Category: current affairs

Andrew Simms had an excellent piece in The Guardian on Friday, “The final countdown”. It superbly summarises the basis on which we are fast approaching an irreversible climate crisis before detailing the ways in which we can climb out of the hole we have dug ourselves into. Even without global warming driven climate change there are other imperatives to change: oil is fast running out, air quality remains a serious problem (as Olympic athletes will soon recount I'm sure), cancer rates are soaring and the global population is bigger than ever.

What always strikes me when looking at alternatives to the current 'business as usual' approach is how viable they are. There's nothing impossible about them… the technology is there, the ideas are there, what we are lacking is the leadership and collective willpower. Why aren't we insulating all homes or subsidising alternative sources of energy? Why have we privatised our limited water supplies? Why is our train system so expensive and slow? Why is so much effort being put into expanding Heathrow airport?

The existing political establishment have had their chance to prove their commitment to these issues. But again and again they've failed, whilst delivering extremely fine words of intent — but the last thing we need is more hot air. A greener, low carbon world isn't one of deprivation it's a future with a higher quality of life for all.

Some overdue links for your delectation:

• TheyWorkForYou, Video, tagging, crowd-sourcing… MySociety have another great new development and you can help improve it: Video on TheyWorkForYou

• Dutch ban voting computers
  Old, but good news. In May the Dutch government ruled out using e-voting again, due to problems with eavesdropping, so they are reverting to paper ballots. I love this excerpt from The Register: The Ministry of Internal Affairs says that the development of safer voting computers has “insufficient added value over voting by paper and pencil”.

• Brighton & Hove Dharma Yatras
  Scroll down to the very, very bottom to view pictures from a couple of silent peace walks for the Tibetan and Burmese peoples. I participated in a couple and found them very moving.

In a major coup, The Observer’s leader column, backs Sian Berry in the London contest, with Ken as second preference:

There is a stronger case to be made for casting ‘first preference’ votes for Sian Berry, the Green candidate. The party has already used its toehold on the London Assembly to wring green concessions worth millions of pounds out of the mayoral budget. A respectable score for Ms Berry, an intelligent and articulate advocate of her cause, would send a clear signal to whoever wins the mayoralty that London cares about environmental policy.

Full column
Sian’s website

Whenever there's a rise in energy prices media pieces are usually accompanied by grumbles from businessmen (and it's usually men moaning) about how the higher costs are making business harder than ever. Increased costs are always a challenge for businesses… any organisation in fact. But it really shouldn't be any surprise that energy prices are rising. It's been a matter of policy for years that fuel tax will increase ever year (Brown merely delayed the increase last year). It's also clear that with declining oil and gas supplies yet increased demand those prices are also set to rise, further augmented by carbon trading schemes.

These are not sudden occurrences. They have been in popular knowledge for years. Part of business is scenario planning to prepare for what the future is likely to bring. It seems to me that there's huge competitive advantage to be had from shifting your business away from the volatile, increasing costs of carbon-based energy sources to renewable sources. The business that can keep a lid on its costs by switching to renewables is also the one that is going to be able to offer the most competitive prices. Despite what some might argue, a greener economy is filled with opportunities, not gloom.

I've heard too many people promise 'a new kind of politics' too many times… it's a big promise which needs to overcome huge dollops of immutable human nature. Still, despite not winning the New Hampshire primary as hyped, Barack Obama does have a special kind of charisma. Obama is reaching people who haven't voted before, and regardless of his politics that is sometime worth studying.

It's difficult to get an accurate grip of a campaign over the pond, but Obama's website is deeply impressive. It's engaging, cleanly designed and very comprehensive. It addresses a wide variety of issues, groups of people and Obama's background with a depth and clarity that significantly outstrips the other Democratic candidates.

The US Green Party are also holding a healthy primary process but, as in previous years, the voting system for presidential elections tends to polarise voters at the expense of newer parties.

I would love to see if Obama can deliver on even a fraction of the potential he appears to show at the moment… but he may never get the chance if the Clinton revival continues apace.

Defending himself against recent accusations that Labour aren’t taking seriously their duty of care to our service-men and women, Gordon Brown boasted that the UK had the second highest defence budget in the world.

Nobody doubts that the brave men and women in our armed services deserve excellent care in terms of pensions, medical support and housing. Yet they have been risking their lives in foreign adventures which have made us arguably less secure rather than more so. They haven’t been defending us from any imminent threat, despite the dodgy dossier’s claims.

The Treasury expects to spend £32 billion on defence in the 2007-08 financial year. We’re not a superpower, our borders are not under threat of attack, yet why are we spending hugely more on armed forces than all other countries except the USA – the sun set on our empire a long time ago.

