Living Without Tesco’s was a success - we shunned supermarkets for a whole year and now live a more ethical lifestyle as a result.  The blog began with a focus on that, but its focus shifted with mine, it is after all unashamed naval gazing.  My life has again changed and priorities now juggled, I now do no freelance work and am employed full-time and am focusing on how best to communicate with my students.  I’m, cautiously, experimenting with different teaching techniques inside the classroom and, perhaps most excitingly, looking at ways to inspire students outside the classroom through social media and that’s what I’m passionate about, and want to blog about for now.  I don’t want anyone to mistakenly think my comments are those of my employer (who every month pays my rent) and I certainly don’t want anyone assuming that there is any connection between LWT and the for-profit education provider I work for (who could choose to no longer pay my rent) so I won’t be blogging under the same banner.

For reasons of finance I’m no longer going to own and host the five different sites I currently do, my blog about all things educational is currently here, but please don’t bookmark it as in the next week it will be relocated to here.  LWT will be moved to the same site and archived there for prosperity.  LWT, both .co.uk and .com, are available to anyone who can make use of them, the ownership of the names I’ll happily give away to any worthy proposer until they are up for renewal and it’d be great to see if anyone can do anything exciting with them.  lawlecturer.com provided me with a good income for  a couple of years but is no longer of use to me, again its up for grabs if anyone can make use of it.

I’ve enjoyed LWT, I know I’m going to enjoy blogging about teaching.  Please continue to follow me.

Dear Nicholas

Thank you for contacting Louise about tax avoidance, and what the Government is doing to ensure that every person is paying the tax they owe.

Of course people can plan their tax affairs – that is sensible, fair and reasonable. But there is a clear difference between saving for a pension or investing in an ISA – both of which might reduce your tax liability – and some of the aggressive avoidance schemes we have been hearing about.

The Government has made it clear it will not tolerate abuse of the tax system. Both the resources and the number of staff working on evasion and avoidance at HMRC have been increased. The Government has also re-invested £900 million in HMRC compliance resources, which will bring in around £7 billion in additional tax each year by the end of the parliament. The Chancellor has also announced a general anti-abuse rule, on the recommendations of an independent review by Graham Aaronson QC. This will improve HMRC’s ability to deter and counter artificial and abusive tax avoidance schemes – without damaging the competitiveness of the UK as a place to do business.

This is in stark contrast to the previous Government, who let the gap between the amount of tax that was collected and that could have been collected widen, and saw the number of tax loopholes increase.

Regarding the tax avoidance of Boots in Switzerland, last October the Government signed a groundbreaking agreement with Switzerland to tackle tax evasion. The agreement will make it much more difficult to evade tax by hiding money in Switzerland, by introducing new ways for the UK to find out about bank accounts there. The UK is likely to receive billions of pounds as a result of this historic agreement. The Government has increased the levy to £50,000 a year for non-doms who have lived in Britain for more than 12 years. It is also engaging with its international counterparts to discuss global solutions to the problem of tax avoidance

This Government is committed to tackling aggressive tax avoidance. As the country works hard to pay off the debts the last Government built up, it is not fair that some people pay money to use complex schemes to avoid paying their fair share.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact Louise

Oliver Sloane

Oliver Sloane | Office of Louise Mensch MP

I’m pretty sure Liz, a pure bantam, has taken to laying her blue-shelled eggs somewhere other than the nesting box, never-the-less with four laying hens we have more eggs then we can eat and were so over-whelmed with eggs some must have been kicking around too long so I got out a bowl of water and checked, frustratingly I had to feed 19 out-of-date eggs back to the chickens and, hating waste, hatch a plan.  I abused the work email system and sent all my colleagues an email offering to barter eggs for home-grown and home-made goodies and quickly found a home for 5 boxes of eggs.  The colleague who named Edith has promised a batch of home-made fudge for her box, I have a pot of home-made mole (a Mexican cooking sauce) in the fridge from another and the promise of home-made red or green curry paste from yet another.  This is all good as it is encouraging me to cook and plan our meals better – we were sliding towards eating crap.  We bought a quarter of a pig, butchered, from friends in the village so I’m defrosting two chops today to sample with mole sauce and whatever accompaniments I can find on Oundle market – today I am working from home.

Last week also marked the return of Darling, as quickly as she’d gone three-weeks later she appeared again, a little thinner but definitely alive.  I can only guess that she got locked in somewhere, although somewhere with a source of food and water.  All very bizarre.

