Your inner shopper

All right, I know there’s a day for everything under the sun. But it is good to be in touch with our inner shoppers and it’s particularly good to remember that many people are struggling for access to basic goods and services. So I wish you, here on March 15th, a very good World Consumer Rights Day!

A few of us have been blogging in the run-up to the Day for the wonderful campaign network, Consumers International, led by Joost Martens which joins up consumer movements around the world. The big campaign at present is to win the case for a global code on the marketing of junk food to children.

UK in the internet slow lane?

The Government’s Digital Britain Interim Report was launched with a fanfare. Its primary architect is Stephen Carter, who knows what’s what after his time in Ofcom. But the result is a damp squib and I hope the final report has more ambition and more vision if it is going to set the tone for the UK’s internet future.

Colleagues at Consumer Focus have got some good ideas on what could be done. But the analysis of what’s on offer at present is pretty damning. Philip Cullum, Deputy Chief Executive at Consumer Focus says the Digital Britain Interim report is grounded in the past, focuses on protecting vested interests and old ways of working and living.

An example is the idea of updating the universal service commitment to cover broadband – but only at what will fast become lame duck speeds. Government talks of a minimum universal broadband speed up to 2 Mb by 2012 when other European countries such as Germany and Sweden already achieve average speeds of 4.8 Mb and 7.4 Mb respectively and Finland has set a 100Mb target.

Life in the slow lane or life in the fast lane, my old friend Elna Kotze from the New Economics Foundation used to say to me is not about where you are but who you are. If we want to be Digital Britain, we have to start acting as if we are Digital Britain.

Meet Minnie McGee

Visited the Consumer Focus Scotland office yesterday (just back – late, late train) and here, exclusive for the first time online, is a picture of Minnie (or Mini) McGee. To the left is the original catfish Sucky McGee, who was the energywatch mascot and has happily made the transition to new offices in Glasgow and is in great shape – as the staff are, many of whom are working on urgent issues of energy disconnection and need a little light distraction over breaks.

Minnie McGee. You heard it here first!

Letter to Obama on consumer rights

Great to read Ralph Nader’s letter to President Obama, which asks him to focus on a fair deal for the poorest Americans after years of policy neglect.

Transition time

My local neighbourhood, I am pleased to say, has become one of the growing number of ‘transition towns’ across the UK. The ‘transition’ is to a low-carbon, post-oil economy.

In places such as Totnes, Lewes and Brixton, this is becoming an emerging movement for a wide range of initiatives. The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience by Rob Hopkins is the latest and best in a series of works that promote local alternatives to the global economy. The forebear of this was probably Short Circuit by Richard Douthwaite, which looked with such a systematic eye at this that its most memorable section for me was the discussion of whether horses would make a reappearance as a mode of transport in a post-oil world…

I for one am not good with horses so my money will be on bicycles and low emission buses. 

In credit crunch times, any of these seem far less hippy as ideas. Even so, it takes a long time for new thinking to emerge. One of the lessons of the collapse of global finance is that the UK has been far too closed – and dismissive of dissident thinking. Those working on alternatives are given no airtime.

In the rush to find individual bankers, regulators and politicans to blame, we should not forget the political economy, the corporates and the media culture that close down radical ideas. Here is another transition we will need to make.

yes, we have bananas

An amazing 374,102 of us across the UK took part in the 24 hour big yellow fair trade banana fest this weekend.

Go bananas

12pm, 6 March – 12pm, 7 March

Why not join thousands of people throughout the UK and beyond (from Ireland to Germany, Ghana and the Windward Islands) and eat a Fairtrade banana to set a world record for the largest number of Fairtrade bananas eaten over a 24 hour period! All you have to do is to take a few moments and register on our website and then eat a Fairtrade banana on the day! So far over quarter of a million people are registered!

Click here to register.

The serious side to the banana trade which is highlighted in a new report from the Fairtrade Foundation entitled, Unpeeling the Banana Trade – covering the true cost of cheap bananas and unfair trade rules. To download your copy click here.

kyoto2

I have just finished what feels like a really important book, Kyoto2 by Oliver Tickell. The author starts from all the right premises in terms of action on climate change, including arguing for stabilising concentrations of carbon dioxide at far, far lower levels than current policy is yet ready to accept – 300-350 parts per million rather than the 550 ppm in the Stern Review. The programme of action he sets out is based on a global auction of greenhouse gas permits within an overall cap on emissions. The funds can then be used to smooth the transition to a low-carbon economy.

The framework is simple, more so than other schemes based on per capita rights or household quotas for emissions. But of course it leads pretty rapidly to the enormous complexity of implementation – what in fact it means to adjust economies to the added costs of internalising the full cost of carbon. But at least we are then focused on the right question, which is how to adjust rather than whether.

There is a summary of the proposals here.

One of the big choices though is whether policy should continue a route of ‘emissions trading’, such as an auction scheme, at all given that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme has been pretty desultory. It is all very well to design a framework for markets to do their thing, but it is all to easy for powerful groups, including polluters, to lobby the design so that it works for them and not for the rest of us. Consumers end up paying for emissions trading and it really grates when all we are really paying for is windfall surpluses for polluters and ineffective outcomes in terms of carbon reductions. Because of the opaque way that environmental charges are levied onto consumers, it is a classic case of misselling and it is not hard to predict anger and a backlash as the economy turns tough.

The alternative – at least at national level – is a system of carbon taxes. Oliver Tickell, I think, concludes that we need to hang on in there with emissions trading and make it work, building from the European to the global level. The good news, at least, is that we would know where we want to get to.

join a great alliance

This winter, over five million households in the UK are struggling to heat and power their homes. Many older people, disabled people and adults and children living on low incomes will have to choose between keeping warm and putting food on the table.

In alliance with a host of other great organisations…Disability Alliance, Age Concern England, Child Poverty Action Group, Help the Aged, Friends of the Earth, National Right to Fuel Campaign, Association for the Conservation of Energy, Centre for Sustainable Energy and the Sustainable Energy Partnership… we want to change the law so no-one should have to live like this. Your MP can help end this scandal by voting for the Fuel Poverty Bill on Friday 20th March. Most MPs return to their constituencies on a Friday but we need at least 100 MPs to stay in the House of Commons and vote for the Fuel Poverty Bill. Can you help make sure that your MP is one of them?

• Join the Facebook group
• Write to your MP
  

http://www.writetothem.com makes it easy! Please help out if you can.

my monday

I am seeing Ed Richards of Ofcom this morning; the eloquent new shadow consumer spokesman, John Penrose in the afternoon; and Schools Minister Jim Knight this evening.

Last time I saw Jim Knight, I told him of my middle son who is outraged that his school is still teaching to test his year for SATS when government ended this as a compulsory exam recently. What other laws do they want to break? he asks. What are they going to teach us next – drink driving? The Minister reported that 30% of state schools are still doing it voluntarily. He is just one of the unlucky ones. Perhaps it is no surprise that I have also just had a form through asking if he and his class can take part in research on children concerns and anxities.His view? “I am a bit worried about it Dad.” Ha ha.