First a credit crisis, and now a food crisis. Gordon has helped make both !
Quite some time ago the EU Referendum blog highlighted the coming crisis in food production. The back peddling of the EU as it tried to move away from set aside to production was discussed.
Now the same sort of crisis of confidence that affected finance is hitting food. Banks won't lend to each other, because of the fear of the debts they may be hiding. Now some countries won't export food because of the fear they may not be able to buy any in return.
In both cases events have lead to a wider crisis in confidence which is showing the edge of the globalised systems in finance and trade.
You can bet that this will lead to calls for more regulation, but perhaps its time to start thinking about food security again - as Nadine points out.
Instead the government is introducing today the biofuels requirement that will reduce the amount of food in the world, eventually leading some to starve ( perhaps in Africa which Gordon Brown is supposed to be so committed to ). All this was easily foreseeable, as I mentioned in Sept 2006 - citing my undergraduate design project in the late 1980's when my project partner and myself concluded that the area required to grow biofuels would leave no room for housing let alone food production. If we could work that out on the back of an envelope in 1989 then why is the government so surprised in 2006 with the damage biofuels will do ? ( The answer lies in the quality of civil servants, and their lack of technical understanding. )
Both the massive debt in the UK economy and the new biofuel irresponsibility are directly the responsibility and fault of Gordon Brown and New Labour.
Now the same sort of crisis of confidence that affected finance is hitting food. Banks won't lend to each other, because of the fear of the debts they may be hiding. Now some countries won't export food because of the fear they may not be able to buy any in return.
In both cases events have lead to a wider crisis in confidence which is showing the edge of the globalised systems in finance and trade.
You can bet that this will lead to calls for more regulation, but perhaps its time to start thinking about food security again - as Nadine points out.
Instead the government is introducing today the biofuels requirement that will reduce the amount of food in the world, eventually leading some to starve ( perhaps in Africa which Gordon Brown is supposed to be so committed to ). All this was easily foreseeable, as I mentioned in Sept 2006 - citing my undergraduate design project in the late 1980's when my project partner and myself concluded that the area required to grow biofuels would leave no room for housing let alone food production. If we could work that out on the back of an envelope in 1989 then why is the government so surprised in 2006 with the damage biofuels will do ? ( The answer lies in the quality of civil servants, and their lack of technical understanding. )
Both the massive debt in the UK economy and the new biofuel irresponsibility are directly the responsibility and fault of Gordon Brown and New Labour.
3 comments:
Absolutely and the new food crisis they're generating is worrying.
Brown seems to have got away lightly from the food crisis because the EU is likely to take most of the abuse.
The words "couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery" spring to mind.
By the way they haven't got Mugabe down on the payroll as a farming / eco consultant have they? With all the crackpot ideas coming out I thought they might have.
Post a Comment