Policy
27 January 2012
On the Buses, you may remember or you may be too young to remember, was a classic British TV situation comedy aired in 74 episodes between 1969 and 1973. The first spin-off film was the most successful film of 1971, beating the James Bond spyfest Diamonds are Forever. On the fortieth anniversary in 2011 fans attending an On the Buses Rides Again weekend travelled in a Routemaster bus to the London suburb of Borehamwood to take photos of a manhole cover – the very manhole apparently where, in the film, Olive Rudge got her bottom stuck. Olive was the frumpy sister of main man Stan, played by the great Reg Varney.
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....Divided we fall or should that read Divided we stand....together we fall. I don't know... my literally references being somewhat impoverished. A new report from the OECD reckons that the gap between the richest countries and the poorest is getting wider. Given the current poor state of the rich economies then surely this is doubly concerning. Surely such inequality cannot continue as it is completely inconsistent with sustainable development.
From the perspective of diplomats and politicians, coming home from Durban with the outlook for a deal between 194 nations on something that binds them all, legally, passes the test of being an ‘historic achievement’. More relevant to all of us: this ‘success’ means that they have in effect agreed to fix the world on a path to at least 3,5 degree Celsius warming, probably more. Which basically means that for example South Europe will probably become an extension of the Sahara and agriculture in Africa will be virtually non-existent (some even say 99% less).
The American call them 'green backs', Scotland still has them, albeit the rest of the UK has gone the way of coinage. The green pound gets an outing in a recent Joseph Rowntree Foundation funded paper 'Sustainable Income Standards: Towards a greener minimum?'. Previous analysis of the Minimum Income Standard for the UK (MIS) has shown that if everyone were to live at this minimum, carbon emissions would be around 37 per cent lower than at present. This is a long way off targets to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
I have just been looking through the latest edition of TFN, Third Force News: the voice of Scotland’s third sector. The front-page colour photo shows Lorraine Kelly (the thinking man’s Lorraine Kelly) stabbing a red-nail-varnished finger at the chin of a smiling Black Watch Cadet while dressed in a fetching white T-shirt and camouflage breeks. The lovely Lorraine is apparently putting the four soldiers (and one soldieress) through their paces in preparation for the 2012 Alliance Trust Cateran Yomp. The next cadet in line has his eyes closed as if awaiting his turn for the Kelly finger-stabbing. He is not smiling. 