Category: The Economy is Stupid

Crisis & Solution[s]

Old Thinking – New Thinking

I’ve been thinking a lot of late about the kind of dystopian solutions which various politicians have been coming up with, and about finding solutions to the current multiple messes we are all in.

Of course it’s very easy to see how fiscally and scientifically illiterate most of them are, but there is much more to it than that.

Most policy makers look at the world from within their own social class, or political party perspective.

Yet it goes way beyond that, as the majority of them are neither lateral thinkers or possessed of much imagination.

As a friend of mine said to me recently about both society and the economy is going: “ We are in to new territory”.

Thus a lot of new imaginative thinking needs to be delivered, and in a very short amount of time.

We have to do that thinking.

We have to be pragmatic.

We have to be the ones to sort out our global mess, as none of our lords and masters, or any of the policy makers are capable of doing so.

A Multi Faceted Crisis

Just the ecological crisis includes the housing, transport, energy, land use and farming, but that in turn impacts upon many different social and economic issues.

Yet we still think about solving them all in isolation, or as separate campaigns.

While many of the radical political groups or organisations view what can be done in terms separate solutions., such as dealing with unemployment first, rather than question just what kind of employment that might be.

As I keep on saying.

We need both Joined-up-thinking, and joined-up-campainging.

 

In Times Gone By And In Times Present

In Times Past

Much of the current social and political debate is about how society is changing for the worst, while others might argue how some things are much better now than in decades or centuries ago.

Yet nothing is said about how this really compares to the past.

Here are two examples how things have changed for the better over the last 100 to 150 years: –

The School leaving age

and

Life Expenctency

Henry Mayhew

I wonder just how many of the younger generation realise just what the reality of life was like in an earlier age as described by Henry Mayhew.

Or

How many of the younger generation would know about, of ever come upon a Tosher or Mud Lark did?

Now that might seem like ancient history many people, but some of the descriptions within the Road to Wigan Pier are still within the living memory of many of the older generation.

Housing

It’s not so long ago that a very high percentage of the population lived in bedsits or HMOs as they are now classed as being.

Remember the expression ‘A shilling for the gas’ ?

Or

How it was normal to sleep in the same room as a gas cooker before that become illegal.

Yes things have improved a lot over the years.

Yet they have not.

– We now have a lot more rough sleepers than in many decades.

– Adult education in terms of evening classes is now almost a thing of the past.

– While one in seven of UK adults are functionally illiterate to a greater or lesser extent.

In Times Now

Margaret Thatcher said that:- “there is no such thing as society”.

While many of her supporters said “Greed is Good!”.

To which there was a response which went:-

The family is dead! Long live the family !

All of which are totally wrong, but they are attitudes which still prevail to this day.

In times to come

Social Change or Social Revolution ?

If history and all the recent events have taught us anything, then we must care for both society and the individual.

That’s something which compliments the concept of: –

Think Global Act Local.

Extracts From The Book – Poverty and Ecological Disaster. A Post Brexit Study

The following book extracts are taken from the most renowned academic study of the UK during the first half of the 21stnd century.

Poverty and ecological disaster.

A study of life in Britain during the post Brexit years .

Published by the CLO University press.

The Peak district School.

2052.

Chapter 1

The Brexit disaster.

‘ As predicted the state of the UK rapidly declined with the introduction of Brexit.

The dysfunctional desires of the rabid right wing Tory government were no more than a delusional set of nightmare policies.

After Brexit the UK continued its rapid economic decline.

In the poorest areas of the country begging for food on the street increased at an alarming rate. This was not helped by the fact that most of the population no longer had the income to be able to donate to all the food banks which had rapidly increased by the 2nd decade of the century.

The social and economic effects of the withdrawal of all the EU regional funding to some of the poorest areas of Europe was increasingly noticeable as the years went by.’

Chapter 16

Eduction and Illiteracy.

‘Unlike the rest the rest of Europe, British government public spending on education plummeted.

Thus by 2038 the official school leaving age dropped to 14. That was the same as it had been a century before.

