Tagged: politics

Solar Update

Another in my occasional series of blog posts about our solar panels.

We used both the Energy Saving Trust Solar Power calculator and the Europa Solar Calculator to estimate a generation capacity of between 2,500 and 2,700 kWh per year.

Solar Estimate

We've just done a reading for 21 November to 21 February. Right in line with expectations, we generated 205kWh - netting us ~£96 from the Feed In Tariff.

Over 15 months we've generated a total of 3376kWh. Again, totally in line with the top end of expectations. Which gives me happy feelings whenever I see the sun shine.

burns excellent sunshine

So why aren't more people doing this? The prices of solar panels have fallen so much that a regular 4kWh installation costs around £7,000. Granted, that's a chunk of money - but it's nothing compared to the price of a house. Why isn't every new-build house kitted out with one?

The point of solar power (in the UK at least) is not to go "off grid" or be completely energy independent. The point is to reduce the load on the existing grid and to give us more time to construct extra, greener energy generating capacity.

Our personal electricity usage is about 13kWh per day. Call it 5,000kWh per year. At the moment, we generate roughly half of that through solar power. Sure, a large part of our usage happens at night when the sun isn't shining - but it's easily enough to drop the load required for powering the fridge, washing machine, broadband and wifi, and all the other devices left on during the day.

Better local storage of energy would be nice, but given we can export it to people who are using electricity - it's not vital.

Just imagine if we could cut the cost of our electricity bills in half - permanently!

As Professor Sue Roaf pointed out in a comment on The Guardian, the UK is proposing a £240 Billion subsidy for new nuclear plants. That's £10,000 for each household - enough to pay for solar panels, insulation, smart meters, and more efficient heating equipment.

Surely that's the sensible way to go? Give every household a £10k subsidy which they can spend on reducing energy usage and generating their own power. This is cheap and reliable technology which - crucially - has no chance of melting down and causing a nuclear winter. Getting installers working would boost employment all over the country, would lift thousands of families out of fuel poverty, and provide the country with energy security for the future.

That can never happen; it's far too sensible.

Votes For Children

Eric Joyce MP has written about why he doesn't think the vote should be extended to 16 year olds. While I've admired his stance on digital rights, I disagree with him and his reasoning on this issue.

This isn't about whether young people are able to understand the issues, or whether they are taxed without representation, or even if they are somehow "mature". We vote because the direction of the government affects us. No matter our age.

It is my contention that every citizen of this country should be able to vote. No matter what their age.

Imagine the following system. Every live birth registered up until the day an election is called is worth one vote. Parents would be able to vote on their child's behalf up until the parents thought the child able to vote for themselves.

If you are a single parent with two small children - you get, in effect, three votes.

We can't have a test for the age of maturity - that would be extremely politically loaded and probably disenfranchise the elderly, the disabled, and the illiterate. Every citizen whose life is affected by the Government ought to have a say in how they are governed. If they are unable to comprehend the arguments or physically unable to vote - their parent or guardian should act in their best interests as their proxy.

Mr Joyce puts forward some very disingenuous arguments against lowering the voting age. He seems to confuse the age of maturity with the ability to to be a fully franchised citizen. He says:

Do we want to say that voters are adults (and so treat 16 year olds as adults), or that it's not that important so we let kids do it too. Do we want 14 and 15 year old’s details on the publicly available voters register, with parties ringing their homes to lobby them? Do we want 16 year olds risking death in theatres of war? Do we want 16 year olds treated as adults in the justice system? Do we want them buying their own alcohol in pubs and off-licences (the SNP doesn’t, by the way, it wants to raise that age to 21)? And why draw the line at 16 in any case – 14 year olds can pay tax and are perfectly capable of understanding the arguments put by political parties at election time.

I'd like to take those points in order.

  • Voters don't have to be adults. Either mentally or physically. Adults are capable of reckless acts and children capable of maturity.
  • The names and addresses of all citizens are already available. I remember my (Conservative) MP sending me a birthday card when I turned 18 - a shameless tactic.
  • Regarding lobbying children - I honestly think it would be a good idea for politicians to explain their proposals in simpler language. In 2005, fewer than 20% of people with a learning disability voted. Thanks, in part, to Mencap producing manifestos suitable for people with learning difficulties - that figure rose to 31% for the 2010 election. So, yes, politicians should court the youth - either directly or through their guardians.
  • Regarding rights and responsibilities - Joyce has already pointed out the age related discrepancies in our laws. This could be another of them. Or, just as we don't expect (some) people with mental health issues to be tried as adults or conscripted into the armed forces, neither would we expect children to shoulder this responsibility. An 89 year old woman is unlikely to be asked to risk life and limb - yet she is able to vote for a war-hungry government.
  • On the subject of age related hazards - again, this is a specious argument. Why shouldn't anyone capable of passing a driving test be allowed to drive? For "sinful" or dangerous substances like alcohol - do we ban drunk drivers or alcoholics from purchasing alcohol? We don't ban children because they don't understand the risks - but because these items have a damaging impact on the developing body.
  • Finally a point we agree on! Why draw the line at 16? Children pay tax, and have their rights dictated to by local and national politicians. Why should anyone be disenfranchised?

