You might remember that we’ve been making a bit of an effort to reduce our energy use at home this year - following on from a couple of years working towards getting rid of our car.

The idea has been to try to do small things that, together, might add up to a saving of around 10% in terms of energy use.

How have we been getting on?  One of the main – and most useful – things we’ve done is simple – we’ve taken weekly meter readings.  And here, courtesy of imeasure, is a graph showing our energy usage over the last few months  (click on the graph to see it in more detail)

It’s still early days, but I think it’s fair to say that you can see a small, steady decline in our electricity usage.  It tended to be around 100kWh per week in the first few months, and it’s dropped below that since the end of January.

The week when it looks like we used no electricity is a statistical blip – the meter got replaced and that messed up my stats.

Gas use is a bit harder to comment on – I think the changes in usage have more to do with the weather than with any particular change in our behaviour  as most of the usage is for the central heating.  But it’ll be interesting to keep an eye on that over time – and compare next winter with this one.  (The week when the meter reading was close to zero was the week the central heating broke – and we had to buy a new boiler).

I’ve explained the things we’ve done to reduce our energy use in a previous post.  The only thing that I think is worth repeating is that being mindful of your energy use can have a real impact.  That doesn’t mean that you have to totally obsessive.  It just means being aware – taking note of how your energy use changes week on week – and then changing little things.  Adjusting the thermostat, that kind of thing.

In a couple of weeks I’m taking part in Green Day – organised by local environmental community organisation REAP.  A number of us are opening up our homes for the day to let people see the things we’re doing to reduce our energy use at home.

I was keen to get involved because I’m a big believer in the idea that we change what we do when we see people we know – people who are a bit like us – changing what they do.  So if I see a few neighbours growing their own veg, or taking the time to draught-proof every last corner of their house – then I’m more likely to do the same.  I’m much more likely to change my behaviour that way – whereas a Government campaign might alienate me, and I might not necessarily trust someone who’s trying to sell me the latest green technology.

A number of people who are taking part have had solar panels installed, some have triple glazed windows, whilst others have invested in the latest insulation techniques.  A couple are attempting to lead a suburban good life by growing much of their food in their back gardens.

I’ll mainly be talking about LEDs (yes, form an orderly queue) – having spent a good amount of time researching various LED bulbs – and finally settling on some from Bradford-based Energy Saving LED.  I think the story I’ll be telling is about energy saving not just being about big investments like solar panels.  I’m all for people investing in solar – and I’d like to do that in the future when we can afford it – but it’s important to focus also on the small things we can do at home.

Investing in some decent energy-saving bulbs – which to be fair in some cases can be pretty expensive to buy – might not be as sexy as solar but it can make a real difference.  Similarly spending £60 on a new thermostat which you can actually work out how to adjust can be money well spent too.

So if you’re interested in having a look around a few houses and chatting to people about what they’ve done – and presumably in some cases what they might do different next time – sign up here or leave a comment below and I’ll put you in touch.

There’s much talk at the moment in the world of social business, innovation and investment about the need to create a thriving ecosystem. I understand that to mean an environment within which the social ventures that we want to encourage are best able to start up and grow.

All sounds good. I assume the kind of thing we mean when we talk about an ecosystem includes effective, responsive business support, appropriate finance and, in general terms, a supportive environment within which to do social business.

Our business, Social Business Brokers CIC, supports people to set up and run social ventures. We do that, primarily, by working with people to explore ideas, get set up and keep on going. Traditionally third parties (such as Local Authorities) have paid us to offer free support to whoever they want to encourage.

We think most of the time we do good stuff. But in the last twelve months we found ourselves becoming increasingly restless. We were conscious that it was becoming ever-more difficult to do good quality work. Existing contracts demanded more outcomes for less money. New bits of work were increasingly elusive. And whilst we did good stuff, and got lots of nice feedback from people we worked with, we weren’t satisfied. We knew, deep down, that we weren’t having as much positive impact as we could be.

So we came up with a bit of a plan. We decided to try out a few different ways of supporting social ventures. The big idea was to focus on a series of specific social issues. Previously we’d worked with just about anyone and everyone who had a social enterprise idea. We thought focusing a bit more – specialising perhaps – might help.

So we identified a few issues:

that we felt could benefit from some innovative, socially enterprising thinking
that we knew a bit about/could quickly learn about
that we thought had potential for developing sustainable social ventures
that we cared about
that other people seemed to care about too

We started with empty homes. We’d read about the 15,000 empty homes in Leeds. We’d seen George Clarke on the telly. We knew 27,000 people were on Council waiting lists. So after a bit of thinking we came up with our Call To Action – an attempt to bring together all the people in Leeds – innovators, entrepreneurs, investors, funders, door-openers, encouragers – who could help us to make a significant dent in the number of long-term empty homes in Leeds.

