I hope readers had a Happy Christmas and are looking forward to a better 2024. We may well have a General Election in the coming year with smart money on an autumn poll. There is so much that is broken in our society that it will take an awful lot of fixing. Our country is facing crises around the cost of living, in public services, in biodiversity collapse and the climate crisis. However, looking at things more positively an election year is a chance to do things differently.
Mere tinkering at the edges will not fix what is broken; we need a complete reset of society. Let’s start with a vision of the world we want to see and set a roadmap for getting there. Greens have a vision of a world based on cooperation and democracy which would prioritise the many, not the few, and would not risk the planet’s future with environmental destruction and unsustainable consumption. We know that our planet has environmental limits, and that inequality is not just unfair, but damaging to everyone in society.
The Green Party is not like other parties. We have bold solutions. Conventional economic policy uses economic growth, inflation, balance of payments and unemployment as ‘economic indicators’ of progress, but we replace the conventional indicators with those that measure progress towards sustainability and equity.
Fairer, greener homes would be well-insulated with low (or no) heating costs and low carbon emissions. Taxing the wealthiest 1% of the population and the biggest polluters could provide money for a million homes a year to be insulated. Fairer, greener housing policy would put a freeze on rent rises and a ban on no-fault evictions.
There is a real need for fairer, greener public services, such as education, health services, water services and transport. There is an essential contradiction in private ownership of public services. Private companies’ first duty is to provide profit to shareholders, but public services’ first duty is to provide a service to the public.
If all children are to benefit fully from education, we need to make sure that they all have enough to eat. A hungry child can’t concentrate. Free school meals for all children would satisfy the need, and if everyone received them, there would be no stigma attached.
We need long-term funding for public transport that recognises the service that workers provide, and that provides routes that people need, not just where they are profitable. While the money diverted to public transport from the cancellation of the northern section of HS2 is welcome, it is short-term and it takes time for people to change their travel habits and start using buses and trains. With cheaper fares and free travel for the under 22s, there would be benefit to pockets and the climate. It could be funded by cancelling the road building schemes which would be unnecessary if public transport use increased.
Our rivers and lakes are vital habitat for wildlife and green/blue space for residents, but for too long they’ve been used as sewers by water companies who haven’t been upgrading waste water treatment works to cope with extra housing and increased rainfall. The only sustainable way to run vital services like water is to put people ahead of profit and take water back into public hands.
Our current means-tested benefit system is complicated and expensive. It and the harsh system of punishment by withdrawing benefit payments need to be replaced with a Universal Basic Income, sufficient to cover an individual’s basic needs as an unconditional, non-withdrawable income.
So let’s look forward to radical change in 2024 and coming years.
Cllr. Jill Perry
