Twenty things we should have done thirty years ago to prevent the current crises
The extreme problems of the cost of living, energy bills, exorbitant rent, resource wars, climate breakdown are all part of an emerging meta-crisis. But none of this was inevitable and there are plenty of things we can do and should have done a long time ago.
Here’s twenty things we should have done thirty years ago to prevent the current crises (but need to do immediately now):
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- Stop putting up with this shit. Stop being so passive.
- Create resilient forms of energy production that aren’t impacted by external shocks and volatility. These would have to be publicly owned, renewable and decentralised to match this criteria. Energy that is vast in scale, privatised and based on fossil fuels is a disaster.
- Energy should be seen as a public need not a commodity. Private companies have no interest in selling you less of their product.
- Every home in the country should be insulated and every single new-build should have a passivhaus standard (or nearest possible).
- Create a radical nationwide cross-sectoral energy descent plan with annual targets and incentives and fines for failure.
- People who do essential work should be treated with respect and given a living wage. Instead of creating a hostile environment and demonising trade unions we should create workers boards and wage councils to allow pay to meet and match the cost of living.
- Mass expropriation of landlords to create affordable housing (see Berlin).
- Ban AirBnB from Scotland.
- Establish an independent Scottish Living Rent Commission to regulate the sector.
- Significant and ongoing investment in social housing with a massive shift-away from the emphasis on home ownership and towards long-term tenancy agreements with housing associations.
- Create publicly controlled energy companies with an ethos of creating affordable energy.
- Move to district heating systems in Scottish cities.
- Create a functioning free integrated public transport system to allow people to leave their cars behind.
- The big energy companies need to be ransacked.
- Stop concentrating power in supermarkets. We have outsourced ‘food’ to four vast private companies.
- Ban pre-paid meters.
- Innovate around renewables and make this our number one social priority ensuring clean affordable energy.
- Create a National Investment Bank funded by a renewables levy.
- Imagine a different future. Stop being caught in the ‘headlights of now’, none of it works.
- Get out of the British state and create a proper functioning democracy.
Editor’s notes!
It would be great if the author could change the tone and transform this into an inspiring and persuasive article. Describing the different societal and policy options and choices that can be explored and enabled and, if they represent the will of the many people, suggested as a direction to create a better everyday reality in their own live s and own areas. Perhaps it could be re-titled ” Doing it a different way !”
To give confidence, the updated article could refer to real life examples where the proposed changes are already in progress , to inspire, it could underline where some could be innovative radical changes ,leading by example to encourage others around the globe to change also.
It could also illustrate where our current government has taken steps in this direction, albeit inhibited by not having full fiscal and policy levers at their disposal.
Maybe if reproduced in this vein the reader would arrive at the fundamental action detailed in point 20 without it even having to be included!
It’s a list! But yes i will add real-world examples of where this is happening. Thanks Alex
Thirty years ago, although the lady had been ousted there was still a Tory government, and even though is was pretty fractured, it would never have implemented any of these things. Despite the change of government in 1997, rather than ‘stealth taxes’, we had ‘stealth Thatcherism continued’ under Blair and the Bodger. To be fair the Labour, they did a significant amount of redistributive actions and investment in public services. But, they signally failed to articulate a different ‘narrative’ to seek to change the Thatcherite hegemony. Consequently, when the government eventually collapsed under its contradictions and the gross and distorted Bodgerian ego.
I am not optimistic that Starmer has any transformative vision and is not setting out a coherent argument for Labour and change.
However, I think that UK is creaking and I think will fall apart. So, what is being proposed might be feasible in an independent Scotland. People like yourself and others are setting out a vision of sorts of a ‘better nation’
‘…what is being proposed might be feasible in an independent Scotland.’
Why? Why do you think people in an independent Scotland would be any more disposed to vote for what Mike’s proposing? Whence the exceptionalism?
Why wouldn’t they? A majority of the working class in England are totally in thrall to the gutter Tory press.
So, you’re saying that Scottish exceptionalism consists in ‘the working class’ being less gullible in Scotland than it is in England?
I think the idea is that global energy price rises will be solved by Scottish independence. Presumably that’s just part of an infinite list. Some would say that is somewhat gullible. I would say it is really lazy.
If the French public were in the same situation as the UK public there would be riots. Does that make the French “exceptional”?
Whether it’s a cultural thing or whatever it’s true that there’s a much lower percentage of Scots in the back pockets of the gutter Tory press than in England. Call it a “sheep” thing.