The rate of public library closures continued.

Most alarming of all the rate of functional illiteracy in the country rose from 1 in 7, to 90 in 100 of the population.

Thus the rate of unemployment rose, as fewer and fewer of the population became qualified or skilled workers.’

‘The effects upon higher education became profound. This was especially so after the universities of Cambridge, London, and Oxford were forced to merge and become the CLO university.’

Chapter 22

The Toxic Legacy.

‘ One of the most alarming aspects of the period was that all the nukiller plants became engulfed by rising tides, as did many of the radioactive and toxic waste dumps. The government stated that dealing with this was a priority, but there was no money left in the exchequer to solve it.

Thus the UK government had to declare a national emergency, but it was just too late to solve all these problems.

Thousands died of starvation and exposure to all the radioactive and toxic waste.’

‘ Finally, in 2042 the country became such an ecological disaster area, that the UK government begged the EU to become a European dependency, as it was totally incapable of becoming a full EU member state.’

– – –

Postscript.

December 2019

All of the above could happen: –

If we don’t take Action Now !

My New Dystopian Novel

I’ve just started to pen a dystopian novel.

It starts like this: –

After a series of increasingly right wing governments, there was a Rabid Right Wing political coup, which placed in power a group of rich, delusional, incompetent, authoritarian, militaristic, socially and fiscally illiterate individuals.

Seventy five percent of these individuals had received a public school education.

A very high percentage of them were multi millionaires whose political agenda was to abolish all the taxes they paid, and hand over all government agencies to private companies.

At the same time they ignored the environmental crisis which was threatening to destroy the world, as they could see no personal profit to be made in fixing it.

Er – wait a second – this is no novel – but more a description of the Britain state, and state of affairs right now.

Not Just A One In 7 Problem

What I keep going back to is one factual piece of information.
 
One in Seven of the adult UK population are to a greater or lesser extent functionally illiterate.
 
This impacts upon jobs, poverty levels, adult education, affordable social housing, a lack of skilled workers, which, in turn, moves on to the issue of immigration quotas, and thus makes for an ill informed population which relies upon mass media to form their political opinions.
 
Though that’s not the end of the problem.
For while many people moan about university education loans, we still find there is zilch money available for adult literacy classes.
 
Very clearly we are in a social mess.
It can not be solved until we no longer have 14.2 % of the population unable to write or read.

Landing Homes For The Future

Yesterday [ july 15th 2019 ] there was a feature in the Financial Times about the current state of Britain’s care homes.

There are now just 8% of them left in public ownership.  Thank you Mrs Thatcher !

While 4 of the largest ones are up for sale.

The problem is financial.

The FT stated: ‘ Care homes run up debts of £40,000 a bed’.

Is it any wonder that care homes are priced out of reach for most people.

Meanwhile the push to build new environmentally unaffordable homes in the suburbs grows, There are however a lot of cheap student flats being built.

Yet the real need to build affordable mixed age housing is the cities is just being ignored.

Ditto – The need to use waste land in the inner cities to grow small fruit orchards, create lots of small allotments, or build community greenhouses is just not on most peoples agendas.

It will all need to be worked on very soon, or else we really will be in a lot of trouble.

False Solutions Or Joined Up Campaigning ?

Most of the greatest issues which we face can not be dealt with in isolation.

That is why we need to rethink how we approach many of the most urgent issues which endanger us all, and that means we do need to engage in joined up campaigning.

Here are just a few examples of how this might be achieved.

Plastic Ship Building

If we were to live in a society in which people thought more about our rubbish, then not only would a lot of our ecological problems be over, but in doing so we could solve many of our economic problems too.

Ship building & Barrow

Of course the other side of this is just how we clean up the oceans of all the plastic which is floating in it, Getting that done will require many specialist sea craft to scoop it all up. There are a number of designs for such craft. All we have to do is build them.

The other aspect of this is that the collected plastics can be recycled & that will mean less oil being drilled.

While the ship building industry can switch over their production away from that of building war ships.

