FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR
YOU might have to live in several different places at once in order to do so, but it is theoretically possible to lead your life entirely within the embrace of co-operatives, before going to your grave courtesy of a co-op funeral director.
You can earn a living in a workers' co-op, go home to co-op housing, get your food, clothing, fi nance, transport, clean energy, telephone, even entertainment and creative satisfaction from one sort of co-op or another. More often than not you'll get a fairer, more environmentally friendly deal as a result.
The NI has tended to keep quiet about being a workers' co-op. The fact seemed incidental to our work. We could even be apologetic about it, perhaps because so many other co-ops failed. Recently we've made more of it and it's begun to seem more central to what we do. On the topic of this magazine at least, we know whereof we speak from personal experience.
All the same, I worry. Whenever I come across something positive, and particularly when I write about it, it tends to go wrong. I'm not so superstitious as to believe that our co-op has fl ourished only because we've kept quiet about it. But, just in case, in the picture below you see Anne our accountant in the centre; Jo, our distribution manager, on the left; Alan, one of our designers, next to her; James, who crunches numbers, on the right. If we're spared, that will have more to do with them than with me.
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Paul Carter
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David Ransom for the New Internationalist Co-operative
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