This is great short video from the Mental Health Foundation about why relationships and connections with those around you are important.
Relationships: the missing piece of the wellbeing puzzle
Simple stuff but it really is true. I am involved in various community projects and it is wonderful to see that sense of connection making such a difference to people’s lives.
I love Desert Island Discs and this one with Tidjane Thiam from 2012 is probably one of the most extraordinary episodes I have ever heard.. some great songs too ranging from opera to traditional Senegalese music.
At the time Tidjane was ‘The Man at the Pru’ (he is now CEO of Credit Suisse) and amongst other things he talks about political upheaval, Yes Minister and The Archers, his fathers imprisonment, being offered the presidency of Ivory Coast, and why he took 2 suits to big meetings!
Click on the photo to hear his Desert Island Discs .. or find it here on iplayer
Intro from the Desert Island Discs website
He’s chief executive of the Prudential, but he’s about as far from the archetypal “man from the Pru” as you can get.
The seeds of his success were sown amid the complex political terrain of the Ivory Coast with an extended family heavily involved in politics and a father imprisoned for his beliefs. His life quickly took on an international flavour from West Africa to Morocco, Paris to Washington, but in his early 30s a coup in his homeland left him high and dry. He says “I had no job, no career, nothing at all. It taught me a lot about myself. If you’ve been in a situation where you have nothing there’s nothing much you’re afraid of.”
The entire archive of over 3000 Desert Island castaways is now on the BBC website and worth a browse through..
Gilbert and George are probably best known for their similar appearance and demeanor but you may not know much about their lives or their work.Watch movie online The Transporter Refueled (2015)
They have been a huge influence on many artists and musicians and are very rarely interviewed.. so it was lovely to see Mark Lawson talk to them about their lives, work and routines. Mark seemed a bit star struck and this adds a nice almost reverential air to the interview.
Well worth a watch.. and if you haven’t come across Gilbert and George before there is more on their website about them and their work – be warned – they like swear words! <a href="http://www.gilbertandgeorge acheter viagra pharmacie ligne.co.uk/” target=”_blank”>http://www.gilbertandgeorge.co.uk/
Many people do not really think about where their money goes when they put their wages in a bank. High street banks often support, loan money to, or own shares in a range of ethically dodgy businesses such as arms dealers, tobacco, logging, oil and energy companies to name a few. Many have also been implicated in dodgy deals like the Libor fixing rate or money laundering too.
The recent Panama Papers leak showed how many large banks helped customers to set up off shore investments and tax avoidance schemes. HSBC and Credit Suisse featured often in these documents and both were quick to say they don’t condone tax avoidance – see this article in The Independent.
The controversial decision to allow fracking in North Yorkshire also highlighted that Barclays own 97% of Third Energy, the company applying to do the fracking.
So.. if you have an account or a mortgage with a high street bank and aren’t happy about about their business practises there are some websites to help you make an informed decision. The Good Shopping Guide has lots of articles and blog posts about a range of ethical shopping choices including this one on ethical banks and building societies and the table below comes from that article.
Another useful source of information is Move Your Money who also talk about other forms of finance like crowdfunding, peer to peer lending and credit unions.
Not all the best ethical banks do current accounts but if you are looking to put savings somewhere you can be assured the top ones are doing really good stuff with your cash.
It is often said people are more likely to get divorced than change bank, but switching accounts is now much easier than it used to be after rules changed in 2013. The excellent Money Saving Expert website has an article about the changes and 7 day current account switch service.
I have had an account with our local credit union for a while but recent banking scandals have prompted me to move as much as I can to ‘Good Banks’. Unfortunately, our mortgage is with a slightly dodgy institution, but at least I’ve made a start!
If you are interested in finding out more about this subject see my previous blog about the free online course Just Money: Banking as if Society Mattered.
Buried deep in the archives on the BBC website are a collection of wonderful old films and documentaries including this one about the sculptor Henry Moore.
