5 New Long Term Consumer Trends from Coronavirus

It is clear that the Coronavirus crisis, the lockdowns and the new sets of behaviours required to survive it have brought about a number of short term changes but, perhaps more importantly, Covid-19 will usher in a number of new, longer term trends. We believe that there are 5 major trends that will establish themselves as more permanent global shifts.

We should not forget that the massive societal adaption currently in process is profound for it is lasting, it is global and it has extreme structural economic consequences. We will have to adapt to another 12 – 18 months of social distancing across our societies and businesses while also accepting that a once in a century great depression has started and will take many years to work itself through.

How we adapt to these changes as consumers, as businesses and as politicians will prove to be a vital barometer of our likely success in the coming years.

Here are 5 New Long Term Consumer Trends from Coronavirus:

1. Healthier living – our attitude to food, exercise, wellbeing and the environment will be fundamentally altered by Coronavirus. A growing body of evidence, alongside a once in a lifetime lockdown experience, should give rise to a grand awakening of our combined consciousness around a more frugal, a more natural and a healthier existence. This, in turn, will accelerate the shift towards more sustainable and eco-friendly products and services and a greater need for in-home enhancements and experiences. Expect to see wider adoption of vegan diets, plant based cuisine, organic foods and drinks, eco-fashion, eco-tourism, eco-DIY, books on climate friendly behaviors and activities, greater focus on energy and health efficient homes and offices, less international travel and an accelerated shift to renewable energy and electric vehicles and tools. We should also expect to see a greater demand for nature based experiences, gardening in general, wildlife gardening, rewilding, vegetable gardens and foraging.

2. Homeworking – perhaps one of the biggest single economic behavior changes coming from the Coronavirus lockdowns has been the global adoption of home working. This is a trend that has been building for a decade or more but has now cemented itself as the new way for companies to organise themselves post Coronavirus. Every company has had to figure out how to do it and now that they have made the complex shift they will not want to give it up. Indeed, economic necessity will drive its further adoption particularly given the ensuing economic shock. Continued social distancing requirements post lockdown will force companies to redesign offices with fewer desks per square foot meaning fewer employees in the office and more working from home. Employees will also push for continued home working as they will have discovered how much time and stress was wasted on commuting. Home working is logical given the wider shift by businesses to move their organisation online and is a natural consequence of the trend towards knowledge based business and the outsourcing of manufacturing and distribution. After all, if you can serve your customers online why can’t you organise your workforce to work online as well?

3. eServices – as Coronavirus has accelerated the shift to ecommerce it will also create far greater demand for online home services. After all, if you can use a video and perhaps even a remote engineer on Zoom to explain to you how to install the new kitchen sink, or washing machine or simple plumbing fix and it is cheaper, then why not? Particularly as we will remain concerned about allowing tradespeople into our homes for some time after lockdown. We should also see a shift towards online plumbing services, simple electrical, gardening, DIY, car repair and more. Indeed this falls into a growing demand for wider automation across industries.

4. Online Sports & Culture – thanks to social distancing guidelines we will have spent a good portion of 2020 avoiding going to sports events, concerts, live performances and theatres. Instead we will have learnt to consume sports fixtures digitally possibly fused with gaming, watching live concerts on YouTube and enjoying theatre on Netflix. Indeed with the rollout of 5G more immersive, higher-definition digital experiences supported by a new generation of inbuilt and stand alone speakers will make consuming sports and culture from our living room or dining table more enjoyable than ever. Content creators, sports professionals and artists, like any product manufacturer, will have used the Coronavirus crisis as a trigger to shift more of their professional endeavours, content and communications online.

5. Digital Healthcare – for governments to continue to offer universal healthcare at scale but in a more financially sustainable way they will have to shift to digital healthcare. Coronavirus will show us the power of education and communications online using WhatsApp, Zoom or LinkedIn to deliver any kind of business, research or educational meeting. This has made it more than possible for the digital provision of basic healthcare so that doctors brick and mortar surgeries and hospitals can be reserved for a potentially higher number of more seriously ill patients and the future pandemics which are bound to hit us with greater frequency like severe weather events have become a part of our new reality. Indeed, there are a number of all digital healthcare platforms gaining traction across the western world. We should not forget that Covid-19 is just the latest in a regular series of public health crises we are dealing with as a consequence of global warming. Until we start tackling the climate crisis, sustainably removing carbon and other pollutants from our atmosphere while halting the destruction of key habitats for wildlife and natural plant life, we will have to get used to a steady stream of public health crises whether from pandemics, droughts, flooding, wildfires or industrial and urban pollution.

How industries and specific solutions are shaped to address the above 5 trends could have profound implications on our movement, privacy and civil liberties. The right balance, particularly with regard to civil liberties, will need to be maintained. Choosing the right politicians, policies and organisational leaders through this shift will be a greater focus of debate.

But there can be little doubt that the consumers, businesses and politicians that are the quickest and best at adapting to these changes will find the greatest success in the new world. New industries will be born and we should think hard about how we develop our skills so that we can work in the climate industries, eco-product manufacturing and eco-service delivery, healthier living industries, renewable energy and climate science, homeworking product manufacturing, design and consultancy services, digital home services, online professional services, online sports and entertainment and digital healthcare.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Are People Already Revolting over Coronavirus Lockdown?

I feel an undercurrent swirling way deep down in the bowels of democracy, a genuine shift in thinking when it comes to our western attitudes towards Covid-19. One of those shifts that are so grass-rooted that Presidents or Prime Ministers remain entirely oblivious to the emerging dissidence. You see, unlike most cabinet level politicians and health officials, I believe that the people in the US and Europe (still including the UK – I think) have moved on.