Mr E: all that’s being claimed is that a Scottish government that was independent of UK government would be able to respond differently to the problem of global energy price rises, not that making Scottish government independent of UK government would solve the problem.
No, Tom; it means only that France and Britain have different political cultures. The fact that there’s been no more rioting in Scotland than there has been in Britain as a whole would suggest that Scotland is unexceptional in that respect in relation to British political culture generally. I’m wondering why Alasdair thinks that people in Scotland would be any more disposed than people in the UK generally to vote for what Mike’s proposing. I’m not so sure they would be; I’m not so sure that, in respect of its radicalism/conservatism, the political culture people share across Scotland is all that much different than that which people share across Britain generally.
And as for you theory that people who live in England are more susceptible to the press than those who live in Scotland: according to Ofcom’s 2020 News Consumption Survey, there’s no difference whatsoever between people in Scotland and people in England with regard to the platforms out of whose back pockets they obtain their news.
Are you saying Scotland and England don’t have different political cultures? If percentage readership of the gutter Tory press is the same in both countries then it would appear Scots are less gullible than the English in that they’re both exposed to the lies at the same rate but far fewer swallow them up here.
It’s the little Englanders who think they’re exceptional. That was what was behind the Brexit vote. The fact we think we’re better than that doesn’t imply we think we’re considerably more exceptional than them. In what way does thinking we’re NOT too good for the rest of Europe equate with believing in Scottish exceptionalism.
No, I said that ‘I’m not so sure that, in respect of its radicalism/conservatism, the political culture people share across Scotland is all that much different than that which people share across Britain generally.’ I’m asking for some reason I might believe that the Scottish nation is superior in that respect.
And, yes, some people in England think that England is exceptional as a nation. I’m wouldn’t deny that. Again, I’m just wondering why Alasdair thinks Scotland is too in respect of the radicalism of the people who live there and, in particular, why he thinks that, if Scottish government was independent of UK government, the people who live under its jurisdiction would be more disposed to vote for what Mike’s proposing.
A good list that makes a lot of sense.
The question I have is what is the actual reason for the price of energy being so high at the moment?
This question was asked tonight on Any Questions (from Stirling) but the focus was entirely on what current governments have or have not done to ameliorate the cost, not explaining why the prices has shot up.
I suppose the broad answer is supply and demand (heavily influenced by shortages and uncertainties because of the war in Ukraine) but that does not explain the specifics. The source of the cost increase is where exactly and why and who controls and thus has power over this? Is it even down to humans or the highly automated nature of the ‘markets’? There is surprisingly little discussion of this and we seem in thrall to forces no-one is talking about or understands. No-one seems to be looking at the root causes which is surely where the solution really lies?
Good point about control. The Trinidadian writer, C.L.R. James, pointed out that our governments offer only an illusion of control, which is why looking to them for ‘leadership’ and ‘fixes’ in times of crisis is vain. In an increasingly global world, ‘independent’ national governments are increasingly powerless and maintain only a spurious authority. Commodity prices, like the weather, are ‘controlled’ by the butterfly effect.
What’s with all the red stripes?
Thirty years is an interesting timeframe which gets to the root of the problem:
1. We should not have embarked upon the “Dash for Gas” in the 1990s which locked us into dependence upon gas for electricity
2. We should not have privatised the energy utilities
I take exception to the district heating bit. District heating is almost entirely used in places where you need a mains hot-water pipe running beside the mains cold-water pipe to stop it freezing solid. It’s really inefficient. You need regular expansion sections above ground, and it heats the earth and the air. The places I’ve seen district heating, you can’t turn off the radiators in your house because it’s under district control and you get in a situation where an air conditioner is running because the heating is way too warm, or your house is uninhabitably hot.
Banning German horse-riders might be the way forward, though…..
Strange that it works so well in Denmark then: https://ens.dk/en/our-responsibilities/global-cooperation/experiences-district-heating
District heating works well in Lerwick, unfortunately its not viable for us country folk.
Moving heat is extremely inefficient, moving electricity is very efficient. It would be way better to burn rubbish and fuel-oil in Lerwick to produce electricity. More thermally efficient seeing as there wouldn’t be a 60Km – long radiator to heat, water wouldn’t have to be heated to 95deg C, and you don’t have to dig up the streets and pull houses apart.
There are hundreds of millions of people using district heating, but punting the idea that it’s good for the environment is a new trope, and it doesn’t make much sense unless it’s below zero for months or you’re making a profit out of it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39736010