THE PRICE OF THAT RETIREMENT JOB...

It is a sad fact that the fate of our manufacturing industry (and our Steel industry) may be directly related to the fact that when members of the Westminster elite 'retire' from playing politics they tend to seek directorships with financial (city banks, etc) rather than directorships with manufacturing firms. This simple fact may directly show how divorced from the economic situation our manufacturing industry faces the Westminster elite have become and how furthering the economic interests of the city at all costs has become the Westminster elites central focus.

Quite how desperate the Westminster elite (and the City) have become in their efforts to tap into the finances of the People's Republic of China (one of the world's last brutal dictatorships) may be demonstrated by the fact that they recently chose to veto EU efforts to bring in tariffs to protect the European Steel industry from Chinese steel dumping.

The deterioration in the value of Welsh exports should be a real cause of concern, and is something that a Plaid Cymru government would address in government. The value of Wales’ exports has dropped alarmingly under this government by almost £2.5bn in two years. That’s a huge 17.5% drop at a time when other nations, by comparison, have managed to increase them.

Wales has historically performed well in the past. We export more than we import, and we compare much more favourably than other UK nations. What we need is a strategy to combat this trend. A Plaid Cymru government would establish a Wales Development Agency – a WDA fit for the 21^st century to work globally and throughout the UK, to boost Welsh exports and turn around Labour’s legacy of continued economic decline.

We want to sell our products, skills and ideas to the world. But unfortunately this is the second consecutive year where the value of Welsh exports have decreased significantly and the current Welsh Labour Government (and successive Westminster governments of various political hues) have shown no sign of producing a strategy to stop this continued decline.

The recent alarming figures, contrast with those from between 2007-2011 when Plaid Cymru Leader, Ieuan Wyn Jones was Minister for the Economy, Welsh exports increased by nearly £4.4bn, a 33% increase. During extremely difficult economic times, Plaid Cymru showed what real ambition and strong leadership can achieve. It’s now time for new leadership – Plaid Cymru is the change Wales desperately needs.

SOME MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT?

Biofuels were suppose to save us and the planet from a combination of global warming and an over reliance on fossil fuels. The problem is that many biofuels are reliant on monoculture cropping and industrial agricultural systems, massive fertilizer inputs, large quantities of water and huge amounts of oil. One result of this is that biofuels may end up accelerating global warming by leading to the destruction of forests and other natural ecosystems when land is cleared for the cultivation of biofuel crops.

Another result is that biofuels end up in the developing world competing with food for land, increasing food prices and hunger. The biofuels industry is also supported by a number of different policies in both the USA, Brazil and the EU including various tax subsidies, trade barriers, government grants and loans. We need to bring to an end policies that directly support the production of environmentally harmful biofuels, and make room for sustainable energy alternatives and more environmentally friendly and socially responsible biofuels.

A recent report by Chatham House says the growing reliance on sustainable liquid fuels will also increase food prices . Basically biodiesel made from vegetable oil is worse for the climate than fossil fuels. The report noted that the UK’s use of biofuels is “irrational” and will cost UK motorists around £460 million over the next 12 months. The EU plan (underwritten by law) is for biofuels to make up 5% of the UK's transport fuel as of 15th April. The UK (since 2008) has required fuel suppliers to add a growing proportion of sustainable materials into the petrol and diesel they supply.

Many of these biofuels are distilled from ethanol which is sourced  from corn and biodiesel made from rapeseed, used cooking oil and tallow. Chatham House research suggests that reaching the 5% level will result in UK motorists having to pay around an extra £460 million pounds a year because of the higher cost of fuel at the pump and from filling up more often as biofuels have a lower energy content. The report states that if the UK is to meet its obligations to EU energy targets the cost to motorists is likely to rise to £1.3 billion pounds per annum by 2020.

The problem with the EU biofuel mandates are that they have huge distorting effects in the marketplace. As a result of used cooking oil being regarded as one of the most sustainable types of biodiesel, the price paid for it has soured. By the end of 2012 used cooking oil was more expensive than refined palm oil. Another concern is that taking EU land out of production to grow rapeseed oil in particular will end up creating more climate problems than it solves.

