Im going to point out right now that I'm not going to respond or react to any dumb "you suck", "commie" criticisms, but a logical critique of our current system is wholly welcome. Having said that - do direct any hatemail to me {kit}, so I can have the pleasure and spare sensitive old Tess the pain.

Anyhoo, you wanna know what a collective is? I do too! Im currently attempting to study alternative economic systems  to capitalism [or trying to] and I thought it was about damn time we had a pretty lil collective in northern ireland - until I realised Queerspace had beaten us to it. Queerspace rocks incidentally - go to it.

It takes a while to get your head around collective ethics, and as we are not a workplace - ie, we're not employed labourers - some of the principles of collectivity are irrelevent to us. However we do try to stay true to the basic ideas of collectivism and a fair work/play place.

The basic concept is anti-hierarchy. Two of us founded this initiative - hopefully more will come. At the moment, who is to have more authority? Who deserves it? Is it me, because I am obviously the coolest, prettiest, most charismatic and modest person you've ever met? Is it Tesser because she's elusive and thats sexy? Well now. We dont think either of us deserve that sway. Yes, if one of us worked consistently harder (hmmm) and proved themselves more dedicated (hmm hmmm) then perhaps that person would be entitled to a little more influence than someone who rolls in drunk once a week (HMM) to pick up her [non existent, we're voluntary] pay-cheque, but thankfully we're not in that position .... yet.

As it stands - decisions will be taken equally. Meetings will be held. Ideas will be listened to, voices respected. Anyone who joins our collective - provided they arent some weird ass seventies-spy-film style subterfugeous (of course its a word, i just said it) type - will have equal input. If they are a spy however, we'll beat them with chopsticks until they wake up a homo. Remember though that we are only mere saplings in a forest of collective redwoods and we're takin' our sweet time actually getting the initiative up-and-running, nevermind the damn principles. Have you lot never heard of exams?

My head hurts so I'm going to stop this now. A much better definition of collectives (according to the real world, not the unplugged muscle within my skull once known as a brain) can be found at wikipedia. Anyone interested in alternatives to capitalism is STRONGLY recommended to check out the stuff about PARECON (participatory economics, fancy eh?) at www.zmag.org - if we ever get to distro we'll be based on Michael Albert's principles. God, there a lot of them. Fuckin' right says this leftist tart.

PS go to zmag anyway.  You with the 'hawks! I see you! Stop dryhumping punkvoter, mowons!