The response was overwhelming. I can honestly say that in all the time I’ve supported social businesses I’ve never experienced such a positive response. People cared about the issue – but they also seemed to like the approach. And it’s created a real buzz around empty homes that, we reckon, could help us to stimulate approaches which will see hundreds more Leeds homes brought back into use.

There’s lots more to do. We need to make sure we get all the right people at the Call To Action – and we need to do work to make sure that Leeds is the best city in the country for doing up empty homes. And then we need to encourage sustainable social ventures to develop.

The aim is that we’ll get paid for doing this kind of work – identifying a social issue – understanding it – stimulating interest in it – bringing the right people together – and then making things happen. But this is where it starts to get complicated…..

Because the big question is: who will pay? Our theory is that we identify a key stakeholder or stakeholders for each social issue – people who want to see significant progress on solving that particular social problem. We ask them to pay us for doing the kind of creative stuff that we’ve outlined above. We think that theory is a good one. But up to now it’s just a theory. Because no-one’s stumped up any cash yet.

Things might change in the next couple of weeks. We’re looking for sponsors for the Call To Action. We’re charging a small fee for people to come along (next time we’ll charge more). And we’re talking to some people who might put in some cash. But I wouldn’t bet my house on us being successful – because, as you all know, money is very tight.

Money is tight, and there also appears to be a reluctance for anyone to pay for business support at the moment. Conversations with people who know more about the world of social investment than I do suggest that it’s hard to work out who will pay for the “social venture intermediaries” – the people like us. Investors would prefer most of their cash to go to the people they want to invest in. New ventures aren’t always the best source of income either. And whilst we’re open to the idea of taking equity stakes in new businesses we support, that feels like a long-term income source. Or maybe a form of payment on the never-never.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think anyone owes me a living. But I also think that what we do matters. In setting up our social enterprise we’ve each taken a fair amount of personal financial risk -primarily doing lots of speculative work in the hope of future success. The hundreds of hours we’ve put into empty homes so far have all been unpaid. That was our decision, and we’re fine with that – but you can only do that for so long.

We’ve given ourselves till the summer. I think there’s every chance that our Empty Homes Call To Action will help us work out how to make a big difference supporting social ventures – whilst also making money. But I also think there’s a good chance that no-one will think that this particular Leeds-based social venture intermediary is worth putting significant money into. We’ll see.

I do most of my work these days through Social Business Brokers, the social enterprise I set up in 2010 with fellow Leeds social entrepreneur Gill Coupland, founder of Angels Community Enterprises.

We’ve decided to change how we work this year to focus on particular social issues.  Issues that we think matter.  Issues where we think there’s a need for some socially enterprising thinking, and where we think there are opportunities to develop social ventures.

The main issue we’ve focused on so far is empty homes – based around a Call To Action that we’ve organised for the middle of May.  But, on a smaller scale, we’re looking at other issues too.  One we looked at today was prisoner re-offending.

We decided to look into this issue after reading some stats about the re-offending rates at our local prison.  More than 60% of prisoners who are released this month will be back inside within 12 months.  That’s an incredible loss of human potential, not to mention a massive cost to us all with regards to the cost of imprisonment and the personal and financial costs of crime.

We also heard about a Payment By Results trial at Leeds prison – so we decided that we’d see if we could get a few people together to explore the issue in a bit more detail.

Eight of us got together for a couple of hours this morning.  The format was simple:

• What do we know and believe about prisoner re-offending?  What do we need to find out?
• What do we think needs to change?
• What opportunities exist/can we create to change things?
• What are we going to do next – and can we do that together?

The discussion was really interesting.  We had a mix of people whose day job was to do with prisoners or offenders – whilst the majority of people were interested in this issue – and keen to work out if there were ways that they and their organisations could make a difference.

It’s hard to summarise the conversation, but it’s fair to say that there was a good amount of discussion about the need – in an ideal world – to tackle causes as well as symptoms.  We talked about some interesting initiatives we’d heard about – particularly around employment and skills – but also questioned whether isolated initiatives can make much difference – without a more profound rethinking of the prison system, and its balance between punishment and rehabilitation.

We then discussed what we might do.  Some ideas emerged – again a fair few with an employment and skills focus.  I’m sure plenty more would have been developed if we’d had more than the couple of hours that we’d given ourselves.

