I am reminded of the story of the fat cat that I recently read in a Brothers Grimm collection. In case it is not familiar to you:<p>A cat and a mouse decide to team up and store up some surplus food for hard times. They agree during abundant times to both put a little extra fat into a shared pot. They then store the pot in a safe place. The cat, however, is overcome by hunger even in the abundant times. Every few weeks the cat sneaks to the pot and takes just a little bit, maybe just a few licks at a time. Over the course of a couple of years of sneaking and small stealing the cat manages to completely deplete the pot. Then hard times hit, as both expected. The cat and the mouse both go to the pot together to divide their savings. But when they lift the lid they both gasp in surprise that the pot is empty. The mouse slowly realizes what must have happened. The cat is guilty but won't stand being accused and so it turns on the mouse and eats it.<p>My whole life I had heard of the rich upper-classes described as "fat cats" but I didn't really understand the message until I read the story. From at least 2008 we were supposed to be saving for the next crisis. Yet here we are at the next crisis and low and behold the pot is empty.<p>The reason we fall for this over and over again is that the short-term memory of civilization is shorter than the cycles these things happen over.
<i>"Brexit has delivered some deregulation, though: notably, the Conservative government ditched EU standards on effluent discharges, resulting in the (private) water companies discharging raw sewage into almost every river, and the seas around the UK coastline.
So it is no longer safe to swim in UK waters."</i><p>Holy crap!<p><i>"the Bank of England are forecasting 13% inflation towards the end of the year."</i><p>And we thought things were bad in the US.<p>This article sounds absolutely dire, can someone in the UK comment - are things <i>really</i> that bad there?
I think Brexit has allowed a sort of nihilism to creep into U.K. politics. If you can live with a policy that has such a demonstrable adverse effect on the economy and so many other things then why worry about the impact of other policies.<p>The standard approach for the government now seems to be to look for short term wins in the tabloids and ignore the long term.<p>And this is on top of the huge distraction that Brexit has been.
Some of England's problems are unique to them, but I think the reason those who voted for Brexit did so is that they felt the current deal wasn't working for them. Already, way back then, they weren't on a path to a bright future where there was a house of their own to live in, a job that was a good fit for them and society, a future to believe in.<p>I believe the same things that fueled Brexit persist as malaise today in England. In the US. Probably everywhere else where regulations allow unregulated profit to be squeezed from the less well off. Rent seeking cultures morally bankrupt and rot from the core.
It's a bit like blaming the Democrats for the political crisis in the US but I have to ask "what the hell is wrong with Labor?" The Tories have dominated politics in the UK since the later 1970s except for the Blair administration, and Blair was an honorary Tory.
It’s eerie how similar the issues facing western nations are and how intractable the disagreements over solutions have become.<p>Desperate balkanization coming for many, I think.
Good points from Stross in the comments: "The problem is that in practice a solution requires the political elite to collectively admit the falsehood of the axioms they built their entire careers on."
This is not limited to the UK<p>Europe has been in an energy war with Russia for the past year, we have a drought affecting hydro power and the French nuclear fleet is just out of service<p>The government action up to now has been almost nothing, basically amounting to announcing a few LNG import projects and updated 2030 targets. Nearly nothing has been done to the demand side nearly six months into this crisis<p>What needs to be done that can help 0-6 month time scale:<p>Gas supply<p>* Ramp up of Groningen (with payments to affected people living there)<p>Electricity generation<p>* Restart of all possible coal plants (only two have announced restart in Germany!)<p>* Removal of any restrictions limiting oil and diesel fired gensets from operating<p>* Extension of the three reactors in Germany, and likely also the three shut down reactors<p>Demand<p>* Have utility field forces inspect every gas boiler, starting with the vulnerable population, to set the correct flow temperature on condensing boilers (saves 5-10% !), check for easy fixes (e.g., leaky drafts that can be plugged)<p>* Mandate utilities to pay for avoided gas/electricity use for people on fixed retail tariffs - everyone need to be price responsive, not only large industrials<p>* Mandate commercial customers to raise AC setting to 25C<p>* Mandate everyone to lower thermostat to 18C<p>* Cash payments to households (at least vulnerable customers), but do not link it to the consumption levels and do not lower the price indirectly by other means (e.g., VAT reduction)<p>This will also require that permits, supply chains, labor etc. get fixed. Apparently that's stopping some of the coal restarts in Germany. That would not be a restriction if this was a shooting war...
I think when discussing this, it should be recognised that there is ample evidence that Russia has worked last several years to undermine the stability of western democracies. Brexit vote and resulting chaos being one glaring result. I am suggesting that we are just starting to understand the magnitude in which Russia has been able to cause havoc in the west by taking advantage of our freedoms.<p>Link: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_Brexit_referendum" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_...</a>
This is why all of these people who are always predicting collapse or crisis keep getting it wrong...the collapse if and when it happens, will not hit the US first...it is other countries instead like the UK, Lebanon, TUrkey, etc. Yes, the US has problems, but we see over and over that elsewhere has worse problems. Even the UK (inflation), Germany (inflation, dependence on Russian nat. gas), Japan (a recent assassination, bad demographics). The US dollar hit yet another high yesterday.
Wow, what an optimistic view of things. From my view, the UK is about to take a 50% drop in their standard of living, if they manage things well, they might recover it all within a decade. This is if they make a trade deal with the US.<p>If they fail this, and are left in the breeze, they'll eventually have to beg for a seat at the French lead EU (if the EU survives), and things won't be as nice.<p>The world is deglobalizing, because the US won the cold war, and it's no longer in our interest to keep subsidizing the rest of the world's free trade. If you're not in our trade group, things are going to be about as rough as they were for your nation prior to WWII.
I love Charlie Stross:<p>"And feel free to use the comment thread to discuss what's coming next for the UK as the vector sum of Brexit, COVID19, the energy crisis from the Ukraine war, and the worst inflationary bubble since 1980 punches us in the face."
If I may point to the elephant in the room:
<a href="https://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil-gas/" rel="nofollow">https://www.crystolenergy.com/assessing-future-north-sea-oil...</a>
The UK used to be Nigeria, now it's Mali.
> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations.<p>What does "bring down nations" mean though? Replacing a government? Violent overthrow and then writing an actual constitution? Because a bunch of the challenges being faced would still be issues under any regime right? A different government isn't going to magically get more potatoes this year, or significantly more energy from strained European countries this winter.
> This is the sort of crisis that brings down nations.<p>It's really not. This is some pretty sad FUD.<p>Unsafe to swim in waters. Trash not taken out. Crop failure. Inflation. Low heating fuel reserves (in a country that doesn't even get snow). Strikes. Absent politicians.<p>This is basically an average <i>week</i> in many countries.
I'd ignore Stross. He's been predicting inflation and famine since Brexit passed.[1] Something about the past decade has broken his brain. Obviously the issues he mentions are worth worrying about, but they're not going to cause the UK or the rest of europe to fall into anarchy.<p>1. <a href="https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-of-life-and-death.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-o...</a>
The more time moves forward, the closer we are inching to a one-world government.<p>Or is democracy too dangerous to be left in the hands of the people.
Green energy (except nuclear) is inefficient, expensive, irregular, and the money for it goes straight to China and developing nations who mine the rare earth elements. Even Germany finally backed off from de-commissioning their last nuclear plants as the Greens realized it was illogical.<p>Need to remove red tape, stop controlling prices, de-regulate business, establish free trade agreements, and do all manner of things to increase real productivity and not the government-pretend kind of productivity.<p>Reality is a tough pill to swallow and it will likely take several years of misery before the obvious solution becomes the only solution.