Jock's Place - Milliband's money (was "Oh dear Chris...") - Comments

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Jock Coats — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:05:22 +0000

And our little pounds sterling were born in a conceit that has continued in trillions of pounds of abuse over the past three centuries....:)

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Tristan — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 16:56:37 +0000

I find the idea very worrying, like road useage pricing, the mechanisms to get it working are too open to abuse.

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Jock Coats — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 11:09:22 +0000

Oh - okay then. I take it all back.

Or rather I accept the political message (do something now instead of long term thinking).

But as an idea this should not be dismissed - I don't think it goes far enough actually, but is good to see government ministers thinking what I am sure only recently would have been dismissed as nuts.

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Liberal Neil — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 08:25:25 +0000

Jock - I think you may have fallen into the trap of taking the BBC's spin on what Chris said, rather than what he actually said.

Chris did not criticise Milliband for thinking about carbon allowances as a possible long term solution - he was making the point that Government should be doing more now.

A longer and more representative quote of what Chris said is:

--snip--

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, welcomed any discussion about household carbon allowances".

But he stressed: "What David Miliband must realise, however, is that proposals such as these are years away from being practically possible.

"Rather than using blue sky thinking to give the impression of doing something, green action is needed now.

"Green taxes have fallen to their lowest level since Mrs Thatcher was prime minister. This is a shocking indictment of a government that claims to care about the environment."

--snip--

I can't disagree with that!"

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Jock Coats — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 23:39:20 +0000

Oh - was that the point of the criticism then? I'm not even sure that Milliband was indugling on that point in anything more than a how it might be envisaged" type speculation and it was the idea Chris was having a go at.

Besides, 97%+ of our enisting little pounds sterling only ever exist in pixels somewhere too...:)"

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James — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 23:26:59 +0000

But you could do it without turning it into a currency on a bit of plastic the government would almost certainly want access to (and screw up). The economics is right, but why use a high tech solution when we have a more workable solution more readily at hand?

Milliband's money (was "Oh dear Chris...")

Jock — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:03:58 +0000

One of the good things about this medium I've found is that nothing is ever permanent (well I suppose it might be on an MI5 backup somewhere but I doubt it!). Blog entries get amended all the time, and sometimes readers do see the amendments in their RSS software. So, following comments it seems I have been a bit harsh on Chris Huhne's criticism of David Milliband's idea for personal carbon bank accounts.

The BBC and others reported in "Labour under fire on 'green' bid" that Chris criticises David Milliband for blue sky thinking on personal carbon allowances. I agree with Chris that such longer term floating of ideas is no substitute for getting things done now - like the LIb Dems' ideas for Tax Shifting - taxing the use and abuse of our common natural birthright such as land, clean air (through taxing pollution and the like) and fossil fuel use. But the idea is an important one, and if, as some suggest, it would take a long time to implement, it is surely good that a government minister is floating what to some might seem a barking mad idea now.

But Chris is also President of the ultimate Lib Dem blue-sky thinking lobby group of which I am secretary, ALTER (Action for Land-value Taxation and Economic reform), so he is only too well aware of the sort of long-term thinking that has to go on to achieve big systemic change.

Whilst I noticed also a Greenpeace (I think) activist on one of the news programs today saying that "it is a good idea, but one whose time has not yet come", both Chris and Greenpeace will know that there have been many groups, including my own and others I participate in, actively promoting the idea of alternative currencies as a way to create an "energy commons" that everyone can participate in.

I have to admit that my interest has been mostly in the other side of the coin - that microgeneration of electricity could be monetised in some form to create an "energy currency". But carbon, on the pollution, is just as good an idea. A carbon allowance would enable us to monetise the "commons", in this case clean air if you like, and pass responsibility to individuals, and tax them when they breach "Locke's Proviso" - a key argument for Land Value Tax.

Indeed in economic terms Carbon Allowances and currency would enable this important part of the commons to be subject to a Land Value Tax, for that is what it is.

And it need not be years away either. As they proved in Argentina it's easy to promote a new "currency" - you just announce that people can pay their taxes in that currency. In Argentina's case, local government decided when they were in the midst of their currency crisis and effectively had no money with which to trade amongst themselves that they would accept "time bank" style credits from companies wanting to pay their local rates.

Exploring different ways of accounting for our "commons" is a good thing. It will become more and more important to make people realise the real costs of living and trading in ever less obvious natural resources. A good example is the licensing of the electromagnetic spectrum - there's only so much of it out there for different technologies and how it is fairly shared out will affect who can participate in future wireless technologies. What we risk by solely concentrating on corporate carbon quotas and licensing of other natural resources is a new wave of eclosure of the commons - in this case the air itself by big business.

I would love to hear what that other Lib Dem radical currency reformer - David Boyle - thinks.

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