I left not knowing whether this was an issue that we would work more on.  Let me explain my thinking.  I think this is an issue where there is a massive need for social innovation.  And, on the face of it, there appear to be opportunities emerging to do things a bit differently.  Leeds Prison has shortlisted half-a-dozen providers (one of whom joined us today) for the Payment By Results pilot.  Other prisons are thinking of different ways to reduce re-offending.

Yet there’s a part of my that wonders how much of a difference we could make.  Politically, it feels like a tough one.  The political narrative – informed by much popular opinion – is that the role of prison is to punish.  And of course that’s an important role.  But that narrative doesn’t leave a lot of room for creative thinking around how we make sure that people don’t just end up offending again when they come out of prison.

Similarly, I worry about how effective initiatives like the Payment By Results pilot at Leeds will be.  It’s telling that all of the six shortlisted providers at Leeds are Work Programme providers.  The very same Work Programme that I – and countless others – have criticised for sidelining smaller organisations like many of the social enterprises that we work with.  Experience suggests that I shouldn’t expect the Ministry of Justice to learn much from the Department of Work and Pensions – particularly when the DWP doesn’t seem to think there’s much wrong with the Work Programme.

There’s also the issue about how hard it can be to engage with a big beast of an organisation like a prison.  I’ve rung the Prison – to speak to a specific, named person, four times in the past week.  I still haven’t been able to talk to – or even leave a message for – the person who, Leeds Chamber would have you believe – is running a groundbreaking programme of engagement with the Leeds business community.  We waste a lot of time working at the pace of people in the more bureaucratic wings of the public sector.  To be honest we can’t continue to waste that amount of time chasing opportunities.

So I’m a bit torn.  Do we engage with one or more of the shortlisted Prime Providers at Leeds – to see how we can connect them with innovative local organisations?  Or do we take the judgment that the kind of people we work with are better left out of a Payment By Results pilot which – you’d fear – would put them under severe financial pressure as risk is passed down the supply chain?

We’ll see how things go over the next few weeks.  Maybe our meeting – and the discussions opening up as a result – will see us getting more involved in this issue. Maybe I’ll finally chat with the guy at the Prison.   Or maybe we’ll decide it’s one issue where we can’t make much difference.

But if that’s the case, isn’t that a wasted opportunity – and shouldn’t people like those who joined us today have a decent opportunity to change the prison system for good?

I blogged at the start of January about our plans to focus this year on cutting down our energy use at home. We’d been recording weekly meter readings at imeasure for a couple of months – and that’d given us a weekly average for gas and electricity of approximately 100kwh each. We knew it wasn’t particularly scientific to be comparing November readings with January readings – but we took those figures as our starting point. The initial aim was to reduce our energy use by 10%.

So how have we got on? My original post listed a few things that we thought we needed to do. The main ones we’ve made some progress on are the boiler and energy-saving bulbs – so I’ll talk more about that here.

We knew the boiler was on its last legs. But we were hoping it’d last another winter, but in early January it packed in completely. So we had 10 days with no heating or hot water – which does wonders for your energy use stats! Whilst it was a pain (and a big expense) to replace the boiler in an unplanned way at least it gave us an early opportunity to see if we could get our energy use down, by choosing a good boiler.

I looked at Which? (you need to join to see their reports) and chose one of the boilers that came out top in their recent survey – a Worcester Bosch Greenstar 30si (the top 20 Best Buys were all Worcester Bosch). I also looked into thermostats as the thermostat we had previously was hard to adjust. Thanks to my followers on Twitter I chose the Honeywell CM907 as a few people recommended it as being really easy to programme. I really wanted one of these next generation thermostats – but they’re not available in the UK yet.

How have we got on so far? Here’s a graph showing our energy use over the last few months:

(You can click on the graph to see it properly)

You’ll notice a slight drop in electricity use in January – and a rise in gas use (other than the week when we had no boiler).

Our gas use has gone up against the previous three month trend. I think there are a few reasons for that. One, obviously, is that it’s winter. Secondly, we’re still getting used to programming the thermostat – and we’ve had a few days where it’s been on for too long because we programmed it incorrectly. And last of all, we reckon we’ve had the heating on more – precisely because the thermostat is easier to control. Previously, we struggled to put the heating on outside of its programmed times. Now we just press a button. And as a result (and this is a good thing) we’ve had the heating on for longer.

With regards to electricity, I’ve been trying out a range of LED lights, for the GU10 halogen spotlight fittings that we’ve got in a few parts of the house. I’d never have fitted them in the first place, but we’ve inherited them and a total re-fit isn’t feasible at the moment. So I’ve looked at LEDs.

