Category Archives: Politics

Books Environmental politics History Science

A fascinating (pre)history of manure – no, really. And possibly some lessons for today…

June 23, 2012 – 11:15 pm

A shorter version was first published on Blogcritics

The “new books” section at the London Library throw up many weird, wonderful and exciting possibilities. Not many readers might have picked up Manure Matters: Historical, Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives, but since it combines my interest in soils and history, how could I resist?

And I found parts of this collection of academic essays by different authors absolutely fascinating – and even a reader without my special interest would, I think, also do so. (Although I’ll admit that “Organic geochemical signatures of ancient manure use” is probably only of specialist concern – although I did learn from it that elephants, hyraxes and manatees are the only major vertebrates that don’t produce bile acids. Now there’s a pub quiz killer answer…)

Even the introduction, with its brief skip through the 20th-century organics movement, told me things I didn’t know, particularly the debt that this Western knowledge owes to the East. It identified a key text, published in 1911, Farmers of Forty Centuries, by Franklin King, who had made a research trip to China, Japan and Korea. “Critically, King was able to demonstrate that organic manures in the East enabled more to be grown per hectar.. than contemporary methods used in the West which were becoming ever more reliant on artificials [fertilisers]”. (p. 3) And India also contributed through the work of Sir Albert Howard, who eventually established the Institute of Plant Industry in Indore, where he established a manuring method, the Indore Process, that involves mixing vegetable and animal waste with chalk, limestone, wood ash, earth or claked lime, to neutralise the acidity produced by fermentation. His An Agricultural Testament (1940) informed Soil Association work.

But mostly, we’re going an awful lot further back in history – or more correctly prehistory. “Middening and manuring in Neolithic Europe” sets out much of the ground – the fact that stall manure is rarely spread more than 500 metres from its source, even with animal transport available, greatly raising the value of land in immediate proximity of human/animal housing. And that manuring is a slow investment – only 5-25% of the nutrients being usually available in the year after its spreading – which immediately raises questions of land tenure and inheritance. There’s a tension if new households are added – if they are to be in close proximity to existing ones, then this land will be encroached. This may explain areas such as central and northern Europe where dispersed settlements tend to be the norm.
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Politics

Interesting protest ideas and plans from the Reclaim the NHS meeting

June 23, 2012 – 8:55 pm

I only managed to catch the afternoon session, after a morning on housing, but it certainly threw up some interesting ideas:

* One line of attack is on companies that are taking on privatised services, particularly those for which it is not the core part of their businesses. Highlighted was a planned protest against Sainsbury’s takeover of the St Guy’s and St Thomas’s pharmacy – a plan that has already led to a parliamentary question. The next one is planned for next week – I heard on Wednesday 12-2 on Borough High Street. Virgin was also identified as another possible target – and Richard Branson masks and protest balloons certainly seemed to be selling well.

* In Sheffield the local Keep Our NHS Public is organising a protest on Monday to coincide with the Olympic torch passing a major hospital. The aim is not to disrupt the passage of the torch but use the occasion to celebrate the NHS.

* It was suggested that patients ask their GPs to put on their notes for referrals ‘NPP’ – no private practice. (Unless there’s no alternative – we were told all blood tests now done by private providers.)

* But of course the TUC demo on October 20 is going to be big, and one speaker suggested concentrating efforts on that.

I think it was David Babbs from 38 Degrees who pointed out that it was hard to stop a government with a parliamentary majority from passing a law it wanted to pass, but that doesn’t mean they can implement it.

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Politics

An economist’s view of England’s (and particularly London’s) housing problem

June 23, 2012 – 7:27 pm

Today’s Camden housing strategy conference heard from LSE Professor of Economics Christine Whitehead, in a high-level and challenging, but very informative talk, which aimed, in her words, “to give an overview of the major tensions in the housing system and in housing policy” and “clarify why current policies are being put in place”. (She suggested it would be unpopular, but it was clear that what she was saying were observations of events, not views.)

She started by pointing out that everything in the end depended on macroeconomic conditions “but macroeconomists do not know what is going to happen and they do not even know how to analyse it”. But “the chances are that on the whole the future is like the past”.

It’s estimated there are now 1.5 million households across England who pre-crisis would by now have become owner-occupiers, but who are now renting, or living at home with parents. The government was “trying things”, in response to this she said. “If it doesn’t work, they’ll come out of it – it’s a variation of the traditional way of doing things, which was knowing what you want to do”.