The more fuel of this type that is put into cars the bigger the deficit created in the edible oils market. This had resulted in increased imports of palm oil from Indonesia, which is often produced on illegally deforested land. As the UK reaches its 5% of liquid fuels target, the government faces some tough decisions on how to move forward as it may end up facing a tripling of the costs for motorists by 2020.

The UK Westminster government may prefer to try and get do a deal with Brussels on the impacts of indirect costs which might restrict what exactly counts as biofuel. There are problems with this, especially when it comes to reaching an agreement with those EU countries which have powerful agricultural sectors who rake in the cash from the current biofuels arrangements.

Outside of Europe there are other consequences with the acquisition of land by multi nationals for development or to acquire resources at the expense of local people. This is bound to be a touchy subject especially when little medium to long term sustainable benefit is delivered to the indigenous inhabitants. What's happening now in Africa is subtly different, there is a race going on between multinational companies on one hand and the emerging economic giant of the Peoples Republic of China on the other hand to acquire land, not so much for the minerals (although that is a factor) but to acquire the ability to grow food.

An interesting report (produced by the Oakland Institute) has noted that Hedge funds are now getting involved in acquiring land in Africa to produce food and biofuels, which will all boost their profits.  The report notes that foreign firms and hedge funds) have been quietly purchasing large chunks of land in Africa, often without any proper contracts and that this activity has led to the displacement of millions of small farmers, who are losing out as multinational firms try to secure their hold of the global food markets. Food production is often sacrificed to make space for cash crops for export, including flowers and biofuels, which fetch a tidy profit.

Since 2009 foreign firms the report noted that have acquired land equivalent to the size of France (nearly 60 million hectares) from questionable but lucrative deals with a combination of gullible traditional leaders or corrupt government officials in Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Mali and Mozambique. I have no doubt that the foreign firms make many promises of progress, development and jobs to local communities, but they don't necessarily come close to delivering on the promises.

Investors benefit with a wide range of incentives written into their contracts from unlimited water rights to tax waivers, but, are clearly not there to help feed starving Africans. Sounds familiar doesn't it - not that much of step from the old days of the WDA throwing wads of cash of foreign investors, who got all sorts of benefits (grants and incentives), promised much (I seem to recall the magic figure of 6,000 jobs kept cropping up in the 1980's, 1990s and early 2000's) yet in the end never quite delivered all that was promised.

AS ONE DOOR CLOSES...

Last week in his State of the Union speech U.S. President Barack Obama declared that by the end of 2014 "our war in Afghanistan will be over." Aside from finally bring the soldiers home the end of this phase of the war in Afghanistan could have some long term consequences, including a slow but steady decrease in Western security interests, an increase in drug traffic and terrorism in Central Asia.  Will the West wash its hands of any involvement in Central Asia, something that will please Russia, the Peoples Republic of China and the drug dealers and the terrorists alike?

At the moment at least, US (and Western) policy is based on an assumption that the 350,000-strong Afghan National Army (with US assistance and advisers), will be able to hold off or at least manage the Taliban. After 2014, unless there is a political deal, the Taliban will stay in the field with varying degrees of control in most of the Pashtun areas and perhaps beyond them. How far have we come since the heady days of 2001, when the suggestion that a battered Taliban would still be active in the field thirteen years after the invasion, would have been treated with disbelief.

As the Soviet Union faded into history in the 1990s, Taliban were in control of much of Afghanistan, their success (and the support of Pakistan) encouraged other extremists in Central Asia. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who had fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan was responsible for bomb attacks in Uzbekistan and kidnappings in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. After the invasion in 2001, splinter groups like the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Uzbekistan and targeted the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Tashkent (in 2004).

At present both the IJU and IMU have sought safe refuge in those parts of Pakistan which could politely be described as being effectively ungoverned.  Once NATO leaves Afghanistan their fight may yet be carried back to Central Asia, no doubt fuelled with the support and encouragement of Pakistan’s military and intelligence community. Power, politics, water and Islamic inspired insurgency are just some of potential problems that may feed Central Asia’s future insecurities.

Power and water are connected by plans to construct dams in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which while boosting their economies also may threaten to reduce water for agriculture (cotton) in neighbouring Uzbekistan. There is already talk of ‘water wars’,  the flash point may be the lush (and relatively green) Ferghana Valley (which divided between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) with its complex mix of ethnic groups, it’s badly drawn borders (which date back to Stalin’s time) and fresh oppression, and a recruiting ground for Islamic jihadists. Back in 2005, Uzbek security forces killed hundreds of protesters in Andijon (in Uzbekistan).

