More shame for Reading Buses

Some more embarrassment today for Reading Buses, where it has turned out that instead of running their number 17 route buses on sugar beet waste from Norfolk, they are actually running on wood pulp from Sweden…

The song ‘it’s not easy being green’ comes to mind.

How they can confuse wood pulp imported from Sweden with sugar beet from Norfolk goes beyond belief. The fact that Reading Buses used the number 17 route with this apparent unique quality as their flagship service makes even more of a mockery of Reading Buses. Which is a shame. Personally, i love to champion the use of buses, even if they are run purely on petrol.

The main problem with Reading Buses however, is that they appear to have the idea that to make more money they need to raise prices. So a few months ago, to make up for the £40,000 they were reportedly losing per week they cut services and raised prices. Now, i know i only did economics at A-Level, but i am sure  even those more experienced with economic matters would agree with me that if prices were to fall, then it would entice more people onto the buses and therefore lead to a price rise… Maybe this would still not stop services being cut, but perhaps the increased demand would give Reading Buses more room for improvement…?

Is that a cow?

So today I gowned a green paper suit, put around 5 bucket loads of disinfectant on my boots and was told that I should behave because I am representing the government. That’s right. I went on a farm visit.

I could talk about my professional feelings towards the visit- but that is best kept for when I am at work behind my desk. Instead I would just like to say a few things from my own personal standpoint. [Note, these are not the views of RPA, Defra or HM Government :@].

I firstly would like to say I really enjoyed the trip. I gained valuable insights into agriculture that you just can not appreciate when you are stuck behind a desk reading about EU subsidies!

Part of the trip meant we were able to see the lifecycle of the milking process (the farming side of the farm we went to had a rather large daily element). We started off by viewing some Heifers and other pregnant cows. Before I carry on I would like to say that the farm manager who was showing us around explained to us that everything is consumer driven, he also explained that for the majority of farms in the UK, animal health and wellbeing is of utmost importance, firstly because the supermarkets have strict standards (consumer demand…) and secondly because of regulations placed upon farms to abide by strict animal health procedures with the penalty of non-compliance a reduction in subsidy payment.

Anyway, back to the pregnant Heifers. As the farm primarily dealt with producing milk as this was most profitable for them (but not very) then females cows were important to them. The life of a female cow ranges from growing up (year) to pregnancy (artificial insemination or from a suitable bull if AI is unsuccessful), then when the calf is born after a few weeks it is taken away, this female cow then goes into producing milk- which is collected, after a few months the female is impregnated again, starting the whole cycle over again. One cycle occurs between every 1 and a half to 2 years and each female cow goes through around 3 or 4 cycles (depending on the cow and this is specific to this farm) through it’s life (even though cows can live to around 15).

When the Heifer/female cow has given birth the fate of the calf is dependant upon its sex (and if there are any diseases).  Female calves are obviously starting life in the milking cycle. Male calves are dependent on two things. The first is whether there is enough meat on them at birth. If it is possible to tell in the early stages of life that this calf will grow big and strong then it is sold on in market for consideration for the dinner plate. Weaker looking calves essentially have no purpose in the milk or food chain. In some circumstances they are put down because economically they have no use. However, this farm does note that there is a moral side and it is not all about economics. They are therefore more reluctant to kill the calf straight off and are likely to try and sell these calves on albeit at a very low price. Within this context we were taken to see such calves, some of which were only 4 days old, others 10 weeks old. We were told that this is the side of things consumers tend to miss when they buy or demand cheap milk. If you want your milk cheap then only the most productive animal is of economic use, those with no economic benefit are essentially useless.

We were taken to the main housing shed for the cows. This was a large open area, regularly cleaned- in fact it was being cleaned while we were there. It was not overcrowded and there was plenty of room for the cows to move and over the course of an hour I watched as cows had the freedom of movement of the length of the shed.

