The “Occupy” movement was moved on this week – turfed out of its temporary home on the steps of St Paul’s. Cries of “Police State” on one side of the argument and “about bloody time” on the other. But there is a different way of looking - there always is!

Now we have another movement: ”Boycott Workfare have today confirmed that their national day of action on Saturday 3rd March will go ahead…action is now planned in twenty four locations.”

Reports suggest that the Government’s new “WorkFare” scheme is another dog’s dinner – is it really as bad as we’re being lead to believe?  The real issue surely is that we all have such a jaundiced view of “work experience” because we all know of, have seen at first hand or maybe even were directly responsible for making the experience of work experience an appalling couple of weeks where making the tea was as good as it got. I venture to say that most work experience doesn’t ever get close to anything as constructive as stacking a shelf or flipping a burger – the two main arguments I keep hearing against this. By the way living the unconventional days that I do, I am often in awe of the massive military style operation stacking shelves appears to be as I wander round 24 hour supermarkets in the middle of the night - quite a talent me thinks!

So whilst the protests may be far too militant it doesn’t mean to say that I am in anyway siding with the government. There is a different way here too and they simply do NOT get it!  As the “Occupy” movement gained momentum and eventually came to some sort of a coherent argument, I offered the notion to them that right here there is a company growing, in spite of the broken economic model they ranted about, that is the embodiment of everything they were looking for – true sustainability – and if they all ”borrowed” our model they could actually achieve huge change through the most positive type of proactive activism. Errrrr…zero response.  That was the different way then and this is the different way now:  those that are ”Boycott Workfare” are welcome to “borrow” our business model and develop ventures – just as we have and I have covered in previous entries – that give those without work an opportunity to get involved in creating their own future in their own community.  We are reinventing the experience of work experience one step at a time and this movement could do they same: if they can harness ”two weeks of mass social media campaigning” so that “companies cease or suspend compulsory unpaid work placements in response to public pressure” why can’t they, and why don’t they, harness that same level of committed activism to spread a positive message? They won’t. Nor will the government respond either. So we’ll just keep treading our path and gaining support until they have no choice but to listen.

You see the thing is when you take a different look you see different things.

Radio Five’s very entertaining “Wake up to money” haven’t woken up to this; nor has William Hague; and, when you hear British Gas boss Phil Bentley tell us that we all profit from their profits, you really do know that those that should, simply do not get this.  We are in desperate need of a rural energy strategy that incorporates the type of energy we actually use in rural areas!

As I write, wholesale prices for rural energy – kerosene, gas oil, LPG – have rocketed. They have risen on the back of Crude OIL jumping over $2 in a day yesterday – the 22nd of February – to $122 a barrel. They in turn have risen on the back of brokers speculating over the brinkmanship between Iran and the UK, the US and the EU. So in other words we are going to pay more for heating OIL and LPG from today because of what might, but almost definitely won’t, happen a couple of thousand miles away. How have we let this dependency on the good relations of others who have little concern for us happen? How is nothing being done to remedy this? Both are answered by the dumbfounding truth that the UK has zero rural energy strategy. Change must occur now…it must be forced from the bottom up. Last year I ranted, many moved that message on and we got the issue of outrageous price increases raised in The House. Now it is time rant some more and to take the Twelve Point Plan to parliament and beyond:

• smart meters on every OIL and LPG tank
• remote web access to fuel levels
• monitoring to push a massive energy saving program
• enhanced energy security to protect all from supply issues
• carbon emission reductions across the entire supply process
• reinventing the ordering process to incorporate existing smart technology
• reinventing payment to include a pay as you go method
• gps and remote mapping to cease aborted deliveries
• streamlined coordination to specifically reduce waste in delivery and congestion on tight country roads
• job creation via development of a skilled labour force in the green economy
• embracing the opportunity of leading a reformed energy market to a renewables revolution

I defer to my previous blogs to expand on each of those points. In the US The Picken’s Plan is moving legions of supporters to force their government to tackle the issue of dependency on Middle East OIL, we must do the same. Please add your comments below and forward this to your address book AND your MP. Urge them to see that a foreign policy of brinkmanship is no way to run our economy and that they must support us now to redesign rural energy.  It is that important. Thanks.

chris@community-buying.com

Rural energy strategy…do we actually have one? It doesn’t actually make a massive difference off-gas or on-gas every single rural community is affected by this blight: the pretence that the UK has anything that even slightly resembles a rural energy strategy.