Children enjoy human rights, and they are protected by the law. We give them a right to education, to life, and to healthcare. We shelter them when homeless, and feed them when hungry. But we don't give them - or their proxies - any say in the provision of these services or how they are governed.

Abolishing the voting age isn't without its problems. We will never arrive at a system which is free from defects and edge cases - but this is an improvement on our current situation. It would engage young people in politics, and invest them with the idea of personal democracy.

Politicians are constantly harping on about "hard working families" and how we must think of the children. This would - I hope - ensure policies which were good for families and good for children.

Votes for all.

A Kickstarter for Political "Donations"

A few years ago, I went to a recording of Mark Thomas' "Manifesto" radio show. Members of the audience can suggest humorous changes to the law and society that they would like to see enacted, and the rest of the audience votes on whether they're good enough - or funny enough - to be in a proposed election manifesto.

My manifesto suggestion was very simple - every time you visit an MP, it should cost you £5 or £10. If you want to go and speak to your MP you have to hand her a crisp new note. This has the dual advantage of weeding out vexatious visitors and, more importantly, reminding the MP who exactly they work for.

It has - I'll grant you - some drawbacks. If you can't afford a fiver (and many can't) you're denied access to your elected Member of Parliament. It also means those with the biggest cheque-books get to write the law. This is, many would argue, extremely unseemly and a recipe for corruption.

Before he became Health Secretary, the Tory MP Andrew Lansley accepted large donations from private health companies. When he became Minister, he helped drive legislation which - it would seem - directly benefited those who had donated to him.

John Nash, the chairman of Care UK, gave £21,000 to fund Andrew Lansley’s personal office in November.

Mr Nash, a private equity tycoon, also manages several other businesses providing services to the NHS and stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Conservative policies to increase the use of private health providers.
Source: Daily Telegraph

It's important to stress that this is not bribery. Bribery is when a Tory politician receives £30,000 to ask questions in the House of Commons (See the Cash For Questions affair on Wikipedia).

Taking money to ask questions is wrong. Taking money and then independently helping to change legislation is fine. It's an important distinction.

Perfectly Normal

Let us take, for example, the Kingdom of Bahrain. They sent MP's investigating the regime luxury hampers worth at least £200 each. They funded flights to the country for several MPs, and gave the PM a fountain pen and jewellery.

On May 18th 2012, the Queen invited the King of Bahrain to dine with her.

It is perfectly legal and acceptable to use cold-hard-cash, to fund foreign trips, or to purchase goods and services - in order to help MPs understand complex issues and take the tough decisions which are needed.

Grass Roots

This year has seen the rise of Kickstarter and similar crowd-funding websites. An aspiring author, inventor, or musician takes to the Internet and says "If X number of people give me Y pounds, I'll be able to produce product Z!"

It's a nifty system. I've used it to help support new books and video games this year and been very impressed with the results.

It's obvious that sites like 38degrees and Avaaz are doing something right. They're attracting huge numbers of people to attempt to engage with politicians. But sending letters or - worse - a truck load of email "signatures" on a petition just doesn't cut it any more. If we want to influence politicians, we have to pay.

The campaigning site 38degrees raised £50,000 to run an opinion poll and place an advert in national newspapers. That money was wasted. It didn't help change the Government's mind on NHS privatisation. Why should it?

I'm suggesting it would have been better to give that money directly to Andrew Lansley. It's over double what he received from the chairman of Care UK. They could have given him half now, half on scrapping the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

£50k might be overkill. They could have matched the original donation and then the rest could have been used to buy him a nice holiday, some chocolates for his wife, presents for his kids, etc.

So, that's what I'm proposing. A crowd-funding political "donation" site.

Putting it into Practice

There are two ways to make this work.

The first is like a regular Kickstarter campaign.

"I want to raise £30,000 to buy something nice for the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson if he will repeal the ban on Fox Hunting."

Kickstarter Fox HuntingMembers of the public could then purchase gifts to send to the MP(s) - in a similar fashion to Oxfam Unwrapped. Select how much you can afford and then purchase, say, a tasty treat to pack into a luxury hamper.

Once enough money is raised, the gift or the cash is given to the MP. Now, there is a slight risk that an MP won't behave honourably. An MP could accept the money or gift but then not do what we want them to do. This leads us on to the second option.

Popular website Arrest Blair wants people to perform a Citizen's Arrest on the former Prime Minister. They've raised a bunch of money and will give a quarter of it to anyone who attempts to arrest Tony Blair. So far, they have paid out around £11,000 between the four people who have attempted to hold Blair accountable for his alleged war crimes.

That, in essence, would be the second model. A citizen would say

"I want to raise £30,000 to buy something nice for any MP who helps repeal the ban on Fox Hunting."