They’re not cheap – the ones I’ve tested have ranged from £6 each to £35 each – and it all adds up if you’ve got 20 bulbs to replace. But the promised savings are significant – down from 50W to 7W per bulb – and up to a 20 year life span.

It would seem, with LEDs, that you get what you pay for – the cheapest ones that we’ve tried don’t give off a great quality light, and they don’t seem that robust. These mid-range ones were pretty good – I might well use these in the utility room (i.e. a part of the house where the lighting isn’t quite so crucial). However it was the most expensive ones – from Energy Saving LED – that were clearly the best. Incidentally, Energy Saving LED have written a useful blogpost which compares LEDs and makes the case for investing in their more expensive bulbs.

I’d certainly agree that the quality and strength of the most expensive light was noticeably better and they certainly seemed to be built well – they’re the only ones I’ve found with a five year guarantee. But £35 is a lot of money. I’m going to try the less-bright version of the same bulb – which is around £10 cheaper – and I’m likely to go for those in the kitchen.

We’ve also replaced a number of R10 spotlights – mainly in the hall – with these energy efficient ones from Megaman. Again, they’re not cheap, but we’ve been impressed with the quality of the light – and they’re well made. We haven’t replaced the current spotlights in other areas of the house where they’re used less as it’d cost a lot to replace them all – and the benefits would be minimal as we don’t use those lights much. But we’ll replace them one by one as they fail.

In terms of energy use – gas use is up on average (average 112kwh per week) but in real terms it’s higher than that as we hardly used any gas in the 10 days with no boiler). We’re likely to get a sense of the impact of the new boiler in the longer term.

With regards to electricity, the average weekly usage in January was 96kwh – compared to 98kwh in the previous months. So a small fall – but again the figures are perhaps skewed by the boiler issue (e.g. using an electric radiator). Nonetheless, the last two week’s readings – 84kwh and 85kwh – are promising. Some of that will be down to the new bulbs – but it’s more likely related to us being a bit more mindful about how we use energy.

And reflections so far? I was grateful for the decent insulation when the boiler broke – it wasn’t very pleasant but the house wasn’t as cold as we’d feared. Secondly, trying to choose bulbs is harder than it should be. It’s too complicated – all the fittings have odd names (SES, GU10 etc) and all the talk of lumens etc is confusing. It needs to be made easier than it currently is to make an informed choice. I looked into it in detail – most people won’t. As a result most people – faced with paying a lot of money for a technology they’re not convinced by – won’t invest.

And more than anything, I think it’s useful to be mindful of your energy use (recording weekly readings at imeasure helps a lot here) – and I think that is what is likely to have most impact. We now appreciate how warm our house is – and recognise that the weak spot is the single-glazed front door – that’s just about the only place where cold gets in. But that’s a longer term job. This month we’ll focus more on bulbs – and getting those reflective radiator panels fitted…..

Over the last couple of years we made an effort as a family to cut down on how much we used the car – and a couple of months ago we finally went car-free.

In 2012 we’ve decided to work on a couple of other areas which account for a significant amount of our carbon footprint – our energy use at home, and the food that we eat.

I’ll blog about food in the next few days but let’s look at energy use first.  Over the last ten weeks I’ve been taking weekly gas and electricity readings to get a better idea of how much energy we consume at home.  You know how it is, you have a broad idea how much you spend (probably less of an idea of how much energy you consume – or how that’s changed over time), so I thought it’d be useful to keep an eye on it.

I also joined the Energy Group at Roundhay Environmental Action Project – a local organisation which, amongst other things, runs the monthly Oakwood Farmers Market.  Their Energy Group consists of a small group of people who are working on issues to do with domestic energy use – encouraging people to insulate their homes, sharing information about solar panels etc.

Through the Energy Group I found out about a useful website which helps you to record your weekly energy consumption – so I’ve been adding our weekly readings to this.  Here’s a graph showing our energy consumption over the last ten weeks :

(if you click on it you’ll see the whole graph -and if you’re wondering why it drops significantly in week 10 – it was Christmas and we were away for a few days)

The stats show that over 10 weeks our average energy use in Kilowatt-Hours (kWh) was (very conveniently) just under 100 kWh for both gas and electricity (98 kWh for electricity and 99 kWh for gas). So, for ease, we’ll use 100kWh per week for gas and electricity as our reference point.

The plan is to see if we can get our energy use down significantly – by 10% to start off with. Why? Two main reasons. One – to save money – we spend £100 a month with Ecotricity for their new energy plus dual fuel tariff and clearly prices are only going one way. The second reason of course is an environmental one.