Yep, we’re cruising past the Corona-rabbit-in-headlight-frozen-to-the-floor-or-tv-or-bed phase and have started the next phase of getting on with life with Corona and have kinda stopped listening to the politicians bang on about curves and ventilators and PPE and lockdown or exit or new norms, second waves, great depressions, social distancing, social gatherings or just plain socially f***ed. We’ve been doing it all long enough to get used to it and for God’s sake its gotten sooooo boring.

Also, lets face it, even our crappy school grade maths skills mean that we, the lowly people, have figured out that the pandemic bell like curve thingy we get served up daily like an upside down bowl of porridge means some time in June we’re gonna start going back to work, school, shops and maybe even the post Corona lockdown holy grail to end all holy grails which is a real friggin bottle of real friggin Corona in a real friggin pub. And for the record I have never in the past said pub lock in when I meant lockdown. Honest.

I just don’t think that we Corona-care as much anymore. We’ve become immune, not yet to Corona, but immune to the endless politico ramblings and stats and rules and generally depressing shit we get served day in and day out on every TV channel, newspaper, website and ad. Yep, we’ve finally become Corona tone deaf and started to figure out our own exit strategies cos if we wait for governments to come up with a real one we’ll be beyond broke and when you’re beyond broke who gives a shit about rules or ramblings or even Corona itself.

Mostly I see it on the roads, in the streets, shops and under-rumblings. I hear it from Dave-the-boss-man at Tesco every frigging week emailing me with how the entire goddamned nation’s back shopping with him cos he’s really cracked this Corona shop-till-you-drop in-store thingy and if you have Corona dropped then no problemo cos he’ll deliver to your door now he’s energiza bunny like gone and gotten a gazillion more delivery slots per minute than UK wide testing kits. Mind you, that’s kind of a low bar.

I also hear it from Tim-I’m-a-pubaholic-Weatherspoons telling us that his pubs will be open from June. And let’s face it no one’s gonna dare disagree with Tim cos he’s got the cheapest beer in town and drinks way too regularly with that other kinda scary guy called Far-arse. But mostly I see it in the divine Corona boredom now emanating from the Donnie and Bozzer show signalling that we really can start getting on with our lives alongside Corona cos they ain’t gonna figure it out for us mostly because they just wanna get back to Mar-a-lago or Chequers or banging other dollies. So, time to get on and off and get up-from-the-couch and start planning our post Corona, avec Corona June existence. And if our eminent Anglo Saxon leaders have confused you to the point of rigor mortis about what to do next just keep it simple and book a one way trip to New Zealand. Cos Jacinda really has got it all figured out.

See ya!

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

The Next New Norm – The Secret to Not Getting ClimateF***ed

Now that we’re used to the Corona in our lives, the lockdown loonies, Great Depression 2.0 and the fact that Kim Jong Ding-dong is dead we thought we should try to look to the next new norm. You know, the one where we start to exit lockdowns (Brits exempt) and rediscover the simple joys of visiting a park without getting arrested, grabbing a coffee at Starbucks reminding us that it’s way cheaper at home and parking the teens at the beach to accidentally forget to pick them up for a week. Let’s not, though, underestimate the importance of survival skills.

The smarty pants among us will be figuring out which of the last ‘new norms’ (Christ I’m sounding like a politician) will become permanent changes cos if they don’t we’ll all get mothered by pandemic 2.0 just lurking round the corner called ClimateF***ed. And I don’t know about you but I’ve kinda had enough of lockdown 1.0 so I’m really not into an even longer, more invasive lockdown 2.0 which by its very nature will be too late so all our proverbial little fingers in the damn will, of course, do absolutely sod all to delay the inevitability of getting well and truly ClimateF***ed.

So here are the 5 key elements to ‘The Next New Norm – the Secret to not getting ClimateF***ed’:

1. Healthier living – der yeah! You see lockdown loonies gave us material monsters the chance to step back, breathe in the polluted air from our shitty shoebox apartments and realise that there had to be something more to life and Levi’s and the Big Mac. Well, OK, maybe not the Big Mac. We’ve reconciled our lowly consciousnesses to the fact that we’re gonna have to trade in some old crappy behaviours to keep, well, living. And we’ve had the once in a generation opportunity to learn to appreciate walks in the park so long as we don’t dawdle, making our own food cos there’s no point waiting for Dave from Tesco to start stocking pasta again and even enjoying our jungle of a garden because it’s better to hang out there than get Corona on the street. Going forward we’ll travel less mostly because we’ll all be broke, we’ll want less pollution cos they’ll prove that pollution feeds Corona (not the beer) and Donnie and Bozzer will figure out that their only chance of survival beyond the botched Corona thing will be to pin their entire machine and slogan making team on the next hot trend cos more than anyone they don’t want to get caught behind yet again and get politically ClimateF***ed. Plus all those self help and yoga stretch pants books that went straight in one ear and out the other will suddenly make the smallest amount of sense so we’ll all succumb to the healthier living, deep breathing, all-avocado cool aid.

2. Home Working – yep, not because we all loved it. But because our tight ass bosses spent all that money on Zoom licenses to get through lockdown loonies and won’t want to see them to go to waste. So, bye bye company car, meetings for gossip in the hang out room, sweet company lunches and trips abroad or anything whatsoever that broke the endless monotony of working at this dump called workplace. But, hello Dave boy Attenborough who’s gonna remind us 24 hours a day that our new found zero travel life has cut emissions to the point where we just saved another rhino. But, hey, their wellbeing comes first in this green new deal, next new norm.