Ethnic tensions have been simmering for years, several hundred Uzbeks and a smaller number of Kyrgyz died in bloody ethnic clashes in Osh (in Kyrgyzstan) and in nearby areas. To make things worse a historical cesspool of corruption in Central Asia (dating back to Soviet times) has worked to undermine most people’s belief in effective or fair governance. Transparency International’s corruption perception index of 174 states, lists Kazakhstan at 133rd, Kyrgyzstan at 154th, Tajikistan at 157th, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are 170th. Afghanistan incidentally comes in at 174th; the UK comes in at 17th and Ireland at 25th.

Unfortunately for Central Asia, as the West’s interest in Afghanistan (and the rest of Central Asia) wanes as the Afghan war winds down, the region remains between ambitious reborn great powers in the shape of Russia and China. While some in the West may occasionally speak out against any moves by Russia to manipulate the CIS customs union to "re-Sovietize" Eurasia, soon there will be no Western boots (virtual or otherwise) on the ground let alone and desire to offer an alternative.

Kazakhstan, while resisting political union, is a member of the Russian dominated customs union. Neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with one-third to one-half of their economies being dependent on migrant-labour based remittance payments from Russia may not have the luxury of playing for time. As NATO influence wanes and it pulls out of its bases in the region, Russia may increase the pressure by offering protection by expanding its military foothold in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which already reluctantly host Russian military bases.

For Central Asia, any choices may be stark ones, Russia to the north, Islamic fundamentalism to the south or the People’s Republic of China to the East. Already the PRC looms large in Central Asian economies, with opportunities for trade and inward investment. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan now ship energy long distances to the PRC, something that hope may help reduce the effectiveness of Russia’s effective control of export pipeline routes to the West.

The PRC already uses the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to boost its Central Asian interests, for now admittedly these are mainly economic and energy related. While the PRC does not at least publicly challenge Russia's geopolitical role, as China's economic and political influence increases the Central Asian states freedom of action may be further reduced.

As NATO troop reductions in Afghanistan proceed, so NATO's need for logistical support via the northern distribution network in Central Asia will further diminish. The Central Asian governments, who are increasingly concerned that a NATO pullback (let alone a pullout) will leave the region more exposed to subversion and increased Russian and Chinese influence. Ironically the Central Asian States want continued Western support to hold off the IMU and IJU, to counter narcotics smuggling, and to help them keep Russian and Chinese power at arm’s length.

The brief 12 year period when the West’s had relative freedom of action in Central Asia is closing. Back in 2001, Russia effectively gave the USA and its coalition partners the go ahead to use bases in the region to support operations in Afghanistan. Now a more confident Russia is actively working to remove any NATO presence and influence from the region and is opposed to any Western involvement in dealing with the ongoing narcotics and terrorism problems.

In many ways the West failed to either effectively or consistently deal with the emergence of the newly independent Central Asian states and more widely failed to deal effectively with the demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the independent successor states. Western aid was relatively scare, and not tied into a respect for human rights and civil liberties. The often authoritarian governments have quite happily used security tools against their domestic protesters, something that has quite often fed political unrest and fundamentalism.

As NATO prepares to leave Afghanistan (and the region) what legacy if any will it leave behind? There should be some areas for security cooperation, information exchange and border security with the Central Asian states. There should be a more robust sharing of intelligence about terrorism, narcotics, and criminal threats. This could add to the solid, low-key work by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union that has already been undertaken.

After 2014, it is quite possible that Central Asia will go back to being the focal point of yet another new Great Game, this time the battleground where outsiders seek to impose their influence may well only have two players, Russia and the PRC. Central Asian governments may well need assistance to securing themselves against external dangers, but the reality is that historic autocratic rule, weak governance and grim human rights records are as big a contributors to political instability as the threat of home grown or foreign Islamic insurgencies.

THIS LAND IS NOT FOR SALE

It can be argued that in the end with people that it comes down to land, who lives on it, who owns it, what we do with it and what other people want to do with it. The issue of land tenure, land rights and land use is set to become one of the dominant issues of this century. This is an important issue that affects people in both the developed and the developing world as local people and local resources (including land) come under increased pressure from various levels of Government for development.

