Horner's Corner » Chris

ayohcee: Five Questions: Chris Horner, member of The People’s Supermarket

Chris — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:32:02 +0000

You would have had to have had your head buried in the sand to have missed the buzz that has been growing concerning The People’s Supermarket recently. This supermarket takes aim at the ruthlessness and soullessness of the big supermarkets in attempting to create a local supermarket that sources its produce ethically.

Chris Horner, a colleague and friend of mine, is responsible for bringing The People’s Supermarket to my attention. He is a member and thus a worker at the supermarket in Lamb’s Conduit Street, Holborn, London. He agreed to take part in a Friday Five Questions interview for Ayohcee about his involvement in the project.

It must be stressed that his views are his own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of The People’s Supermarket.

Ayohcee: The People’s Supermarket (TPS) has risen to prominence over the last month or so, thanks in part to the Channel 4 documentary about it. What’s all the fuss about?

Chris Horner: I’d say it was an idea whose time has come, or is overdue. The question of how we source, waste, sell, and consume food is a hugely important one on many levels – I could write several pages on each of those and then add some. Part of the importance of the TPS is the fact that it involves people in not only thinking through, but also acting in order to improve things. Some examples of why it’s important:

We live in a global context, and the questions of sourcing and paying for our produce fairly must be addressed –TPS tries to work with suppliers here and abroad in a way which keeps them fairly and sustainably in a partnership with the retailer/consumer.
Food waste is appalling. TPS acts to avoid that; part of what it does here educates and shows others what can be done. It’s an ethical, political and environmental scandal to chuck the amount of perfectly good food away that the typical retailer and consumer does every day.
Being active in making things better is good. Co-ops are good! Taking responsibility for ones own locality and the way one’s quality of life develops is a positive thing. TPS tends to have a subtle ‘educative’ effect on all those who work there – we decide together what we’ll do and then we do it – ourselves. That changes people.

AÓC: Can TPS every really challenge the might of Tesco and it’s 33% of the market share, or is that not really the point of the idea?

CH: We’re realists and idealists. We know that one co-op won’t threaten Tesco, and won’t overturn these large organisations with their unhealthy grip on the nation’s alimentary canal – and their appalling way with the people who labour to grow the stuff they sell. But apart from the fact that the TPS is a good thing in itself, I think we can be a beacon to others. ‘Propaganda by the deed’ was an old anarchist slogan. I’d adapt it to our context: showing what can be done and making it a success has already begun to inspire others to set up similar enterprises elsewhere (just as we were inspired by the version of the TPS they have in Brooklyn NY).

Whether or not this kind of thing rivals the big supermarkets or just helps to change the way they do business, and raises people’s consciousness in the process, it’s got to be worthwhile.

AÓC: David Cameron recently paid a visit to TPS which coincided with the re-launch of the ‘Big Society’ idea, and took time to speak to Arthur Potts Dawson in front of the TV cameras. Is TPS what Big Society is all about, or is Cameron jumping on the bandwagon to rescue the somewhat confusing idea of Big Society from the scrapheap?

CH: The latter, I think. I wasn’t too happy with our role in it all, as I wanted us to be a bit more media savvy about politicians’ photo opps. The Big Society idea isn’t 100% rubbish precisely because it is an amorphous, hard to pin down idea. Who could be against society? We are society and the TPS is an aspect of the desire to act rather than wait for others to do it for us.

But what does ‘big’ in Big Society mean? – does it mean instead of ‘small’ state provision for the vulnerable’? Does it mean competing interest groups carving up the commons – denying a citizen’s right to be treated equally wherever s/he is? I don’t worship The State but I’ll fight to defend the sense that the state embodies our shared life together, and tries to ensure justice and solidarity.

AÓC: Now, I know you in your professional capacity as a teacher at the same Sixth Form College as I teach. On top of this I know you are writing a book, that you keep a blog, are a regular tweeter and now you are involved in TPS. How much of your time and energy does being a member take, and does a member have much of a say in the decision-making process?

CH: I’m also a member of the London Equality Group, promoting a more equal society, and a few other things! TPS asks me to do 4 hours a month in return for being able to help decide in members’ meetings what we will do, as well as a 10% discount at the till. It’s not much of a commitment, I find. I also enjoy it – it’s a refreshing change from what I usually do. All members get an equal vote at members’ meetings – we decide on the kinds of stuff that comes up in a co-op, very much including fair trade, supporting the local community, as well as the mundane issues of bulk purchasing etc.

AÓC: Finally, what will the future hold for the TPS? Will it rely on more charismatic Arthur Potts Dawson-types to come forward to open more People’s Supermarket, or do you believe there will be a different strategy for growth?