Finally on our trip we were taken to two different fields so we could assess things such as set-aside land, arable land, environmental stewardship and cross compliance (good agricultural and environmental condition). It should be pointed out that farmers only get subsidy payments without penalty if they keep their land in good environmental condition; there are also extra subsidy payments available for farmers who take part in environmental schemes such as countryside stewardship and planting hedgerows (for example). One of the amazing things that occurred to me was that the first field we were taken to was around 5 and a half hectares. Everyday at work I come across farmers who have fields about 5 times the size of this (and this is only one of their fields/parcels!).  But I thought this field I was in was huge. It made me appreciate how much land some farmers had (this is not the case when it comes to tenant farmers of course). Anyway, the farm manager explained that a lot of the field around Berkshire is of poor soil quality but one of the most popular crops to grow in this soil is corn. This is not the kind of corn that you have a dash of butter on top for dinner. No. The main purpose of this corn was to feed animals- such as those cows on his farm. Now I have heard of the statistic that around 60% of grown food crops in America go towards feeding animals involved in diary/meat farming,but you don’t appreciate how many crops are grown just for animal feed. I only started appreciating this whilst standing in the middle of a 5 hectare field.

I have to admit that despite being a vegetarian on moral and ethical grounds I now feel even guiltier for not being a vegan. It appears that it is pointless to say you will become vegetarian because you disagree with treatment of animals or the effect upon the environment that animal farming causes. If you were really serious about these issues then you’d become a vegan. But can I make this step? Vegetarianism is really easy for me; I have not been tempted to try meat once in over 2 years. But soya milk? I don’t know :-S

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There are two other points I picked up from the visit. Apparently, there are farms (rather big ones) who are still being screwed over by the larger supermarkets. This is because a contract can be made between the farmer and supermarket, the farmer will then fulfil his side of the agreement but then the supermarket turn around and say “Great, but we are going to pay you £15,000 less”. The farmer has no power in these circumstances. Of course what the supermarket is doing is illegal and of course the farmer does have the National Farmers Union to go to, but then that farmer will lose that supermarket’s contract. Therefore the farmer has no choice but to accept the new terms imposed by the supermarket.

This is not the first time I have seen this kind of undercutting. When I worked on building sites the way things are generally done is that the main builders will contract out jobs to other companies’ i.e. electrical work, plumbing etc. These companies will bid for the work; the lowest price for the quickest work plan will win. However, for a few of the electrical companies I have worked for after they had won the contract and signed the deal the builder has turned around and have said that the electrical company will need to cut their price by 5%. The electrical company (depending on its size) will not walk away because it needs that contract. Therefore two things happen. The first is that the quality of materials used will fall because money is tighter. This may not sound like a lot but the quality of the material can severely affect the quality and speed of the work. Secondly, and most importantly, the wages on offer falls. Most companies do things on price. This means that there is no fixed wage but the amount you take home at the end of the week depends on the work you do. The theory is that the incentive to you is to work quicker and faster in order to make more money. However if after you start working for the builders they ask you to lower your price then you can see situations where a first fix (putting in all the wires and cables whilst the house is being built- a second fix is when the walls and ceilings are up and you put the covers on switches etc) originally was say £500 and took 3 days to do, would now be £450 but still take 3 days to do, or because the quality of the materials falls can take 3 and a half days.

I’m digressing.

The final point I was pondering from my visit was the future of farming in England. We were told that the average age of a farmer was 59/60. We were told that there is a high illiteracy rate amongst farmers and many still didn’t (and refused) to have the internet. Some farms apparently are still running without electricity. Regardless of all this there are enormous pressures placed upon the farming community when it comes to inspections and paper work. A lot of farmers who went into farming straight from school years ago went into an industry that was purely manually based. Now because of the pressures imposed by the capitalist model and especially supermarkets, many farmers are hardly making a profit. The more efficient farms turn out to be those that are bigger. These bigger farms are able to claim bigger subsidy as well (SPS is based on potential land that can be used- the more you have the more money you get).

In the context of the average age of farmers, their illiteracy and the idea of it being purely manual labour, the pressures placed upon smaller farms in terms of the bureaucracy involved with farming (not all bad in terms of environmental care, animal health and food quality) means that many of these farmers may not get the full subsidy they are entitled to because they don’t fill out the relevant forms or make a mistake. On top of all this you have to remember that for a variety of reasons there is not an influx of younger farmers in the industry. Younger farmers would be more open to technology and bureaucracy because that is what the more recent generations have grown up with. But farming is not attractive to a huge majority of youngsters, even to those from a farming background because there is not enough money in it for the amount of work you have to put in.

