When I talk to people about the need to tackle global warming, a great many still say that it is going to be very difficult to reduce our carbon footprint. In the eyes of many, one of the easiest wins in reducing emissions is to convert to electric vehicles. Given that private cars account for at least 20% of our total energy footprint, IF they were all electric, and IF the electricity all came from renewable sources, clearly there is a big prize here.

But like many, I have to say I have been sceptical that electric cars will ever be an attractive alternative.  There is a wonderful website I know called “ugly electric cars” which demonstrates clearly the problem.

However, my attention was caught by a tweet I picked up a month or two back with a link to Robert Llewellyn (Crichton in Red Dwarf) and his Carpool series of Internet TV interviews. He had been given a new fully electric Mitsubishi i-MiEV to test and I was immediately struck by how practical a car this was. And by its low running cost - roughly £1 per 100 miles, which was also its approximate range. Now for me, most of my car journeys are short, around Hertfordshire, so this could be a very viable option. He now has a series of internet TV videos called Gearless which will track his experience with the i-MiEV.

Read the rest of this entry.

It is a bit late in the day, but nevertheless we probably should welcome Labour’s sudden desire to hold a vote on replacing the hopelessly outdated First Past the Post (FPTP) system of elections.

BUT!!!!

What is needed is a two stage process. First, by all means let’s have a vote to agree that we want to replace FPTP - if this can be done straight away then at least we have started in the right direction. But then we need to ASK THE PEOPLE what they consider a more appropriate replacement.So far in the UK there has been precious little debate on this except amongst those of us who are really passionate for the need for change, and most people have no idea of the merits of the various systems.

Personally, I would prefer us to slim down parliament, establish larger constituencies which would allow us to use Single Transferable Vote (STV), by far the fairest form of PR which preserves individual votes for individual candidates, and a constituency link - although it would be a much larger constituency.

This would then require a major reform of the system of local government - which we need anyway, so that local government has the power to make a difference, and the role of the MP as a local problem fixer, rather than a national legislator, could be reduced.

Local elections definitely need to be via STV and this is now used for local elections in Scotland. This change could be brought in immediately as the multi-member ward system we have currently lends itself to this already. And if we did this, we could end the quite appalling imbalance of representation at local level whereby  we have 55  Tory county councillors out of 77 in Hertfordshire, versus 17 LibDems and 3 Labour, despite the proportion of votes being 46%:27%:14%.

Major changes like these should be brought in through a process of public consultation and hopefully cooperation between the parties.

So yes we need to agree to scrap FPTP, but we then need to hold an electoral conference (as we have been proposing) in order to come up with the better solution. What Brown is proposing is just a desperate gesture.

For more on electoral reform see  http://www.voteforachange.co.uk/

I listened to much of the Chilcot inquiry today - and twittered like a tweeting fool as I got angrier and angrier. And not just because the questions I wanted asked (see previous blog) were not being asked. But to recap the day…

It took no time at all for Blair to start reinventing history - even recent history. The Fern Britton interview was dismissed as if he had simply been careless with his choice of words, even with all his great experience of the media. And the panel failed to press him on this as they failed to press on so many other lines of inquiry - one can only hope that their inscrutability is masking a stinging report when it finally gets published, however many months away that is.

Then he was off, running the show virtually, making mischief with 9/11 when one thing we do all know is that prior to the invasion there was no link between Saddam and global terrorism. And once again he was allowed to get away with it.

The dossier and its presentation was raised - but Tony swatted this away as an irrelevance - and he quoted some totally spurious statistics on how little this had been raised in parliamentary questions - as if that was a sensible measure of anything! And again they didn’t question this at all.

