Chris Till

  • Gaming is Broken. Here’s how we Fix it

    Two different game controllers being held one in each hand
    Photo by Onur Binay on Unsplash

    Gaming has more than its fair share of problems right now. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to find new games I really want to play. Practically nothing fits my actual values. And even games which fit enough for me to just about tolerate are becoming somewhat rare. And that’s before you get to the cost of everything. Hardware, software and services. At least in the 90s and 2000s, I would describe gaming as having been pretty centrist or even centre-left in some cases. Now it almost universally comes across as right wing or even fascist. And that’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. Jeffrey Epstein himself played a key role in fostering the free-to-play, microtransaction centric, greed dominated corporate hellscape gaming has become in the 2020s.

    It is true that bargains in gaming do still exist, although only really in software, and only really because of the sale culture that Steam has cultivated over decades, which has forced Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo to compete (if you can say Nintendo competes on price, which is debatable). I wasn’t kidding when I talked about how Steam is responsible for almost everything good that’s happened in gaming in recent times. But outside of that, you very rarely feel these days like you got a good deal. You generally feel as if you have to fight against the rip-off system. If you buy everything on launch day, and get the deluxe edition because you know you love this particular series; and you can save a little bit by paying up front for the DLC season pass; you still feel like you’ve paid too much. I almost never feel like I get value from a full price game. Pokemon Legends Z-A a recent example of one where I did feel like I got my money’s worth on the base game. But even then, the price of the DLC left a sour taste in the mouth.

    The thing is, it may not even be the case that all of those publishers are charging extortionately for the work that goes in to these titles. But that should then lead you to ask questions about the industry as a whole. Do games need to be this grand in scale? Do we need this many developers per game? Wouldn’t it make more sense to spread those developers out among more games? Clearly, something; or more likely many things, have gone very wrong to end up in this state. While neoliberalism is definitely to blame in large part, I think there’s definitely a lot more going on besides.

    In this article, I’m going to briefly outline my solutions to the issues I see as holding gaming back from its full potential; and even the reasonably gamer-friendly position it used to occupy during my childhood. I’m going to categorise them as either instant fixes, more mid-term challenging problems to solve; or dream scenarios that we’ll most likely need a form of revolution in order to make reality. In the vast majority of cases, it’s pretty self-explanatory as to what the problems are; and I’ve also touched on several of these points before. Therefore, I’m only going to get into the specifics where I feel I need to offer more context.

    Instant Fixes

    • More affordable games.
    • Phase out most free-to-play games (unless only cosmetics are paid for) – No paid unlockable characters, modes or areas. Certainly no micropayments to skip artificial waiting times.
    • No paid battle passes – Paying to be locked into playing the same game for many hours to unlock what you’ve already paid for makes no sense to me. Free battle passes are ok though. They’re more akin to traditional gaming progression or seasonal challenges.
    • Fairly priced DLC / season passes – I’m a casual Tekken fan. I’ve been waiting 2 years for the latest release to come down in price to a sufficient level for someone who will only play it very occasionally. At this rate, I’ll be waiting another year or two to get a fair price on the game with all the extra characters. Many of the DLC characters are core Tekken series returnees, and you can bet that’s not an accident.
    • Free online play and cloud saves – Steam offer these essential tools for free. Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo can and should do the same. PlayStation and Nintendo have in the past.
    • No “Pro” edition mid-generation console releases – They’re deeply unsustainable, add complication to game libraries and make the jump to the next full generation less of an exciting event.
    • Longer console generations (a full decade).
    • Less remakes and remasters – Let games become retro, and enjoy them as they were originally intended to be. Limit the practice to exceptional circumstances when dedicated long-time fans specifically ask for a remake for an older game. That’s how it used to be before we started seeing a deluge of remasters (because it’s relatively easy money and a sure thing for extremely risk-averse publishers)
    • Fewer sequels – unless they’re genuinely necessary rather than a “cash grab”.
    • More new IPs – more creativity in general.

