It’s been a while since I posted. And I have long since dropped ALL social media platforms. I find I don’t need them. Heading into 2026 I am resolved to blog more. But to start with I will simply post links to prior posts that perhaps summarise my head space.

It’s Way Past Time to Regulate Social Media.

Extract: I suggest the tech companies should adopt the pattern that was and is practiced in more prosaic areas of IT, by themselves establishing an independent governance enterprise that is adequately funded to use latest practices that requires all, yes all social media posts to be preapproved by an automated AI hub such that unacceptable behavior is identified and managed. It would make sense that the regulators work closely with the shared governance organisation, to ensure that there is a level playing field between all the operating companies.

Community Based Food Production is the Future

In Christiana Figueres new book [1] with Tom Rivett Carnac they explore what the world in 2050 will look like. The post is a paraphrasing of their view of the future of food production.

Hurt Russia and Save the Planet? We All Need to Share the Pain!

Some examples of what we need to do ……

Reduce speed limits on roads. There have been various studies that suggest this single change could save significant fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. An authoritative EU report showed 12 – 18% fuel consumption and emissions by reducing maximum speed to 110Km/hr. As an emergency measure we might anticipate a maximum speed of 90 Km/hr to have proportionately greater savings.
Dramatically reduce cost of public transport. Interestingly reducing maximum speeds provides a powerful argument for switching to public transport. With the added incentive of cost saving, we could again envisage proportionately greater fossil fuel and emissions savings.
Change motor taxation schemes to favour low milage and penalise high milage. Increase tax on personal fuel consumption and provide discounts or rebates on business fuel consumption that is directly linked to the cost of living index.
Provide (business tax based) incentives to make “electric car sharing” highly attractive, to both accelerate transition to EV usage, AND incentivise single or no car ownership.
Encourage (with grant and tax incentives) transition to electric home heating.
Provide home and business heating energy usage incentives and disincentives to influence both immediate behavior (reduce thermostat setting) and investment behavior (insulation, electric heating systems etc).
Encourage (by price and tax incentives) behaviour based usage pattern for heating plans that allow gas suppliers to manage down gas usage and introduce a form of planned rationing.
Provide all consumers with generous grants for transitioning away from fossil fuels, making it clear the level of generosity will decrease year on year. In other words act now!

These are just some ideas and examples. But most of these could be implemented very rapidly. And if we were listening to the climate scientists these types of schemes would already be in widespread usage.
But in the very short term, when we stop using Russian gas and oil, rationing is high probability.
Frankly so what? Compared to what the Ukrainians are living through, fuel rationing would be a small inconvenience. And the abrupt shock of rationing would be a great stimulus to consumers and business to cut dependency on fossil fuels. As I finish this piece I note the UK has just announced they are committing to end use of Russian fuels by the end of the year! Clearly the UK government hasn’t got the message yet – we all need to share the pain!