It looks like she's a shoo-in for leader now. If so it seems the people who ousted Boris now have a replacement they'll equally abhor. If this is the case I don't think she'll get much of a honeymoon period from the press. It'll be all hands on deck from the get go.
The 'cost of living' crisis is building up steam nicely. I'm starting to see threads on Twitter with graphs and tables - put together by people who think they're Jeff Goldblum's character in the movie Independence Day. Imploring the public and government alike to take heed of their doom-laden analysis - and of course to follow their sage prescriptions for action.
It's exactly like with Covid, and boringly so. The crying of wolf almost mind-numbing in its repetition.
The only thing stopping me from mocking it completely being the knowledge that cold winters do indeed kill people in the UK. The elderly and the homeless being particularly at risk every winter, so perhaps it'll be more so the case during this one. The hype and fearmongering is obvious, but that doesn't mean that the bills and blackouts will not be real. So I'm trying to force myself to think beyond my initial instinct.
Orange Economy
In many ways it brings to mind the thoughts I was contending with when I was writing about how you "can't grow oranges on a laptop".
People having access to computers and the internet has led to an abundance of digital produce. It's often said that modern people are lazy and that they "don't want to work", but there's an endless supply of memes and music and art and articles and so forth online - all made by people who've made the effort to do it, with no whip at their back forcing them to, and generally little chance of making money.
So ..it seems if you give people free (or super cheap) online "space" they'll be super productive with it.
However, physical produce - food, energy, goods, etc - requires physical space - and that's what most people generally don't have. Getting a few rooms to eat and sleep in (i.e. a home) is hard enough.
My argument is if you want physical abundance you need to open up physical space to people. People need gardens, workshops - places to do things. To grow things, to build things - to experiment and to create..
Do you really think people wouldn't make the effort to chop down trees for wood if they could this winter? To warm themselves by the fire just as their ancestors did. People can't just go out and get resources though - not because they're lazy, but because they're not allowed to. Modern society is so complex and things (like energy) are delivered at such a scale that people simply can't endeavour to warm and feed themselves as individuals
The problem with food and energy, especially for people living in the city, is that you have very little opportunity for self-reliance - because you have very little space. We live in a network of a thousand Romes - if the grain gets cut off we're all sitting ducks.
We have empty highstreets galore though, so it's not like we don't have spaces and places. We just need to make space work for people.
So when I think about energy I think long term we need innovation, space and more self-reliance. More capitalism, - more local market.
This Winter..
Pretty visions aren't going to help in the immediate future though I guess. So we just have unpretty problems at the moment. Personally I would bail out the people that need bailing out, but aim to do it in a way where that cash doesn't advance the ideologies that make us less free and more state dependent in the long run. It's easier said than done though. Especially when it's hard to know where the hype stops and reality starts.
....
(So much for being shattered - I've went from casual commentary to setting out policy plans lol. The idea of energy self-reliance, or a least a degree of it, is something that really interests me though. I feel like I have the spirit of Archimedes bursting to get out. Obviously things like solar and wind are limited, but in a way it's a shame that these technologies have become the preserve of the big state. With more freedom-loving people tending to dislike them. We seem to have this dichotomy of big business vs big state. Of course, we need industrial scale energy production to supply industry and warm homes, so it's sensible and understandable to think in terms of large operators, but who knows how much we could dent reliance on big providers by encouraging real personal innovation and self-sufficiency.
It's like with food: if you can grow some food locally it gives you a cushion. It also provides a potential pathway for scaling up.
Anyway, you can tell how tired I am by how much my focus is wandering, so I'll leave it there for today.)
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