Therefore could the future of farming be a few large companies? This would be of serious detriment to tradition and raise the entry levels for new farmers, but on the flipside larger farms can employ people to deal with the bureaucracy and then employ people to work on the farm. Could this help save farming? It would provide well paid farming jobs, but then what would be the result of this? Would animal health go down? Well larger farms would be able to experiment with new techniques and use the newest technology. They would also continue to be at the mercy of government regulation which ensures quality. The bad taste left in the mouths of the ethical consumer when it comes to market dominance of companies such as Tescos and Primark may not necessarily reflect if the same was to happen to farming. With Primark for example, they buy their clothes from a producer, they do not operate at the bottom of the chain, only buy from it. Farming would essentially be at the bottom of the chain- control this and you control the quality of the chain (in theory).

The idea of a larger more monopolised farming industry would still create problems. If one company was to collapse this would have a huge impact upon food prices and supply- this would be the same if these companies started demanding more for their product (because there is less competition)- food prices would go up. Finally there is still the problem of entry into the farming industry being higher and those small independent farmers whose families have been farming for generations will be wiped out- do we really want to do this?

Ecosocialist

I am unashamedly an eco-socialist, and I would like to share with you two pieces that make interesting reading and which help frame my mind set. Saying that, my political mind set is a hectic place, so over the next few weeks I will hopefully show you what I specifically belief in and what I would do if I had the power on the page ‘Mattism’. Enjoy.

The Ecosocialist Manifesto

By Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy (September 2001)

The twenty-first century opens on a catastrophic note, with an unprecedented degree of ecological breakdown and a chaotic world order beset with terror and clusters of low-grade, disintegrative warfare that spread like gangrene across great swathes of the planet—viz., central Africa, the Middle East, Northwestern South America—and reverberate throughout the nations. In our view, the crises of ecology and those of societal breakdown are profoundly interrelated and should be seen as different manifestati

ons of the same structural forces.

Reading Buses to increase prices again

In those high fuel price days of October/November 2008 where the price of fuel went up around 44%, you couldn’t blame Reading Buses on raising the cost of their tickets. Even though they proudly boast that their premier number 17 route runs on sugar waste- you couldn’t really blame them, the recession was hitting most companies in some way or another.

So, the current prices are £1.70 adult single journey, £3.20 for an adult ‘Busabout’ (means unlimited travel in one day in one zone) and £10 for a west Reading weekly bus pass.

But now the price of fuel has fallen drastically, you’d expect Reading Buses to pop along and say “hey, we have gotten through a period of high fuel prices, let’s reward you for your patience and lower our ticket costs to reflect this fall”.

Nah, not at chance.

It has now been announced that prices are in fact going to rise even more. The reason? Well they say they have lost £100,000 in single fares these last couple of months. Face of it, that sounds reasonable, but i want  to know more.

For example, who much money did they make on Busabouts and Weekly Passes? Do the maths quickly, and it makes much more economic sense to buy a Busabout than a single fare, so of course they are going to lose money on single fares, especially when people use buses more.

So perhaps it is greed? That was the charge levied at them when they rose the prices in November- but i gave them the benefit of the doubt, but now, now i am not so sure.

I would like to say as a user of the buses to get to and from work everyday i am generally pleased with them. After experiencing the services on offer in other towns and cities and the conditions on the bus, i think Reading Buses rank right up there with the best. But this price rise to me stinks- there is something fishy going on.

Plus, what good is it going to do for the transport problems there already are in Reading? There are way too many cars. The rise in bus fares is only going to put more people in cars. We are meant to be going green! The buses and other such public transport are meant to be one of the vanguards in reducing mans impact on the environment, yet price rise after price rise is only going to weaken this.

Finally, i wonder what makes better economic sense; raising the prices even higher to make more money (you hit those reliant on buses hardest while others move into cars) or lowing the prices to encourage more people to use the buses (especially during quieter spells and routes) and increase profit that way?

Do we really have to ponder that?

How to do it bad, how to do it good

What is obvious from the ‘credit crunch’, the attack on privacy and now the MP’s expenses saga is that in the upcoming European Elections the minority partys are going to drastically increase their electorial strength.

So it has come as a bit of a surprise to see the (New) Labour Party Election broadcast focus entirely on David Cameron, and what Cameron’s policies would do to the country. I would have to say that i agree with them on every single point, however as an European Election Broadcast it is pretty poor.

Not once does it talk about their own policies. Granted, they are the ones in power and we can see the shambles of some of their policies, but still, come on, you got to have some sort of manifesto.

Secondly, (New) Labour have 19 MEP’s. Why didn’t the broadcast focus upon the work they have been doing?

Finally, talking about how bad Cameron is is all well and good- i generally support it, but, this is a European election, not a local election. Of course the results of these elections go someway to showing what will happen at the next general election and results going either way is either going to strengthen or weaken either side, but still, this is a European election!

