I have long argued for a Green New Deal. Now many others - from the CBI onwards - are suggesting that we need a new economic consensus to rebuild after coronavirus. In this video I explain my vision for this consensus.
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Interesting video. Needs some more examples of where GND programmes have been tried before though, and perhaps a few pictures. Are there any stretches of farmland in range of your walks that you could photograph that are less bio-diverse than one would like due to CAP subsidies.
Thanks
Work pressure prevents me finessing the videos with images – it would massively increase production time. Sorry
There is as such still no GND anywhere
But then, there was no NHS once….
Today I heard on the news that the 2012 Lansley reforms to the NHS are to be unwound.
With the ERG mob in the ascendant, what on earth is going on?
It is what our opposition parties should be arguing for.
I can see this causing a rift among the Tories.
This is very odd
If Labour announced it the plan would be socialism
But I will welcome it if it happens
That’s also what I thought. So I searched and found this article about it on Keep Our NHS Public: https://keepournhspublic.com/government-used-crisis-to-increase-privatisation-nhs-white-paper-will-endorse/
It seems it was grossly mis-reported by the BBC and The Times. Apparently the leaked White Paper proposes almost the opposite of today’s headlines – much as one would expect from our present government.
I agree with your GND points. I think another dimension is the need for radical economic system changes to support the many for whom the end of the month is a more pressing problem than the end of the world – as expressed on a Gillet Jaune plackard – so that they have the security to join in support of all the other changes necessary to avert climate catastrophe. The Cumbria coal mine issue is an example of this.
I too found analysis later in the day suggesting what you have found
Hugh Pym for the BBC completely misreported this
Will Sir “Land of Hope and Glory” Starmer now pop up and ask how’s this re-vamping of the NHS’s going to be paid for after such a huge spend on Covid? Isn’t that the necessary patriotic line of duty thing to do?
Maybe the Tories realise that health care is a critical part of the infrastructure now.
Seeing the NHS as a cash cow for private interests may have had its day. Providing effective, good value health care to the whole nation, is best done without the NHS competing against itself and private tender. With all the layers of beaurocracy that it creates.
The Tories are going to be the party of the NHS and steal Labour’s clothes. A smart move, if they want to stay in power.
The next pandemic may be far more destructive and the impact on the economy and society much worse. The country and the NHS needs to be ready and well resourced.
In fact, the whole world needs universal health care for all to counter a new global pandemic.
Reports later on Saturday suggest the early BBC spin on this was entirely wrong: the plan is, of course, the exact opposite of what they reported
The new consensus needs to understand that climate change is not the only major threat we face as it is accompanied by a bio-diversity crisis which is linked to it but also has a dimension of its own. The current pandemic is just a symptom of the bio-diversity crisis and the destruction of the planet’s eco-systems. This will certainly not be the last pandemic- they are coming at us thicker and faster. Viruses and other micro-organisms are vastly more numerous than we are and they reproduce, mutate and adapt at a faster rate, which is measurable only on a logarithmic scale. They will out run us. Yet we carry on destroying eco-systems and depleting the living world of species which create a “buffer zone” separating humans from viruses and other pathogens. It is analogous to building our houses on a flood plain. The GND must incorporate bio-diversity loss mitigation and recovery elements as well as elements to address climate change – reforestation will be a response to both crises but we must recognise that damaged eco-systems cannot be re-created (they have taken millions of years to evolve), so protection of what we still have is essential.
I entirely agree
We recognise this in the GND
It’s often harder to get across
You say that you recognise the need for biodiversity in the GND but that it’s often harder to get across
Perhaps if you mentioned it in the body or prefaces of the Green New Deal reports, then that would make a difference in getting the message across.
https://greennewdealgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Green-New-Deal-5th-Anniversary.pdf
Biodiversity isn’t in there (refs excepted). It wasn’t in the first one either.
It’s all very well to talk about messaging but if you haven’t been including it in the message from the beginning then it’s going to be harder to get going if your starting point is v6.
Messaging the GND has been hard enough
Sorry, but it’s nit possible to do everything in a single go
Need for a new economic consensus? Yes a million times Yes!
Then decades old cold damp UK reality intruded when I checked in on Neil Wilson’s blog and read his first two articles:-
https://new-wayland.com/blog/uk-borrowed-foreign-currency-from-imf-in-1976/
https://new-wayland.com/blog/planning_for_tax_rises/
Thanks Helen.
BIll Mitchell ‘s take on the 1976 crisis is here:
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=24221
And some recent big-picture, how we got here, perspective from Michael Hudson:
https://michael-hudson.com/2021/02/at-the-oxford-economics-society/
You make a compelling case. The post-war settlement was crafted long before the last war was won. But, in this interconnected world, even an economy of the UK’s heft can’t do what you’re proposing unilaterally. The Biden administration is proposing to pivot away from the dogma of this mis-named neoliberalism by focusing on increased productive public spending, a sustainable and focused industrial policy, balanced trade deals (that compensate workers who might lose out and a recalibration of the balance between monetary and fiscal policy. By virtue of the US’s economic heft and interconnectedness, this will impact on all the western advanced economies – including ours. There are indications of similar policy movement in the major EU economies. What you are proposing will need a concerted multi-national effort. But we’ve put ourself out of that loop with Brexit.
And the politics here are all wrong. It’s difficult to see this Tory hegemony not being sustained – but it will adapt to emerging realities. Only Labour could drive what you are proposing. But Labour is going the way of the Liberals a century ago.
Arundhati Roy: “What is this thing that has happened to us? It’s a virus, yes. In and of itself, it holds no moral brief. But it is definitely more than a virus … It has made the mighty kneel and brought the world to a halt like nothing else could. Our minds are still racing back and forth, longing for a return to ‘normality’, trying to stitch our future to our past and refusing to acknowledge the rupture. But the rupture exists. And in the midst of this terrible despair, it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves.
Nothing could be worse than a return to normality. Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine the world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our databanks and dead ideas, our dead rivers, and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
Indeed
Excellent . Should be widely shared on our various platforms and through our various channels
Thanks