Alec Smart

Alec likes nature, language, food and drink, music, travel (especially by train), the sea, the sky, the land, the inner workings of people, knowing – if not always saying – the truth, and the tiredness that comes after doing something hard but rewarding.
Alec dislikes unkindness, injustice, inequality, the powerful abusing the powerless, the growing trend of rejecting evidence-based knowledge, conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, populists, bullies, liars and mushrooms.

Alec writes partly for love of expression, partly to get down exactly the right words, partly for self indulgence and partly to attempt to say something true that, apparently, no one else has said yet…

Bet George

Bet will be unpicking normality, celebrating small joys, and sharing true stories and observations about urban melancholy and life without a significant other.

Bet thanks you in advance for reading.

Daisy Clemens

Daisy aspires to be an agent of positive social change. She wants to find ways to reduce avoidable suffering and contribute to managing the complex challenges societies face. She appreciates that there are many challenges and ways to contribute. Also that it’s not easy to know what to do. She has found taking action to effect positive change and being part of ‘the problem’ can frequently be one and the same thing. But not to act when you have the means to do so is also troubling.

Daisy is writing in an attempt to clearly articulate how she feels and understands things. She hopes to make tricky things a little clearer and extract knowledge to support future action. She believes you should speak to be understood not to sound good, and is interested in complexity, tensions, systems thinking, human and institutional development.

Leila Gracie

Leila says that she was unhappy and shy as a young person, but acted strong and hid on her moral high ground. After a big fall down, she learnt to be open to people and, though the fall brought its own wounds, she is forever grateful for it.

Begrudgingly, Leila did a degree and realised that, while she’s not especially academic, she did enjoy writing.

Leila cares very much when things are not fair, but also recognises the logic in human behaviour, and can be defeatist about it sometimes (or is it just realist?).

The North Face

The North Face is a 39 year old thinker, writer, traveller, Engineer, Londoner, cosmopolite, Black man and avowed Liverpool fan.

He is British though the blood of Africa runs through his veins. Of both, he is proud, however he very much considers himself a citizen of the world.

He has a wide variety of interests – sport, politics, social and cultural issues, music, films, fitness, health, wellbeing, history, sartorial elegance, technology, food etc. Amongst the aforementioned interests are some passions that may become apparent in his contributions.