3. eServices – cos we all figured out that watching a YouTube video on how to fix the kitchen sink was a frig load cheaper and easier than trying to persuade a plumber to come rip us off, give us Corona and not fix the thing properly so he gets to do it all over again in a few weeks time.

4. Online Sports and Culture – let’s face it the only thing more amusing than Live Aid was watching Lady Gaga trying to coerse a bunch of geriatric rockers to rock it somewhat out of tune from their homes/gardens/the morgue. Beyond that, pretty soon PlayStation and Xbox will figure out that lockdown loonies taught us all to play soccer way better than those slightly spoilt, entirely analogue pro footballers so they’ll make the next set of games so friggin realistic with the AI thingy that we won’t need the offline players anymore making the Xbox sub a must have and the season ticket a must dump. Plus who wants to sit with a gazillion other sweaty, drunk people in a stadium or theatre or anyplace whatsoever only to get spat on, puked over, hot dogged or just to catch the Corona from them.

5. Virtual Healthcare – see 3. and the whole plumber thing. Plus, we’ll have had enough Corona hospital time to last many a lifetime and every government will have gone broke trying to (not) fix the Corona thing. So we’ll have to figure out DIY health. And pretty soon 3D printing will get us our stay at home pill dispenser, ventilator, vaccine and robot care giver which will prove more than handy given the Great Depression 2.0 meant we sold our car. At least the car bit will make Dave boy Attenborough happy which seems to be the game with this climate solving thing – right?

Christ, I think I’ll just go plant up a wildflower meadow.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Hope in the Time of Coronavirus

Hope in the time of Coronavirus has been in short supply. Lockdown loonies combined with the incessant, daily pandemic curve-watching mixed up with our precondition of job loss terror has unleashed a perfect storm for our fragile souls. And this mega storm has created a national wellbeing crisis. One that needs a different kind of leadership – a leadership of hope.

You see, when we’re all feeling a little depressed we need small, incremental green shoots, particularly as we’re heading towards the second half of lockdown loonies. Cos with the benefit of hindsight it seems that around four weeks is our limit before lockdownitis truly sets in. The walls start closing in, the routine starts to feel a little, well, routine-like and we start reliving weird apocalyptic zombie movies in our nightly dreams that are just starting to feel a little too, like, possible. Enough I hear you shout! Time to snap out of it! Time to start thinking differently, to pick ourselves up, to shake off those lockdown blues. Time to stop staring at endless news conferences in the hope that, well, there might just be the vaguest amount of hope. Time to think about a new tomorrow, a better tomorrow and most important of all time to get back to McDonald’s.

You see, we can put up with the endless negative news cycles and the stay at home teens firing up testosterone like it was a chain saw in our left ear. We can handle Donnie and Bozzer banging on and off – mostly off. One being Mr time off and the other just off the rocker. We can take the military style operation of a weekly shop or drive to pick up gas or goddamned exercise in dodging everyone else to perform the perfect social distancing dance in a napkin sized so called community park with not a lot of the community bit left given the gestapo gangs of do gooders taking pics of us getting one inch too close to other earthly beings while dodging rabied dogs snarling at our proverbial heels. We can even take the new roadblock vigilantes straight out of the cast of Hot Fuzz that keep us from going too far to take a walk or jog or simply to go have sex in a forest. Doesn’t everyone do that? And talking about Hot Fuzz, have you met our local villagers? But while we can take all of this, we cannot, cannot, cannot take another friggin second without our Big Mac and fries.

Where’s the leadership of hope from Mickey D? They just keep telling us not yet. Not yet. What the f*** is not yet! Endlessly bombarding us with this horrifically over used Corona statement ‘not yet’ doesn’t solve a goddamned thing. Just cos every politician uses it doesn’t make it right. And they only us ‘not yet’ cos it’s French for I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in my government cos it’s such a friggin crap shoot of chaos right now that ‘not yet’ is as good a statement as your gonna get from me and in any case who thought getting elected meant we had to make decisions in the first place. And btw ‘not yet’ is only as overused as every goddamned Coronavirus statement from EVERY single venue or hotel or attraction or National Trust joint starting with ‘It is with a heavy heart that we have to close for now…’ What the f***, did they all just cut and paste the same friggin statement. They pay the bosses of these joints like cash went out of fashion (which it will soon but that’s another matter) and the closest they can get to writing a goddamned customer statement on the front of their website is a cut and f*** you paste.

But, getting back to the immediate Mickey D issue, how friggin long does it take to do socially distanced drive through or take out or just goddamned click and collect. You see I’m willing to let any politician we can still remember the name of, given Donnie and Bozzer hog EVERY airwave like a Corona virus on a pollution particle, take every last shred of rights from me but I’m not prepared to go another day without my McDonald’s. I mean there has to be some kind of limit right? There has to be a line – and that line could even extend to a friggin queue across London just to be able to exercise my inalienable right to chew on shit from Mickey D.