Here is a much better party election broadcast:

Note a few things from this: they talk about the great work they have been doing, they talk about themselves and not other parties, they tell you they are not a one issue party as a lot of people like to suggest, they talk about what they will do, they say that going green is not something you should be nagged into doing but that it is up to the government to help you, and finally, they are not a racist facist party.

I’m voting Green

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Here’s another Green Party broadcast from 1999

Is free market economics to blame for swine flu?

Two of the main characteristics of free-market economics, or should I say capitalism, is the need to produce a product at the smallest possible cost, and to then increase it’s sales as much as possible.

When it comes to capitalism and food, especially meat, these ideas are played out by breeding, growing and culling the most animals at the smallest cost so to keep the price of their meat down in order to sell a lot of it.

It is this philosophy that leads to intensive farming. In these conditions animals, in this case pigs, are crammed together, force fed nutrient less food and injected with unknown quantities of antibiotics. In these conditions they have limited movement, hardly see sunlight and can in no way healthily develop as a free range pig would.

With the outbreak in swine flu, it is these farming conditions that have come under further attack.

One of the reported sources of the outbreak of the swine flu virus is Perote in Veracruz,  Mexico. In Perote there is a huge industrial pig farm which contains around 950,000 pigs. Nearby there is another pig farm called Xaltepec where 15,000 pigs are housed in 18 warehouses.  Both of these farms are owned by Smithfield the world’s largest pork supplier (worth around $1.4 billion). An outbreak of swine flu at one of Smithfield’s farms in Romania cost the company $13 million in 2007.

Johann Hari has written about this issue and has quoted Dr Ellen Silbergeld, Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, as saying about intensive pig farms as allowing viruses “thousands and thousands of spins [of the roulette wheel], for no extra cost [which] drives the evolution of new diseases.” The ‘roulette wheel’ in this case refers to the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of pigs crammed into the same enclosure that allows viruses to spread from one to the other easily, giving it a chance to evolve into something stronger.

Alongside the problems of cramming so many pigs together is the issue of pumping the animals full of vaccines and other drugs.

Hari has looked at the warnings from Sir Liam Donaldson, the British government’s Chief Scientist, who says “Every inappropriate use in animals or agriculture [of antibiotics] is potentially a death warrant for a future patient.” (also see here)

When you combine the idea of and the techniques used in intensive farming, Dr Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, concludes that “all this together… you have a perfect storm environment for these super-strains. If you wanted to create global pandemics, you’d build as many of these factory farms as possible.”

Caroline Lucas, Green Party leader and one of the South East’s MEP’s, wrote an article that also cites Dr Greger, this time suggesting that a human/pig/bird virus (like the H1N1 swine flu virus we are currently seeing) was first seen in 1998 at a North Carolina pig farm. This farm had a pig population of 10million and Lucas notes that at this time hog farms [a bit more free range] were decreasing in the area. (More information on the first recognised outbreak of this human/avian/swine flu in 1998 can be found here)

The owner of the pig farms in question, Smithfield, understandably denies any wrong doing suggesting they routinely test their pigs for illness and regularly vaccinate their animals.

However, Lucas has called for a more indepth investigation into the outbreak of the virus and it’s possible connection with intensive pig farming.

Despite Smithfield’s assurances, another potential source of the outbreak has been revealed as La Gloria also in Veracruz, where pig manure pools have been singled out for blame. Problems with pig manure fields come from the smell which attract flies and which help spread diseases further afield, and from water contamination. Funnily enough in 1997 Smithfield were fined $12.6 million for violating the federal Clean Water Act. Concerns that La Gloria is the centre of the outbreak and that pig waste is to blame have been raised by Mexico’s national public health authority.

What is interesting to point out is that the first reported case of swine flu does come from this region, a four year old who has survived. Yet despite this, and despite “residents of La Gloria have long complained about the clouds of flies that are drawn the so-called “manure lagoons” created by such [intensive farming] mega-farms” it has been claimed by Mexican local government (possibly trying to protect industry and tourism is the area) that many of the people ill in this region were only suffering influenza despite these ‘influenza’ outbreaks being the first with unusual spreading patterns in Mexico.

Local residents in La Gloria are still adamant that the outbreak started here though. One report says that a 34 year old local resident called Jose Luis Martinez said “When we saw it on the television we said to ourselves, ‘This is what we had,”‘ he said. “It all came from here. The symptoms they are suffering are the same that we had here.””