I have though enjoyed the single parent lifestyle, spoiling myself and the toddler by reveling in each other’s company.  We’ve camped in Weymouth and, last weekend, at Billing Aquadrome, enjoyed a completely spontaneous day out on the South Bank – I even bought a print – and we’re camping again next weekend.  I am reassured that I am capable of love in its purest form.  I’m dreading the return to work though, I’m now a full-time Central London commuter, my weeks will consist of sharing the 8am train to London Bridge with thousands of other sweaty commuters, knowing it will be 12 hours before I’m home again.  My energies now are focused on how I protect the weekends, my precious time with the toddler, from the incursions of work or domestic chores, his only time with his me can’t be watching me do the laundry!

The blog is now going to get a little unstructured as there’s two further, unrelated things I wanted to mention…

Depressingly I’ve also had to throw away nearly two dozen eggs that had gone over, I do try to share our eggs around but we ran out of egg boxes a while ago.  I don’t think people realise that they cost me and I was expecting them returned, in future I will scribble this on the boxes.  In the meantime if anyone has any egg boxes please save and donate – we will return the favour by filling the odd one and giving it back.  Also if anyone grows fruit or veg, rears their own animals, bakes their own bread etc… I’m very keen to exchange eggs fir stuff.  I will of course include all of this on my annual tax return.

Finally days sat on campsites watching the toddler play and hours on the train have rekindled my love for my Kindle.  I’ve hungrily devoured all 3 novels in the Hunger Games trilogy but am now struggling through Game of Thrones having failed to get into Jo Nesbo so I need inspiration.  I have no interest in reading about millionaires slapping little girls around, although as sexually perverse novels go I did enjoy the Dice Man.  I was about to ask for recommendations but writing that reminded me there’s the Search for The Dice Man to read yet, but when that’s through suggestions please in comments…

I’m now trying to work out what to do with the few precious days of annual leave I’ve clawed out of August – I’m off next Monday and Tuesday.  We are at a birthday party on Saturday so could do something Sunday-Tuesday, just not sure what.  It’s too short a window of time to go abroad, unless we jump on the Eurostar … now there’s a thought!  Ideas please readers x

Inspired by the joy of socialising with other single parents I’ve booked the toddler and I on a Single With Kids camping trip next weekend – lets hope the weather improves.

As we approached the end of our year I have to admit I was losing heart in what we were doing, constant questions about how we coped without various ‘essentials’ made me feel like we might be losing out – my Mum did seriously ask how we coped without 99p Schloer from Lidl. I was expecting my return to those supermarkets I had decided were ethical – namely Waitrose and the Co-op – to be a wondrous experience. I stopped on the way home from work at the Waitrose in Birchhanger service station, it was 7pm and I had supper to think of, I fancied pizza and I hadn’t had a supermarket pizza in over a year. I was greeted by a dazzling display of take-away style meal bargains, the pizza I wanted was £4.40 but for a mere tenner I could choose a pizza, a garlic bread, a salad bag, a salad dressing and two boxes of prepared fruit. Ten minutes later I was trying to choose between a box of prepared watermelon chinks and a mixed melon medley with grapes, having already settled on a pot of pomegranate seeds, once this hurdle had been cleared I would just have to select a dressing and then a salad bag – I could be home, eating pizza by dawn. Then I realised I didn’t want garlic bread with my pizza, I’d never brought prepared fruit in a plastic box because I owned a knife and I was more than capable of mixing olive oil and vinegar all by myself. Why was I about to spend £5.60 on stuff I didn’t want. I felt stressed. I left with only the pizza, denying myself the ‘bargain’ on offer.

On Sunday I braved the Co-op, I wanted a bag of rocket, some parmesan and a pack of pumpernickel bread. The array of bright red signs hung on the shelves proclaiming ‘save’ assaulted my senses, I was feeling nauseous, the toddler was asking for hands full of everything in sight and soon our basket was heavy, but we had yet to find the rocket or pumpernickel and by now I’d completely forgotten about the parmesan. I asked a member of staff, a team of four was quickly assembled and they confirmed over the next twenty minutes that none of them had heard of pumpernickel but that there were two bags of organic rocket at their Oundle store just 8 miles away. Oundle has a greengrocers that sells punnets of fresh, peppery, local rocket – shame it was Sunday. We paid for the crap we didn’t want, or need, and left.

