Beth Tilston is my new hero

Can non-friends on Facebook view her mouthwatering 'Mobile Uploads' album?

And I think this wins the prize for the most interesting facebook conversation I've ever read. 

Beth Tilston

Grrrrrrr

June 21 at 2:16pm ·  · 

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    Christiane Lechner what happend?
    

    June 21 at 3:45pm · 
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    Beth Tilston Things are not happening fast enough...
    

    June 21 at 4:15pm · 
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    Christiane Lechner i know what you mean. a friend of mine texted me the other day "hast du es eilig, gehe langsam" - "are you in a hurry, walk slowly" (kind of :)
    

    June 21 at 8:09pm · 
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    Paul Kingsnorth When Greece collapses in a few weeks, things will start happening pretty fast ;-)
    

    June 21 at 9:35pm · 
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    Beth Tilston Just watching that on the news. They're going to take everyone with them, aren't they. If they don't collapse, the alternative is to sell all their public services and basically be sucked into a black hole of (even more) debt. Learnt the word peonage the other day, seems appropriate.
    

    June 21 at 10:31pm · 
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    Paul Kingsnorth This is the north being structurally adjusted, the way the south has been for decades. The people of greece have to pay for decades for the fuck-ups of bankers and for the obsession with the Euro that the EU's leader's have. It's a fantasy coming up against the buffers of reality. They have to default, because their people refuse to become peons. The century is just starting to get interesting!
    

    June 21 at 10:51pm · 
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    Beth Tilston http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/13/greek-crisis-athens-rural-migration?cat=world&type=article
    
    http://democracystreet.blogspot.com/2011/05/back-in-midlands.html
    

    June 21 at 11:36pm · 
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    Paul Kingsnorth Good links. I wonder what the possibilities are for a new ruralism? When the banks collapse again this question may become more urgent:
    
    http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/06/22/its-time-to-plan-for-the-imminent-banking-collapse-and-its-aftermath/
    

    June 22 at 9:50am · 
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    Beth Tilston It'll be interesting to find out... My feeling is that we are more fucked than most in this respect given that we're an extremely populous country, we have little left of rural skills and culture, the land is owned by toffs who have had it since Biblical times and it is largely occupied by the people who caused the crisis in the first place (at least it is down here).
    

    June 22 at 8:47pm · 
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    Paul Kingsnorth Yes, quite agree - and we also have far less contact with the land than others, given that we were torn from it first. We were the first modern landless nation. Also, I just found out that England has 9% tree cover, while the EU average is 44%! Christ.
    

    June 22 at 10:09pm · 
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    Ian Lawton we're also more fucked than most because what little revolutionary spirit we have has been asleep for longer than everybody else's ... gonna have to learn to farm again very fast i guess - we will have to run to the country when the state finances collapse along with a couple of 'too big to fail' banks ... this is all quite mad isn't it!?
    

    June 22 at 11:27pm · 
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    Beth Tilston 
    

    I think people will just starve in the cities for a bit as they're starting to now. Or perhaps they'll move out of the big cities to smaller ones where it's cheaper. I don't think people will get 'back to the land' until we see the end of industrial agriculture. Industrial agriculture doesn't need people. I reckon there will be a growth in people working in woodlands before there is in people working in fields. Wood is a fuel, after all. Though if we only have 9% tree cover left - maybe not...

    
    
    

    June 22 at 11:49pm · 
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    Paul Kingsnorth 
    

    I think land prices are the biggest issue actually. I think there would be a flood of back to the landers if it were affordable. the internet has put info about how to work land and grow food at all our fingertips - we're all started from nothing, after all. The demand for allotments would have been unthinkable ten years ago. If the land were not all locked up by landowners and yuppies - which is an issue of population density, history and economics - things would be different. But also, yes, I think the cities may start starving first. Must go and buy that farm ...

    
    
    

    June 23 at 9:28am · 
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    Ian Lawton 
    

    nevertheless i'm hoping we get desperate enough that the landgrabs start. I've always thought that the thirst for allotments is probably driven by a half conscious intuition that we are likely to starve to death in the near future ... landrights are going to become a major issue that's for sure ... i recently bought 'this land is our land' by marion shoard, not read it yet, have you read alastair macintosh's 'soil and soul' beth? ... anyway here's hopin for some Diggers radicalism... ""The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land." Gerrard Winstanley

    
    
    

    June 23 at 9:57am ·