Last night London was thoroughly glum. As I sat in an hour-long traffic jam just 5 minutes from home, I surveyed the block-long queue of commuters huddling against the rain, one man crouched down holding his head in despair as yet another already-full bus passed them by. Home and warmth still several unhappy hours away.

Is there anything that could make Londoners more miserable than a tube strike during the February freeze? Well actually, I think there is: if the unions really wanted to achieve maximum impact, personally I’d have held off another week. Why not punt for Valentine’s Day? There’d be no faster way of resolving negotiations than grinding the city to a halt on one of the most popular commercial events of the year.

The roguish cynic in me indulged in this thought: picture thousands of lovebirds with romance on their minds – separated, wretchedly stranded in different corners of the city, hindered from delivering their £50 bouquets of imported roses, stuffing their faces over a mediocre set menu, or reaching that all-important rendez-vous under ‘The Kiss’ at Kings Cross on time.

I may be newly single for the first time in several years, but I am adamant I will not be joining the mass of uninspired internet daters searching for their 97% match at the top of The Shard. Newly liberated = newly empowered. So this year I will not be hoping for freshly cut flowers or a smattering of gaudy greeting cards. Instead I’m taking matters into my own hands and have opted for an ‘experience’. My new playmate – 14 years my junior – and I will be heading to Somerset. Unbeknownst to the rest of my friends this will not be a weekend of country walks, pub dinners, open fires and big breakfasts. Oh no. There will be masks, lingerie, and plenty of sex (and yes, hopefully still a big breakfast) as we join a throng of bacchanalian revellers all seeking the same Valentine experience: not love, simply pleasure.

But putting my inner cynic aside for just a moment, there are ways for even the most loved-up Londoners to avoid buying into the consumerist crap that ends up littering our bins a week on. Return that lingerie (it’s a myth, girls don’t like red underwear) and try one of these simple pleasures instead:

• Morning glory: get up and watch the dawn – when was the last time you saw the sun rise?
• Write each other a poem: when the creative juices start flowing, so will everything else!
• Go on a bargain hunt: head to your nearest market with a budget and a time limit – half an hour to find the perfect love token for a fiver. Guaranteed to get the heart racing.
• Make it last longer: Camellias are widely referred to as the ‘rose of winter’ because they only blossom at this time of year, they are also a symbol of promise and love. Walk to the garden centre, then go home and get your hands dirty.

Have fun getting it on Hustlers!

The post The Authentic Valentine Experience – not love, only pleasure appeared first on EcoHustler.

The debut single and video from Let The Machines Do The Work is probably the first ever video to be shot at an actual EDL rally. Rather than members of the English Defence League, the Brighton four piece are fans of the English Disco Lovers and joined forces with them to bring some good vibes to the occasion.

Let the machines do the work on FB

The post Fascism Versus Techno (guess who won?) appeared first on EcoHustler.

Almost unbelievably, giant petrochemical corporations prowling our planet for new places to drill are honing in on everybody’s favourite party island. Locals who love the island year round for myriad reasons beyond the techno scene have launched a petition and need our support to block this dangerous scheme.

Ibiza may be infamous for its summer season when legions of tourists flock into mega-clubs to thwap one out to often dubious electronica and spend weeks of their wages on small bottles of water costing ten euros a pop, but there are whole other dimensions to this unique and sacred “Pine Island”.

Early ravers

Ibiza is an exquisite jewel in the Mediterranean with precious ecosystems and a rich cultural past resulting in large portions of the island being registered as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Phoenician settlers founded a port here in 654 BC and named it Ibossim (from the Phoenician “iboshim” dedicated to the god of music and dance Bes).

Something magical about this extraordinary countryside and coastline lends itself to bacchanalia and has been drawing revellers ever since. Some say it is the unusually intense magnetic field focused on a magnificent rock of the southern coast called Es Vedrà.

Es Vedrà

Of course, at a time when our planet’s climate is dangerously changing and renewable alternatives abound, drilling for oil anywhere is unacceptable. However, by setting their sites on our beloved “White Island” the oil hoodlums have finally gone too far.

Perhaps the money men have bought the myth – that this island is just a den of iniquity. They have failed to appreciate that the international, elite of House Heads are actually a major creative force driving much of the positivity keeping our culture float in these dismal times of corporate hegemony.

Paradise @ DC10

The dance floor of DC10 contains so much wasted talent the average IQ is significantly higher than at most of the world’s leading universities. Not only is this a fight Big Oil can never win, by rounding on the latent passions of the Techno Troubadours they may find they have picked an enemy that will prove their downfall. Underground club culture is grass roots and touches every major metropolis in the world. Roused into action it could prove an unstoppable force for change in the world.

In the island’s legendary cave after-parties the talent is so wasted it is actually pretty much wall to wall Mensa members. These people haven’t been partying non-stop for the last fifteen years because they can’t get a job – they’ve been doing it because it makes a hell of a lot more sense then working 9-5 in an office for a company participating in an economy that decimates the natural world whilst enabling six billionaires to sit in mega yachts the size of small cities off Formentera.

Yoga on Formentera

How to solve the “energy crisis”

This latent genius could solve the world energy crisis in 30 seconds if someone got in there and told them there was a problem. We don’t need to disturb them though as we have figured the solution out already. All we need to do is connect giant, concentrated solar arrays in all the world’s major deserts to a global renewable energy grid. If the fossil fuel corporations were simply acting in the interests of their shareholders, as they claim, they would have done this already. The truth is, these companies are run by evil, greedy men who have been so intoxicated with their poisonous business model they plan to destroy our planet just because they can.

Logical arguments can only take us so far. What we need is for the good people of the world to unite into an unstoppable force of positivity and demonstrate that other ways of living are available and much more fun. We don’t need to work five days a week, banks are not too big too fail and the last wild spaces on earth are definitely not for sale. A key tool in our arsenal is house music. Over to you Romanthony:

Please sign the petition here

Bruce Parry, member of the EcoHustler Advisory Posse say no:

Please sign the petition here

The post Ibiza says ‘no’ to Big Oil appeared first on EcoHustler.

London’s famous Tate Britain art gallery was recently rebranded as the ‘BP Walk Through British Art’. But not everyone is happy with the world’s biggest corporate criminal and polluter using art sponsorship to greenwash its image. Yesterday, a group of actor-vists known as the Reclaim Shakespeare Company expressed that opposition in a very dramatic way…

Find out more, and watch a film of the full performance here:

http://bp-or-not-bp.org/news/shakespe…

Follow on Twitter: @ReclaimOurBard
Like on Facebook: www.facebook.com/reclaimshakespearecompa­ny

Get involved with the campaign to kick Big Oil out of our arts and culture: www.artnotoil.org.uk

The post BP Ejected from Tate Britain by Thespians Channeling the Great Bard appeared first on EcoHustler.

Public Enemy explode the bull-shit hypocrisy of the USA’s phoney war on drugs decades before it became fashionable. Essential viewing.

The post Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos – Public Enemy appeared first on EcoHustler.

www.pitchfornature.com

The post Did This Funny Dude Just Make Natural Capital Sexy? appeared first on EcoHustler.