Report from the UK Shopocalypse tour...

The Shopocalypse bus takes us back to Colchester, after a tour loop that started here in Cholchester, then Norwich, Ganthram, London and back -- now here we are again in East Anglia’s heart. Today: in London in the traditional places, on BBC radio and preaching and singing at #10 Downing St. and in front of the comical Parliament, which has been caught in an expense account scandal. Fully a fourth of the MP’s were caught padding the requests, buying things like duck islands, estate forests, and moat cleanings – on the public pound. Dozens of them will “stand down” in the upcoming election and mea culpas fill the papers.

So our timing couldn’t be better. Although we frequent our usual Starbucks and super malls, the choir has a refreshing feeling of hitting the zeitgeist squarely. Our parading around this afternoon through rows of fluorescent green bobbies, and then our arrival at the annual conclave of “Transition Town” at the Battersea Arts Centre -- was the close of our tour’s first chapter. While the traditional politicians here become clowns in their own inevitable-feeling tragedy, the transition think tankers are planning sustainable communities, envisioning a future beyond oil and war.

Tomorrow we have for the first time ever - two shows in the same day, here in Colchester and then in the evening in Cambridge. The choir is so hot, I hope to ride that gospel wave. I believe the “Fabulous Worships” are sold out. A number of the people in the parliament parades (one for peace, one for the Tamil community, and one against the police’s killing of Ian Tomlinson at G-20 a month ago) - shouted out in the din they would “see you in church!” Change-a-lujah is in the air, as the self-dealing financial-political class is exposed and it dawns on us that the economy is a sum total of our personal decisions…