    Challenging Problems – will take time even with widespread desire for change

    • A more affordable and more comprehensive cloud gaming service for PC games (I’m thinking of GeForce Now). Nvidia’s service has a lot of things going for it. Primarily how you own your games via Steam or other stores, so you can play them on future hardware you may end up owning. However, the game selection is far from comprehensive; which it needs to be for it to be any serious gamer’s primary platform. I also think going down the “install to play” route is a mistake. Cloud gaming needs to always be easy, and it needs to be significantly cheaper than buying the hardware yourself. “Install to play” compromises the core selling point. My main hope with regard to cloud gaming now is that Valve themselves come out with their own competitor directly built into Steam. That would be a hugely significant development and would be great for gamers.
    • Controllers, mice, keyboards, headsets and other peripherals must be compatible across all hardware and operating systems, and be built to last too.
    • Gaming peripherals must no longer require proprietary software like Razer Synapse or Logitech G-Hub in order to function fully. We should be able to fully customise them via a web-browser on any operating system. There are benefits to downloaded software, such as being able to automatically change DPI or polling rate settings when specific games are launched. But it shouldn’t be mandatory. And the software should also be available on Linux (especially Steam OS).
    • We need to have the option to choose between handheld and static “GameCube style” versions of systems like Nintendo Switch 2. The opposite of the Switch Lite concept. Why should you have to pay for a battery, screen and other hardware necessary for a handheld device, if you’re like me and always prefer to play on the TV. I wouldn’t exactly say Valve are doing this with Steam Deck and Steam Machine, since the hardware is different on both. But they are offering people the choice of a handheld or a static experience. They’re even offering in the Steam Machine a choice between living room and desktop use. They are undoubtedly catering to gamers like me more than the others. And I wouldn’t include the ROG Xbox Ally or Playstation Portal in this, because neither of them are truly doing what the Steam Deck is. The Portal is a cloud gaming and remote play device that requires ownership of a PS5. And the Xbox Ally is a Windows handheld from a 3rd party with Xbox modifications. It’s not a ground up Xbox handheld.
    • Games need to stop progressing graphically for a while, in order to allow storage and other hardware components to catch up, become cheaper and store more games again. People are never going to need 8K TVs; but I imagine that is going to be a big focus of Sony and Microsoft in the next generation. Games look good enough now. PS6 needs to reset the ratio of game size to default storage space to around the era of PS4, when managing storage internally and externally wasn’t the frustrating experience it became with PS5 and Sony’s move to NVMe SSDs. And actually this gets more important over time, as we all accumilate more generations of downloaded games that we have to fit on the new systems. All of which will undoubtedly be backwards compatible, as is now the industry standard. PS4 games are no trouble because they can be stored on a standard external hard drive. I still use the same one I used with PS4 and PS4 Pro (before I realised how bad of an idea mid-generation consoles are). But PS5 games will almost certainly need to be stored on the PS6’s SSD when you want to play them. If so, that’s going to cause yet more storage related headaches for Playstation gamers in future. If it turns out that they will be playable from an external SSD, then that doesn’t really alleviate the problem, since NVMe SSDs are still very expensive if you want a useful amount of storage (aka over 2TB).
    • A far better and industry collaborative method for preserving games for future generations.
    • DRM-free games (all games).

    Dream Scenarios – maybe in a degrowth communist world

    • A unified software store for every publisher – Yes, even Nintendo. (ideally a nationalised Steam). You’d buy a game once, and own it everywhere. And you’d be automatically entitled to any future remakes or remasters of that game. And we’d eliminate the problem that often occurs now where your DLC is stuck on one platform, so you can’t move to a different platform, unless you buy the same content again.
    • All consoles of the same generation would be built to equivalent specs; so as to make it seamless to release games everywhere.
    • A unified cloud gaming system available on any device, and with all games from all publishers available. That is unless there’s a good reason why they can’t be. For example a niche peripheral that’s no longer available or compatible with current devices; like a dance mat or lightgun.
    • All games preserved for future generations except possibly certain online only games. But even in that case, we should endeavor to preserve them, even if only for educational demonstrations rather than actual gameplay.

