Dear readers of my blog

My life’s work: the book, this blog and lots of talks…

I have wanted to write a book since my schooldays in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was to be a book about the many problems in the world and possible pathways to a better future. For decades I didn’t have the time or confidence to start writing, and I knew I needed learn a lot first. I did decades of reading, research and lifestyle experimentation. In 2007 I did start writing, and wrote 80,000 words and then abandoned the almost finished manuscript as I could not find a publisher. People asked me what I was writing about, so I started giving talks in village halls, at conferences and festivals, and at venues as varied as a committee room in the Houses of Parliament and an Occupy protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral. In 2010 I started the blog. Over the years I had a few more false starts with the book.

I started writing a new version of the book in September 2020 and finished it in April 2022. Editing, typesetting and printing took the next few months and now in late July 2022 I have a pile of books to sell! My 2007 version was very technologically focused, and in this current version the focus is wider.

I now want to organize a series of book launch events in venues in and around Herefordshire and neighbouring counties. As I am self-publishing the book it does not have an ISBN number and therefore cannot be ordered through normal bookshop and library channels. I am hoping to get it into a number of local bookshops and other outlets. The first shop to take copies to sell is Hey Honey in Church Street, Hereford.

The book is called ‘System Change Now!’ and is for sale at £10.00p per copy to those who buy the book directly from me in Hereford. At shops it may be a little more, depending on shop mark-up, and distance from Hereford. Nowhere in UK will it be more than £15.00p

Richard Priestley System Change Now! One man’s vision of a better future Healing a network of crises: Climate, Ecological, Political, Social and Economic through a Global Green New Deal to achieve Human Liberation & Planetary Rewilding Chapter 1: System Change & A Global Green New Deal Chapter 2: System Change: Politics, Economics & Society Chapter 3: Energy, Infrastructure & Materials Chapter 4: Food, Farming & Biodiversity  Chapter 5: System Change & Regional Geographies Chapter 6: Creating Change: What we can do Chapter 7: Postscript: Putin & Possibilities

Dear Jesse

Our country is at a dangerous point in its history. Boris Johnson is a uniquely unfit person to be prime minister, but he is just the tip of the problem. It goes much deeper. The Tory party is split. Most of the able people who were once Conservative MPs have left the party, and are now its fiercest critics.

Anna Soubry recently tweeted that “Boris Johnson and his cronies have made law breaking, lying and cover-ups the new norm. Something very wrong and bad has happened to politics in our country. Even half decent Conservative MPs cower in the shadows refusing to despatch their disgraced leader. Truly dreadful times.”

Rory Stewart, writing in the Financial Times said “Boris Johnson is a symptom of a much broader problem in British politics – which can only be fixed with new policies and – almost certainly – new political parties and a new electoral system”

Boris Johnson’s Savile slur against Sir Keir Starmer was intended to provoke a violent mob, and in true Trumpian style it did. Even Tory loyalists were outraged. Sir Roger Gale tweeted: “Grim scenes outside Parliament today and disgraceful treatment of Sir Keir Starmer.” Tobias Ellwood told Mr Johnson to “apologise please”, adding: “Let’s stop this drift towards a Trumpian style of politics from becoming the norm.”

Boris Johnson has inflicted damage across every part of British Society. When he famously said “Fuck business” he really meant it. Farming, fishing, industry and trade are all in chaos: so too the NHS and education. All this may represent opportunities for Rees-Mogg and the disaster capitalists, but for the vast majority of the UK population it is a total disaster. Your local constituent, Mark E Thomas has carried out extensive research on the damage being done.

Society is fighting back. Court actions against the government are many. No doubt this year will see much street protest about countless issues. The climate and ecological crisis spins ever further out of control and the current cabinet care not a jot. BP effectively pays no tax while receiving huge subsidies to make the situation worse and UK citizens have to pay high prices for energy while the companies rake off vast profits. People are furious.

One of the heroes of our times is Dr Julia Grace Patterson (founder and Chief Executive Officer @EveryDoctorUK ) and she tweeted “Dear Conservative MPs: What’s the line Boris Johnson is going to have to cross for you to accept that he is dangerous?”

Jesse, I see from your website that you are keeping your head down, neither critical nor supportive of Boris Johnson. As with Brexit you remain noncommittal. A saying that is often attributed to your old hero Edmund Burke states that “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Boris Johnson is reported to have said it would take a tank division to get him out of Downing Street. He may actually mean it. His upcoming legislative programme edges ever closer to something like the Enabling Act of March 1933, which entrenched Nazi control in Germany. The judiciary, the BBC, Parliament and many of the other necessary checks and balances are under attack. In the Weimar Republic many politicians thought that they could keep their heads down and the monstrosity that was Nazism would collapse before it did too much damage. They were wrong. They missed the window of opportunity when they could have spoken out and prevented all that followed. Now is surely the time for you to speak out and denounce Boris Johnson and his wretched cabal.

• For more on Pathocratic leaders, see this from Psychology Today

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On this blog I usually pick a technology of the year, and a person, or people, of the year. This year what has inspired me most is small groups of people taking action to change things in all sorts of positive ways. The old quote from social anthropologist Margret Mead comes to mind: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.” Many such small groups have inspired me this year, and whose actions I will be following with interest in 2022. I want to highlight three.

First while the UK government is still paying tax payers money to companies to develop more oil and gas fields this needs to be challenged. Paid to Pollute is a tiny organization which has taken the UK government to court. There is a video of the three key people, Mikaela, Kairin and Jeremy explaining their actions. It is worth watching all 56 minutes.

Awel Aman Tawe is an amazing Welsh charitable organization that does great educational work around climate change and has initiated some excellent projects. It set up the Awel as an energy coop to build and run two Enercon 2.35MW wind turbines at Mynedd y Gwrhyd, near their headquarters at Cwmllynfell, twenty miles north of Swansea in South Wales. They have also set up Egni, the UK’s largest rooftop solar coop, with 88 photovoltaic systems on schools, village halls and other community buildings across South Wales, with a combined capacity of 4.4MW. It is an excellent and ambitious renewable energy coop. Well done Dan, Rosie, Mary Ann, Carl, David and the rest of the team.

The term agrivoltaics combines the words agriculture and photovoltaics. If done well many benefits can be achieved, from biodiversity gains to more productive farming systems and solar electricity, all from the same land. Byron Kominek set up the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Centre on five acres of land on the outskirts of the city of Boulder, Colorado, USA. He works with a small team experimenting with various crops under the solar panels and running educational workshops. In the hot dry climate of the American southwest saving water appears to be one of the key advantages, but in other climates other factors will be more important, such as protecting crops from frosts or extreme weather events.

The changes we need in society are many and complex, but challenging the government’s irrational subsidies for fossil fuels is certainly a necessary first step. Developing more renewable energy is also of course necessary and doing this by utilizing agrivoltaic systems and cooperative structures seems the best way to go. Well done to these three teams of pioneering people at Paid to Pollute, Awel Aman Tawe and the Colorado Agrivoltaic Learning Centre.