And that, in the end, is why we need a new kind of leadership. A leadership of hope. The thing that has gotten clearer and clearer from this pandemic is that the old fashioned Putin style, populist, white male, autocratic leader type that thrives off fear and flag and slightly strange free press semantics where the truth is as popular as the Coronavirus, is dead. And when I say dead I don’t just mean Kim Jon Ding-dong, I mean ALL of these old style leaders in government, in corporates and in life. And I guess to wrap this all up in a McWrapper what I’m really trying to say is that we should invest our time not just in finding a virus for this little Corona fella but also on a major Jacinda cloning programme so we can get Arderns running every government and corporate and mostly running McDonald’s. You see, if Jacinda was running things right now, I’d be sitting down at my local Mickey D swigging a chocolate shake soaking up a good old fashioned burger and fries while listening to Jacinda on McTV telling me that everything was going to be just fine. And I wouldn’t need to believe a goddamned word she said cos it wouldn’t matter two hoots of a Corona infected bat so long as I could hang out at my kinda heaven – Mickey D heaven.

McNewNorm really can be as simple as that.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

The Bad and the Ugly of Covid-19

Having previously covered the hero’s of the Coronavirus it’s time to examine the villains. There are, of course, far too many to mention and we apologise in advance if we’ve missed you out – it won’t be for want of trying. But we, like so many others, have just skeleton staff (literally) for now.

First up, it would be entirely remiss not to mention the little fella himself. No, not Danny de Vito, I’m talking about Corona. Like all good villains you have multiple personalities and names like Corona, Coronavirus, Covid, Covid-19, invisible enemy and fucking pain up the arse virus. You, dark Corona villain, can stealth it like the best of those bombers, you can spread like Nutella and you don’t need to waste money on fast fashion – you’re friggin invisible. You can teleport across time and space and you’re really hard to track or maybe that’s just a Chinese thing. You’ve gotten inside a bat, a cute little pangolin and countless ladies proving you can shake it up like the best James Bond. You get Prime Ministers so scared they hide for weeks or at least until dozzer come-on-me’s better, you get Donnie to show up for work most days and stay off the golf course for more than five minutes at a time. You’ve quietened Kim Jong Ding-dong, Jose Mourinho and the entire cast of the Lion King but apparently not the Pope, Andrea Bocelli or Dave the incessant, pain up the frigging rear end Tesco boss who keeps emailing me telling me how goddamned smarty pants and heroic he is just for delivering food. Obviously not that smart cos he keeps emailing folk who wouldn’t shop at his over-processed food joint even if Corona made it the last food joint on this scorched earth. Mind you with climate chaos crashing down on us maybe…

But enough about the invisible guy let’s focus on the ones he’s brought out of hiding just to remind us that a good ol crisis can bring out the best of so many but the worse from a terrifying few. So let’s celebrate the few. The good news is we don’t have to go much further than Donnie, Bozzer or Bols-anus-aros to see what bad really looks like and they remind us every single remorseless day across any frggin media we wish we could hide from. But, it seems, they also went and inspired a whole cast of wannabes. Like the Turkish dudes who promised 400,000 hospital gowns to the really desperate muppets in Westminster only to deliver 4 or was it 40,000 who’s counting… Well, maybe the same loonies who bought a gazillion antibody tests that couldn’t antibody test their way out of an infected rat. Then there’s the vacuum cleaner guy who loved the idea of an independent UK so much he moved his entire company to Singapore presumably cos he had some friggin scientific insight into the fact that the UK would be about as good at prepping for Corona as a teenage misfit prepping for GCSE’s only to find out that Singapore recycles Corona infection peaks like a high speed wash cycle. But, maybe he could reinvent himself with the world’s first Dyson Corona vacuum. Just shove this baby down your throat, press the green button and it’s guaranteed to suck Corona right out of you or you get your money back or a free dose of hydroxychloroquine or a sun ray down your gullett or just plain disinfectant (thanks again Donnie).

Let’s not though forget to mention the guys who made the latest James Bond movie and kicked the release date out a year proving they’re not only the greediest bastards on the planet but also the dumbest – I mean just think of all the gazillions of Netflix dollars they could have made while we watched it over and over and over. I mean what better cure for Corona-lockdown-beat-me-over-the-head-with-boredom-itis than the latest Bond release on constant Sky store loop. Mind you, talking of dumb schmucks how about this Georgia governor Kemp who thought that a Corona infection curve going up was a good thing and lifted the lockdown right as their infections were spiralling like a football straight out of Tom Bradys palm. Dude, curve up equals not good Corona spread – curve down better. Easy to remember as it’s the opposite of the effect from your Viagra pills.

But, last of all, I would like to reserve a special thank you to Xi Ping Pong for not listening to that nice young doctor dude who spilled the beans on Corona way back when and could have stopped this whole damned Corona thing in its infant tracks while, at the same time, making sure that at the very least we got to see James Bond on the big screen which is our goddamned divine inalienable democratic right. And while you might not be that into the whole rights thing we are – or at least we are when it comes to James. Got it!

I think I’ll go watch Tiger King again.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

An Exit Strategy for the Climate Change Crisis

Seeing as no one in their right mind would wish for another government lockdown this is probably the right time to produce an exit strategy for the climate change crisis so that we can solve this more deadly event ahead of time and before the next, possibly permanent lockdown. Also, today is world Earth Day.

The good news is that if enough of us follow this simple 10 step exit strategy WE CAN reverse global warming while improving our lives, our health and wellbeing, our wildlife and this planet – but most importantly we, the human race, will also get to survive.

I have tried to keep this 10 step exit strategy as simple and achievable as possible. Each step is backed by science and each one has been selected to make the biggest difference possible to reducing global warming. None of these steps is hard for any of us to do. Over the coming weeks and months I will be writing more in depth about each of the 10 steps so that we can better understand why they are so critical and how, specifically, we can make them happen. I will also try to highlight some of the companies and government organisations that are leading the way on climate change solutions.