Suspicions have also been raised of the inspections taken place in the town and the pig farms, with one source suggesting that none of the inspectors so far have been from the Mexican government.

Regardless, what we do know is that the swine flu outbreak is not the first that has been directly linked with intensive animal farming. Caroline Lucas wrote a report 3 years ago about how avian flu developed in the world’s poultry farms. This report can be accessed here.  There have also been stories of intensive pig farms being responsible for some MRSA outbreaks in the USA.

If the current outbreak can be directly attributed to intensive pig farming, then it is another thing we can blame Thatcher for. It would be capitalisms fault. But as capitalism keeps imploding upon itself as we have seen this past year with the ‘credit crunch’, then this is another classic case of capitalism being it’s own worst enemy; remember the economic destruction caused in Mexico by swine flu- borders shut down, hotels, tourism, schools, businesses shut and collapsing.

Although I could just be jumping ahead of myself here, as Joseph Luter III, Smithfield’s chairman, once said; vegetarians are “neurotic”.

***   ***

I need to become a proper scientist to be able to assess the true threat of swine flu, but on the face of it, I don’t think there is much to worry about… yet.

For example consider the death map , where at the time of writing there has only been only 2 deaths outside Mexico, one of which was a Mexican boy in USA on 29 April 2009 and the other, also in the USA, was a woman in her 30’s who “had chronic underlying health conditions”. Mexico have now admitted that they may have over-reacted to the number of deaths caused by swine flu. The deaths that there have been in Mexico have been attributed to the poor healthcare system when compared with other countries, although a point I am surprised more media sources have not picked up upon is the seemingly slow down in the rate of deaths. As more countries and people become aware of the problem cases can be treated more urgently. A speedy diagnosis and treatment is the first step to recovery.

There are also reports that this virus is at present only a mild strain and a suggestion from Chris Olsen, a professor of public health and head of the Olsen Laboratory, that older people are more immune to this virus than younger people is because they are more likely to have encountered this type of viruses before and have built up a stronger immunity.

But the most concluding statement I have read on the swine flu outbreak and which focuses a lot on the media attention behind swine flu is this one:

“Swine flu is notable because it’s an exceptional event, something above the everyday toll of deaths caused by infectious diseases. A pandemic similar to that of 1918-19, which killed at least 50 million people, would be a catastrophic event because it would double annual worldwide mortality. However, I think the chances of a repeat of 1918-19 are very small. What swine flu, and the media reaction to it, does highlight is our willingness to accept the “routine” toll of infectious diseases with little apparent concern. However, “Mother dies of TB in Zambia and infects her three children” is not a headline that sells many papers.” John McConnell who is Editor of The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

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Avaaz’s most recent internet action is on this very topic, and they have created an online petition which can be found here to put pressure on the WHO to investigate the link of swine flu with intensive pig farming.

For those who do not get Avaaz’s email updates and actions, here are some links they have referenced for further information on the topic:

Biosurveillance report tracing the disease to the Smithfields farm: http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html

Reports on the link between the Mexican factory farm and the flu:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/for-la-gloria-the-stench-of-blame-is-from-pig-factories-1675809.html

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-fg-mexico-flu28-2009apr28,0,1701782.story

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=can-swine-flu-be-blamed-on-industri-09-05-01

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227063.800-swine-flu-the-predictable-pandemic.html?full=true

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kirby/swine-flu-outbreak—-nat_b_191408.html

WHO pandemic information
http://www.euro.who.int/influenza/20080618_19

FAO, EC and CDC reports on the risks of industrial farming on public health
FAO and CIWF and http://www.cdc.gov/cafos/about.htm

CIWF and PETA video reports of the disgusting conditions for animals in factory farms and the disease ridden manure swamps:
CIWF and PETA

Reports on Smithfield’s animal welfare and environmental damage
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/for-la-gloria-the-stench-of-blame-is-from-pig-factories-1675809.html

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/press/releases/new-report-highlights-the-trouble-with-smithfield-article03132008

http://avaazimages.s3.amazonaws.com/SmithfieldJan08.pdf

Reports on UK tax payers subsidising factory farms http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/farming/5225298/Taxpayers-forking-out-700-million-for-factory-farming-in-England.html

Using the word ‘green’ does not make you green

We all know that many companies and politicians like to jump on the populist bandwagon, none more so than when it is about being green; you only have to look at the irony of BP rebranding itself ‘Beyond Petroleum’ to realise this.