Many is the time we get to hear that something needs to be done in order to create jobs, but the kind of jobs on offer, or which might be on offer, create more problems than they will ever solve.

For example in the arms trade.

What is needed is a some creative thinking in order to stop this kind of thing occurring.

Past Examples

An earlier example of what might be done is The Lucas plan, which came up with Road Rail Vehicles.

Yet for many politicians the priority is not so much looking to save our future, but to save something of the glories of a false past.

This is especially so with regards WW1, and how it is being used to encourage militarism.

Yet in Germany there are a number of memorials to the Unknown deserter, but no such memorial exists within the UK.

Although there is a Conscientious Objectors Commemorative Stone in Tavistock Square.

Future Examples

Other examples of what can and should be done include: –

– Planting more trees & creating new forests.

– Moving towards a better public transport system, with the creation of many more tram and railway lines.

– Stopping nukiller power via the use of wind and solar power.

Costing The Radioactive Waste In Contrast To That Of Brexit

Short Term

I was once told by one of the highly armed members of the Met police Diplomatic Protection Squad that the trouble with politicians is that they only concern themselves with what happens up to the next election.

It’s amazing just what kind of conversations one can have while on a picket line.

There is something very similar which has been going in relationship to Brexit.

I’ll not go in to what effect it is happened due so far, but will note the following.

– The UK economy is now in stagnation, with growing inflation, as real incomes keep declining.

– While public spending on health care, public transport, and education is still being slashed.

As to the whole Brexit process, it can be summed up in one word: –

Shambolic.

Yet all of this can still be reversed.

Long Term

What can’t be reversed is the amount of public money which will have to be spent over many hundred years in cleaning up the effects of having had a nukiller power industry.

Even the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority state that we are: –

‘Dealing with uncertainty.’

‘ The decommissioning mission is scheduled for completion in 2120, more than a century after the creation of the NDA.

The precision of any cost forecast over such long time scales is clearly open to question.

Calculating the total decommissioning bill is extremely difficult. In the short term, where there is greater certainty about the nature of the work to be completed, costs can be forecast with more accuracy.’

The most telling statement being that: –

‘In recognition of this uncertainty, the NDA publishes a range of estimates that could potentially be realistic. Based on the best data now available, different assumptions could produce figures somewhere between £97 billion and £222 billion.’

Now just contrast that with the much debated Brexit exit figures which are currently being thrown about.

Thus it should be noted.

The trouble with politicians is that most of them are fiscally illiterate, as they are unable to do look at any long term costings.

 

EDF & Unrealistic Fiscal Dreams

If anyone thinks EDF will find the money to build a new nukiller reactor at Hinkley, then they should start to look at the companies financial situation.

In last decade the share price has fallen from around 85 Euro to that of between 9 & 10 Euro.

Meanwhile the guestimated costs of the plant continue to rise.

It is because of these costs that the nukiller industry is now starting to push for smaller and what they say are cheaper reactors.

In the meanwhile UK energy consumption has dropped, and 25% of it is produced by wind turbines and other renewables.

 

To quote the quote: –

Just Do The Maths.

No Cause For Alarm – Or Lets Not Worry, As It’s Party Time

Lethargy can cause more harm to the environment than most people ever realise.

In other words, we have so little time to do anything about it, that there is just no time to stop or rest.

Let’s just sum up the situation which faces us all: –

– The Pacific is dying.

– We are at the long predicted stage of tipping over climate change.

&

– The amount of nukiller waste is going to be polluting the planet for many thousand of years,

and still they want to build many new reactors.

As I keep saying: –

We have so much to do in order to stop this mess, that there is no time to party, or take time off during the gloom day period.

If more people were on the ball, then some of the nukiller industry PR propaganda would have been challenged in the way the closure of the Wylfa reactor was reported by the media.

While the other story which would of got more coverage is the one which slipped most people by, as it was announced on December 31st.

‘The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has shelved plans for an inquiry into the culture, pay and behaviour of staff in banking.’

What more can I say ?