Myself, my family and my businesses have adopted each of the 10 steps and they work. We have also created a centre of excellence for the 10 steps just outside Exeter in the UK’s southwest. Visit us at Devon Sculpture Park when lockdown is over or join us today at DSP Online.

So here’s the ’10 Step Exit Strategy for Solving the Climate Change Crisis’:

1. Eliminate waste – eliminate all unnecessary waste with the ultimate goal being zero waste. It includes food waste, plastics and energy waste. This means shopping more diligently and frugally, eating everything you buy and getting better at freezing, composting wasted food, recycling metals, clothing and other materials and doing everything you can to remove household energy waste including heavier curtains over windows, all LED lighting and improved insulation.

2. Shift to a plant based diet – move to a plant based diet and at a minimum try to become a flexitarian eating meat just once or twice a week. Make your own kitchen garden so that you can eat your home produced fruit, vegetables and herbs. It’s more fun, convenient and reduces your travel emission footprint. Buy locally sourced food and pasture fed livestock.

3. Use renewable energy – switch to renewable energy sources including electric, solar, wind and possibly biomass boilers. In the short term maximise electric heating, water and cookers plus outdoor solar lights then start looking into solar panels or roof tiles and mini-wind turbines for your garden.

4. Shop differently – how we shop and what we shop for dictates how products and services are designed. By shopping differently we dictate whether manufacturers and service providers adapt their offerings to become more environmentally friendly. So insist on eco-friendly products and services whether it’s eco-friendly clothes, shoes, food (whether in shops or restaurants), contractors and repair services. There are already plenty of them. For example insist on a gardening service that uses rewilding gardening techniques and electric gardening tools.

5. Rewilding your garden – rewild your garden, terrace, courtyard, verges and more. Lobby your school, neighbours, churchyard, office green spaces, commons and local parks to rewild their green spaces. Learn about wildlife gardening techniques.

6. Change your approach to travel and transport – try and travel less after lockdown. Do you really need to shop for food more than once a week in the car. Try to walk or cycle to the local shops, to work or school. Home work as much as you can while insisting on virtual meetings wherever possible. When you change your car buy an electric vehicle or an electric hybrid at a minimum. Try to reduce flying for leisure to just one flight a year and holiday locally and whenever possible at eco-resorts.

7. Elect environmentally responsible politicians – choose politicians and leaders in general that make solving the climate crisis their number one priority. There is no longer any excuse for any government, business or farm not having a clear, deliverable net zero carbon plan to be achieved by 2030. Hitting zero carbon by 2040 could be too late.

8. Be more frugal and balanced in your life – consume less, exercise more, spend time in nature, read more, spend more quality time with family, friends and in your local community. Make things that are eco-friendly whether it’s DIY, hobbies, projects, community initiatives or the arts.

9. Work for environmentally friendly companies – you get to choose who you work for so choose companies that have clear, short term net zero carbon plans and let you work from home unless you’re in walking or cycling distance of the office. Push them to provide more environmentally friendly products and services, workplaces, warehousing and logistics. Get them to rewild any of their green spaces.

10. Stay healthy and adapt your lifestyle – with Coronavirus lockdown we have a unique opportunity to change the way we live and work. We are already forced to do many of the things required to reduce global warming and to solve the climate crisis. We have seen a massive reduction in global emissions. So just keep doing much of what you’re doing but in a more sustainable way. And if you go beyond this and become a more rounded pro-environment citizen you will not only do your bit to save the planet but you will also develop skills and experiences that could qualify you for the next massive global industry – the climate solution industry.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Coronavirus

Sticking with the slightly biblical theme of yesterday’s post I thought that today we should delve a little deeper into who exactly are the saints and the sinners of Covid-19.

Let’s start with the easy one – the saints: naturally the list includes anyone working for any healthcare service anywhere in the world with a big shout out for Kim Jong-ding-dongs poor about to be decapitated physicians, but also care givers (particularly elderly care providers in the thick of it), delivery people, supermarket staff and generally anyone supporting us through lockdown lock-me-up-and-throw-the-key-away-hell-after-all-have-you-met-my-teens? Added to this list should be Milan’s town planner who’s just figured out that pedestrianising the city is the best way to keep Italian drivers off the streets and keep everyone else alive. And a last saintly hat tip goes to Netflix for bringing us ‘Tiger King’ cos we naively thought that shit couldn’t get weirder than this Corona thing!

But, that’s the obvious list. And the one we should all keep raving about and shouting or clapping or singing or walking round and round the garden on a zimmer frame for or climb endless Everest like stairs or Christ even binge watch the Kardashians for. You see, while politicians may have dawdled/dragged their proverbials/hid in the nice house yet somehow paraded their shiz all over prime-time press conferences the saintly ones have been out there holding us all together. You know actually doing stuff called work and getting us what we need to get through lockdown-looneys. And the great irony is, now we’re stuck at home in gracious perpetuity (with the teens), we’d bight off any of their left feet or arm or pretty much any limb just to be able to go back to work. Yes, the same work we’ve been bitchin’ and moaning about for the last God knows how long suddenly seems as attractive as a simple back massage from Pamela Anderson. The same bosses we’ve been whining about and trying to undermine at every turn now seem almost, well, saintly. Particularly when those bosses are politicians who seem to think its OK for them to go back to work but that we still can’t cos we haven’t figured out how to work Zoom.