And we all know that looking at the government you can see the biggest populists of them all. In the latest budget it was announced that £1billion was to be put into reducing our carbon emissions, with £525million being directed at off-shore wind farms.

This is of no surprise. In Europe Britain has the largest potential energy input from utilising wind energy. The European Wind Energy Association  predict that “developing less than 5% of the North Sea surface area would enable offshore wind to supply roughly one-quarter of the EU’s current electricity needs”.

Forgetting political arguments, wind energy seems like a safe bet to secure Britain’s energy future. Unfortunately, despite the £525million being put into wind energies, it is the politicans who are letting this industry down.

One of the biggest suppliers of wind turbine technology to Britain is Vestas, whose operations in the UK are based on the Isle of Wight. On 29 April 2009, just over a week after the budget announcement, Vestas announced that they “have seen different developments over the last number of months which unfortunately have meant we have to reduce our staff and investments in the Denmark and the UK” they will be duly axing 600 local jobs. 

Vestas’s Chief Executive Ditlev Engel admitted during a press conference that this is down to a “lack of political initiatives”.  He mainly blames the planning process and the lack of support from local politicans for energy from wind development. With this Vestas have “lost our [sic] faith in sufficient demand from the North European markets in the coming periods”. Things have to be serious for Vestas to announce this when you consider the wind speeds around Europe below:

www.offshorewindenergy.org/ca-owee/indexpages/downloads/Brussels01_Resources.pdf

So despite the potential that the North Sea area has for wind energy, despite the promise of how much money the government appears to direct towards energy from wind development, despite the calls for reductions in our carbon emissions, despite the current economic climate that is calling for job protection and despite the need for Britain to sort out it’s energy future, it appears the government, especially local, have betrayed not only the British population, but have also dealt a huge blow to the global fight against climate change. If now was not a perfect time to create jobs, expand what should be a thriving energy industry and fight climate change then i do not know when is.

As is the growing theme of my blog posts, please sign this petition calling on the government to intervene and help, and please spread news of this announcement, more people need to see how it appears we are being betrayed by those pretending to be ‘green’.

More information can be found here.

Sincere economic questions

I know that my A grade a-level in economics does not translate well to serious national economics; however, i have some queries over Europe’s, UK’s and the US’s bail-out of the banks. It would be good if someone could explain why what i am saying isn’t feasonable or doesn’t make economic sense.

I get the idea/theory/jist of putting money behind the debts that banks have incurred from stupid, ridiculous lending. However:

Money was also given to banks to give them more money to lend to each other, well… if this money was instead used for sweeping tax cuts, or as grants to poorer families, or to ‘pay-off’ people’s debts, then would this not also give the banks more money? Understandably, if this money was used aboard then it would not be in UK banks, but, nearly everyone has a bank account, so if people have more money to spend then they will have more money in their accounts. Banks use the money people deposit in their accounts as their own money at the moment anyway, i.e. they lend it. So if governments used the money to cut taxes drastically, then more accounts would have more money in them, more people would be spending this money in more shops- pushing consumerism up, more shops would have more money- that is saved in bank accounts. So more jobs are created or kept because people are still spending. And more people are more happy, and from a electoral point of view, New Labour would most likely win a lot more support- Brown could have called an election and become our PM by popular choice.

But instead of this they just gave the money to the banks and asked them to lend it to other banks!? So this leads me to believe there is some illogic in my theory. I am sincerely asking people to explain it to me. This is not me using sarcy theories to push my own ideology, far from it. My ideology is more nationalise all banks, move away from consumer led economy, pump the money into a new green energy sector and move Britain towards a low carbon energy independence, and i don’t want New Labour to regain power. So i am being sincere.

While i’m at it, green energy. If all the money given to banks was instead put into green energy, would it not therefore be feasible for the UK to generate all of it’s own electricity, either from hydro, wind or solar. Could the money not have been used to give a grant to every household to enable them to generate their own electricity and sell it back to the grid? Would a revolutionised green energy sector not provide for thousands (maybe of millions depending on what the sector contains) of jobs- reducing unemployment, raising job competition, giving people job security and allowing them to earn and spend their money, boosting consumerism and along the lines of a previous point allowing more people to have more money in their bank accounts, boosting the amount of money the banks have. It would also give Britain complete energy independence, we wouldn’t need to rely on other countries. We wouldn’t need to have such a presence in the Middle East. In theory, it could reduce any terrorist threat that we are facing- one of the first major aims of Fundamental Islamic Terrorism is to end the influence of the West in the Middle East (destroying secularism and allowing for the push of fundamentalism – i don’t think secularism would be destroyed in the Middle East anyway, even if Britain/America weren’t there)- so because of our reduced addiction to oil, we wouldn’t need to be in the Middle East (Afghanistan but especially Iraq).

