Monthly Archives: June 2018

Brexit Britain is Bonkers

Farage

Nigel Farage, one of those who led us into Brexit, and made a fortune for his friends.

The UK is now as poorly governed as at any time in my life. Decisions are being made that are crazy.

Yesterday the government decided not to build the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, citing its high cost. Meanwhile they are proposing to build a new nuclear power station at Wylfa in Anglesey, as well as the one currently under construction at Hinkley Point. These nuclear power stations are every bit as expensive as the scrapped lagoon project, and come with massively greater risks and less benefits. As this tidal lagoon would have been the first of its kind anywhere in the world costs will be high, but as many more are built the costs will fall. It is potentially a vast global market to which the UK has turned its back.

The UK government is still paying subsidies to outdated and polluting technologies, (oil and gas exploration, fracking, nuclear power) and are pushing ahead with a third runway for Heathrow. Meanwhile they seem to have done all they can to damage the new clean industries of the future. Solar installations in the UK halved for the second consecutive year, while soaring globally. Onshore wind has been effectively killed off. Locally owned and controlled renewable energy coops are growing in other countries, but in UK they too have been stopped in their tracks.

There are some brilliant things going on in Britain. Take just one example, the new hydrogen fuel cell ferry service destined for the Orkney Islands. I’ve blogged before about hydrogen fuel cell shipping. It will be a huge industry as renewably generated hydrogen replaces diesel in the World’s ships. Ferguson Marine have attracted this pioneering technology to Port Glasgow on the Clyde with help from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation fund, who have supplied three quarters of the current research funding. Leaving the EU will of course end, or at least damage, such innovative collaboration.

Dozens of business, from Japanese car manufacturers to Herefordshire fruit farmers are starting to relocate away from the UK. Brexit will be a disaster for many of those who voted for it. They were hoodwinked by a campaign of lies. As Bloomberg investigations show some hedge fund managers with close links to Nigel Farage made an absolute killing. Perhaps they are the only clear winners of the Brexit vote. Worse than the economic chaos that Brexit has caused is the breakdown of social cohesion. The damage Brexit has done will take generations to heal. The best that we can do now is to campaign to stay in the EU. Last Saturday’s demonstration in favour of a people’s vote on the deal was very well supported. (And please sign this petition.)

While this government make an endless series of dreadful decisions, and the Labour opposition fail to oppose, the real job of holding the government to account is falling to others. So let’s finish on a positive note. Three outstanding women come to mind. Caroline Lucas is the one MP speaking sense on every issue from Heathrow expansion to energy policy, human rights to Brexit. Carole Cadwalladr has just won the Orwell prize for her excellent investigative journalism on how Cambridge Analytica misused data to achieve the Brexit referendum result. Molly Scott Cato is a Green MEP who speaks a lot of sense, and her piece in today’s Guardian illuminates Farage and the hedge funds and the killing they made from the Brexit referendum. Three clear voices of courage and sanity in a country that seems to have gone bonkers.

Housing

Vauban community self build

Vauban community self build

In the UK debates have raged for decades about whether various services or industries should be privatized or nationalized. Such debate tends to pit people into opposing ideological camps. Such static and polarized positions overlook the possibility of other models of doing things. In September 2015 I wrote a blog about this in relation to the energy sector and the emerging civic or municipal sector in Germany and elsewhere. This municipal, civic, pluralistic, flexible and networked model has many advantages over either simple nationalized or privatized systems. In that earlier blog I looked at energy. Today I want to look at the UK’s housing crisis. In subsequent blogs I may look at other industries or services through this prism of organization and ownership.

It is generally acknowledged that the UK has a housing crisis. Home ownership is falling and a growing percentage of the population live in private rented accommodation, which is often overpriced and substandard. Many people would like to buy a home of their own but can’t afford to. The UK property market treats houses as assets to profit from rather than homes to which people have a right to. Many years ago I worked for the old GLC housing department. The council estates we owned and managed had many problems and I wondered then about how things might better be organized. Margret Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’ legislation helped many people onto the property ladder, but at the cost of future generations, as it massively depleted the supply of affordable housing. Council housing did offer affordability, but often at the expense of disempowering people. Families were often stuck in sink estates with little or no hope of moving to somewhere better. The right to make improvements and alterations were all taken away from people and vested with the local council, which de-motivated and disempowered many people.

Self build offers tremendous scope in all manner of ways. It can get people onto the housing ladder and into the homes of their dreams. It can be tremendously empowering. In the UK both individual and group self build has traditionally been a very small part of the housing sector. It is growing, but is still tiny, especially in comparison with many other countries in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere. House building in the UK is dominated by half a dozen or so private companies who have long had too close relationships with local councils and national government. In many countries local and national governments, and importantly also banks, work very much more closely with self build groups. At an event I mentioned in my last blog Ted Stevens showed dozens of examples. Most were from Holland and Germany. A growing, but still tiny, number are from the UK. The National Custom and Self Build Association have a fascinating selection of examples on their website. One is Vauban, near Freiburg, a place I have often cited in talks for its cutting edge sustainability. Community self build is at the core of Vauban’s success. Do read about it on the Self Build Portal and imagine if something on this scale could ever happen in UK, and ask yourself what is holding us back.

Three inspirational events

Almere

Almere, pioneering community self building on land reclaimed from the sea.

Apologies, it’s now nearly a month since I last posted a blog. I usually try and write one every week or so. It’s been a busy month. One annoyance has been the General Data Protection Regulation regulations that I couldn’t fathom, which meant that I’ve cancelled the Mailchimp automated newsletter, and I’ll have to work out how to delete the sign-up form from this webpage! Sorry to those of you who enjoyed getting the blogs via the newsletter format.

Over the last week or so I’ve been to three events that each in their own way were inspiring and indicated positive trends. All could do with strong government support to really grow to their full potential.

The first event was the AGM of Ledbury Solar Coop. The coop is doing well and the directors are doing an outstanding job. This is one of the Sharenergy renewable energy coops of which I’m a member, and which I’ve frequently mentioned in previous blogs. To me they seemed to have massive potential to meet many social and environmental challenges. Unfortunately government support has been weak, confused and generally unhelpful, which has certainly slowed the spread of such coops.

The next event was Riversimple’s launch of the Rasa in Abergavenny. It is looking increasingly likely that our car club will be part of their trials for this hydrogen fuel cell car. The Riversimple car and our car club are things I’ve blogged about before. Together they indicate a way of moving beyond the era of individual ownership of wasteful and highly polluting petrol and diesel cars. We could free up a lot of urban space, cut traffic congestion and pollution by moving toward more flexible patterns of mobility.

The third event I’d like to flag up was the launch of Hereford Community Land Trust’s Building Momentum project. They had two outside speakers who I thought were excellent and showed how the UK’s housing crisis might best be addressed. Keith Cowling spoke about the achievements of Bristol Community Land Trust while Ted Stevens gave an inspiring talk setting UK community self build in context with the extraordinary projects being built in many other countries. (eg Berlin)

Together these three events show how energy, transport and housing outcomes could all be improved.