    If we were to see even half of the things I listed in the first category implemented, gaming would be in a far more tolerable situation. Clearly at this point we can’t just sit around and hope for the best. We need to push for these simple reforms by voting with our wallets and being vocal; while also keeping a socialist gaming future in mind. We’ve become far too used to the need to own specific, expensive machines to play specific, expensive games. And we barely bring up the fact that we have to pay subscription fees for each console’s online functions. Services that not only don’t need to be paid for, but that attempt to lock us in to playing primarily on that system. They essentially bully you into picking one platform to play all your 3rd party games on.

    It’s not a status quo that can continue that much longer. It’s going to get to the point where people will either get fed up of the toxic gaming trends, and stop playing. Or they’re going to be totally priced out of their hobby. Perhaps that could lead to a huge resurgeance of retro gaming, which could end up being very positive. As long as you already own the hardware that is. Otherwise cost is going to chase you down the retro rabbit hole too.

    There are definitely issues in other media. DRM in e-books, music subscriptions (not all of them, but certainly Spotify is problematic); cable and satellite TV being replaced by 10 different apps with subscriptions that add up to more than you were paying before. But no other group of media consumers get shafted more than gamers. This is another reason why we need to fight back. Otherwise we’ll end up with physical music from some labels you can only listen to if you buy a specific machine, or yet another separate subscription. You’ll need two different boxes to play your movies on. It’ll be like Blu-Ray and HD-DVD all over again. Except this time, there won’t be a definitive winner. There may even be three formats. If you want to watch those exclusive films, you’ll need another box. And if you’re thinking: yeah, these corporate goons are bad; but they wouldn’t stoop as low as reinventing CDs or vinyl records in order to capitalise on nostalgia and the physical media resurgeance; think again. Nothing is off the table when it comes to squeezing every penny out of us. Sony tried to stop you ripping CDs in the early 2000s, which didn’t go well for them thankfully. But now we live in a much more brainwashed world where the majority place far too much trust in these multinational conglomerates.

    Because gamers are so used to being treated with contempt by companies, we’re the guinea pigs. If we sit there and take it, the corporations will gain in confidence that they can do the same to everyone else. It’ll make the present day mess of endless streaming apps seem like nothing if they’re left unchecked and emboldened to do their worst.

  • UK Defence Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

    A destroyed tank
    All tanks are as useless as this destroyed one in modern warfare

    As with my previous articles in this series; this one will seem very shocking if you’re used to consuming British mainstream news coverage. All you tend to see in the establishment discourse are calls for yet more military spending (where the follow up question is never “how will you pay for it?”) Along with that, you just get warmongering about Russia, and fearmongering about China and Iran.

    Military spending and outdated weapons

    If I was writing our military strategy right now, the first thing I’d do would be to immediately slash the military budget by more than half. The latest target the Labour government have set is for 3% of GDP. Initially due by the end of the next parliament, but it seems that they now want to pull this forward by a handful of years. The current amount is something between 2.3% and 2.5%. I would cut that to around 1% of GDP to start with, and switch focus to be on defensive weapons rather than offensive. There’s no reason to have jet fighters, aircraft carriers or tanks in the present day, when we have such advanced automated weapons such as drones and ballistic missiles. It would presumably be extremely easy to destroy an aircraft carrier or a tank these days, so to me they come across as toys, for lack of a better term. I think it’s very clear that in 2026, the types of weapons bought by militaries is led by nostalgia as much as it is by the bloodlust of warmongering (overwhelmingly male) leaders.

    There’s very limited reason to have ground troops either, outside of perhaps special operatives like the SAS. Yes, it’s fun to run around shooting people in online FPS video games. But in real life, you’d logically just send in a drone, fire a guided missile, or use a sort of defensive missile system that automatically intercepts incoming fire. We can redeploy the vast majority of ground troops to do infinitely more useful jobs that aren’t going to leave them suffering with PTSD. Very much the opposite. Building renewable energy, EV buses and associated charging infrastructure. Maybe simply building homes. The types of people who end up as ground troops in the military are likely to be very capable of being trained as builders, mechanics or engineers for example. There are a lot of things they could be doing that would clearly benefit the country over what they’re doing now.

