Category: current affairs

• Obvious science: Organic food is healthier
  The Soil Association have been saying this for years. It's obvious that industrialised intensive farming leaches the soil of minerals leaving produce that is low in flavour and goodness. Hence the unfortunate need for vitamin supplements even with a balanced diet. What's most galling is the Food Standard Authority's continued insistence in there being no difference between organic and industrially produced food.

• A case of the wrong technology applied incorrectly
  The Swiss have made a big deal about using 'quantum cryptography' to protect electronic vote tabulation transmissions. This significantly misses the point but I couldn't have put it any better than Avi Rubin so read his post!

Slowness and simplicity are popular themes at the moment, for good reason in my view.

I would love to see the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety's recommendation on 20mph speed limits for towns implemented. It would have so many benefits in terms of improving road safety, noise levels from traffic and the very nature of our towns and cities. Roads can feel so hostile when cars and vans are zooming by. It's just not pleasant… which is why I enjoy seeing how cobbled streets slow everyone down to a lovely bumpy pace.

For a good, personal, introduction to the Slow movement (Slow Food, Slow Towns, Slow Sex, Slow everything!) then I can recommend Carl Honore’s book and website “In Praise of Slow”

It's sad to hear the grey parties bleating about who stole who's policy first. Ideas are free, it's putting them into practice that's difficult. The Green Party have also had our fair share of good ideas slip into other parties' manifestos but when it comes to implementing real change that responds to the challenges we face the other parties offer nothing but hot air – and more pollution, more roads and bigger airports.

The current spat over tax reforms strikes me as extraordinary for being so tame. Yes, rising house prices are making inherentance tax increasingly unfair and punitive. But we're not hearing principled debate over the fundamentals of our tax and benefits system. We arguging over thresholds for inheritance tax and how raised thresholds might be funded.

Of course adjusting our tax system to remain fair amidst the changes caused by spiralling house prices is reasonable – but wouldn't it have been better to deal with the causes of house price inflation much earlier than be forced into these changes now?

Green Party policy has radically rethought the basis of our economy with the aim of supporting a sustainable (in all senses) economy with simple measures. A plethora of credits, benefits and allowances would be replaced with one citizens' income whilst taxes would be focused on eliminating carbon from our economy. Simple, effective and costed.

You can read more about our policies here

• The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer…
  There can be no doubt that we have very little time indeed to prevent runaway climate change.
• ICT in schools: Costs a lot, delivers little
  Despite being very keen on technology, I’m reassured that my own instinctual suspicion of ICT flag-waving in schools is supported by recent studies which show little benefits from large ICT spends.
• How to miss the point: The Green Standard
  A group of environmental groups have published their assessment of how Labour, Conservatives and LibDems measure up in terms of their environmental policies. I find it baffling that these groups thought it would be a good idea to reinforce the tired politics of just the grey parties galavanting in Westminster. At the Green Party conference Caroline Lucas MEP and Siand Sian Berry challenged the parties to commit to 10 urgent policy priorities.

The government’s guarantee of all deposits held by Northern Rock is an astonishing move.

Turmoil in the market was affecting Northern Rock’s ability to operate given it’s mortgage-heavy business model. To protect UK financial markets and consumers, measures were put in place. This included financing from the Bank of England at a ‘punitive rate’. In other words Northern Rock could access money to tide it over, but profits would suffer due to the rate they would have to pay. Northern Rock didn’t actually use the facility, just arranged for it to be available as a precaution.

Somehow this was worked up into a media frenzy which saw queues forming _at some branches_ as customers tried to withdraw their money lest it get lost in some kind of catastrophic financial implosion. This ignored the fact that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme guarantees the first £2k and 90% of the next £33k. For the vast majority of customers this more than covers their savings.

It seems to me that not only did many savers not understand what was going on, but that some journalists didn’t either. Some did and chose to whip up a frenzy whilst a few remained calm. Not an unusual state of affairs.

The government, in an attempt to calm fears and stop panic withdrawals, offered to guarantee all existing deposits in Northern Rock. Whilst very thin on specifics, this was an extraordinary thing to do and in my view a huge overreaction. Suddenly taxpayers were liable for all deposits in the bank, and the precedent was set so that by implication any other bank appearing to fail (even if not failing in reality) would be provided such guarantees at taxpayer expense.

It’s quite astonishing that the government felt such a huge intervention in the market was necessary, with so little attention to detail or the implications of the precedent it set. Will no bank be allowed to fail, no matter how poor its management?

The government overreacted and have created a situation which could essentially nationalise any failing bank. The question then becomes… was it Alistair Darling who got the jitters or Gordon Brown?

Public reaction to the Northern Rock story has also shown the low level of trust people seem to have in financial institutions and the system at large. This is an issue the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England will need to urgently address.

*UPDATE* I was flabbergasted by the BBC’s 1 o’clock news coverage of Bank of England Governor Mervyn King’s appearance before the Finance Select Committee. Suddenly the entire problem was his and the Bank of England’s fault, plus the British banking regulatory system was flawed. Rather it was coverage by outlets such as the BBC which stirred up the trouble, including their incessant presentation of a queue outside one branch when I hear other branches had no queues at all. I’m finding the heavily lopsided presentation of the facts increasingly disturbing.

The boom in buy-to-let property investment over the last few years has been a staple news story. First time buyers are often reported to complain about older, wealthier people coming in and buying up homes to create lucrative rental portfolios they can retire on.

For some buy-to-let hasn’t been quite the golden goose they hoped for, a glut of rental properties has made it difficult for them to break even. When I rented in a central Brighton “loft conversion” I was fortunate: I could negotiate the price down between three desperate private landlords in the same building. There were repossessed flats on every floor of the apparently “prestigious development” as the developers had described it to my landlord.