We are in the transition era but for some reason this critical issue has been overlooked, entirely left out of DECC’s business plan, consigning thousands of communities and millions of people to live with an energy system rooted in the last century.

If we were to design energy delivery for rural areas in line with the way other energy mechanisms have been designed then we create thousands of jobs (within local communities), we reduce the UK’s carbon emissions by millions of tons a year, we attack fuel poverty on a massive scale and we create safer, more sustainable places to live.

Energy that is delivered on a truck – most people living in urban areas would not believe that we even still have such a thing and you would have to agree it does sound like an utterly proposterous statement in 2012 - so, energy delivered on a truck…must be redesigned. The business in which that energy mechanism has been allowed to continue will naturally redesign with it, IF we adopt a really simple twelve step plan:

• smart meters – every single OIL and LPG tank must be connected up so that it can communicate with the delivery network
• web access – every tank must have its own dedicated webpage, showing the number of days fuel remaining, so that levels can be seen easily at any time meaning no interruption to supply will ever occur again for anyone
• energy saving – both systems will trigger a monitoring process that when wedded to an energy waste/saving educational campaign must ensure that energy use drops dramatically
• energy security – the remoteness of the tanks should not mean that vulnerability to theft and security of supply should be any less sophisticated than the security provided for the energy we pump into urban homes, the technology already exists to secure every tank and to monitor that remotely
• carbon emissions reduction – in addition to the reduction of emissions by eradicating energy waste the archaic delivery process must be set stringent targets, either self imposed or directed from central government, to bring down CO2 levels in the delivery process
• reinventing the ordering process – we should simply expect more because if the Big Six went about taking orders and moving those orders along the system for their energy delivery in the same ad hoc, unintelligent and last century method as truck delivered energy then our opinions of them would be even lower
• reinventing payment - all energy forms should be pay as we go and the process should be redesigned so that tanks are filled and the end users are charged as they use it on a monthly basis, simply squaring the circle of smart meter monitoring and security
• virtual delivery reports – somehow thousands of aborted deliveries occur because delivery is attempted with the incorrect vehicle, this is completely surmountable by using existing technology - a combination of GPS and virtual delivery reports showing measurements and distances easily accessible via remote mapping
• streamlined coordination – millions of litres of fuel are transported needlessly around the UK and returned to the depot unused, many million of miles are wasted needlessly as trucks are sent across many different communities on a single delivery route rather than coordinated deliveries to one community to drop their entire cargo to those homes ready to accept a top-up; remote monitoring completely redesigns both of these challenges and creates a streamlined transport/delivery system that fits with the 21st century and the UK’s ambitious carbon emission targets
• job creation – rather than resisting change because it will cost jobs, this industry must embrace change, it will allow suppliers to diversify, it will create economic growth and it will generate thousands of jobs: right where we need them – in local communities; for people that really need them – the young, the old and those wishing to retrain; and in the sector that every one knows we have to develop a skilled labour force - the green economy
• unforeseen outcomes – change once embraced can create endless possibilities, who knows what serendipitous outcomes will occur when this massive rural issue is resolved, there are so many connected positives that reach far beyond just the price of energy.

That’s it…extremely simple isn’t it?

Support: all we need is for DEFRA, DECC, BIS, OFT, CAB, FPS, ACRE, HAs, NFU and a whole list of other acronyms to lend their support, because there is one thing for sure the energy companies won’t. They don’t like change too much when the odds are currently stacked completely in their favour.

Delivery: there is only one way to deliver this rapidly across the UK, from the bottom up. Community Buying Groups can deliver this led by the revolution that the RCC movement is already creating and by every other independently run community buying group – either new or existing.

This is a people’s revolution that starts with making a dumb delivery mechanism smart and to get that moving I defer to my last blog: we just need a million pounds.

Lent is for giving up something – let that be this pretence, but it is also for making a positive change – let that be making a noise for those who remain without.  It really is as simple as this: when we connect up the dots of the rural communities reliant on truck delivered energy we begin to create a movement that can lead to any type of rural energy revolution…one that will be a move away from fossil fuels to renewables and a low carbon rural energy market - that sounds like the foundation for a strategy.

chris@community-buying.com