We do need to maintain defensive capabilities, but otherwise we should be spending this money much more wisely. Climate change is a huge challenge to world peace and stability. Oil, water and food supplies are already and will becoming increasing sources of conflict.

Our defence spending should be redirected to sustainable transport, greening our housing and kick-starting British eco industries to generate new jobs and ensure our leading position in this booming global market.

In a sense, as Rita Donaghy of the Committee for Standards in Public Life argues, the current series of revelations regarding donations to the Labour Party is a sign of the improving levels openness in British politics.

Yet these stories are hugely corrosive to public perception of politics and so politicians and the political parties. People end up wondering how they can trust any politician leaving them to disengage altogether. Which is just tragic because not showing up is what lets people in who may not have survived more thorough selection processes, election campaigns and so on.

The Tories are certainly not above criticism themselves, Lord Ashcroft's funds which they are depending upon mightily come from off-shore tax havens – famously Belize. Yet Labour have been astonishingly self-destructive with Ecclestone, two Blunkett and two Mandleson fiascos, cash for honours… the list goes on. Didn't they see what John Major's government went through? How hard is it to say no?

Pretty hard it would seem. Labour's Chief Fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn whose protestations of innocence ring increasingly hollow, was at the centre of a Labour lobbying scandal uncovered by Greg Palast for Newsnight and The Observer with Mendelsohn the lobbyist promising unprecedented access to the Government. There's an excerpt from Palast's book chapter on this story online.

It's disappointing when any party brings itself into disrepute. But Labour have seemed to have worked themselves to a state of dangerous arrogance whilst retaining an inappropriate sense of 'ownership' over progressive votes.

Votes are nobody's but voters. All politicians and parties have to work hard to earn trust. It's sadly much easier to lose than gain.

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, the giant government department responsible for tax, benefits and customs, have lost 25 million records relating to child benefit. In my mind and the minds of many ORG and FIPR people this was an accident waiting to happen.

The Government has consistently shown very basic misunderstandings of what IT can and can’t do as well as how smart folk can abuse simple failings. As a result aggregating lots of sensitive personal data should be avoided at all costs. In this case however it didn’t take a smart hacker to potentially leave bank and personal information to identity thiefs. A ‘low level’ worker burnt to CDs the database of 25 million records which was then lost by a courier somewhere between HMRC and the National Audit Office.

Any system which allowed a so-called ‘low level’ member of staff to burn any records let alone millions to CDs has fundamental security failings. Getting bulk data (i.e. more than one at a time) out of the system should be highly restricted. While I welcome the Audit Offce’s commitment to carefully checking HMRC’s work, the requirement to analyse such quantities of live data has to be re-examined. I also sense that Data Protection and the Information Commissioner have been given insufficient regard.

Green policies see the management of a complexity of tax benefits, credits and grants as a burden on society. Takeup of many of these is low and the cost of administration is enormous. The Green Party wants to see a radically simplified tax and benefit system based on a livable citizens’ income and local income taxes which mean you pay on the basis of what you earn, not what someone reckons your house is worth.

• Germans abandon plan for 2008 electronic voting
  Very good news as their proposed plans were particularly bad and had no room for recounts

• ORG, wonderful ORG
  The Open Rights Group have published a review of their activities over the past 2 years. A very good read, summarises our work on e-voting and really makes you ask – if you're not a member, why not!?!

• Amazon: Reinventing the Book
  Interesting article on Amazon's move to create an electronic book reader and the associated economics of ebooks. I think I'll take a while to be convinced of this one!

You may have recently seen around Brighton wonderful bright yellow buses. These buses are from the new community interest company “The Big Lemon Buses“. (Disclosure: Big Lemon founder, Tom Druitt, is a member of the local Green Party). These buses exemplify Green values… they run on used vegetable oil resulting in low emissions and reuse of what would otherwise be considered waste. They also are operated for the community interest, not for the profit of the owners.

Even better, the buses are cheap and have simple prices. £1 for a single and £2 for an all day ticket. This is how it should be. I recently was trying to explain how the Brighton & Hove bus prices work to someone new to the city. In doing so you have to somehow define the difference between city centre and not along with the implications for prices that has.

If we’re going to reduce the number of short car journeys within the city (and we need to!) then making buses regular, reliable and affordable is absolutely critical. So while Brighton & Hove Buses have recently increased their prices, Big Lemon Buses have stuck to their simple £1/£2 pricing formula. Perhaps not being dependent on spiralling oil prices helps.

If you can make use of a yellow bus (they currently run between Brighton station and the univerisites at Falmer) then please support a community company which respects the environment and helps improve the air quality of our city.