“Go not where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are a Community Buyer – it means you buy stuff for communities – and so here we are at buying day once again – lots of orders, new counties covered by different RCCs and even more suppliers to wrangle with…it can all get very entertaining because today the product is heating OIL – aka kerosene.

So I have a question: what would you do? Given the national and international events it is rather surprising that the wholesale market for kerosene trundled down a little this week and the price closed down last night. You wonder if it will fall more, but:

• then you look at the white stuff that fell on the ground in some of the 10 counties we buy for today, the frost that the rest of them got, and you wonder if winter finally arrived (finally giving the suppliers a busier order book and a reason to manipulate prices up). You check the long range forecast…interesting…!
• your eye turns back to the Strait of Hormuz, well not actually to it – you know what I mean – but to the constantly shifting postures of Iran, the US, the EU and the OIL traders’ own profit hunting take on it.
• you reflect on Petroplus plummeting into receivership this week – after flirting with it for weeks – and whilst you wonder how a business that deals in OIL can be run into the ground (a little like a casino going bust in Las Vegas – a very bizarre sight to behold) you are aware that the loss of a critical refinery and supply stream for the UK is going to make an impact. But which way will it impact?
• then you hear there is a Jet tanker driver strike out of Immingham (you’d heard about that right?)…more to consider

and your gut is beginning to tell you what?  Buy today or hold till early next week?

This is what we are going to do: the market report at 9.30 am shows it is up already…we’ll wait till the next full one at 11.30 am and then decide but I would be very surprised if we didn’t buy today. However, the bit that makes us unique is that we have the services of a true industry expert – with a philanthropic heart – and because we will receive market intelligence as it happens we might push it right to 5pm or later. At that point we definitely know what direction the market will go Monday and, because we we can still have today’s prices, we can choose to buy or hold.

Maybe there is a better question than what would you do: why do you buy anything on your own?  Whether it is heating OIL or anything else the power is with the group…we are leaving our own trail.

If you’re like me then you have good days or great days. Today is going to be better than that! In fact today is the day that signifies 2012 is going to be a great year.

The year 2012 will go down in history as the year that Community Group Buying changed the economic landscape. The very same economic landscape that The Daily Telegraph shouted at us about just two weeks ago: “We may pass through hell first but the UK will rise from the flames”. Bah humbug! Look beyond your blinkered, last century economic thinking. Groups of people getting together in their communities to buy things they would normally have bought alone – things that are necessary - will challenge the flawed economic model that we have been seduced by for over 200 years.

So why today?

Well today 40 bags of Rock salt – a pallet load – arrive in the village of Wootton nr Woodstock in Oxfordshire. They are being sold to the residents of our community at £5.49 less – per bag – than they can be bought at Homebase. They are being delivered to the door – or garden shed – of those that are unable to lift a 25kg bag or those that are out all day. The delivery method will be by wheelbarrow. An unsual company vehicle I would agree! They are being delivered by three young people that until a few weeks ago, when they met an educator named Richard, had nothing to look forward to as they are NEETs kids. Not in Education, Employment, Training…it is a horrible term isn’t it? It is also testimony that our flawed economic thinking has let down an entire generation – one million unemployed teens!

So a group of people get together and save some money. So what? OK so they’ve saved themselves forty individual journeys, some time, the phone calls to ring round to see who has the cheapest and the back breaking effort of picking it up at both ends of the journey. Is that really such a big deal?

This is a massive deal.  This is about Community in the truest sense. This is about reinventing the way a community does business. This afternoon and this product are just one example of why Community Group Buying works and how nobody gets left out. We are a group and as a group we go to market.

In this instance the rock salt was bought wholesale and the small profit it will generate is the unusual twist this time around, as it will give those three young people an insight into how a business can be generated by helping the local community. By getting a necessity to those that could not conceive of being able to go and buy it themselves they have protected the vulnerable.  They  have  erradicated numerous journeys on our tiny country roads and that is so much more than simply a reduction in carbon emissions – critical as that is.  The £20 they will each clear from this makes a huge difference to their lives – it also creates belief. But even more than that they have proved a redesigned economic model.

Our Community Buying Group formed over two years ago. In that time 100 families have shared savings of over £40,000 just on their heating OIL. That Community Buying Group can now buy anything it wants to buy as a group…your community, rural or urban, can buy anything it chooses and it too can find ways to reinvent economic models and create micro businesses: nappies, compost, solar PV, fruit and veg, oil, gas, water butts, window cleaning, the list is pretty much endless.

So why is 2012 going to be the year that Community challenges the economic landscape? Apart from the obvious because we must challenge it: we have influenced a project that will create another 2000 of these groups right across the UK! Community Buying Groups…if you hadn’t heard about this phenomenon before, then you most certainly have now.

And so what happened…

It really is as simple as it looks…and in that simplicity is a solution to a vastly more complex issue – jobs for young people in their community

So I am told to WELCOME you to my blog…rarely one to follow such a simple instruction…I will get to that in a minute. Of far, far greater importance than that is this simple message:

why buy anything on your own ever again?

I very much hope by the time you have read a few of the posts you will grasp the enormous good sense of that insight and seek out others that want to buy what you want to buy and share the benefits of a Community Buying Group…the power is with the group!

oh yes…WELCOME TO MY BLOG…