Forced evictions

An Amnesty International report states that forced evictions in China have risen significantly in recent years as local communist party officials sell off land to property developers, out from under the people living on it.  Amnesty International reports that many cases involve violence and harassment, and amount to “a gross violation of human rights". Local officials are under pressure to meet economic goals and vested interests are behind the coercion, the report noted.

The problem of security of tenure for farmers and local people is made worse by the fact that all land in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) is effectively controlled by the state, and laws allow local governments to claim land for urban development projects. The on-going evictions are a serious cause of ongoing social discontent and resulted in public protests across the country. Communist Party local authorities are seizing and selling off land to pay back funds borrowed to finance stimulus packages during the economic downturn.

The PRC Communist Government promotes officials who deliver growth regardless of the cost, and the development of roads, factories, residential complexes on seized lands delivers visible results. Amnesty International has reported that the system is open to abuse and evictees often received little notice, no consultation and barely a fraction of the value of their land and homes in compensation.

There have been a number of violent clashes between local people and police or private security guards across different areas of China.  Amnesty International has interviewed lawyers, housing rights activists and academics, in and outside China. Standing Their Ground (an 85-page report) has looked at 40 cases of forced eviction (between January 2009 to January 2012), nine of which it said resulted in the deaths of people who were resisting being evicted.

Peoples resistance in Wukan

There have been some successful localised resistance to some of the evictions, Amnesty notes the example of Wukan village (in Guangdong province in 2011), here local residents demonstrated on the streets after a village negotiator protesting against local officials over a land grab died in police custody.




The protests resulted in the removal of two local Communist Party officials and the punishment of others in 2012. Local villagers also won the right to fresh local elections as part of the deal.

Amnesty suggests that any optimism in relation to the Wukan case may be premature might be premature, as so far there has been no independent investigation into the death of Xue Jinbo ( the village negotiator). Also villagers have still not got any of their land back. There are also reports that Communist authorities are harassing and spying on local activists in Wukan. The Communist Dictatorship does nominally have laws in place to protect farmers and local residents, but these are often ignored by Communist Party officials at local level.

Communist Party Leaders in Beijing have acknowledged the problem exists and are pledged to improve the situation. Amnesty International has called on the PRC to put an immediate stop to all forced evictions and ensure safeguards were put in place in line with international law. Amnesty also has urged the PRC to implement new regulations (that it adopted in 2011) which should provide for proper land compensation and outlaw the use of violence in these cases.

OUR DAILY BREAD?

As fuel prices creep upwards, as we are waiting to get hit by price rises from the energy cartel, the next hard blow to our wallets will come in the form of rising food prices. The poor summer across the northern hemisphere (either too wet or too dry) is impacting on global food prices which have risen by 10% in the month of July, which has raised the fears of soaring prices for the planet's poorest, as noted by the World Bank.

Oxfam has noted that when extreme weather events drive local or regional price spikes, the people living in poverty face a double shock as they have to cope with higher prices, just like the rest of us. The difference between the developed and developing world is that this often comes at a time when the direct effects of extreme weather events have often already depleted their assets, destroyed their crops and stripped them of their livelihoods.

Back in 2011 the emergency in the Horn of Africa and the 2012 Sahel food crisis clearly showed how this combination can lead to hunger on a mass scale. The small-scale subsistence farmers and the pastoralists ended up getting hit hard in both regions, where the loss of livestock and crops reduced available food stocks and also reduced the value of people’s assets so that they were unable to afford to buy food

The World Bank has warned that the affects of the US heat wave and drought in parts of Eastern Europe were partly to blame for the rising food costs. Key grains such as corn, wheat and soybean saw the most dramatic price increases, something that will hit those countries that import grains particularly badly. Between June to July (2012), corn and wheat prices rose by 25% and soybean prices increased by 17%. The World Bank noted that only rice prices fell by some 4%.

In the USA, the worst (and widespread) drought for fifty years has wrought havoc on the corn and soybean crops while simultaneously in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, the wheat crops have been badly damaged. To make matters worse, the World Bank noted that the continued use of corn to produce ethanol biofuels (which absorbs around 40% of US corn production) played a key role in the sharp rise in the price of US maize.

