Ed Mayo's blog

The Queen in Parliament has asked us to love our neighbours.

Actually, Britain isn’t bad at this. At Coops UK recently, we took a look at the state of neighbourliness in Britain in a report called ‘Co-operative Streets’.

I am chairing the ‘Making Local Food Work’ Conference, with some hundreds of producers coming together. I think the last big food event I did was somewhat different – when I was invited to be a judge in the prestigious Product of the Year contest for the food industry. There were entries from every major food company and the experience was pretty awful.

There has been a lot of good coverage of the tsunami a year ago in Japan. The UK movement came together to raise funds for the relief too, working through the very effective co-operative sector in Japan.

Here is a true story of an earlier disaster and how communities in Japan responded through shared action.

The big global issues of energy can be set out in simple terms if you use units of people and animals.

This is what James Watt did in the industrial revolution when he coined the term ‘horse power’ to measure his steam engines, in units in turn named after him. A horse generates up to seven hundred and fifty watts.

You or I might generate around eighty to one hundred watts and the strongest people we know up to a quarter of the power of a horse.

Think small groups working together when it comes to learning. That is one conclusion I take from the wonderful new collection on co-operation in education published by the Society for Co-operative Studies.

The introduction of small group learning in a number of US schools dates back to the end of segregation. The model of co-operative learning helped children to develop a respect for each other as equals, in a culture that did not always reinforce that.

What’s good for Chelsea is good for the UK economy? Not true.

Andre Villas Boas said just two weeks ago that he didn’t need the players to support what he was trying to do with the club – just the owner. “They don’t have to back my project, only the owner needs to back my project.” What he said could have been echoed by many UK business leaders – it is the shareholders who matter, not the workforce.

Rodrigo tells me he loves shopping, which is lucky. He runs the network Eurocoop, which represents retail consumer cooperatives with thirty five thousand cooperative shops across Europe.

He is keen to encourage joint buying across the cooperative sector and there are some good examples, including Eroski in Spain with mutual partners in Germany and France, who are showing the way.

We are all conditioned to love milkmen in Britain. The following notices brought a smile to my face, as examples of how members of the Wine Society co-operative get to know and love the people who deliver their wine.

Both were examples given to me by Sarah Evans, who is the very accomplished Chair of the Wine Society.

“If out, leave by outhouse, NOT with neighbours – dog friendly, cat scared, ducks for sale.”

“Leave as usual by the front door and write on the box ‘Caution: swine fever’”

Ahead of Co-operatives UK's retail conference this weekend, why not read Ed Mayo's Saturday essay from last month's The Grocer - on the International Year of Co-operatives and the diversity of the co-operative food sector?

The idea of crowd purchasing is nothing new – you buy in bulk and share the gains. But it has all been given new momentum by new technology and, unfortunately, our new austerity.

Eight million people now buy collectively across the UK in a kind of share one, get one free model (SOGOF?) and internationally, the author and innovator Rachel Botsman has charted the rise and rise of what she calls collaborative consumption.