Tuesday 24 April 2012

My New Ride 

My New transport, Big thanks to Ruth Exell's Son. Needs some work but at least the frame is in one piece.


Thursday 12 April 2012

The Cwtch & Why I left

#Cwtch was a group of people who started out with the intention of providing a free community centred café and workshop space . This was a great Idea and something that  seemed  aligned with my beliefs about money. I spent  2-3 weeks at The Dolphin Hotel in Swansea City volunteering helping run the café and assisting where I could. 


On the whole the #Cwtch in the Dolphin was a great experience  was great and worked wonderfully  for the local community. Some people argued that squatting is Illegal, and we shouldn’t be squatting the hotel.  It was at that time perfectly legal  to squat an unused building, though now the rules have changed and it has now been deemed Illegal  to squat a “Residential Property”
With Squatting comes eviction and we did expect this, it was more of a case of when we would be evicted not if. Following the dolphin hotel we where evicted from JT Morgans Dept Store  and Earlsmoore Respite Care Home, again these buildings where unused and were squatted legally.
I began to realise that this was not going to be a long term thing and that my energies was being taken up by the process of moving stuff from one squat to another and then basically sitting in a building to secure it as the last two buildings were not as suitable as a community centre as the Dolphin.
The group was making decisions on its next move. There were discussions about applying to the council  for a building.  That didn’t sit very well with me,  because cwtch would become part of the current system  and become part of some monetary equasion and get swallowed loosing it’s free ethos.  It was either apply to the council  or ask a building to be donated for a period of time , not a likely scenario  as far as I could see.

With all this in mind I decided that I could no longer support the Cwtch Physically, it is a  shame but I guess sometimes you have to move on. I had some great experiences whilst I was there and don’t regret a moment of it.