But there are also unsung hero’s (obviously not Andrea Bocelli) and we’d (not weed) like to shout them out. There’s the Pope who wears a weird robe thingy while walking the empty streets of Rome with some shady looking dudes in black suits stalking him as he tirelessly searches the alleyways for his flock cos they haven’t shown up at St Peters Square the last few Sundays. There’s Mick Jagger who gets the prize for shutting himself in a pint sized room for that online concert to make himself look bigger and presumably poorer to provide a cover for the fact that he pays Charlie Watts so little he can’t even afford a drum kit and also for the fact that he’s the only man on earth smaller than Tom Cruise. There’s Mike Pence for putting up with Donnie and there’s anyone working with Pence for putting up with him and there’s obviously the entire British population for putting up with you know who.

There’s CNN’s Chris Cuomo for getting Covid-19 and being forced to stay on air while his dad gets it up the rear from Donnie and there’s all of us for having to watch their kinda weird English finance news presenter dude bang on about hoping we all have a ‘profitable hour’! A f****** ‘profitable hour’ tard, how in pandemic hell are we supposed to have ANY ‘profitable hour’ when we’re all bankrupt or doled up or paying others to take our oil cos we lost the manual that explained how to switch the goddamned well off or just plain friggin broke thanks to this Corona thing which, seemingly, he’s the last dunce on the planet to think is not a pandemic but a friggin Mexican beer. Christ, does he watch his own news? Maybe he finds himself as annoying as the rest of us and dozes off when he’s on.

There’s my plumber who’s gotta deserve a shout out in the vain hope that he might show up this decade once we’re set free and hopefully won’t hit me up the ass with partial amber friggin traffic light ‘special’ lockdown-looney pricing. Then there’s my mother, who let’s face it, is the only person out there that actually bothers to read this crap. Love you mum. But, last of all, there’s me. Yep, me. For doing nothing more than putting up with the teens. You see, when they had to go to school for real they could get themselves up just fine. Now you know who has to get them up for ‘school’ every friggin day which you would have thought has gotten easier given their commute is exactly five steps past the kitchen which they raid on the way and all they have to do all day is to sit on the couch and pretend to listen to some poor teacher politely bang on to them online while instead they watch TV, do their nails, fall asleep, raid the fridge a little more, social media meme each other and scream the moment I ask them to do anything what so friggin ever as all of a sudden they miraculously (yes Francis they can do it too) have way too much school stuff on one screen when they’re actually watching Kim, and I don’t mean Kim Jong-ding-dong. Then, of course, when it comes to them having dinner or exercise or anything that doesn’t involve them lying on the couch pretending to be at school they just shout out about how school online means it runs all day and night and seven days a week and could we please just keep bringing the food and drinks so they can keep 100% focused on their studies really, honest, promise. And yet, somehow, I can only hear the odd bit of teacher coming out of the room that they keep tightly locked like a government backed loan, but really all I friggin hear ALL day is Kim or Kylie or Bieber-still-with-a-baby-face-no-matter-how-hard-he-tries-to-be, well, hard or friggin Billie Eilish I-got-my-hair-stuck-in-the-paint-machine and the entire goddamned cast of Glee.

And seeing as that list took a while/my sanity I guess I’m gonna go put my feet up with the teens and you’ll have to read my next post for the list of Coronavirus bad and uglies.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Life after Covid-19 and a New Set of Commandments

I know it’s hard to imagine a life after Coronavirus, particularly if you’re living in one of those countries still in the early phases of lockdown with a mirage of an exit plan and a leader in exile. But there has to be life after Coronavirus a little like there had to be life after Napoleon, the great depression, WW2, the Vietnam war, the Cuban missile crisis and even life after Ted Bundy.

But what will life look like after we sweep away this disease? And, while we’re at it, surely we have to ask ourselves more celestially vital questions like how much of the next reality TV dystopian norm will feature the Kardashians? Everyone talks about unprecedented times or maybe it’s just politician cover-my-back-end-lingo or perhaps this time round we will get a chance to reboot the planet and answer the biggest, biggest question of all (yes, even bigger than the Kardashians) which is – do we restart later this year exactly where we started off? (Christ another four years of the Donnie and Bozzer show). Or do we start back in a different way? Do we learn our collective lessons and change course? A timely question given this week, Wednesday to be precise, is Earth Day.

You see we keep telling ourselves that Coronavirus is the biggest public health crisis in modern times. But, what if it’s not? What if there’s an even larger public health crisis just around the corner and the next one’s the real deal? What if David Attenborough (for President – you heard it here first) and every single friggin climate scientist on this entire goddamned planet is actually right and Donnie, Marie and friggin tweedle dum(b) are wrong and the Climate virus will make the Corona virus look like a nano drop in the proverbial Mexican bottled beer. What if Covid-19 is just a dress rehearsal for the real pandemic, nature’s back to ice-age next extinction, that when it unleashes its full fury on us in a decade or two means we ALL get wiped?? You know, the bye bye human race kinda wiped.

Or, what if we use Earth Day to make a new list of commandments. The I don’t want to find out that Donnie/Bozzer/Bolso-I’m-a-nut-naro are actually completely full of, well, nothing and we should have listened to Dave boy Attenborough and ALL those thousands and thousands and thousands of climate scientists who actually know their shit kinda ten commandments. And in anycase, seeing as we all have a bit more time on our hands, you could logically argue that the ten commendments should be up for a bit of a refresh.

