COP 27 – Energy: Back to the Future, local democracy, public ownership and social inclusion.

In his third talk on the Climate Crisis, Alan Simpson tackled the issue of energy production and distribution in a shift away from fossil fuel and towards green energy. Importantly, this is not simply a technological question of new inventions. This is about how to organize socially the production and distribution of energy differently, challenging directly the private ownership of the big energy companies.

 

COP 27 – Feeding the Future

In his second talk on the Climate Crisis, Alan Simpson focused on how to ensure sufficient, sustainable production of food for the future. The global food production system, based on ‘free’ trade and tightly controlled by a few large transnational corporations, results in one-third of what we produce being wasted. At the same time, offloading our surpluses in developing countries destroys the local food production there. In short, the problem is not growing enough food, the problem is how to ensure that food is produced sustainably and locally reaching everybody.

 

Neoliberal strikes for the neoliberal university!

UCU has yet again called for industrial action of academics and Administrative, Professional & Managerial (APM) staff over drastic – and unjustified – cuts to pensions, eroded pay and deteriorating working conditions. Indeed, considering the more general cost of living crisis across the UK at the moment, the situation for action has become even more pressing now than it was a year ago. On last year’s experience, however, it is also clear that striking in the traditional way of everyone out does no longer work. At Nottingham University, management sat out easily 18 days of strike. Considering that learning objectives had not been damaged and students could not, therefore, reclaim some of their tuition fees, management was very relaxed. Only the marking boycott in May 2021 brought them suddenly to the negotiating table resulting in a local agreement (see UCU Nottingham University 2022). In this guest post, Faiz Sheikh outlines what an alternative approach to industrial action in the neoliberal university could look like, potentially overcoming the shortcomings of the traditional approach.

COP 27 – Avoiding the Apocalypse

There is currently no pathway in place to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C, but it is still possible, maintained Alan Simpson at the opening of the first lecture of six on the global climate crisis, a series of TED Talks at Nottingham University. Nevertheless, if we do want to hit this target, everything has to change, including our way of thinking. The Radical is the only Reasonable! In this blog post, I provide a brief summary of the key points of this first lecture.

 

Rise UP, Notts! Organizing for Social Justice

On 3 September, about 100 local activists met in Nottingham/UK to discuss how to best organize in view of increasing injustices and global challenges. In nine panels and two plenaries, discussions ranged from how to meet the refugee crisis, the possibilities of trade unions in the 21^st century to the challenges of climate change and the crises in education and the National Health Service (NHS). The panel Outside Westminster also presented solutions, be it the charity Sharewear, a clothing scheme which offers free-of-charge clothing choices to people in economic difficulty, be it the Preston Model and its focus on local sourcing. In this blog post, I will make five observations in relation to current struggles over social justice.

Analyzing, Strategizing and Taking action: The European Summer University of Social Movements in Mönchengladbach.

From 17 to 21 August 2022, over 600 activists from more than 20 countries in Europe and beyond gathered in Mönchengladbach/Germany for the 2022 European Summer University of Social Movements, organized by Attac and other allied social movements. In dozens of Forums, workshops, excursions, exhibitions and film screenings participants analyzed the current crises in Europe and the wider world, strategized about how best to respond to these challenges and engaged in concrete actions of resistance culminating in a protest march in the coal mining area around Lützerath. In this blog post, I will provide some reflections on the summer university.   

Why public ownership is key: private water and the problems of sewage pollution and leaks.

Britain’s private water companies are yet again in the news. After reports on high and regular discharge of raw sewage into the country’s rivers (The Guardian, 31 March 2022), it is their high levels of water leakage, which make the headlines in the current drought. While 14 billion litres are the daily demand in England and Wales, another 3 billion litres are lost due to leaks (BBC, 12 August 2022). In this blog post, I will argue that the type of ownership is fundamental when thinking about how to tackle these problems.