I’m all for investing in renewable energy, but I have little faith that we’ll manage to keep up with ever-increasing energy use by replacing coal-fired power stations with cleaner alternatives. I wish (and still hope) we would – but given that as a country we don’t have a great track record in terms of green infrastructure investment I’m not going to hold my breath. So, I’m more interested in reducing demand for energy – and it makes sense to start at home.

So, just as we did with reducing our car use, we’re going to attempt to reduce our energy use gradually over time. I’m genuinely interested to see how much of an impact we can have. We live in a relatively small 3 bed 1930s semi, which has double glazing, cavity wall insulation and good loft insulation. So it would seem that the obvious ways to reduce our energy use are already accounted for.

What else can we do? We’ll find out over the next three months – but here are some of the things I imagine we’ll work on (and I’m not pretending any of this is particularly clever)

• Replace lighting with LEDs and other low energy bulbs (this may have a fairly big impact as the house is full of spotlights)
• Use the tumble drier less or not at all
• Improve draft proofing around windows and doors – curtains, a draft-proofing sausage dog at the door, a better letter box etc)
• Change the boiler – it’s ten years old and we’ve been told it’s on its last legs
• Get a new thermostat – the one we’ve got is difficult to control – I’ve got my eye on one of these
• Fit the reflective radiator panels that I bought three months ago (which are supposed to improve efficiency by 20%)
• Generally, keep an eye on our energy use and reducing it where we can

So we’ll see.  I’ll report back once a month as to how we’re getting on.  I’m aware that this isn’t particularly scientific – there’s every chance our energy use month-on-month will drop as we move into a warmer period of the year.  But I still think we should be able to identify a trend – and also keep an eye on whether specific measures such as replacing a number of bulbs make a significant difference.  imeasure also has a clever feature where you can track your energy use against weather conditions – so you can see if your weekly energy use is in line with what you would expect, given the weather that week.

Of course, I’d rather not do this alone.  If you’re already working on reducing your energy use – or you reckon you could do with a new year’s resolution – then please let me know by leaving a comment below.  If you were interested we could share info on imeasure by forming a community on there.   It’s much more fun to do things like this with other people – and clearly it’s important that we quickly get to some kind of scale when it comes to reducing our energy use.

We gave up our car at the end of October – you can read more about why we did that here and here.

It wasn’t just about the money – although we’re hoping we will save a bit of cash – but I’m interested whether we end up spending more or less without a car sat on the drive.  So I’ve been keeping track of our transport costs in November (and the last week of October)- and here they are in summary:

• We spent £240 on car hire and related costs (petrol, annual insurance, car club fee)
• We spent £218 on public transport
• So, with a  few other things (including internet shopping delivery charges) in total the cost for a family of three getting round for five weeks without owning a car was just under £480.

A few facts to put these figures into context:

• £85 of the car hire costs are annual charges for insurance and car club membership.
• We hired a car twice for a total of ten days
• Around £200 of the public transport costs are costs we would have incurred if we still had a car –  as that was for work travel (mostly on the bus) and visiting family (mostly train and the odd taxi).
• So, given that we estimated that the car cost us about £3000 to run, we’re on course to save a bit of money, but not much (based on around £240 costs over and above the public transport costs we would have incurred anyway).

Over five weeks our mileage in hire cars was 215 miles.  This compares with a monthly average of around 500 miles a month over our final twelve months with a car.  We’d got our monthly average mileage down from around 1000 miles a month in the previous 18 months.  For me this is the most significant change.

So how have things changed?

• We’re walking more – short journeys of around a mile each way (e.g. to take my son to a weekly after-school activity) which we’d have done in the car – we’re now walking
• We’re shopping more regularly – more locally.  We’re picking up things on the way home from work, or popping out to the shops a mile up the road.  We’ve also had a couple of online supermarket deliveries for bulky stuff.
• I’m cycling more – it’s been fortunate that the weather’s been pretty mild – so I’ve been cycling to more work meetings.

I think the other stuff that’s interesting is how you need to be a bit more organised because you can’t always just pop out and get something that you need.  So I’ll be taking the wheelbarrow up to the Christmas Fair at the local hospice this afternoon to buy our Christmas tree. Life takes a bit more planning when you haven’t got a car sat on the drive ready to go.

Have we missed the car?  Not really – because when we’ve really needed one we’ve hired one.  I think it does change what you choose to do in your leisure time though – we’ve noticed that we’re more regularly going to places that we can get to easily on the bus – which for us means Leeds city centre or Harrogate.  Places like Wilkinson’s and Clas Ohlson – i.e. DIY stores in the city centre – come into their own when you don’t have a car to go out-of-town.