    I would extend this to all troops including those stationed in overseas military bases. I would close all of the overseas bases entirely. Our military should have no presence outside of the UK. Same with the US and every other nation. Unless you wanted to go down the route of having a continental army or global alliance, which I’m not opposed to. Perhaps that would be a good way to reduce costs in the next few years even further than what I’m envisioning. It could be a decent compromise between fully getting rid of the militaries, and continuing as we are now, for people who don’t feel comfortable (yet) with my kind of strategy. But I think doing it in a continental organisation would be difficult if you have strongly differing politics within the allied countries. It would make more sense to organise it based on ideology.

    Nuclear Weapons must go

    I would retire nuclear weapons. Our current nuclear submarines don’t work, and we require the USA’s permission to fire their nuclear warheads. Not that we should keep nuclear weapons even if they did work and we fully controlled them. But the current situation is particularly absurd.

    People will say that getting rid of our nuclear deterrent leaves us exposed. At the end of the day, any kind of nuclear war means the end of humanity as we know it anyway. And we wouldn’t be any more exposed than we are currently, even if the world wasn’t going to end in the process. In fact, we are about as exposed as it’s possible to be. To reiterate; we rely on a fascist dictatorship currently threatening to invade (or has already invaded) various countries, to use our broken nuclear weapons. We’re also not a part of the EU, so we’re not going to be a high priority for them to defend if it came to that. Anyone who is actually serious about national security should be talking about rejoining. And NATO is under threat due to Trump’s threats over Greenland too. I agree with Zack Polanski about NATO. In the current paradigm, I would look to replace it with a European or World alliance with countries who aren’t fascist. I think that’s only likely to be sufficient for a few years; so I wouldn’t seek to go in that direction personally. I’d want a global alliance specifically for true world peace and disarmament. But it would be preferable to the current situation at least.

    Emissions of war

    Militaries are never going to be sustainable. Just the idea of war powered by green energy is laughable. Destroying things in a sustainable way can never happen. This is a big reason why military emissions have never been included in national emission reduction targets, or talked about at the useless UN COPs. It is estimated that 5.5% of overall global emissions are attributable to militaries. But this crucially doesn’t include the emissions of warfare itself, or the emissions involved in clearing up the destruction and rebuilding. Nor does it include the long-term health implications of the lingering toxic chemicals remaining in the environment. Human and animal lives are just collateral damage.

    I think it’s safe to assume based on the data I was able to find that we’re probably looking at closer to 10% or more of global emissions. That’s a lot. And we can cut it.

    The warmongering neoliberal leaders we’ve been stuck with for decades knew that militaries will always be inherently polluting, and they didn’t care to do anything about it. We need a world where we focus only on looking after people and things, and stop putting so much energy into poisoning and destroying them.

    Pacifism is necessary

    In the end, a world in which militaries exist at all is a scenario where genuine climate action is practically impossible. When governments are spending significant percentages of GDP on deadly weapons, and they’re boasting about how that’s good for growth; while healthcare, education, housing and transport are all severely underfunded and struggling; where utilities are privatised, failing, and unaffordable; you know you’re dealing with a society with its priorities backwards. And I didn’t even mention climate action there. The sentence was already far too long. And it more importantly reflects the reality that the preservation of our world is practically always the last thing people think about.

    Pacifism is necessary in my view. Can you imagine a world in which we actually take the climate crisis seriously, and all countries genuinely work together, while we still have militaries? I can’t.

    Maybe you do think we can have militaries and deal with the climate in a serious way. Maybe you think that the issue is the size of the militaries. With smaller militaries, and a more friendly overall global perspective and desire for co-operation, we’ll be able to do it. Perhaps you’re right. I just think history suggests we would have done so by now if that was going to be the case.

    Feminism’s role

    There’s clearly a gendered element to this. We still live in a man’s world; and you don’t get equal and happy societies, world peace, or climate action without gender equality first. It’s the root of everything going wrong. Obviously, there are exceptions; but I would say in general that women are most often involved in nurturing and building things, and men are almost always the ones involved in destroying them.

