A thought provoking article in today's Guardian by Ian Jack which deals with the implications of rapidly increasing cost of agricultural land and it consequential impact on future food security. He concludes by raising the prospect of land nationalisation being a political consideration to ensuring food supply, as it was in the early part of the 20th century.
The market response to any shortage, or likely increase in demand, is to increase cost and thus maximise profitable return for the owners (and therefore controllers) of capital.
The issue of land ownership for growing affordable and sustainable food needs to be addressed for many reasons; including food security, reducing food miles, sustaining/increasing organic production and resisting the use of bio-fuels. State owned land in the control of local food cooperatives with local shops selling the produce at cost is an old, yet much needed approach.
You never know the new Tory Cooperative Movement (whatever next?) may already be on to this. I think we can rule out New Labour arriving at such a conclusion given this weeks desire to avoid the 'N' word, preferring to speak of temporary public ownership.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Conference
Attended this conference last Saturday and found it to be one of the most informative and wothwhile conferences i have attended in recent years.
It started with a plenary addressed by Caroline Lucas, Phil Thronhill (CCC), Michael Meacher, Matt Wrack (FBU), Frances O'Grady (TUC), Chris Boff (PCS), and Christine Blower (NUT). Some excellent points made and the link between TU's and climate change (CC) via social justice concerns and economic consequences was particulary well made.Of significance it was interesting to hear Matt Wrack quote an unnamed Government minister at the TUC general council admit that CC is a result of 'market failure'. So you wonder why the solutions being sought are so market based.
Michael Meacher was very good, he gets more radical by the speech (having heard is a least 4 times in the last 12 months). I overherad him talking to matt Wrack and he said 'we privatise the gains and socialise the losses' a point that was quite prophetic when set agianst the talk i attended in the first workshop on Carbon Trading.
The system of Carbon Trading is based upon an allocation of carbon credits to the largest polluters. Phase 1 of the implementaion (last 2 years) saw the allocation of carbon credits take place behind closed doors. It resulted in an over allocation to the large energy providers and generators and a subsequent under allocatiuon to large public sector users such as hospitals and universities. So the large private companies were able to sell their surplus to the losers in the public sector.
The other interesting things to come out of that workshop was the fact that the EU trading scheme has allocated itself upto 34% of the worlds atmosphere into which it can dump it's CO2. A disproportionate amount based on population or land mass. Strikes me we are seeing imperialism in the atmosphere as well as its privatisation/marketisation. How have we got to this point where the air around us is being given a market based value?
Your instinct tells you that Carbon Trading must be wrong but this is confimred when someone can quote multinational bankers Citigroup who describe the scheme as 'a regressive tax falling most on the poor'.
In the afternoon i attended a workshop looking at the technology of renewables and the reduction of fossil fuel based energy solutions which was well presented by representitives from Friends of the Earth and Socialist Resistance. I was particulary impressed by the speaker from Socilaist Resistance (Phil Ward) as he focused on the technical aspects of the problem/solutions and didn't just provide a Marxist political analysis.
After that was the final plenary which was opened by a very stirring speech from Jonathon Neale of the CCC. He was joined by John McDonnal, Derek Wall, Tony Kearns (CWU) and someone from Respect whose name i did not catch. John McDonnal was very good and it's quite clear that his failure to contest the Labour leadership has impacted his politics. He has in many recent interviews made reference to making links with the social movements outside of the LP and he did this again, very well. He made a passionate call to arms around Heathrow expansion including the necessity for non violent direct action.
The conferecne ended in typically left wing fashion with a few voices from the sectarian left calling for ammendemnts to a fairly innocuous motion which in essence gave a TU group of the CCC a mandate to meet and take the good work of this conferecne forward. It was made quite clear that the conferecne was not a policy making one, but some of the delegates are unable to understand that simple concept. Their dogma means they just have to have their say and very often make completely unrelated, irrelavant points.
Thankfully the events of the last 5 minutes could not detract from what was a very refreshing and enthusing day that really stirred the intellect.
It started with a plenary addressed by Caroline Lucas, Phil Thronhill (CCC), Michael Meacher, Matt Wrack (FBU), Frances O'Grady (TUC), Chris Boff (PCS), and Christine Blower (NUT). Some excellent points made and the link between TU's and climate change (CC) via social justice concerns and economic consequences was particulary well made.Of significance it was interesting to hear Matt Wrack quote an unnamed Government minister at the TUC general council admit that CC is a result of 'market failure'. So you wonder why the solutions being sought are so market based.
Michael Meacher was very good, he gets more radical by the speech (having heard is a least 4 times in the last 12 months). I overherad him talking to matt Wrack and he said 'we privatise the gains and socialise the losses' a point that was quite prophetic when set agianst the talk i attended in the first workshop on Carbon Trading.
The system of Carbon Trading is based upon an allocation of carbon credits to the largest polluters. Phase 1 of the implementaion (last 2 years) saw the allocation of carbon credits take place behind closed doors. It resulted in an over allocation to the large energy providers and generators and a subsequent under allocatiuon to large public sector users such as hospitals and universities. So the large private companies were able to sell their surplus to the losers in the public sector.
The other interesting things to come out of that workshop was the fact that the EU trading scheme has allocated itself upto 34% of the worlds atmosphere into which it can dump it's CO2. A disproportionate amount based on population or land mass. Strikes me we are seeing imperialism in the atmosphere as well as its privatisation/marketisation. How have we got to this point where the air around us is being given a market based value?
Your instinct tells you that Carbon Trading must be wrong but this is confimred when someone can quote multinational bankers Citigroup who describe the scheme as 'a regressive tax falling most on the poor'.
In the afternoon i attended a workshop looking at the technology of renewables and the reduction of fossil fuel based energy solutions which was well presented by representitives from Friends of the Earth and Socialist Resistance. I was particulary impressed by the speaker from Socilaist Resistance (Phil Ward) as he focused on the technical aspects of the problem/solutions and didn't just provide a Marxist political analysis.
After that was the final plenary which was opened by a very stirring speech from Jonathon Neale of the CCC. He was joined by John McDonnal, Derek Wall, Tony Kearns (CWU) and someone from Respect whose name i did not catch. John McDonnal was very good and it's quite clear that his failure to contest the Labour leadership has impacted his politics. He has in many recent interviews made reference to making links with the social movements outside of the LP and he did this again, very well. He made a passionate call to arms around Heathrow expansion including the necessity for non violent direct action.
The conferecne ended in typically left wing fashion with a few voices from the sectarian left calling for ammendemnts to a fairly innocuous motion which in essence gave a TU group of the CCC a mandate to meet and take the good work of this conferecne forward. It was made quite clear that the conferecne was not a policy making one, but some of the delegates are unable to understand that simple concept. Their dogma means they just have to have their say and very often make completely unrelated, irrelavant points.
Thankfully the events of the last 5 minutes could not detract from what was a very refreshing and enthusing day that really stirred the intellect.
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