You might be thinking, “So what?”    Fair enough.  I’m not suggesting that everyone should give up their car.  We live in a city, have only one child, and have jobs which mean that with a bit of organisation we can get around without a car.  Our families live in places that we can easily get to on the train.  Not everyone’s life is like ours.

But plenty of us could drive less, or perhaps consider giving up the second car.  Or maybe share our car with other people.  And, in some cases, follow our lead and give up the car altogether.

With years of austerity ahead, many people will need to look at how to spend less.  For years it’s been a given that you learnt to drive at 17 and then as soon as you could afford it, you bought a car.  That’s changing already – and this trend is bound to get stronger as we learn to adapt to a good few years of falling incomes.

More than anything, it feels good not to be such a part of car culture any more.  In a small way we’re reducing demand for a finite resource.  We’re also making a bit of a counter-cultural statement that personal progress (better job, earning more) doesn’t mean you need to buy a nice car to sit on the drive.  And, you never know, I might finally get fit, before the midlife crisis hits……

I was in town this morning for a very productive meeting with a friend who’s a local GP to help me explore potential opportunities for social enterprises (aka #socent on Twitter) if GPs end up directly commissioning services.

We’d spotted earlier in the day that Billy Bragg was going to be at Occupy Leeds in City Square at midday, so we wandered across after our meeting finished.

I love Billy Bragg.  I think kids in 50 years time will study his lyrics in the way that we studied war poets.  And there is a coherence and clarity to his view of the world which I find hugely inspiring (even though I’m the first to admit I’m not a socialist).  So it was good to hear a few songs and listen to what he had to say about the importance of the Occupy movement.

It was the first time I’ve been down to Occupy Leeds.  I took a passing interest when Occupy Wall Street started, and got a bit more interested when people attempted to occupy the London Stock Exchange.  But it really caught my  imagination when the protest moved to the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral.

I thought the symbolism was brilliant, and could immediately see how moving the protest to the steps of a Christian church was likely to lead to something quite interesting.  But of course I couldn’t have anticipated how much it would shake up the hierarchy at St Paul’s and in the wider Church.

I’m a conflicted, uncomfortable Roman Catholic, born into a Catholic family.  I wouldn’t actively choose to be a Catholic now, but it’s the tradition I’ve been brought up in and it’s where, in lots of ways, I belong.  I also value in some ways the sense of discomfort that it brings me.  But I have no time for the hierarchy of the Church, and I struggle with a lot of its teaching.  Yet I find a niche within it – informed mainly by my year in Ecuador with a social project steeped in liberation theology - that keeps me hanging in there.

It was my patchy understanding of liberation theology that sparked my interest in the protest at St Paul’s.   I was pretty sure that Jesus would be outside in one of the tents, sitting with the people whose demands may be incoherent but who are saying something profound about social justice.  I also thought that the kind of church leader who inspires me – someone like the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero - would be out there with them too.

So that was my way in to the Occupy movement. But I’d be lying if I said I felt that I was part of that movement.  When I was down at City Square this afternoon I found it too easy to tell myself that the people there – camping, speaking, waving banners were people not like me.  I accept that’s not particularly helpful, but it was my honest response.  Got a beard?  Probably not like me.  Read Socialist Worker?  Not like me.  Look vaguely “alternative” in any of the ways that we like to compartmentalise other people?  Not like me. Got a desire to camp outside in the freezing cold at City Square?  Not like me. And there were lots of people there who, I told myself privately, were “not like me”.

But I think that’s the challenge, both to me and to the rest of us – both those who do currently feel totally part of the Occupy movement – and those like me who are intrigued by it and who see how important it is at this moment in time.  And that’s why I think the We Are The 99% slogan is so clever and so powerful.  Because in my opinion we – the vast majority of the world who are at the mercy of modern capitalism (and the vast majority of the world are doing far worse out of it than I am) – need to see that all of us are ill-served by the current economic system.  There has to be a better way.  If we don’t find one, the only question will be whether it’s economic collapse or environmental catastrophe that gets us first.

So I think with time we need to all see ourselves as the 99% – a diverse, engaged and not so engaged, political and apolitical, religious and non-religious, “alternative” and “mainstream” group of people.  So, speaking personally, I can be part of a movement that aims to make the world a much better place than it currently is.  Me, with my lack of political upbringing, my complicated relationship with Christianity, my lack of desire to take part in protests, my interest in finding business opportunities that deliver social change, my pragmatism, and my messy contradictions.  I see myself as part of the 99 per cent now.  Do you?