While we (the food consumers) will all loses out, the impact on developing countries in North and Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East who will be the most exposed to price rises because significant quantities of their food is imported and food bills make up a large proportion of average household spending, will be harsher. .

Already maize prices had increased by 113% over the past quarter in Mozambique, and the price of sorghum had risen 220% in South Sudan. Last time this happened (back in 2008) there was widespread unrest. Other potential factors could make a potentially bad situation worse and force grain prices still higher. The World Bank is concerned about a combination of food exporters pursuing panic policies, a severe El Nino, poor Southern hemisphere harvests and strong increases in energy prices.

The World Bank's Food Price Index (which tracks the price of internationally traded food commodities) was six percent higher than in July 2011 and one percent up from the previous peak, which was back in February 2011. Why is this important? Well aside from the fact that the most vulnerable in poorer countries will lose out? While we won’t starve, in the developed world as food (and fuel) prices go up, our purchasing power goes down (and we spend less), something that will hit the wider economy.

REMEMBRANCE

As a historian / archaeologist and someone who has more than a passing interest in politics I have to find a happy medium between living in the past and living in the now. It is important that we remember what has been done (for good and for bad) and to use that knowledge to make intelligent sensible choices about our future. I am a big believer in ‘rememberance’, by that I mean we should never be selective when it comes to remembering history.

If you want to wallow in nostalgia about the ‘British Empire’ or the ‘Soviet Union’ that’s fine, but, while remembering the heroic and principled stand against fascism in 1940 then you should also chose not to forget about the Bengal famine (which killed six million) in the middle of the second world war or the million or so who starved to death in Ireland in the middle of the 19th century.

The remnants of Stalin's Artic Railway

For those who yearn for the strong man in Russian politics and days when the sound of ‘Soviet rockets made the world tremble’ don’t forget the millions who were murdered or imprisoned by Stalin and his cronies (not to mention the millions killed and imprisoned by the fascist regimes in Europe and Asia in the 1930’s and the 1940’s) and the repressive regimes that held sway across half of our continent until the early 1990’s.

The vast majority of the old brutal oppressive Communist dictatorships, save for Cuba and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have collapsed and been rightly cast into the dustbin of history. While both Cuba and the PRC have made real social achievements (particularly when it comes to health care and literacy) it is important to remember that these achievements have come at one hell of a price in broken Human lives and scattered bones.

In recent years the tide may well have finally turned against dictatorship, even though we may yet have some way to go before they are finally gone. Certainly the real courage shown by protesters against tyrannical (nominally Communist and other) regimes, particularly in the last 12 months has been impressive, it has however been matched by what can best be described as a failure of leadership on the part of the UN Security Council which appears tired, out of step and unfit for purpose.

REPRESSION IN TIBET

Communist Authorities in the Peoples Republic of China are continuing a big security operation to try to end a wave of unrest caused by Tibetan campaigners. In the past year, at least 19 people have publicly set themselves on fire, five in the past week alone, in a campaign that calls for more freedom for Tibetans.



China has occupied Tibet for more than sixty years. The BBC Reporter, Damian Grammaticas has been to Sichuan province bordering Tibet where most of the unrest has been happening.

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS...

A report by Human Rights Watch has called on the Arab League to suspend Syria, saying the abuses against civilians in Homs are crimes against humanity. The US-based group's report makes grim reading documenting arbitrary detention, deaths in custody, torture, enforced disappearances, and systematic unlawful killing of civilians in the city of Homs (and elsewhere in Syria) by Syrian Government forces. Homs is the focus for anti-government demonstrations and the effective capital of the revolt against the brutal and repressive Syrian dictatorship. Some forty people were killed there on Thursday.

The UN says at least 3,500 people have been killed in Syria in protests against President Bashar al-Assad. Syria continues to benefit from China and Russia's veto on the UN Security Council, where a resolution which condemned the crackdown in Syria (back in October) was a serious blow to attempts to develop an international consensus on how to grapple with President Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime. Western diplomats tweaked the resolutions wording (which had been proposed by Britain, France, Germany and Portugal, in co-operation with the USA) to try to take account of Chinese and Russian concerns.