Today I am working from home and as the sun is shining I took the motorbike out to grab a few bits for lunch, I again set my sights on the co-op but arrived in Thrapston to find it was market day. The fish man asked after the toddler and sold me some smoked mackerel, he cheerfully suggested I grill it with some horseradish. The baker had some great artisan breads on his stall, I settled on a large seeded granary loaf for a mere £1.25, and the fruit and veg man sorted me out some apples, chillies and beetroot whilst chatting to me like we were long lost friends. I swung into the deli to get some sea salt and found out that the daughter of the lady serving me will be starting school with the toddler in September. I’ve had a lunch of grilled mackerel with beetroot, caper and tomato salad and I managed to mix my own dressing. I’m not going to be rushing back into the aisles, you can keep your 99p Schloer I’ll make do with my red wine

Geography and time have had a big bearing on this – when I’m in London for work I can buy a lot of things from small retailers, independent shops and small wholesalers but when I’m in East Northants I’m more restricted. Small, independent retailers around here seem to have a disappointing self-perception – they see themselves as providing the cherry on the supermarket cake rather than as being an alternative. Opening hours are severely restricted, product ranges often limited to the luxury and if you enquire after a staple product, even in the Thrapston bakery, you’re greeted with “have you tried the Co-op?” Our nearest food co-operative is in Northampton, 23 miles away, and our nearest greengrocers is in Oundle, 10 miles away. Time has meant that we now rarely rely on Wobbly Bottom Farm for our goats milk – we had to provide plastic bottles, freeze it in large quantities and defrost it to order, but adding a bottle of organic cow’s milk to our Riverford veg box is an easy, ethical alternative.

We’ve discovered a lot of local, ethical alternatives which we’ll carry on using. Its certainly more enjoyable shopping how we’ve shopped than “going Asdas”.

I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned though is that moral absolutism leads to dogmatism and ultimately to making less moral choices. I have sacrificed other moral beliefs at the alter of surviving without supermarkets. For example we now don’t eat the low-fat, vegetarian alternatives to meat when we’re pushed for time – instead its a pack of organic sausages.

So what does this mean for how we live from now on? I’m not going to wear a hair shirt for the sake of wearing a hair shirt, but I’m not going to shop in Tescos again either. In fact we’re going to carry on boycotting all supermarkets except for those that have demonstrated a real commitment to supporting local producers, stocking higher welfare products and investing their profits locally – this means Waitrose and the Co-op are on our allowed list but big retailers that refuse to pay their taxes in the UK are off it. So whilst we will carry on supporting local retailers and producers, rather than applying blanket policies I will try to make each buying decision an ethical one. Should we buy fairtrade bananas from the Co-op or any old bunch off the veg man at the market?

I am also going to boycott all those big retailers who are identified as dodging paying their taxes in the UK – I think this is inexcusable. This means that when my mobile phone contract is up for renewal I will move away from Vodafone, my business account will have to be moved from Barclays, I will have to continue to avoid Sir Phillip Green’s empire of Topshop, Topman, Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Miss Selfridge and BHS, Tesco is definitely to be avoided and the big brands of Walkers and Cadbury get blacklisted too. Most frustratingly Amazon are tax avoiding scum so I’ll have to top my kindle up elsewhere – for over a year I’ve only added free books but what now?

Firstly, I received a text from Simon, the local IT guru who hosts my blog, this domain is coming up for renewal. Slowly it dawned on me that if the domain is coming up for renewal we’ve nearly achieved our aim of surviving without supermarkets for a year. I’ve checked back through the blogs and the first LWT blog was 14th June 2011, so in 6 days we’ll have done it! Hurrah! So on 15th June 2012 we shall Friday beers at our house to celebrate, and if its warm a BBQ. Everyone who reads this is very welcome to come along any time from 4pm – Friday beers start early!

Secondly, I was reminded why sometimes doing a little thing is important, it has fecundity (one of my favourite, but widely underused, words, it means capable of reproducing itself). As I was driving home, with the toddler next to me, a yoof dragged another yoof off a moped and starting crashing his fists down on the guy’s helmet. Why he was beating him up was unclear, however he was doing it in the middle of the road and my bumper being close to his chest didn’t appear to be calming him down, why he was wasting his energy bruising his fists on a bike helmet was also unclear. I had no desire to adjudicate this mess, for all I know the yoof deserved a kicking, and not just for driving a silly little moped. I did however not want the toddler to see this so I got out the car just as the guy bruising his fists announced he had a ‘blade’ so I went all geography teacher on his ass and bellowed “enough”, announcing that he had made his point. This was enough to encourage others, who clearly felt they were witnessing some wrong to intervene, and a few blokes bellowing at them to stop being pricks, especially with kids around, had the almost instantaneous effect of halting things. I think if you do stand up and do something you feel is right it encourages others to do the same. I don’t expect anyone else to boycott supermarkets but I know a few friends now use local retailers more than they used to because I stood up for something I thought was right and frankly I’m a little bit proud of myself for that.