    I think this tendency is visible in politics too, where in recent UK polling, we see the far-right Reform UK polling higher among men, and the left wing / centre-left Green Party polling higher among women. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. Degrowth communism and feminism are inseparable. We need a more compassionate, intelligent society in which we prioritise all the things neoliberalism has left to rot, while dismantling the one thing they care about building up; the armed forces.

    Things are already bad enough under the supposedly centrist Labour government; and the fascism of a potential Reform replacement will dramatically exascerbate the existing damage to our precious public services. More people on the left need to be willing to stand up and say the kinds of things I’ve outlined in this article; no matter how insane it makes us look in our extremely disingenuous, reactionary media. It doesn’t matter if they laugh, as long as the idea of pacifism is planted in their minds.

    I don’t necessarily think the Greens have to go as far as I’m going. I think you need a more extreme flank and a more mainstream friendly party like the Greens are right now. Roger Hallam is definitely right about that. But I do think Zack and co need to seriously challenge the bloated military budget as a starting point.

    There is a real threat of fascism materialising; with their toxic politics being amplified daily by a media that is clearly biased towards misinformation, hate, pollution, destruction and division. We can’t let the bullshit warmongering narrative go unchallenged, and we have to offer a totally different perspective. Let as many people as possible know that things don’t have to be this way. The military doesn’t have to keep growing. It can shrink and change. Or it can disappear entirely if we want.

    Similarly to how Labour are more scared of the Greens than Reform; they’re also more scared of peace than they are of war. Think about that.

  • UK Housing Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

    Mid-rise apartment building surrounded by green space and narrow pathway for walking. A very human-centric design, fit for the future.
    Housing fit for the future

    In my previous story about energy, I briefly touched on housing, because obviously it overlaps with energy in terms of solar roofs; and in terms of efficiency standards for heating and cooling etc. But now I’m going to go more in-depth on the type of housing policy I’d be pursuing. Obviously, this is extremely to the left of the UK establishment, and I’d probably get locked up at this point in authoritarian Britain if they find my blog. I think I’m joking about that anyway…

    Ban landlords (and second homes)

    The first and most urgent step the country desperately needs in my opinion is to ban private landlords. The rent is insanely high in the country and bears almost no relation to the wages working class people are earning. We need to get rid of private renting as a category. It’s not acceptable for rich people to be able to buy more than one home, and get their tenants to effectively pay the landord’s mortgage for them. It’s a disgusting practice and needs to end. The only renting that should be going on in the country (and world) is social renting.

    We must force all landlords to sell their properties to councils. My instinct would be to force them to do it for below market rate (for the first rental property where they’re not the owner-occupier). But perhaps we could have a sort of “housing amnesty”; during which time, landlords could come forward, and get a better deal or some other benefit. This would be for the first property though (and apply to all second / holiday homes as well). For any additional properties, councils would just seize them. I don’t think landlords deserve to get paid back for all the properties, considering all the rent that they’ve effectively stolen from their tenants over the years. The value of one property would be more than generous in my view.

    Nationalise the house builders

    Every time I see a story in the local news about a new proposed development; or even “sustainable” communities from centrist outlets like Everything Electric (formerly Fully Charged), I’m almost never impressed. Most of the time, I’m dismayed at the idiotic designs of the average new build estate. The homes are all unsustainable, old fashioned and car-dependent. Worst of all, they’re totally unaffordable for the vast majority of people.

    Some supposedly sustainable developments I’ve seen are still car-dependent; consisting of detached and semi-detached housing, with garages and built-in EV charging. Yes, that sounds good to most people on paper these days. But it’s really not and here’s why. It’s firstly not affordable, and creating new car-dependence at this point is insane. We need to be moving away from car ownership, EV or otherwise. The vast majority of these developments or new towns don’t have well thought through public transport plans. They’re often not built around a train station. The bus routes don’t exist or the service is poor. There’s usually no cycling infrastructure provision, and if there is, it’s patheticlly poor. You need centralised government planning to make sure this stuff is done well. And you need experts on sustainability, local ecosystems, public transport and active travel involved at every stage of the process. Ideally leading the process rather than just consulting. As far as I can tell, these things are practically never properly considered. The only development I can think of that did a decent job is Eddington, near Cambridge. And that is led I believe by Cambridge University, so you’d expect some smart planning there.