Here are the new revised Ten Commandments (2.0):

1. Thou shalt not create any unnecessary waste including food waste, plastic waste, clothing waste, energy waste or crap tv.

2. Thou shalt listen to Elon Musk at all times and driveth electric cars and not just hybrids and moveth to electric heating and renewable energy sources for all thine energy needs saying a collective goodbye to the multi-headed hydras reminiscent of mine devileth nemesis nameth of the SaudiAramco, Rosneft, PteroChina, ExxonMobil, Shell and BP.

3. Thou shalt anointeth leaders and politicians who cometh from more humble loins and knoweth more about facts and telling of the truth and therefore of the persuasion of the scientists or engineers, doctors or environmentalists and NOT thine swine lawyers or accountants, pr people or real estate agents. And should it pleaseth thou tryeth to avoideth thine somewhat less than normal Kardashians. The justeth (not Bieber) new leaders shall putteth thine environment first and solveth the climate crisis straighteth away before any other of the priorities or BREXITeth distractions and they shalt always investeth in the universaleth healthcare systems and research.

4. Thou shalt eat a plant based diet and at a minimum becometh flexitarians partaking of the meat only once or twice per week. Thou shalt try to grow as much of thine vegetables as possible or buyeth locally so limiting the transportation of thine food.

5. Thou shalt fly in the sky by the skyplane only once or twiceth per annum and though shalt support local tourism and particularly eco tourism. Leaveth thine beaches for thine divine turtles, thine forests for the tigers and thine wetlands for thine birds.

6. Thou shalt supporteth slow fashion only and buyeth of thine clothes just twiceth per annum making sure to buyeth of apparel that are sourced ethically and useth sustainable and natural materials that are designeth to lasteth many years. Be careful of the mirage of the undivine celeb endorsement or the advertising agency web of the mumbo jumbo.

7. Thou shalt only worketh for companies that have cleareth and detaileth carbon neutral policies and that alloweth all their workers either to worketh from the home or to traveleth to the physical workplace either on the foot or the bicycle. Only worketh with government organisations and political parties that will not faileth to achieveth carbon neutral by 2030 and haveth clear natural capital economic policies.

8. Thou shalt rewild thy gardens, parks, commons and farms. Thou shalt not throweth the rocks or spears at thy birds in the sky in particular the pheasant, woodcock or thine grouse. Though shalt ban the trade of thine exotic animals and thou shalt closeth off of all wild animal markets and the hunting of thine endangered species or removal of the holy tusks.

9. Thou shalt not harm thy neighbour unless they cuteth down trees, plougheth up fields, destroyeth the hedgerows, cuteth the wild grass unnecessarily, useth of the fake grass or plants, overgrazeth the sheep, cow or pig, wear fast fashion, adorneth their garbage bins with thine single use plastics or eateth at McDonald’s.

10. Though shalt liveth a more kind and generous life, finding thine balance of thine life, enjoying the simpler of the pleasures including helping in thine community, enjoying more idle time witheth thine family and enjoying time in the rewilded nature even with thine (holy) wine. Though shalt listen to thine Lord but not those in the House of the Lord(s) that is full of the blashphemer or the stone slinger unto the glass house or thine unelected chamber. Thou should turneth the cheek and yeteth payeth greater attention to thine health, hospitals, religion and finding of the calm and balanced way. Havith faith that if thine follows theseth commendments that thine future shall be rosy.

Or ignore the above and look forward to Corona 2.0 and a Fort Knox like lockdown that even friggin Houdini himself would never find an exit from. Your choice.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Climate Change and Coronavirus

The problem with Climate Change is Coronavirus and the problem with Coronavirus is Climate Change. Go figure. And I promise I’m not trying to confuse you – we get enough of that from our elected compadres (see previous post) so no desire here to continue to screw the pooch/muddy the (polluted) waters/sound like a politician.

The sad reality is that our continuous erosion of vital environmental ecosystems by endless deforestation, expansion of industrial scale agriculture and the forced inhabitation of what probably should be protected forests, coastal areas and wetlands has contributed big time to climate change which in turn has kicked us back up the ass by contributing big time to Covid-19 which has given me the chance to prove that I too can talk smarty pant environmental mumbo like the best of them.

You see poorer farmers in less developed countries have generally been shoved off their small holdings by big agriculture which has forced them to move to cheaper, wilder environmentally sound foresty kinda places where one of the few ways they can make cash (other than flashing their you know what’s on Zoom) is by hunting down some pretty weird creatures to pay for the way too many bills they accumulated thanks to big agro taking the rug from under their paddy field.

This eco migration led one of them to a place where some poor little bat (don’t blame him) gave a big ol’ Corona bug to some cute little armadillo looking thing called a pangolin (don’t blame her) who was then caught by said impoverished ex-smallholder and sold to some not so cute live animal market in you know where. Anyhoo, this sorry, infected pangolin was tout suite bought up by some equally cute little kid who wanted it as a live action stuffed toy or maybe it was bought by some super hungry person who just wanted to eat it. And they’d need to be super hungry cos have you seen the scaly little thing? (NOT the kid) And not exactly top of Michel Roux’s menu. The rest as they say is Corona history. So the next time you’re out trash talking scaly little wild animals think how much this dudes done to change the course of history versus what maybe any of us have done – obviously other than God or Elvis or the guy who invented the Big Mac.