CH: I think I partly answered this in my response to the second question, but I’d add that we’re mobilised around achievable goals: making the one TPS we have a success, for now. Charismatic characters are a real help – but the TPS was/is more collective than the Arthur Potts-Dawson centred TV series may have portrayed it. If the TPS idea is to spread, my hunch is that it will need both: people with the wherewithal to start the thing and the collective will to really make it happen.

For more information on The People’s Supermarket visit: http://www.thepeoplessupermarket.org/ or follow them on Twitter (@TPSLondon).

From: (via) ayohcee: Friday Five Questions: Chris Horner, member of The People’s Supermarket.

Share/Save

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Horner Theory of the Months: September

Chris — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:03:03 +0000

Fast Tube by Casper">September Song – Walter Huston

The Horner Theory of the Months – Revisited

This is the month that in some ways makes me most uneasy. It’s the ‘bridge’ month between Summer and Autumn – it has a dying fall – the equivalent of the month of March, which takes us out of winter into Spring.

Not Summer anymore, dying into the colder weather and longer nights, without Summer’s luxury or Autumn’s beauty. Ah well – at least we’re not shepherding sheep on a windy hillside. Avoid all work that involves heavy lifting or being outside in all weathers.

Westerne wind bloweth sore,

That nowe is in his chiefe souereigntee,

Beating the withered leafe from the tree.

Sitte we downe here under the hill:

Tho may we talke, and tellen our fill,

And make a mocke at the blustring blast.

Now say on Diggon, what euer thou hast.

Share/Save

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Z and I: A True Story

Chris — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:17:55 +0000

: Zizek (Photo by CH)

Earlier this summer I was making my way home on the Piccadilly line, reading something by Zizek. I got off at Russell Square, thinking about some dialectical reversal or dirty joke of his I’d just read, and picturing the man himself, baggy T-shirt, beard etc.

Leaving the tube, I cut through the little lane that connects Bernard Street to Guilford street, looked up and saw: Zizek, in baggy T shirt etc, stood outside the President hotel, waving goodbye to someone in a car. I’d gone from reading, thinking about and now suddenly encountering him in the street.

So, Lacanians: we have the Symbolic (reading his stuff), the Imaginary (me picturing him as I’d seen him last on Youtube or at a conference), and then the encounter. If I understand it correctly the Real wasn’t the empirical Zizek stood in my street there, it was the disorientation/mild trauma experienced in the disruption of the other modes of representation when I suddenly saw him, big and hairy, looming right in front of me.

More on Lacan’s Borromean knot here.

Share/Save

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Old Mortality

Chris — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:17:36 +0000

Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist.

Epicurus

Epicurus’ comment on death has been much studied, and much argued over. The idea seems simple enough: When I live I’m not dead (so no problem), when I’m dead I don’t exist and so don’t experience death (so no problem). In his Mortal Questions, Thomas Nagel makes the point that such thoughts cannot compensate for the lost life that would have been (especially poignant in the case of early death). We cannot comfort ourselves with the thought that the aeons in which we shall not exist are no different from those that preceded our birth. We are, now, and soon shall not be, ever again – and we know this. It makes a difference.

The Epicurean view did not comfort Philip Larkin (see the previous post, or click on the ‘Larkin’ tag for his unblinking contemplation of the unthinkable). Still, I do think that the Epicurean position does have some merit: it’s meant as a tool to counteract the very horror Larkin (and Nagel?) feel: death is not something you will ever experience, so live your life and stop worrying about it. It just doesn’t do the job for them; that doesn’t make it wrong, or foolish.

Some more Epicurean wisdom:

Nothing to fear from God

Nothing to feel in death

Evil can be overcome

Good can be achieved.

Cheer up! it may never happen. Well …cheer up, anyway.

Cartoon reblogged from Chaospet

Share/Save

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Horner Theory of the Months: March

Chris — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:43:53 +0000

From 'The Shepherd's Calendar It's a good time to reflect on my theory.

It’s time to reflect on my theory.

Here it is: there are two key transitional months, which stand as opposites to each other. One is September: it begins in Summer and ends in Autumn. It has a dying fall.

The other is March, which starts in late Winter and ends in early Spring. The clocks go forwards; the days get longer. Just as January was the Monday of the year, mercifully short February flashed by in Winter’s final throes, March is the threshold to the really good days..SPRING April…May..SUMMER..

Not really a theory is it.

It’s not all that original either, but it cheers me up, anyway.

[..........] thou warnest well:
For Winters wrath beginnes to quell,
And pleasant spring appeareth.
The grasse now ginnes to be refresht,
The Swallow peepes out of her nest,
And clowdie Welkin cleareth.

(from The Shepherd’s Calendar)

Share/Save

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Chris Horner: the very image

Chris — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:46:57 +0000

Me: and not much I can do about it.

Share/Save

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.