Anyway, i am going off at a tangent. My point is, if we gave everyone else but the banks money, the banks would get the money in the end anyway.

One last thing. The National Debt. Who are we actually in debt to? I understand when it comes to borrowing from other countries we are in debt to them, but why do i hear of Britain borrowing from the banks? Am i just mishearing? If we were borrowing from the banks (Bank of England) then to me it is more excuse to nationalise them! Plus who is going to hold the UK to account if they don’t pay back their debts on time? More sincere questions.

An idiot’s guide to the economy… the idiot being me

There are some people who it effects, some should be worried, some people’s lives destroyed, but in the most part, this financial ‘crisis’ is more of a financial circus.

We have witnessed history these last few weeks. Throughout human existence, we have strived for the perfect system to govern and to live by, and now we can cross free market capitalism off of the list. Perhaps the next system we will try will be the fair society, we will have to see.

Regardless, the whole mess, although started by free market loving elitist ‘fat cats’ through their creation of a debt ridden society they can milk for all it is worth, is now being pressed forward by the doomsday creating media (it makes a good story)- most notably BBC News.

Turn on BBC Breakfast in the morning and see on one of the screens in the background the words ‘financial’ and ‘crisis’ (crisis in huge bold red letters), even while talking about gardening or football. Nor does it help when guests come in trying to downplay, help and improve the situation and Sian Williams starts asking “But is it?” and “isn’t it true that the fall in shares is draining people of their blood?”- or words to that effect. What this is doing is scaring people into making decisions that is actually making the circus worse.

Take shares for example, if you have shares in a major company, despite the value falling it does not mean you have to sell, this makes them cheaper. By keeping your shares, you can wait a couple of years until the economy starts growing again and then sell them (or keep them) when they are worth more. There are some people who are effected, those whose pensions are tied up in shares and need to access those them very soon (next 2 years) for example, will have pensions worth less than a couple of years back. However, for the rest of us, even those who have shares or interests in companies that will not go bust, there is no need to worry about shares and the stockmarket at all, yet watch any news programme and the first topic is likely to be how the FSTE 100 has fallen 200 points.

Some of these principles also apply to the banks. In the UK all savings up to £50,000 are guaranteed by the government- so if you have less than this in the bank then leave it, you wont lose it. By taking your money out of the bank, then the bank will have less money, they are less likely to borrow, approve loans and mortgages and their confidence and shares will go down. This ties into the need for nationalisation.

In my most humble of opinions, every British based bank should be nationalised. This does not mean in terms of the government directly running the banks, but instead the government should own all the shares- become the majority (and only) shareholder. Not only will this guarantee 100% of savings, not only will it mean the Treasury could bank billions and billions in profit each year (a way to lower taxes), but it also means that loans, credit and more importantly mortgages can be controlled. The government can stop people getting into stupid debt, ensuring you only buy what you can afford. With mortgages, it means the government can repossess your house if you ca not pay for it, but actually, instead of them kicking you out, it allows them to start renting the place back to you at a cheaper rate. No government would want to be seen increasing the number of homeless on the streets, and to not have a house and hence a job it means less tax revenue. Besides, paying rent to the government once again adds coppers to the Treasury.

Now we see the nationalisation of banks starting and new government laws mean councils can buy half of homes where families are struggling to afford their mortgages, so in my opinion, and I hate to admit it, this government is doing right (now). It’s funny though to see the ‘little state, de-regulate’ Tories not saying a thing, which is of course no surprise, their whole ideology is collapsing around them, if Cameron was in power then he would have to do the exact same thing as Brown is doing, and this would show the hypocrisy and lunacy of Tory politics. This is paralleled across the pond with Bush’s $700 billion bail out of the banks in America.

So now, the world has changed, but there is no need to be scared. Now we can find our new leaders, our new ideologies. We can re-build humanity and the world, raped by the greed of money, and change it into something that benefits and adds to the human experience.