The clear diplomatic rebuff to the West, perhaps signals a much stronger stance from Beijing and Moscow who are unhappy to see the weight of the Security Council ranged against the Syrian authorities. This move has only heightened divisions on the Security Council, where Brazil, India, South Africa and Lebanon quietly abstained; this suggests that any idea of a new era of intrusive diplomacy which was brought in by the UN Security Council resolution 1973 on Libya last March is effectively over, perhaps overwhelmed by self-interest.

It's natural for the Peoples Republic of China itself a brutal repressive dictatorship to side with the Syrian Government. Russia has other concerns, spreading democracy not being among them, so an anxiety about a potential lack of future arms sales may be a driving concern. It’s a little odd that some of the states indirectly supporting the Syrian dictatorship have themselves been involved in liberation struggles themselves, perhaps they might well have once had a degree of sympathy for the Syrian people who are laying down their lives for freedom and liberty.

BORIS AND THE BEAR

There is an energy rush going on in Siberia as billions of dollars are being invested in new hydro-power dams in remotest parts of Siberia. This rush is to cash in on the export of electricity to the power hungry Peoples Republic of China. Siberia one of the world more environmentally sensitive green lungs is remote and rich in minerals and the potential of renewable energy - but how these riches are exploited has repercussions for the people on the ground and in the way.

The Angara river, which is the only river that flows out of Lake Baikal and a main tributary of the Yenisei river, which flows to the Arctic ocean has already been dammed three times, at Irkutsk, Bratsk and Ust-Ilimsk. A fourth hydro-electric dam is close to completion at Boguchanskaya, near Kodinsk, and is due to start generating power in April 2012. Many more dams are planned for the Eastern Siberian wilderness to feed the demands of electricity-hungry China.

Burning Houses in Siberia

The local people are paying this price for the energy rush as the small picture-postcard villages made up of traditional wooden houses that have grown up on its banks over the last 300 years are all being burned, so that after the area is flooded, the debris does not clog up the new dam. There have been problems with the compensation scheme, delays in payments and problems with getting new accommodation elsewhere for local people, some people are concerned that the compensation scheme is cheating people out of their land.

Russian and Siberian Environmental groups are also concerned about the impact of other dams on the river system, noting that some parts of the river have turned to swamp, buried trees have rotted and changed the chemistry of the water. Alexander Kolotov, of Rivers International, said: "They say they are building new dams on Siberian rivers in order to save the planet from Chinese greenhouse gases. So of course the question is whether you are ready to destroy the Siberian environment, kill great Siberian rivers, and flood vast forests, in order to save the world from Chinese emissions."

We in Wales, have been no stranger in recent centuries to the exploitation of our mineral (and other) resources and have had (so far) little in put either way into how they have been developed and received scant long term benefits. This has to change, whether it comes to exploitation and development of our nations energy potential, be it on or off-shore or the use of our rich water resources, the people of Wales should be fully involved in any decisions made and our wishes should be respected rather than overridden.

SECOND THOUGHTS!

News that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced a "measured exit" from nuclear power in response to the crisis affecting four reactors in Japan should be welcomed. She defended the temporary closure of Germany's seven oldest reactors, saying sensibly that because of the Japanese disaster it could no longer be "business as usual". Chancellor Merkel told the German parliament that the goal was "to reach the age of renewable energy as soon as possible".

Likewise, China has now suspended approval for new nuclear power stations following the accident at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi plant. checks at existing reactors and those under construction will also be carried out. China, which has a desperate need for energy is currently building 27 new reactors - this is about 40% of the total number being built around the world. China is increasingly worried about the nuclear accident in Japan.

We don't need Nuclear power and should invest in sustainable renewable energy sources, which in the event of disaster are significantly less dangerous. We also have a pressing need for energy. Our problem was made worse by the Conservatives headlong dash to gas in the 1980’s which has in turn been compounded by a real failure in basic strategic energy planning and made worse by the current Government's perverse decision to half-heartedly look at developing diverse reliable alternative energy sources.

The old New Labour Government repeatedly ignored warnings that it was setting the UK on a path towards higher prices and energy blackouts. Over the next five years almost all of our old nuclear reactors, along with nine major coal and oil-fired power stations, will be closed, with nothing ready to replace them. We are now in the situation where we are now even more dependent upon imported gas from either unstable regions or dubious suppliers and we the customers face unnecessarily expensive bills.

