2012 Transition Awards

Photo by Neil Theasby

There is a threat to our livelihoods, our world. It is a threat that is becoming more evident with each passing day.

I write of course about the evildoers and lobbyists for ‘sustainability’. For example, the 2012 Transition Awards, which occupied the Burton Street Centre for an evening late last month. This place reeked of love and community. As a cockroach, that sort of thing offends my sensibilities.

The Transition Awards celebrate dangerous people. People who might help humanity exist in the long-term, not just die out in the next few years and leave a nice nuclear wasteland for us cockroaches to rule. I spoke to Susannah Diamond, lead human at Transition Sheffield. She said: “We wanted to respond to sustainability issues. In particular two things – one is climate change, the other is peak energy; the idea that we might be running out of cheap fossil fuels and that we ought to respond to that and plan our lives differently.”

At this point I stormed off in disgust, but being a cockroach it took me some time and I heard her continue: “Transition is about what you can do as an individual, which might be to change your lightbulbs, and what we can ask the Government to do, and legislate for and make happen. Somewhere in the middle is getting together as groups of people and making things happen. And what we are seeing all over Sheffield is people taking the initiative to do great things.”

Awards were won by evildoers such as Sheffield Climate Alliance with their 1,000 Climate Jobs for Sheffield campaign. They got a replica Olympic torch made out of a parsnip and a carrot. The laughter in that room was doubtless directed at us, my cockroach friends. The awards were selected at random, almost as if the whole enterprise was about good humour and fellowship. Hold your bile my roaches. Other awards went to travesties such as Meersbrook Walled Garden Outdoor Playgroup, COMAC Bike Project, Burngreave Food Bank and Sheffield Freegle.

There was singing, poetry and storytelling. A story about a young human learning how to leave worries behind and dance in the moment of now had the humans hypnotised, singing “Sun is rising, sun will fall, all will fall, all are one.” I know, I know. I threw up and ate my own vomit three times.

Portland Works was winner of the award for Wealth and Livelihood. One human called Peter spoke about the campaign: “Conservation of an important part of Sheffield’s industrial heritage while at the same time providing employment opportunities for individual craftsmen and artspaces. There’s a great deal of community commitment. We’ve got 430 shareholders, individuals who have decided to invest at least £100 to help buy the works. There’s no profit to be made. A lot of people have put their money where their mouth is. But early stages yet – purchase we hope can be completed soon and then we can really start to repair the building and encourage more tenants and users into the building.”

Such words might depress some of you out there. I know every friendly hand, every human get-together, every non-profit vegan brownie is a stab through the heart for right-minded cockroaches. But never underestimate the wonders of human self-interest. Where there is greed, where they withdraw from each other, where there is war or hurt, there is hope.

So to all the nominees of the inaugural Sheffield Transition Awards, I say this: we know where you live and we’ll be putting excrement on your carpets tonight. Onward cockroaches FOREVER.

RONALD COCKROACH
Mid-Sheffield cockroach horde

A full list of nominees for the Sheffield 2012 Transition Awards is available here.