Yet, for many, the combination of rising house prices and the people left unable to buy, buy-to-let is profitable. At the extreme end of the scale are the maths teachers who are apparently en-route to becoming Britain’s first buy-to-let billionaires. I do think there should be firmer taxation on multiple home owners, but there will always be a rental market.

What strikes me is how few incentives there are for landlords to make their homes more energy efficient. Tenants almost always pay the bills themselves but often stay only for a short time, so have little reason to make long term investments in energy efficiency beyond low-energy light bulbs.

The Telegraph reported in May that energy performance certificates (which are also part of the controversial Home Information Packs or HIPS) would be required of landlords October 2008. However it’s not really clear what purpose they would serve. The certificates would be unlikely to sway the majority of people looking to rent. It’s a small, pointless gesture from a Labour government continuously failing to take action on climate change.

85% of Brighton & Hove residents live in privately owned property. 21% of homes are privately rented, twice the national average. These rented properties often see a high turnover of tenants and landlords who show little concern for energy efficiency.

While there are grants available to improve the energy efficiency of private rental properties, they are usually limited to tenants on benefits or over 60 whilst being complex to apply for. Whilst these grants may help those most in need of warmer homes, they will barely make a dent in the carbon footprint of private rental properties overall.

Buy-to-let isn’t going away, so the government needs to get serious about addressing this major part of our housing stock. Without clear incentives for landlords, either in the form of taxation related to the energy efficiency of their properties or through bearing the burden of energy costs themselves, I’m afraid I don’t see private rental properties getting any greener.

It's not much of a surprise that Transport Secretary Alistair Darling has announced that x-ray screening can't be implemented across the rail network. Well of course not, there are so many entry points to the rail network that the cost of the machines and staff would be absurd, never mind that they could never cope with rush-hour numbers.

Instead of just focussing on other measures, such as better trained police and human intelligence agents (though they're doing a bit of that), they're going to be piloting x-ray and body scanner machines on the Heathrow Express line. A complete waste of time and money, the usual cheap politics of the ignorant I'm afraid.

• This is a classic case of fighting the last war we lost. I'd expect the next attack to be a car or truck-based bomb and not to be train or tube-based considering the excessive police presence on the networks now.

• By so publicly announcing the location of where these machines will be it's certain that no serious terrorist is going to actually use that rail line or any others that have scanners installed in the future.

• If airports are anything to go by then the people staffing these machines will be underpaid and bored right out of their brains. Due to passenger numbers they'll have to pick only some people, which due to their low training and motivation will probably the 'usual suspects' if the scanning staff do any profiling at all.

• Of course this makes it look like 'something is being done' by the politicians (and I'm not saying something shouldn't be done) but it's just using technology to cover the hand waving. The public know about airport screening so it sort of sounds good, sounds reassuring etc. But in reality this, if anything, makes us more insecure by diverting resources and attention away from more useful security measures like: Making it harder to produce high explosives, effectively tracking terrorist networks, interfering with their funding (if you think we're doing well on that count read this damning report ) and so on.

The UK isn't the only place doing this kind of silly security measure for public reassurance, the US are masters at it too… the problem is a lack of proper security understanding in many segments of the non-security service government and a lack of criticism on these matters from the media because, well we've all got to be seen to want the terrorists stopped. We do, which is why it's important we point out the stupid ideas when they arise.

Fun bonus link, by the ever excellent John Lettice, showing why two biometrics are not always better than one

Say what you want about Chirac, but these comments on Turkey show him to be the ultimate smooth operator… link

Watching the lunch time news I had the feeling of being blackmailed by those pushing hard for Turkish membership… The core of their argument was that if the talks weren't allowed to continue then a 'clash of civilisations' would occur so basically Islamic extremists will continue to harry us. er what?

• Turkey's being a member or not is going to have little or no impact on Islamic terrorism.
• How on earth the EU can accept Turkey with Cyprus unresolved, no constitution in place and uncertainty over future adoption of the Euro?
• As the opinion poll shows (taken from the BBC) most Europeans are not in favour of the Turks joining. On what democratic basis can these talks be pushed ahead?

It was the Austrians and Poles who defeated the Turks at Vienna – I find it extraordinary to see history sort of repeating itself. I understand it's a very difficult time for Turkey politically, and from their perspective they would be mad to accept negotiations for 2nd class citizenship in the Union. Still the EU doesn't know what it is at the moment so Turks should not be so willing to jump into the mess. Of course the EU has been behaving like an inexperienced girl, surprised to see a man expect more when she has been teasing him for years. Turkey has tired of the flirting and wants more, but us Europeans had no intention of giving any more…

After having read “For Your Freedom and Ours” I'm passionate about righting the fairly comprehensive ignorance there is concerning the huge parts the Polish air force, army, navy and incredible resistance (the Home Army) played in the second world war.

I've been sitting on these links for a while… I stumbled upon them whilst looking up something about e-voting but I'm pleased to see two excellent speeches by John Prescott concerning the Polish. I doubt he wrote them but still…

More people outside Poland should know how much you contributed to the fight against Fascism.

And today I want to remember my own, personal debt of honour to a man called Paul, a Polish refugee who lived with my family during the War.

He fled from the Nazi occupation, and fought with the Allies for the freedom of Poland and the freedom of Britain.

I hope that today we have finally begun to properly record the contribution of thousands of people like Paul, who made such a huge impact on the Allied war effort.

Today, we pay tribute to the remarkable bravery of the citizens of Poland whose spirit was never broken.

The speeches can be found here and here