The Green(er) Economy?

So, the Green debacle. And what exactly is it that we mean, when we say/write/think 'Green?'

There has been much talk and speculation, over recent decades, regarding the greener options for the economy. But, in terms of any effective application, it (green) has remained entirely that, 'talk and speculation,' almost as if it is some ethereal and otherworldly quality. Nothing has yet managed to nudge the economy away from the neoliberal nightmare in which we currently find ourselves, and into those greener pastures anew.

Of course, this posting is really nothing more than a ruse; it's intention is not actually to write about the environment and the wilder corporatised world, except by association. And it's not because all this stuff matters not. Of course it does, it matters a great deal and to a great many people, all people in reality, but currently these people and the avenues through which they channel their efforts, remain almost completely redundant to the people at the helm.

I will cite two incidents of such helpless impotency, in order to justify my generalisations, then I shall move on to the main thrust of the item. One incident involves a local(ish) woodland and the other a more remote one.



Theberton Wood is an idyllic place, not far from the RSPB Minsmere reserve in Suffolk. The wood has the sort of magical quality that so many more (since lost) woodlands once used to hold, before they were covertly earmarked for more financially 'viable' purposes. It is a restored, mixed woodland, currently under threat ("under management") from a Forestry Commission who are hoping to clear and 'optimise' the space.

The fact that the woodland contains a wide variety of birds such as Spotted Flycatchers, whose populations have taken a serious hit, is apparently unimportant in the drive for maximised profit. The fact that the woodlands contain populations of Silver-washed Fritillaries, Purple Hairstreaks and, more recently Purple Emperor butterflies, and that butterfly populations in general have plummeted in recent years, is also to be deemed as nothing more than a minor inconvenience. If there were such creatures as faeries, then this is the sort of place where they might still be hanging on by a fingernail. And yet, even this small sanctuary of peaceful and free escapism is not safe.

The second example cites Lodge Hill in Kent, a site of Special Scientific Interest upon the Hoo Peninsular. Lodge Hill currently holds 1.3% of the national population of breeding Nightingales. Just to flesh this out a tiny bit I should also here mention that any woodland that satisfies the breeding requirements of so many Nightingales will naturally be supporting a wide range of other scarcer plants and wildlife- bats, birds, badgers, amphibians, invertebrates- because that's how ecosystems actually work.

Medway Council's Planning Committee 'considered' all of this and voted to bulldoze the lot, for the construction of 5,000 houses, either the new smaller shoebox designs, or else more investment purchases waiting to be snapped up by investor landlords we might safely surmise.



Meanwhile the more imminently-unscrupulous Medway Council have attempted to placate the gullible with what is mistakenly referred to as 'Biodiversity Offsetting.' The name is probably self-evident, the purpose rather more darkly disingenuous. The misnomer, in this instant, involves offsetting 650 hectares of land for habitat restoration 'somewhere else.' My understanding is that this restoration could take up to twenty years, and that is assuming that Medway Council does not, some time in the near future, cite efficiency savings as a 'valid' reason to renege upon the 'deal.'

The average lifespan of the Nightingale is approximately two years, so that's an awful lot of bird-custom-and-tradition to hand down the years, by chirp of beak (word of mouth), ten generations no less. Is there something that Medway Council knows about the Nightingale that has otherwise escaped detection? Or are they just like so many other feasting parasites in the non-existent 'greener' economy?

Philip Green, the 'real' stucco facade of this post might care even less for any such consequences, should it afford him another yacht or perhaps even another meal. His £586 million-and-counting slight of hand, in addition to the uncertain future of 11,000 former employees and a £571 million pension funding vacuum, suggests that he would certainly more openly excrete upon all and sundry in his wake, should the rewards be deemed attractive enough.



He is estimated to be 'worth' £3.22 billion (and we might well quibble over the use of "worth" in this context) and in that calculated value alone I have already spotted a viable solution. But my suggestion will mean little to the bods who are currently pretending to deal with the issue. The Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Work and Pensions committees, working in tandem, compiled a report that didn't even stretch to stating that Green had done anything wrong. The current standing is that Green is able to claim that the sale of BHS, for £1, was done "in good faith." He remains a knight of the realm and is currently threatening to sue Frank Field for stating that Green "was much worse than Robert Maxwell (for plundering BHS)." Would I stand half as much chance of evading a single Council Tax payment? Did the sitting committees even dare to use the term Asset-stripping? Because that's certainly what it was.

Whether Green is eventually suitably backed into a corner that might result in him having to resolve the issues to an equivalent benefit to his former employees seems currently unlikely. I personally would be prepared to deal with the knighthood issue in a manner not dissimilar to knocking a coconut off its perch in a coconut shie; I might not hit the target first time, but I'd get there eventually, and such fun would be had along the way.

Which leads in 'nicely,' to the thrust of the posting, the far wider issue of Asset-stripping and the real reasons for this pussy-footing about the Philip Green issue. Why would any society openly and so readily condemn the act- because they are currently falling woefully short- when it is one of the absolute founding stones of that selfsame society? In reality he (Green) has stolen the futures of several tens of thousands of people, yet he has also taken the 'accepted and daily practised' tool of asset stripping, and then he has simply more-keenly sharpened its point.

There could be countless examples, both national and international, to here employ in my pretended prosecution, but I will settle for just the handful.