So we’re ten days into our car-free life.

Having said that, we hired a car for about five of those days, with it being half-term.  Good service from Enterprise – picking us up, dropping me off for my 930 meeting on Monday morning.  Why bother owning a car when you can rent one and then be chauffeur driven to your first meeting of the day?

It was interesting to compare renting a car with sorting out our membership of the local car club.  Joining the car club felt very modern and hi-tech – I applied online, then had a three way telephone call with the DVLA and the Club to check that I was who I said I was.  My smart card arrived the next day – and now a couple of cars are there for when I need them, about a 15 minute walk from our house.

Things were a bit different with Enterprise.  First thing to say is that their customer service was excellent – friendly and efficient. But the process leaves a lot to be desired.  Whereas the car club makes you feel like you’re making a sound decision, hiring a car makes you feel like this might not be such a good idea after all.

First of all you search the house for your paper driving licence and two recent utility bills.  And your passport.  Then you fill in all the documentation and they instil fear into you by suggesting that if the car doesn’t come back perfect they’ll take £600 off your credit card.  Unless, of course, you take out our ridiculously over-priced excess-waiver.  Oh, and if your partner wants to drive the car too (who’d have thought of that?) that’ll be an extra £10 a day.  Have a nice trip!

And it’ll be the same next time, find the documents, sign all the disclaimers etc etc.  Now, I understand there need to be some safeguards – I’m sure some shady people hire cars and get up to all sorts.  But maybe the big car hire firms could learn a few lessons from the new entrants to this market – City Car Club, Whipcar, BMW DriveNow and the rest.

Enterprise appear to making the assumption that you can’t trust your customers, whereas our car club seems to trust that most customers are decent people who will do the right thing.  So they rely on us to not leave the car low on fuel, or tell them if there’s a problem with the car.  Some people will abuse the system because some people can’t be trusted.  But they don’t build their system based on the assumption that you can’t trust your customers.  And, I’d like to think, when you make it clear to people that you trust them, they’re less likely to abuse that trust.

Trust is a key issue in what is increasingly called the sharing economy, or collaborative consumption.  And it’s one reason that I’m keen on sharing more and owning less.  I know I need to get better at trusting people – and I think relationships based on trust do us all good.  So if I lend my lawnmower to my neighbour who I don’t know very well, there’s a chance that he might run off and sell it on ebay.  But he probably won’t.  And by lending stuff to eachother we’ll get to know eachother better, and trust eachother more.  And my street will be a nicer place to live in.

So what’s that got to do with Enterprise?   Maybe they need to go beyond offering friendly customer service towards understanding this new breed of customer, and work out ways to trust us a little more.

Money is tight in the world of social business.  Our city-centre office (which to be honest was a bargain – courtesy of this social enterprise) is no more. There’s just no slack in any of our contracts for anything that is a nice-to-have rather than a must-have.

So we hotdesk with fellow social business Angels Housekeeping, and I work from home a fair bit more.

Working from home has its advantages.  You save a fortune on coffee and sandwiches.  From a green perspective, I bet we’re wasting less food – any leftovers from last night’s tea tend to be recycled into a worker’s lunch.  And my commute up the stairs is pretty carbon free.  Although I’ll soon need a new pair of slippers.

But there are dangers too.  Not just daytime television.  But knocks at the door.  I had one such knock on the door yesterday.  Someone from Scottish Power greeting me by name.  Not my name – that of the previous occupiers.  He was in the area, just “checking up” on things, or something nice and helpful like that.  That’s when it all started to go a bit odd.  He told me that “they’d taken over supply of this area”.  Obviously this is ridiculous and I told him so.  He said that’s what he’d been told – and then he said that they’d become the main generator of energy for the area.  Clearly another load of nonesense.

I cut the conversation short. I was incredulous.  You hear about this kind of thing, but I never imagined that anyone would offer up such blatant untruths.  I tweeted about it, did a bit of googling and eventually ended up chatting to Trading Standards.  At one stage it sounded like they were about to send out a SWAT team to intercept him (they asked if “there is any vulnerability in the area”) but in the end they said they’d just pass it on to Trading Standards in Scottish Power’s home town, Glasgow.  I wasn’t to expect a follow-up call.