    These bad decisions are hard to fix once the houses have been built. It locks in incoherent design in the country for decades to come, which will make things so much harder for future governments than they need to be. Especially when they’ll be desperately trying to reduce emissions and car dependence by then.

    We also need to move away from large, detached houses. And not just because they’re expensive. They’re also very space inefficient obviously. We need to be building density. I’m lucky enough to have grown up in a detached home. Since 3 or 4 years old anyway. I can’t remember before that when apparently we lived in a semi-detached. If everyone in the country lived in a detached house, we’d run out of room. It’s an inherently unfair form of housing if you want an equal society. There are benefits of detached houses though. There’s no doubt about that. Certainly the biggest for me is having a garden. You have the ability to make your own space a haven for nature, which I really appreciate. The other benefit I feel in my own life is the ability to play music out loud without annoying your neighbours. The biggest benefit for most people would probably be having freehold over the land. Avoiding leasehold ownership of flats is definitely a huge plus. But I think these are all things that can apply in apartment buildings if we choose to make that change.

    As I wrote in my last article, we can build apartment buildings and terrace housing in harmony with nature. Without fences, with wild areas and generally an open feel that’s good for people and wildlife. Yes, we hear on Springwatch how “wildlife corridors” (aka making a hole in your fence) can help massively, and that’s true as long as you have nice neighbours who want to join you. But we can do so much better.

    We can also design high quality apartment buildings that have good sound insulation, allowing people to not disrupt their neighbours (or as much as possible). With regard to leasehold properties; it’s slightly more difficult. When you have council housing as a major part of the housing stock, you clearly don’t have that problem. But in terms of ownership, we can mandate collective freehold among the owners of the flats in a building. It’s never going to be the same as true freehold for apartment dwellers; but as long as we make sure the occupiers own the building and not a company or the original developers, then that’s a decent compromise.

    Even though I’ve personally never lived in a flat, I’ve always been fascinated by them. I used to enjoy going to visit my Grandparents who lived in a block of flats in the town centre when they downsized from the former family home. I thought it was so cool. The layout, the communal areas (even though there wasn’t much to speak of at that place), the intercom and remote front door unlocking. Even the underground car-park interested me. I guess you’re always going to be curious about a different way of living than what you’ve been used to your whole life. But it’s more than that. I’ve always been interested in small spaces. When I was young, I made a little clubhouse in a cupboard in one of the bedrooms. Aside from my own interests, I do believe that it’s the best and most sustainable way for all of us to live; and we can do some really innovative things to improve our quality of life that we haven’t really considered up until now. Well, except the rich. Funnily enough, the rich individualistic capitalists have the best communal facilities out there in their fancy apartment buildings or at luxury hotels they frequent around thr world. It’s time for everyone else to experience a bit of luxurious convenience in our lives too.

    Going back to cost; the reason why these developments overwhelmingly consist of detached and semi-detached houses is because these privately owned developers make more profit from that type of housing. Even the apartment buildings that are built are almost exclusively luxury ones. It’s no great secret.

    The only way to get affordable housing built is to nationalise the developers and bring in strict, expert led, ecologically considerate building regulations. That way, we can ensure that we’re building future-proof housing and infrastructure. Far from what we’re building right now, which is not fit for this century, and barely fit for the last one.

    Build a lot of council housing

    We have a housing crisis. We need to build a lot of housing. But we have to be intelligent about how we do it and where. I don’t think we should necessarily close the door on home ownership. At least not straight away. That’s for the long term degrowth communist plan. But for the moment, I’d like to see full focus on small, affordable, but still quality made council homes; with a small percentage of homes to buy. We have a lot of brownfield sites in this country we can be building on. According to the government, there are enough brownfield sites to build 1.5 million homes, and that half of these sites could be built on immediately. And not only that, I think it would be reasonable to assume that this figure of 1.5 million homes probably includes a lot of detached and semi-detached housing. So logically, you could build a lot more than that if you focused entirely on flats and terrace houses. And that’s building mid-rise buildings. No massive Hong-Kong style residential towers required. We should start there, and only go further out into the countryside when we’ve exhausted all other avenues.