This was an Arena programme broadcast to celebrate Moore’s 80th birthday and is a collection of several films collated by John Read who interviewed and filmed Henry Moore six times over a 28 year period.
There is a decidedly old fashioned and almost reverential tone to the programme but it is a times a beautiful ‘fly on the wall’ documentary and a wonderful insight into the life and work of Henry Moore.
His huge sculptures can be found all over the world but many of his large pieces are actually not far from us at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield.
I think my favourite part shows the laid back attitude of Henry Moore. He goes off for lunch on his bike while a team and a crane are trying to move an enormous sculpture out of the workshop. It breaks in various places and Moore returns to find chaos and panic – his response to months of work being damaged was beautiful – ‘it can be mended’ 🙂
More old Arena programmes can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006pn88
And there are a huge number of photos of Henry Moore sculptures on flickr for your perusal.
I’m writing this while on a retreat in deepest Cornwall with some women I know through a mindfulness group. It has been a lovely few days doing not a lot.. a guilt-free escape from our usually busy lives.
When was the last time you stopped and did absolutely nothing? I realise for me it has been a very long time.. partly because we live in the Yorkshire Dales, so any holidays or trips to friends or relatives involve a long drive and usually a whirlwind of activities and visits.
We have been lounging around reading, journal writing, meditating, sketching, walking, cooking, drinking lots of tea and wine and generally recharging our batteries.
It really has been an interesting experience to be properly ‘away’ with very limited mobile signal.. and actually quite liberating to do nothing.
The wind is whistling through the windows but the sky is blue and the crows are playing in the wind… this is my view…
Pretty good eh 🙂
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you responded to those spam emails? Well .. comedian James Veitch did exactly that.. and this TED talk is an entertaining story of his correspondence with some of these spammers.
I have mentioned the U.Lab course Transforming, Business, Society and Self in a previous blog and this free course Just Money: Banking as if Society Mattered is from the same team at MIT. This time they look at how money moves around the exisiting banking ‘system’ and at examples of financial institutions working for positive change and doing things differently.
Hardly a week goes by without some story of dodgy behaviour from big banks so it may surprise you to discover that many credit unions and some banks are actually doing great things with their clients money. Understanding more about how this works gives you the knowledge to make an informed choice about what you do with your own money.
The 5 week course is free and runs on the edx.org platform and starts mid-April 2016 but you can register any time and work at your own pace.. blurb from the course page says..
What do you know about banking? Do you know what your bank does with your money? The recent financial crisis highlighted some of the most fundamental issues with the mainstream banking system.
This course looks into banks that operate differently, namely, “just banks” that use capital and finance as a tool to address social and ecological challenges.
This course is for anyone who wants to understand the unique role banks play as intermediaries in our economy and how they can leverage that position to produce positive social, environmental, and economic change.
The instructors of this course have worked for over 10 years with just banks from around the world, as well as in the fields of community development, economic democracy, and social change.
No previous knowledge of finance or banking is needed to take this course.
For more info or to sign up go to the Just Money page on edx.org
This is the first of several spin-off courses from the original U.Lab course and by 2017 there will be more from the same team of people on a range of topics.
I love In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg.. 45 minutes a week on BBC Radio 4 and you know you will always learn something new!
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872 into an aristocratic family, Russell is widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytic philosophy, which is today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. In his important book The Principles of Mathematics, he sought to reduce mathematics to logic. Its revolutionary ideas include Russell’s Paradox, a problem which inspired Ludwig Wittgenstein to pursue philosophy. Russell’s most significant and famous idea, the theory of descriptions, had profound consequences for the discipline.
Synopsis :
Movie ‘John Wick: Chapter 2’ was released in February 8, 2017 in genre Thriller. Chad Stahelski was directed this movie and starring by Keanu Reeves. This movie tell story about John Wick is forced out of retirement by a former associate looking to seize control of a shadowy international assassins’ guild. Bound by a blood oath to aid him, Wick travels to Rome and does battle against some of the world’s most dangerous killers.
