Mary Portas on her podcast The Kindness Economy and power to the people

Virgin Radio

29 Jan 2021, 10:20

The retail renegade joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky earlier to talk about her spending-inspired podcast and how to create a hopeful and happy community. She told Chris: “I have to give credit to us all as humans because I think most people are good people. I think what happens is that we just bought into the wrong ideas.

"Those wrong ideas that we set up in society were really around money, fame and power and that got acknowledged as great and we didn't look at the bigger picture.

"We didn't look at what was happening to us we and the effect that what we were doing and the way we were living was not only having on the planet but us as people, it just didn't make us happy.

"We've seen this shift in our consciousness and weirdly, when you have something like a crisis which we are going through, COVID has given us a conscious more than ever and we're realising that the only thing that matters is humanity and our planet. That's it, and love at the heart of it.

“We need to have faith in humanities to make this change... through COVID particularly we've just seen such joyousness and understanding of this.

"And when I do my podcasts I speak to people, not just to business leaders, but that's where the change needs to come. That's the push that I'm hoping for here.

"I don't think we can rely on government for this change so we have to make the change where the power is.

“We have the power to choose... We need to eat, we want to socialise, we want to connect. So, what we need to do is try and buy locally, because every pound that goes to local isn't just a pound to that shopkeeper, that goes back into the local economy.

"What it also does is means you don't have to drive anywhere so you're not wasting petrol, it also gives this web of security, a connection and a community, which is the role of high streets - not more, more stuff.

"The power is with us... the more we talk about hope and the more we talk about people doing this, the more people will do it.

"There's a great philosopher called Gershom Scholem who talks about the 'plastic hours' and he came up with this concept actually after the Holocaust; when such pain hits, you have time to change. And we have those plastic hours now...

"We can do this, and we cannot rely on government, it's down to us. Every pound is a vote. Think of where you're putting it, think of where you're spending it and that will start to change the world for good."