Once the money is raised, any MP who helps successfully to bring forth legislation can claim her share of the prize.

This system is not fool-proof - which is a pity as there are no shortage of fools in the House of Commons - but I am confident that it would help to alleviate our democratic deficit.

If You Have Nothing To Hide... You Still Have Something To Fear

One of the most pernicious memes is "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." It implies that the only reasons for opposing a law is that you would find yourself guilty under it.

The phrases is, I think, a contender for a new form of Godwin's Rule. Any discussion about laws eventually boils down to "Only a criminal would oppose this measure."

The annoying thing is, it's particularly hard to refute. In some cases, yes, it may be felt that the law unfairly criminalises behaviour which one currently engages in. Most people, however, argue from theory. The Pirate Party has a nice little primer on objections to the argument.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were some practical, real world, examples of how having "nothing to hide" can still be dangerous?

The Government wants to introduce the Communications Data Bill (AKA the Snoopers' Charter). There has been a Joint Committee investigating these proposals - as part of their investigations, they reported:

191. It is not only the public authorities which make errors. The annual report shows that in two cases a CSP disclosed incorrect data in response to a request, the police took action on the basis of this data, and members of the public were wrongly detained and accused of crimes.
Draft Communications Data Bill Joint Committee Contents - 5 Safeguards

So, there we have it. People with nothing to hide caught up in a dragnet of incompetence. Here we have highly responsible state bodies unable or unwilling to verify data correctly - the fall out is that innocent people have their lives severely disrupted

If this bill passes, every single email and text you send, every website you visit, every link you accidentally click, will have its details recorded in a database somewhere. It will then become trivial for the CPS to trawl this vast mine of information looking for anything they regard as "suspicious". And if they mistakenly arrest you because of their deep-grained institutional ability to cock-up - or if they dislike your legal hobbies? Well, that's just too bad.

That's why I support the Open Rights Group - and you should too. They've submitted statements to the Joint Committee, they've tirelessly briefed the press, and are organising a citizens' lobbying of Parliament.

ORG want to fund a part-time Legal Officer to help them with their work - they started with a goal of getting 150 new members, now they are only 30 people short of their target. They need you to join for just £5 per month.

Join The OpenRightsGroupEvery supporter donating at least £5 per month by direct debit receives a free copy of Rapture of the Nerds co-authored by Cory Doctorow, a member of the Advisory Council and Charles Stross, one of ORG's founding members.

NB - the affiliate style links are for ORG's member-get-member program. If you'd prefer to join without giving me as the referrer, please use http://www.openrightsgroup.org/join/.

Obligatory Cartoon

What If They Gave Us Capitalism - But Nobody Cared?

What if they gave a war and nobody came?
Why, then, the war would come to you!
-- Bertolt Brecht

The current Conservative Government (and their Labour predecessors) are obsessed with the idea of competition. Their theory is that competition lowers prices, improves services, and makes the world more efficient. The free market will arrive at an optimal solution for everything.

In some cases, this is correct. In my own field - mobile phones - we see a tooth and nail fight between companies which has dramatically lowered the price of phones, improved them immeasurably, and created a lot of value in our economy.

But not all services are like this. It turns out that, in some cases, people just don't care about competition.

The energy sector is one fine example. David Cameron recently announced that all energy companies would be forced to put people on their cheapest tariffs.

Why? Surely, as capitalist citizens, we should relish in the choice of dozens of energy providers - each with their own myriad of tariffs? Whenever our bill comes in, we should shop around and get the best price?

This doesn't happen. It turns out that inertia is a more powerful force than capitalism.

  • It takes time to compare all the different tariffs.
  • The savings make are comparatively small compared to other household costs.
  • There is a fundamental disconnect between price and service.

The last is the most important. I can understand why the apples at Sainsbury's cost less than the apples at Tesco.

But my electricity comes through the same wires - no matter the provider. It comes from the same power station, across the same pylons, and works in exactly the same way.

So, how can Company A's prices be radically different from Company B's?

Some Have Choice Thrust Upon Them

The Government appears to be suggesting that every energy provider should be forced to move their customers to the cheapest possible tariff.

This strikes me as an odd move for a Tory Government. They seem to be interfering with private business, forcing households not to engage in competitive behaviour, and are distorting the market. Don't get me wrong, I think cheaper energy bills are a good idea - I'm just surprised that they're doing it this way.

Where does this end?

  • Will mobile networks be forced to write to their customers and say "You only used 200 minutes of your 600 minute bundle - we suggest you move to a price plan which is £5 per month cheaper"?
  • Will Tesco have to email me to say "On a like for like basis, you'd be better off shopping at Waitrose"?
  • Will the Tory party have to send out local council election leaflets saying "Your tax rate would be 7% cheaper under a Lib Dem administration"?

We have a fairly free market for energy (and phones, and shopping) so people are free to compare.

If we are moving to a period where companies' policies are being directed by central government - are the Tories saying that Socialism is better for the British people?