Absurd Intelligence

Economics — 6 min read Soup kitchen queue after the 1929 Wall Street stock market crash On the first day of the Absurd Transformation, a fundamental piece of legislation will be introduced that will signal the ambitious intent of the new system. The word “market” will be banned.

If I was in charge, one of the first things I would do is insist Media Health Warnings were put on newspapers and displayed before news programmes, a bit like you have on packets of cigarettes.* You know, the labels that tell you you might lose all your teeth or get lung disease if you consume their product. Instead, these would warn you about the possible risks of deception the news you’re about to read might provide.

‘If I ruled the world, every day would be the first day of spring’ sang Tony Bennett. OK so I’m not actually ‘ruling the world’, I’m just hypothetically exploring what I might do ‘If I was in charge’ for a day, but the song’s sentiment still applies. I would be delighted if Tony’s ruling could be true. I bloody love spring. It is without a doubt my favourite season. You can keep your increasingly Hellscaped hot summers. Autumn’s sense of loss, mulch and decay can go do one. And winter?

— 5 min read Assembly organised by Assemble at Conway Hall in 2025 - Photo by Marcus Decker I would replace service charges with residents’ assemblies and everyone would get a tenner to buy a neighbour something nice once a year… 0:00 /0:02 The following are instructive extracts from the Guild of Residents’ Champions Annual Manual, 2028 Edition: Preface Following the completion of Phase One* of the three year pilot scheme to replace service charges with Residents’ Assemblies, The Guild of...

One of the perks of the work we do is that I have the opportunity to travel around the UK meeting brilliant people putting in the hard yards to make the places they live better. Those who are working every day to support their neighbours, while running the community spaces where the magic of building a new world really happens.

Marsh Farm in Luton is a special place. Once the home of Andrew Tate, it also has earthy English magic and lore, with Waulud’s Bank, the ancient Neolithic monument adjacent to the estate, being the source of the River Lea. When you visit, you’re struck by the huge Bob Marley mural on the formerly derelict farmhouse, which the community group Marsh Farm Outreach renovated.

For five years, the volunteers behind Swell, a community movement in Portrush on the north Antrim coast, have handed out postcards at their festival with a single question printed on them: What is your wildest dream for Portrush? Hundreds of answers in, a pattern set. Over and over, people wrote that they wanted a community centre: Somewhere free. Somewhere open. A place that cost you nothing and asked nothing of you, where you could turn up, see a familiar face, and do something together.

About four years ago, in search of a hobby to keep me both fit and to interrupt my increasingly anxious mind, I took up martial arts. While other women my age were leaning into their maternal instincts, I was leaning into an urge to release some deeply suppressed rage at the world. Perhaps all those years of trying to make it better and feeling like we weren’t getting very far had altered something in me. Either way, I decided I wanted to learn, not just to defend myself, but to fight.

The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion Clare Farrell is working on a new Constructive Programme for the UK – you can follow progress on her Substack. It is inspired by Gandhi’s original constructive programme for Indian independence. Both constructive programmes are oriented around a spiritual grounding for practical revolution; both call for a flexibility of mind and heart to keep our humanity intact in this difficult work. I am lucky enough to work with Clare on the programme.

What does it really mean to be ‘out there’? If we were discussing someone’s tastes or proclivities we might describe their niche penchant for St Helenan philately’s ‘Extinct Seabirds Collection’ as somewhat ‘out there’. Or being ‘out there’ is a gesture to a broader, further horizon, a location perhaps unspecified, that carries the sense of possibilities in a world beyond the present time, space and constraints.