The government’s main aims were to reduce welfare costs, target more, use existing assets more effectively, and using housing policy to support growth. It was seeking to move from “supply subsidies”, capital grants and lower rents, which help a narrow range of people and leave out many of those who are worse off, to providing income-related subsidies, more targeted and adjustable as household circumstances change – and which in some scenarios can be cheaper. The affordable rents model is a direct transfer from The Netherlands, but there there is better and more comprehensive social security, a better distribution of income and a stronger capital base.(There, rents of over 652 euros a month are market rents.)
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Environmental politics Politics

Notes from the London “Alternative Rio” conference

June 17, 2012 – 10:54 pm

I spoke today at the session on “Women and Climate Change”, which I think went  well. I’ll be writing elsewhere about what I said, but among the things I learnt from the session were about:

  • *Bridge and  their very interesting-looking “gender and climate change pack”, which has gone to the top of my to-read pile. The related Institute of Development Studies also produced an interesting leaflet on food sovereignty.
  • About a government consultation on biofuels, with particular reference to the issue of palm oil
  • About the biological vulnerability of girls to radiation (with particular reference to Fukushima)
  • About the Greenheart project;
  • And while I’m posting links, I was promoting the useful GenderCC website.

Although I kept getting caught in conversation, I did manage to catch parts of two other sessions.

I was taken by comments from Dan Plesch of SOAS about the damage that has been done by the provision of limited liability for companies, which has led to the externalisation of risk while profits remain privatised. He was scathing about “corporate social responsibility”, noting that it was legally subject to the obligation to maximise shareholder value.  He noted that the Victorians were extremely suspicious of limited liability – referencing Gilbert & Sullivan’s Utopia Ltd, and up until the 1920s The Economist was opposed to it.

Rupert Read made a nice summary of Keynesianism as offering the tradeoff of continual growth in return for accepting continuing inequality  – “growthism is an endless excuse not to face up to inequality”. He said that the end of growth would mean a need to share out the pie more equally.

Green MEP Keith Taylor spoke on fracking (at what from the bit I heard was a very strong session – also very impressed with Frack Off). He said that for Europe the problem was that it was a fast-moving technology that was hard to keep up with, France and Bulgaria had banned it while Poland was rushing ahead.

Sian Berry from the Campaign for Better Transport spoke about “peak car“, the idea that young people in particular (in cities and large towns at least) are becoming less interested in driving – hey, you can’t use Facebook! And how the Department for Transport has over the past three decades consistently significantly over-estimated traffic growth, by assuming that it would simply grow in line with population. And given the fact that the government has been planning for that growth, providing the roads etc, the question arises about how much traffic might have gone done had that been what the government was planning for…

Coming up from the Campaign Against Climate Change: Zero Carbon Britain Day, July 21, and December 1, Global Day of Action on Climate Change.

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Books Environmental politics

Elinor Ostrom – a true intellectual innovator

June 12, 2012 – 10:55 pm

When I studied agricultural science at university many years ago, we were taught “The Tragedy of the Commons” not as a claim, or as a situation arising from certain social circumstances, but as an inevitable fact of life.

Life experience, and a certain intellectual scorn for the quality of my university education, had led me to no longer believe that, but I was still delighted when Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Economics prize with her work on such commons that worked very well with community management over long periods of time – often better indeed than government or commercially managed models.

Also delighted that she was the first Economics laureate, although unsurprised to learn that she’d had to battle to be allowed to study for her doctorate, as a woman in a “man’s” field. (And I’m glad that I got the London Library to buy her Governing the Commons.)

Sad to learn then that she’s died today.

Here’s her Nobel lecture: Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems.

And her last article, on the Rio conference, published today.

A good day to read in her memory…

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Environmental politics Politics

Green politics in Burgundy

June 5, 2012 – 9:46 pm

… well this is based on a very small sample of the meeting I went to this evening in St Leger sous Beuvray (population 500 or so). This is in the 3rd circonscription of Saone et Loire and the speaker was the candidate for the legislative elections starting on June 10, Francois Lotteau, who is also the mayoral candidate for Chalon sur Saone, the regional capital. (And it is also based on my limited French…thanks very much to the people I was talking to for their patience! )

The candidate’s literature begins “after decades of liberalisation, the state is powerless to resolve the global crisis. There are interdependent economic, social, ecological and financial crises. austerity is not the solution. Green politics is the highest response (response a hauteur) to the issue of the day.”

It talks about the development of “peasant” (paysan – I think perhaps “non-industrial” might be a better translation) agriculture, guaranteeing good food to consumers and decent income to farmers, the decline in numbers of which must be stopped.

That was one of the chief topics of discussion tonight – the problems of young farmers and access to land and capital, the complications and cost of getting organic certification, the fact that so much food in the shops is industrial and not tied to place or producer.

The leaflet also talks about the need to invest in the green energy sector, including insulation, to reduce unemployment and “the (financial) precariousness of life”. Most discussion this evening was despair at the French acceptance and promotion of nuclear power – I sympathised and explained about our rightwing government.
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