The excuses kept coming: he complained that many were pushing him to move more quickly to war - yes, we know who those people were, and they were mostly in Washington. In the afternoon when it got onto the reasons why the aftermath was such a disaster, it wasn’t that the planning was cavalier (or non-existent)it was apparently because they had not anticipated the role that Iran and Al Qa’ida would take. And it was not our troops that were responsible for the thousands of civilian deaths each month, three or four years after the invasion - no, that was all down to the insurgents. (At this point in the proceedings I have to admit my tweets were becoming rather colourful). Read the rest of this entry.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth E. Boulding
Economist and co-founder of General Systems Theory

So, this week’s big news is that we are finally “out of recession” - even if it is by the smallest of error-prone margins. But is it perhaps a timely reminder that whilst GDP growth may still be a valid measure of our economic well-being, it is by no means the only one, and there are many economists who question its continued relevance, and some are brave enough to point out the bleedin’ obvious - that continued growth is neither sustainable nor desirable.

I’d like to share with you the latest report from the New Economics Foundation (nef) which puts forward the case for a new macro economic model “that allows the human population as a whole to thrive without having to relying on ultimately impossible, endless increases in consumption.” Read the rest of this entry. .

What a load of rubbish!

Seriously, the waste strategy that Hertfordshire is preparing to adopt is fundamentally flawed, and this is an issue that affects us all - it’s not just NIMBY objections to waste facilities in electorally inconvenient spots.

What is happening across the country, and indeed across the rest of the world, is that mass burn incineration is on its way out. It is yesterday’s technology, and is a dangerous addiction, relatively easy to take up, but very difficult to get rid of. The world of waste treatment is a rapidly changing one, and there are many new ways being found to reduce our past reliance on landfill. But not, it seems, in Hertfordshire. Read the rest of this entry.

I have just added my tuppenceworth to the suggestions for questions to be asked of our former PM when he appears before the Chilcott Inquiry.

Although there are many I would like answered,  the one I hear least concerns the impact of the US and the UK taking what amounted to pre-emptive military action, without the support of the UN, or even NATO. The question I have suggested to the Inquiry is therefore:

How do you justify the damage your decision to take Britain to war has done to the process of international diplomacy, and Britain’s reputation? What weight did you put on this consideration before you decided to mislead parliament in order to win the vote on 18th March 2003? As John Denham said on that day the decision to take pre-emptive action, without the support of our international partners “…will turn many parts of the world against us, undermine friendly Governments, fuel terrorism and those who will join it in the future, and make it more difficult to sustain international action against common problems.” Do you not agree that his points have been shown to be very prescient?

I would urge everyone to use the 38 Degrees website  to put their own question, and to encourage the inquiry team not to let our former PM off the hook

I have recently had a number of people emailing asking me my position on the fox hunting ban.   When the ban was introduced I was sceptical of the motives (Labour metropolitan class versus rural areas) and its effectiveness, and I was very conscious of the very strong opposition to the ban by many I knew who lived and worked in rural communities across the country.  But I think on balance it has succeeded in curbing unnecessary cruelty without completely ruining the rural way of life as was predicted by its opponents. If it was brought to a vote again I would be inclined to suport its continuation.

One of the best pieces of evidence of people’s attitudes to this now was an e-poll conducted by one of our MP’s, Tom Brake, who represents Carshalton and Wallington - here is his summary: Read the rest of this entry.

I think the answer the first question is much easier than the second.  We are currently in a nightmare situation militarily and diplomatically and there are few signs of it getting any easier. Read the rest of this entry. Read the rest of this entry.

It is pitiful that both Labour and Tory politicians seem to be falling over each other to quote dear old Maggie Thatcher’s “advisors advise, ministers decide” dictum when what they are really saying is “we know best, never mind the evidence”. Thank God for Chris Huhne and Evan Harris who have shown that not all MPs are so patrician in their outlook.  We must champion evidence based policy making and support informed debate.

Yesterday the Liberal Democrats called on Parliament to back the 10:10 campaign on climate change. Sadly, the Labour Government applied a three-line whip (why did they have to do that? - doesn’t that just make politics even more pointless to real people?) to vote down any specific action and the motion was defeated.  It was heartening to see local Conservative MPs speaking and voting in support of this initiative, although not surprisingly our own MP, whose views as a denier of climate change are well known, did not see fit to attend the debate.

Read the rest of this entry.