But the reality is that this poor little pangolin who probably sits in some even poorer dudes belly by now, if not she sits right at the top of the U.S.’s most wanted list along with the guy who invented ISIS, may just be the first step in nature’s combined boot back up the ass to us for having decimated nature’s ability to absorb all the gargantuan amounts of CO2 and other noxious gases we pump out while simultaneously destroying nature’s habitats to the point where we’ve killed enough animals to take us straight to the next ice age and back. And all this while we nuke plant life and insects who by the friggin way need each other but apparently nothing like as much as we need them cos without insects and plants we stop the flow of another (non Corona) invisible thingy called oxygen which means we just stop breathing.

So, we may survive this Corona blast from a rewilded past but that won’t matter while we keep raping the planet cos there’s a lot more bat’s and pangolins out there and we seem to have pissed nature off to the point that the next boot back us might just lead to a reverse big bang sucking us into some nano-sized black hole to hell and (no going) back.

The other problem with Coronavirus (sorry) is that right at the point that the airwaves were finally starting to focus on climate change they’ve gotten all bunged up with the Corona meaning that there is a risk Coronavirus might just stick it to climate change as well as all of us. Stay with me. You see Coronavirus doesn’t just attack our bodies and health systems but it also reenforces our politicians innate inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time (see Brexit) while attacking our economic arteries to the point where no one’s gonna have any money left to fix the climate thingy that gave us Tesla, Virgin Galactic and this damned pandemic in the first place.

And while all this eco tripping doomsday soothsaying just makes me want to go to the pub, Corona/climate change/one little bat and one very cute little pangolin put paid to that too. Christ.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

Politics in the Time of Coronavirus

Politics is pretty painful at the best of times – as example the U.S. has you know who, the WHO (not the band) now also knows what it’s like to have you know who, the UK had the EU now it has the other you know who, France had Macron now has dudes in yellow jerseys, Italy never knows who the frig they have and Spain has, er, Ibiza. Don’t even get me started on what Russia or China have. But, even in the best of times there ain’t now’t so queer as politics.

Then again there’s nothing like a good pandemic to take it to a whole new level. And when I say new level I mean it’s like turning your gigantic rocket like speaker up to supersonic super-woof to the point where your ears blast right out of your head as now we have to listen to the truth serum masters of ultimate power bang on incessantly, hour after hour after 24 hour, day in day out. Frig, they make the Kardashians look like Mormons. You can’t move for getting streamed yet another daily press briefing about the newest politico BS mumbo jumbo that is ‘fact first and led by science’. Led by fact and science my left nut. These briefings are about as led by science as McDonald’s is led by Weight Watchers.

You know facts are a bit wobbly when the one FACT we do know is that we have about as many testing kits in the West as we have honest politicians. So how in the world we’re supposed to believe the Corona infected number God himself knows. In fact, it seems the daily stat for people infected with Covid-19 should be renamed the daily number of test kits we actually have that worked versus the fictional level we friggin dream we had. It seems even the number of deaths is not entirely accurate mind you ask any number of expert tyrannical despots how easy it is to bend that little reality.

But, then again, who needs fiction any more – we’re living it! I kinda feel for Matt Damon and the really expensive cast of ‘Contagion’ I mean they genuinely thought they were onto something. Then along came Corona and their supposed movie blockbuster looks, well, a bit less popular. And given we’re all finally living in the global Truman Show it could well mean that the best thing we can do right now is to look to the cast of either movie to step up and run our countries – I mean we can’t really ignore the fact that they have actually gotten through this weird shit before. And the one thing all our current politicians keep telling us is they ain’t seen nothing like this (friggin mess) before. Now that’s reassuring. Mind you as reassuring as their lockdown exit plans? Donald’s entire plan comes down to a date – May 1st. And, well, that’s actually it. A date. But he keeps telling us it’s a plan. I hate to say it Donnie but that’s not really what a plan looks like that’s just three letters and a number! Boris is at least honest enough about not having a plan which is apparently because he no longer believes in plans, after all look where his plan not to have kids out of wedlock got him.

And what would it look like if Matt Damon was actually running the UK? Well, he’s clearly quite Jason Bourne fit and having had me at fit he obviously gets my vote. So what about Jim Carrey for President of the USA? Well given his name isn’t Donal Trump then that’s an easy one too. Then again, according to the latest media ‘fact first’ (my right nut this time) it seems the only leaders getting it right just now are women. So presumably that means that if a Kiwi nurse can fix Boris (and we oh so graciously let her work here) then in the same vein we could let Jacinda run Westminster with the added benefit that a job swap the other end of the world seems like a pretty safe spot for Boris right now.

The other bit I really don’t get is given that we’re all actually living in the movie set of ‘Contagion’ you would have thought that the politicians would have it nailed by now. I mean it’s ALL fiction dudes so you don’t even need to pretend to tell the truth cos, let’s face it, we don’t go to the movies to get a dose of reality – we go to the movies to get as far away from that one as NASA can extra-terrestrially take us. So politicos this could be one of those once in a lifetime moments you’ve been waiting for pretty much all your career when you get ti legit spin it like there’s no spin class like tomorrow.

Oh………. you already are. Oh, shit.

In that case where’s Barack Obama when you need him? Christ (he) just Easter resurrected on my stream endorsing Joe Biden meaning Joe will get EVERY vote like ANYWHERE. Perhaps even less surprising given Joe looks a bit like Matt Damon a few years down the road which finally lays claim to the fact that one day we’ll all wake up and realise that this is just one big Contagion/Truman dream and the only real nightmare we can’t ever frggin wake up from is, yep, you guessed it the Donnie and Boris show. Sorry.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.