My first example ties in quite neatly with the Lodge Hill 'development'- such a misleading word in today's parlance, don't you think?- that of Britain's housing crisis, one and the same housing crisis that consecutive governments have been wringing their hands and bemoaning in mock concern now for approaching three decades. It's that very same crisis that sees tens of thousands of houses built every year, whilst at the very same time the number of souls who cannot access either a decent home of their own, or else an affordable rent, continues to multiply. Why, it's almost as if the building programme is actually designed to feed a very different 'need,' isn't it? And one wonders why it is that every day- I am in semi-retirement- one may witness the BBC et al chaperoning investment purchasers from property to property, why it is that homes built as 'starter homes' continue to still be snaffled up by the 'investor' landlords? "Hang on just a moment!" we might think, "Why, pray why, are we still selling off so much council stock and social housing?"

I'm going to put the proverbial neck upon the proverbial line and suggest that affordable-rents-en-masse, via council-type homes, are the last thing that private landlords with more money than scruples will be wanting. I'll go further and ask the question, "Haven't we been asset-stripping council and social housing for decades?"

A second example would be Blair et al's PFI 'initiatives' in the NHS, the creaming-off of all services deemed profitable by Private Health Care interests, and that would include you, Owen Smith, the Parliamentary Labour Party's choice for leader. The service doesn't improve but the new shareholders are invariably happy, and the CEO might not always be the best, but within a year his pension is sure looking more healthy than the average Philip Green former employee. Except, of course that the shareholders, and probably the CEO aren't new to this are they? Some of them will have become accustomed to creaming off the best bits for an age. Seriously, isn't this also just Asset-stripping by any other name?

We can see the same things happening in local councils, up and down the country. Hell, the water's already gone, as has the railway, and the rest of the utilities. Thatcher famously said that she wouldn't sell off the Post Office, "Not with the Queen's Head!" I think she may have uttered. What she didn't say was that this neoliberal nightmare wasn't just a single term, or a single Prime-Ministerial matter.



We might well cite education, chipped away at and sold off in large, small or medium-sized chunks, to whoever, everything must go! That student loan that you're repaying, well a significant chunk of that is going to the Vice Chancellor, or whoever, the one before the present figurehead maybe? Free Schools and Academies are now up there for grabs; the kids may well get something along the way, but the investors certainly will. Asset-stripping?

So many of those ageing citizens- those who last the duration- are currently being asset-stripped. The staff in the care homes are invariably working on or around the minimum wage, so somebody in the system's on to a jolly good thing. I know that my father spent the final years of his life wishing he was already dead. If he had spotted the subterfuge he wouldn't have admitted it; it was what his newspaper had always assured him was the right course of action. "No return to the bad old 1970s!" was an oft banged out headline in my parents' home. The Telegraph had replaced the Daily Mail years ago- less red-faced hatred being shouted out from the pages- longer words but the message was pretty much the same.

Several years ago the then Chancellor legislated to allow people to far sooner access their pensions. "Take control of your pension." Aviva are currently shouting from their Norwich-based towers. They would, but in the bustle they appear to have omitted the beginning of the sentence; "Let us take control of your pension." was what they meant to say. "Let us take your pension!" might have been more accurate. 'Pension flexibility' the Government prefer to label the action. The surge in pension scam losses trebled within a month of Osborne's access to pension reforms, £4.7 million in May 2015. Even if people are not to be scammed (Asset-stripped) they are still strongly advised to see 'their financial adviser.' He or she will be looking to sup deeply of those pension pots. Of course, you may well already have had your pension pot compulsorily 'purchased' (What, you've still not been paid?) by the former Chancellor Gordon Brown, when he chose to scrap tax relief on pension firms. But he was merely doing what the system 'told him to,' asset-stripping the funds to his own, and Blair's own means. £118 billion that move cost the people of the nation. But don't worry, had he not done this George Osborne would have been sure to have tried something very similar. In reality Osborne's Pension flexibility was a lot less of a coup for the neoliberals, but as many a boardroom CEO has undoubtedly stated, "You can only help yourself what's there to be taken."



I currently hold in my hand, a letter from Aviva- Aviva again!, would you credit it?- inviting me to indulge in a bit of equity release. The letter reads like an invite to a all-you-can-eat buffet banquet! It seems that the company are just falling over themselves to throw money at people. It won't even cost me anything, oh, except for my home... sorry their home... hang on, what's this small print? I can even be Asset-stripped with a smile on my face. Well, what do you know? Far from enough, apparently.

Isn't all of this just Asset-stripping UK.com? And, that's the wonderful thing about this neoliberal dream, nothing is sacred, everything that might be 'liberated' will be liberated. Let's get on that TTIP gravy train and have the ride of our lives! But will they still be our lives at the end of 'the journey, that's the thing?' The new liberation, it sounds so darn catchy, too! Those at the very top are hungry for more, so they're forever looking to liberate something else. Hang on to your hats! Or your children, your health, your tranquillity, your lungfuls of fresh air. That glass of water's already gone, I'm afraid sir! It sounds silly, the manner in which I've couched it, and true it might not be your air, your children at the present... but investigate the global economy to see just how far they're prepared to go!

And that, my friends, is why I have this sneaky suspicion that many of those who are currently berating Philip Green rather more secretly admire the chap. He looked into his toolbox, he rifled through the raw materials and he optimised his particular style of Asset-stripping. And many of the top bods just wish that they'd got there first. He was awarded a knighthood, after all.  

I could be wrong, but it's a thought, isn't it?