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It's environment week at Oxford Brookes University. On Wednesday evening I took an evening off from campaigning to attend a lecture/discussion led by Bill Dunster, architect of BedZED, Professor (and Lib Dem City Councillor here in Oxford) Sue Roaf, and others entitled "Designs on the Planet".

It was a debate about how we're all facing an energy crisis in the not too distant future and how we need to build our homes, workplaces and communities to survive only on the energy we can generate ourselves as a nation from sustainable resources - something around 10% of the copious energy we fritter away today.

The media is in a frenzy about politicians "going green" by example, or not, with Ming Campbell selling, or not, his Jaguar, Dave Cameron choosing a hybrid Lexus and forcing his environment spokesperson to get rid of the Porsche, how well your local council does on recycling and so on. We have a hose pipe ban about to be extended to teeth cleaning it seems. Soon we will be advised to drink our pee to save water no doubt.

I've said it before, but it bears saying again, if the "mainstream", and especially those who used to be quite eco-sceptical, have seen the (energy efficient) light and are now promoting action to deal with or adapt to climate change, then perhaps the first battle of the "War on Weather" is being won, but the changes that are being suggested vary wildly. The "are you doing your part" sort of message of the politicians - flogging the gas guzzlers and switching off the TV - is, according to Dunster, Roaf and others fiddling while Rome burns.

And their prognosis is, I think it is a fair word to use, cataclysmic, unless we embrace huge changes. Huge, costly (in financial terms) changes.

All of them are missing the point. They are all dealing only in symptoms and adjusting to the effects of something that we can in fact change very little. For many, the damage is already done. We may be able to slow it down. The most benign interpretations may even suggest that we can do things now that will cause changes for the better, in time. But let's face it, the planet is a vast system - talk about how long it takes to turn a supertanker around and multiply it by hundreds, maybe thousands of years.

Yes, as one well known notso-eco-organisation says "every little helps", but it's not addressing the root of the problem. Everyone feels a bit better for doing their bit, I'm sure. But we are fighting a losing battle.

However, there is one system that forces us into the sort of habits that we generally now seem to accept have helped cause the problems on the horizon. A system created by human ingenuity rather than an immutable law of nature. A system that has changed and adapted, often out of all recognition, from time to time as human needs have changed. A system that, unlike gaia, the great mother-ship, whatever you want to call our one and only home planet, can be changed "merely" with an act of political will.

IT'S THE ECONOMY STUPID

I say "merely" because of course there are huge vested interests involved. The 0.25% of the world's population that own more than the other 99.75% put together will of course find a way to survive any impending crisis. It will not be the financial elite that will disappear under the water as it rises over Battery Park or Belgravia but the poor, just as it was with those worst affected by the Boxing Day Tsunami sixteen months ago.

And the not so poor. Just those who, despite years of hard work, saving to buy their dream home, cannot afford simply to up sticks and move to higher ground. In fact, most of us. The same most of us who have begun to recognise that the way we treat the environment has to change. The vast majority. Crucially too, in case you don't think this applies to you, it's the same most of us who are now worried about whether we will be able to retire on a decent pension any time soon, because the reasons are the same.

But this is not an envy-trip. I don't begrudge people who have played the system successfully what they have gained (so long as they have played fair) - it is the system that now needs changing. The rules of the game, as Tony Blair said about another war he's losing.

What we have to ask ourselves now is whether we can afford not to do whatever it takes, to change whatever we can actually change, in the faint hope of changing the prognosis for the planet but in the better hope of being able to survive the changes that may already be inevitable. And the things that are ripe for changing are the man made systems and rules that say, in particular "we, the vast majority, can't afford to..."

So stop fiddling, and take the initiative. The mass movement that's building of concern for our planet and our future, from all shades of the political spectrum can achieve it. Do we want to fry merely for want of looking at other economic models that promise "sustainable abundance"? For fear of upsetting an economic "orthodoxy" that has pushed us into this position. It has served us well, arguably. But it is now, more than anything else, a hinderance and not a help. At least for about 99.75% of us.

"Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hands?"

Merseyside police work with Revenue and Customs and other agencies to stop £166m of drugs entering the country

I feel I've been tagged in a strange sort of a meme for my thoughts on Oxford's recent local election results by Antonia [From Oxford elections round-up]:

We await with bated breath the thoughts of Stephen Tall, no longer Lib Dem councillor for Headington, his colleague David Rundle, and the third-placed Lib Dem candidate for Headington Hill and prolific blogger, Jock Coats.

Well thanks, she just had to rub it in by mentioning that third place. I am embarrassed and humiliated to have come third. There are of course official post mortems to come yet on the campaign, but whatever their verdict, one simple fact is that I am a "bad candidate". Whatever fresh ideas I may have brought to the council (and I doubt my Labour victor will be doing much of that, sad to say), I cannot escape the fact that I hate knocking on strangers to talk politics with them. So for me, the literature and word of mouth amongst people who have met me outside that context is more crucial than for most. Such glad-handing ought to have happened long before the campaign proper started with voter ID canvassing in late March. And been followed up with a leaflet introducing me properly and extolling my virtues before the cross city campaign started with its more party led focus on whole city issues.

