Link4Change - Chris Ogle

Being a huge ambassador for Link4Growth I attend a large number of physical events every week. So what happens at these events? Conversations mostly... Conversations about a huge number of different topics. In actual fact this blog you are reading here is a record of conversations I have had with people at Link4Growth events... This is the sole purpose of this blog.

Perhaps one of the best ways to consider the importance of conversations is to compare what happens when we don't have conversations versus when we do. We are in actual fact in the middle of a very dry period in human history in the west regarding conversations. Communities which used to be quite tight knit where people often took time out to stop and talk to each other have been usurped by busy people who have no time for such trivia any more. Time is money and we need money. So something had to give and it did give. Conversations didn't happen, and when conversations stop... Then local knowledge doesn't circu…

Debt is everywhere today and yet when I look back to my parents era, to be in debt was to be in a shameful place. Even mortgages were taboo in those days, and if you did get one the aim was to pay it off as fast as possible. People lived within their means and only when they had the money to buy things did they go out and get them. Positive money. My parents had a box and some deck chairs to eat off when they bought their house they couldn't afford to buy them until they had saved up. Then they gradually acquired white goods and other furniture as money permitted. They worked for things and thus appreciated them when they finally bought them.

Today it is a very different story. Debt is an acceptable position, not desirable, but debt no longer comes with any consequence. We all have debt, it is ubiquitous, accepted and normal. The personal debt in the uk is now at astronomical levels £1.4 trillion at the last count.

But let us just look at what has fuelled this debt based society. …

Initially stopping using supermarkets was a massive challenge. I had been used to shopping virtually daily, being able to get everything without thinking in a one stop shop, and boy had I bought the dream... Convenience, time, lower costs... Asda was my poison of choice, and those that have known me for years could quite rightly have suspected I was on the payroll such was my enthusiasm for the shop and extent of my delusion.

I used to go to Asda 3 maybe 4 times a week... I used to buy things I didn't really need... I used to throw away quite a lot of food... The vegetables, salad and fruit kept an inordinately long time... Fruit was often not ready to eat... you had to leave it for days on end sometimes... You never really knew what food was in season as everything was available all the time...

When I stopped using Asda's 30th September 2013, it was like saying goodbye to a trusted friend... It wasn't going to be difficult to replace food I knew I could get that from the …