    I say start with brownfield sites, but actually, we have a lot of empty homes in this country too (around 700,000!). And when you combine those with all of the former private lets that we’d be taking into council control, we’d be able to make a big dent into our housing problems very quickly. According to the Office for National Statistics, 19% of all UK households in 2024 were in the private rented sector. It has overtaken social renting at 17%, with owner occupiers at 65%. We should be aiming to eliminate private rentals within a few years, and increase the social rented sector to something like 50% in the same kind of timeframe.

    I think it’s definitely possible if we try. That’s fundamentally what’s holding us back. The only thing the neoliberal governments of recent times have been trying to do is increase house prices to encourage selfish homeowners to vote for them at the next election.

  • UK Energy Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

    I’m getting increasingly fed up of hearing so much bullshit in the media, and even from many on the left. So I’m going to lay out my personal energy strategy for this country (presumably can be applied to your country as well). So here’s what I’d do if I were Ed Miliband or equivalent useless dwebe from where you live.

    My kind of solar housing

    I’m having a hard time figuring out which would be the most important thing to start with. I think probably heavily subsidising the cost of solar installs for all properties and commercial, municipal buildings. And for those who live in apartments, I’d give them an equivalent subsidy off their energy bill. The energy bill subsidy would only need to be in operation for a year or so. Just until the other policies listed below had come into full effect.

    Next, I’d ban new nuclear energy (including the establishment’s new favourite bullshit talking point, SMRs (Small, Modular Reactors). This would be a priority because these things could cause huge headaches for a long time to come if they actually get built. So we need to make sure they don’t.

    I would also ban any kind of new coal (did they build that coal mine?) oil or gas development. We sometimes see oil powered grid backup sites, which are insanely polluting; and could obviously be replaced by grid battery storage. And we could do this very quickly. The only types of energy that I’d allow to be built would be Solar (domestic, municipal, commercial roofs, solar parks, farms etc); Wind (onshore and offshore as required, and as recommended by experts); and some other more niche renewables. For example: Geothermal, Tidal, Pumped Hydro and so on, where they would be more suitable than wind or solar. I don’t think they’d be used much, but there’s no reason to fully rule them out of the energy mix.

    The next policy would be to nationalise the National Grid (private company with misleading name), and the energy providers. Or I’d shut down all the energy providers except Ecotricity, and designate them as the UK’s sole nationalised energy provider.

    I would of course change the absurd policy that exists right now, which ties the cost of electricity to the cost of gas, so that we get actually affordable renewable energy. This is something Dale Vince constantly talks about, but is completely ignored by the media and our shitty establishment politicians. Including of course his beloved Labour Party. I’m sure they’ll get it together in another year or two Dale. Keep the faith…

    I would regulate that all new buildings be built to the highest environmental standards for insulation, energy generation and so on.

    I would ban new detached and semi-detached housing. Everything would be small apartment buildings and terrace housing. Everything much smaller and more energy efficient; built for people and nature to coexist in harmony. I don’t want to get any further into housing or other areas of policy though. I want to stick with specifically energy as much as possible.

    I would plan to have a mixture of domestic, municipal and large grid battery storage sites. Most homes won’t require it, but other types of buildings would benefit from battery backup.

    There would be a plan for the gradual phasing out of existing oil, gas and nuclear energy infrastructure. Gas would be last to go, because of the potential extended use of domestic gas boilers for heating. It’ll depend on the rollout of green gas, how hot it gets in summers, as to whether AC becomes a necessity; and if Heat Pumps start to make sense for mass adoption; which could happen with these policy changes. But this is an area where there are different potential paths to explore at a later date. There’s no real rush to settle on one technology. Especially when there’s so much else to do in the meantime.

    Wasn’t that nice? Considering what it’d be like living in a country with sane leadership that wants to solve problems.

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