I didn’t think that was good enough to be honest.  The reason I was so angry about it is that we do a lot of work with older people’s groups – and they’re always telling us about older people’s better nature being taken advantage of by dodgy sales tactics.  I’ve seen it in my own family with double glazing and financial products.  Carefully crafted patter which disarms many of us – and in particular older people, but which has only one goal – a sale, whether it’s in the best interests of the customer or not.

I searched the #scottishpower hashtag on Twitter – and found out that Scottish Power had just announced that they were going to end door-to-door sales – but not just yet.  They plan to finish encouraging people to switch suppliers through door-to-door tactics at the end of November.

Consumer organisation Which? (of which I’m a member) picked up on my story and wrote about it today.  They’re following this up with Scottish Power and hopefully they’ll take some action.  To be honest I can’t understand why they can’t just end this practice now.  If it’s no longer appropriate on 1st December, I’d say it’s not appropriate today.  How many more people will end up on a tariff which is potentially not right for them – just in time for the winter – thanks to similar tactics?

I’m not a great fan of a lot of big businesses, particularly those that appear to be doing pretty well out of us at a time when most of us are feeling the pinch. But I’m certainly not in the “all big businesses that make profits are bad” camp.  But when, time and again, the big six power companies have been criticised for misleading sales tactics, I find it hard to understand why they don’t just sort themselves out.  Either, you might assume, they’re badly-run businesses (possibly) or they care about short-term shareholder value more than they care about their customers (that’d be my gut feeling).

Let’s hope I’m wrong.  Maybe they’ll show some leadership and end these sales tactics now, instead of waiting until the end of November.

We had an interesting round table discussion with two of the leading thinkers and do-ers in the worlds of social enterprise and mental health yesterday – Mark Brown and David Floyd.

Mark is editor of leading mental health magazine One in Four, whilst David runs Social Spider – the social enterprise, which, amongst other things, publishes One in Four.  David also writes what in my opinion is the best UK blog on social enterprise, Beanbags and Bullsh!t.  Well worth a read if you want an honest, front-line take on the world of social business.

We’d invited Mark and David to Leeds because we’ve been chatting to various people over the last few months about exploring new ways to support people with a mental health need.  And, just as importantly, exploring ways that people can help themselves.  Mark and David had written a thinkpiece about the potential for a Big Society approach to helping people to improve people’s mental health – so we were keen to hear more.  The thinkpiece is excellent (but not available online yet) and yesterday’s discussion was fascinating.

I’m no expert in the field of mental health – I’m just someone who cares about this stuff and is interested in trying to work out how to do things better.  But it strikes me that some of the things that can contribute to a person’s improved mental health and sense of wellbeing could include:

• Active involvement in the development and delivery of the support that they receive and the opportunity to influence things (you might call that co-production)
• Support from and contact with peers – people who are – or who have been – in a similar situation – with an emphasis on self-help and peer support
• Appropriate, non-institutionalised, personalised services
• A sense that they matter – they’re not just a statistic in a faceless world of health and social care

So, with that in mind, you can imagine how an approach – which you might call Big Society – could work.  People setting things up themselves to support eachother.  Local charities and social enterprises setting up services which are funded through contracts and charges to paying customers.  All sounds great doesn’t it?

Except the discussion yesterday – whilst highlighting the potential of a Big Society approach – also emphasised the barriers that are in place if more of this stuff is to happen.  Fundamentally, it comes down to money.  Where is the money in the mental  health field?  Much of it stays within the NHS and the local authority.  Some of it goes out through contracts – to deliver pre-determined outcomes, tightly monitored through Key Performance Indicators.  And a bit of it – if you’re lucky – might go on innovative, local, risky, do-it-yourself initiatives.

And please don’t tell me that Personal Budgets could fund this kind of thing.  They could – in theory – and should.  But our experience – and increasing amounts of evidence such as this report into Personal Budget pilots in Scotland – suggest that few people with a mental health need are getting support which is different in a meaningful way through a Personal Budget.

Locally, we’re hearing that the local authority will approve a Personal Budget to cover someone’s transport costs to get to an activity (which could be a Big Society, DIY, self-help/peer support activity) – but they won’t pay for the activity itself.  So how is the service supposed to develop?  And, given that many people with a mental health need are on pretty minimal benefits, they will tend to struggle to pay for that activity.

Solutions?  I doubt there are any quick fixes.  But, as always, the starting point needs to be an honest assessment of where things are.  Big Society approaches aren’t going to magically spring up out of thin air.  If the State decides that more of this kind of thing should happen, then we need to invest in it.  In Leeds we’ve made a start with the Ideas That Change Lives investment fund, which has teamed up with UnLtd to offer support to people with good ideas.  It’s a good start, but we need plenty more.