited economic choices, very different from the gilded choices of the rich…

6. ‘Tiny loans usually provided under microcredit schemes do not seem to lift large numbers of people out of poverty. Poor people need credit that enables them to go beyond meeting immediate consumption needs and build permanent assets. Second, credit is more likely to be used productively when it is combined with improved local infrastructure, particularly rural roads, and with help in connecting to and producing for markets.

7. ‘Communities with more responsive local governments have better access to clean water, schools, doctors and nurses, and public health clinics. Furthermore, the quality of education and health services also registers more improvement.’

8. ‘The paradox of collective action is that while it may enable poor people to cope and survive, it typically does not help them move out of poverty…. Poor people as a group lack cash, assets, education, market know-how, and connections with the rich and powerful. When poor people associate only with each other, they bring only their own meager resources to the table. Poor people understand these constraints and affirm that “there is a limit to how much one hungry man can feed another.” The challenge is to extend these positive local traditions of mutual help so that they reach across social lines.’

That’s just a taste – it doesn’t include all the evocative quotes and case studies, or the more subtle debates, but there are rich pickings in here for anyone interested in the reality of poverty and development, big challenges to our assumptions, and blessed relief from all the frustrating generalities about ‘the poor’, ‘developing countries’ and so on.

I think Liz could have easily added illustrations to a lot of these points with a local perspective. I am challenged especially about Point 8. Liz talked about how the good folk within Craigmillar do so much for those around them ... the salt of the earth. But her utopian vision, not one she would put across as a practical solution, would be to go back to a village structure where we are all mixed up, and where the rich help the poor, the gifted help the less able, and we are a complete community. But what happens when we lose that diversity? In my church, which is young, educated, fortunate, well off, we have few people to whom life has been less kind. And, I find, such people find it difficult to fit into our style. So how can we bring our resources to their table, "to extend these positive local traditions of mutual help so that they reach across social lines"?

The third perspective - Rupert was speaking from the Sermon on the Mount again on Sunday. He was emphasising the plurality of the language ... you plural are the salt of the earth. It's also a pro-poor agenda. But we are 40% more unequal in the UK than we were in 1974. And in terms of supporting others within just a few miles we might as well admit we're staying put in the salt pot. It's a safe way to stay salty.

Community hub

The church building has been open this week as the hub of a community pothole-filling, streetlight-fixing, graffiti-cleaning week. And we have taken the opportunity of having a table to publicise the Hope Counselling service and the Money Clinic.

We have had a number of interesting conversations, and hope that it will lead to further opportunities within the local community.

You will see our new pull-up banner in the picture; I don't have the designs for the leaflets in a form which can be imported to the blog yet, but will put them up here next week.

The Reverse Book club

From my Chief Researcher today:

Just came across this during some research and wondered if you had heard of it – I like the “4 books for £5 per month, and you’ll never see any of them”

Obviously appeals to her Marketing and Website Development side ...

As Michael Palin says on the website,

"This is a book club with a difference - you pay the money and somone else gets the books!

It's a brilliant way of helping readers in the world's poorest countries. It's simple, practical and cost less per month than your Sunday newspaper. And each monthly gift of £5 means Book Aid International can send four more books!

One of the things I've found on my journeys is the thirst to learn more about the world, and this is one sure way to help people get more out of life. Book Aid International sends over half a million books to the developing world every year. Over 90% of them go to sub-Saharan Africa.

By transforming your donation of just £5 a month into 48 books each year, this wonderful charity can help transform the lives of so many people and communities. Each and every book sent gets read over and over again - changing thousands of lives.

I hope that you can consider joining the Reverse Book Club, and help spead the joy of books.

Remember - every donation of £5 means that Book Aid International can send another four books!"

Why don't you sign up and comment (anonymously if you prefer) and see how many books we can send?

Debt - more than numbers

I have been put in touch with the author of Fantasy Island Finances by Dave McNeish, and met up with her today ... in fact, we were surprised to discover that we both use the same local coffee place near to The Kings Hall.

Kate Judge was made bankrupt a few years ago, and in her own words,

In 2003, I could not find a book that documented the emotional fall out of being over-extended with credit. I desperately wanted to know that I could survive debt and bankruptcy and that there was hope and light at the end of the tunnel. I wanted a book that could hold my hand whilst I had to deal with all the of letters and phone calls that can plaque someone who is in debt ... ‘'Fantasy Island' was born out of a diary that I kept when I finally awoke to the devastation that my financial ignorance and mismanagement had created. I use these diary extracts in the book as they accurately reflect the raw emotions that were involved when I had to deal with creditors, debt agencies, financial institutions and the bankruptcy court.

I am increasingly suspecting that the role of the Money Clinic in providing support for those with money problems may be much more weighted towards the emotional support than the numbers bit. Yes, we need to be good at the numbers bit, and to have appropriate budgeting tools. But there is so much more.