Then there was "that leaflet." On the last weekend of the campaign I had the dubious honour of having a Labour leaflet, apparently partly delivered by Mrs Dromey (I rather hope, Antonia, that you were unaware of that leaflet's existence when we exchanged pleasantries on the Friday evening), using quotes from this blog about drugs policy obviously intended to give the impression that if I won I would probably be found standing outside the primary school handing out various narcotics to the year sevens, or perhaps to their parents! Several opponents have commented that they thought it was one of the worst personal attack leaflets they had seen. I suppose I ought to feel flattered that Labour were sufficiently alarmed by my candidacy to feel the need to drag the contest into the gutter.

You can read it for yourself here. By my reckoning, it at least breaches copyright law (my moral right not to have my copyrighted work treated in a derogatory fashion or in a way designed to be prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director), if not possibly electoral law. Enquiries are ongoing. I am not a sore loser, but I was upset by it. I know it cost me both votes and reputation, even amongst my deliverers.

Anyway, enough of the campaign itself. Will I ever try again? I don't know. For many years, since in fact I was last on the council in 2002, I have wondered whether the present system of local government is fit for purpose. As an ideological descendent of the individualist-anarchists and a mutualist, I find the state, in all its guises, terribly coercive. I believe sovereignty should lie with the individual and he or she should only cede power upwards to representatives over things that they cannot arrange for themselves or in small groups or local communities. Local government is so tied down by Whitehall and Westminster that the current arrangements simply cannot be responsive enough to local peoples' needs.

The main reason I wanted to be on the council was to continue to promote, from the inside as it were, my mutualist agenda of hiving local authority functions off onto social, community led partnerships. The more things compete for the crumbs of council budgets within the tight control of Whitehall oversight the less satisfactory the outcome. Leisure services for example cannot hope to compete in quality at least with private providers while it is within the constraints of council budgeting. Similarly, whilst more difficult, I think the solutions to our housing problems are community led, rather than council, landowner and planning led.

Every time I've lost so far I've come out of the contest wanting to do other things that will make a difference one day outside the council structure. Almost as if to prove we can cope without the psychopaths who are so good at saying the right thing at the right time to get themselves elected. This time it is to continue to promote the social enterprise "alternative" for producing social and public goods and to work on promoting local community e-democracy.

• It will be interesting to watch Labour finally explain where they think there is a "£5m cash crisis" at the city council - reading the latest annual accounts I cannot see it myself. But there's another argument for local government reform - despite us being the tax payer/employers their finances are even more opaque than any company's I've ever seen.

• It will be fun to see Maureen Christian defend the Northway Playing fields from something or other she seems to think threatens them (certainly the only "threat" i heard was my own idea to see if we could fit a cricket square on there by budging up the two football pitches and see if we could get a local cricket team going).

• I think it will be a retrograde step if Labour succeed in removing planning decisions from area committees. They were not perfect there, but I have always maintained that was as a result of the bad legal advice that both sides in any disputed application had the right only to speak for five minutes each - where they have open discussion at area committees they manage to get better decisions and more fruitful interplay between applicant and objectors and a better outcome for both.

• It will also be interesting to see whether the Tories, who, despite not winning a single seat managed to come in second in many wards, and at least the ones in which they tried to put up a full campaign, will be able to keep up that level of work, for example, next year, when their declining reputation in control of the county is up for defending.

• And it will be interesting to see whether this marks the high water point for the IWCA, who lost two of their councillors.

• But I also don't really expect the city council, under any party, to set Oxford on fire with bright new ideas that will markedly change the quality of life for its citizens.

Finally, if anyone has any ideas about what little thank you gifts I can get for two teenaged Muslim boys who managed throughout to deliver most of the half of the ward for which we did not have regular deliverers - not a happy situation to be in at the start of a campaign and one of the first things I hope to put right for next time - I'd be very grateful to hear them! Their father has resisted all my requests for his advice so far!

...is at Her Majesty's Pleasure.

Was this the sort of democracy you envisaged when you talked about regime change:

Gays flee Iraq as Shia death squads find a new target. And apparently they're not having such an easy time being granted asylum because the Home Office doesn't want to give the impression that Iraq is not what you said it would be. Still, I suppose they could always try their luck in Zimbabwe, since that's now "safe".

History will be your judge. Oh yes. History. If anyone's still alive and free enough to write it.

I just listened to a BBC report on the launch of the Labour party's local elections campaign. It majored heavily on the police's Neighbourhood Action Groups where every neighbourhood is supposed to have police on the beat and everyone has instant access to them by email, mobile phone, even perhaps telepathy.

Sounds nice? Yeah, but, dare we point out the minor flaw - nobody voting on May 1st will be voting for anyone who can do remotely anything about this policy since it is controlled by the unelected Police Authorities. Their budgets are unaccountable to local people, uncappable by the communities secretary and, as the "Hapless Band of Staff and Regulars" noticed last week, can impose a huge cost on helpless local tax payers.

But I suppose it is at last a belated admission that ASBOs are not the answer so much as eyes on the street. Such as most of us had been saying since the Crime and Disorder Act of Labour's first year in power. Ten years to achieve something - hardly what I would major my local elections campaign on.