As a matter of utmost urgency the Westminster Government, the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly should work with the Irish Government to make these islands entirely self sufficient via renewable non market driven non nuclear energy resources rather than pursing the dubious and costly (potentially in more ways than one) nuclear alternative that is particularly favoured by Whitehall civil servants.

The renewable energy sector can and should play a major role in creating more sustainable green energy jobs in Wales and elsewhere in the UK. If we can develop a flexible self-sufficient energy development strategy that actually encourages decentralised microgeneration schemes and then actually implement it then we have a fighting chance of creating jobs, useful new skills and will be able to bootstrap the economy out of the recession, as helping consumers and securing a stable safe energy supply.

If we do this then we will keep the lights on and rebuild and reboot our economy as well.

GUESS WHO'S NOT COMING TO DINNER?

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who has repeatedly faced imprisonment and surveillance from the Chinese government and is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for "subverting state power" - has rattled more than a few bars. Liu helped write the manifesto, Charter 08, calling for political change in China. The massacre in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989 turned him into a Human Rights activist. As a result of his nomination for and his winning of the Nobel Award for his work on Human Rights there is a growing boycott of the award ceremony.

It's interesting to see who apart from China are not going to attend Friday's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony. Envoys from Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Serbia, Iraq, Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, the Philippines, Egypt, Sudan, Ukraine, Cuba and Morocco will so far all miss the event "for various reasons". By way of comparison only ten embassies were absent from the 2008 ceremony which honoured the former Finnish President and UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

The interesting bit may well be the reason why they are not there – some have pretty dreadful human rights records, some are one party repressive totalitarian states (with enough imprisoned dissidents of their own – who don’t want to encourage other Human Rights campaigners a tad closer to home) and others are simply significant recipients of Chinese Foreign Aid. Literally the bullies and the bought! What's even more interesting is how many are portrayed as being our Allies (in the so called War On Terror) - oh the company that we keep!

THINK AGAIN MR PRESIDENT

President Obama, has gone and done it, as part of his new vision for space exploration as part of his $3.8 trillion (£2.4 trillion) budget proposal to Congress yesterday, he has called for a halt to Constellation, the project that aims to send astronauts back to the Moon by 2020 and has already cost $9 billion.

One immediate side effect of this proposal is that the International Space Station, which would have been scrapped in 2016, will now get a five-year extension to its working life. Additionally the business of getting US astronauts there and back again will be effectively privatised, with a subsidy of some $6 billion of funding, while NASA continues to work on developing new technologies for longer-term space exploration.

In the wings stands China, which will not be unaware of how things will look if China beats America back to the Moon. US President George Bush when he vowed to return Americans to the Moon by 2020 was acknowledging that it was important not only for manned space flight to flourish; but also important for those humans in space to include a healthy number of Americans.

The Europeans have a space programme of sorts (admittedly largely French, Russia has retained (by the skin of its teeth) a space programme. What about the UK? well the Conservatives finally finished that dream off in the early 1970's when a Tory Minister saw no future for private satellite launches...which brought the remnants of the Blue Streak programme (originally cancelled in 1960) to an end.

The next historic landmark may well be that of the Peoples Republic of China putting a man on the Moon, which may help to rundown America’s technological supremacy. China, already produces more engineering graduates than America. If congress approves the budget then we may be seeing the moment when Washington’s sense of international supremacy begin to decline, as its global political and scientific stature also begins to diminish.

Manned space flight programme which can be viewed as an expensive luxury when the economy is on rocky ground, but, it is not. NASA needs to do more that merely to focus on long-range research and development. This would be a grave mistake, with financial, economic and political consequences.

The PRC has the ambition, the money and the determination to take the traditional Chinese long view. With its sights firmly set on the stars, the PRC, the world’s newest superpower is planning to put a man or woman on the Moon by 2020. Close behind is India, which launched its first unmanned mission to the Moon in 2008 and now aims to put an Indian astronaut into orbit within five years.

The curse of the modern political world may well be short-term thinking US President Obama needs to deal with the financial crisis and he also needs to be able to show the world that America knows where it wants to be several decades from now, and that the USA has the vision and will to get there.

While the proposed budget and NASA cuts will greatly irritate Congress with politicians from both sides of the political divide who see NASA’s manned space programme as vital component of US national pride, they are also important to the rest of us.