Chris Till

  • UK Transport Strategy written by a Degrowth Communist

    Yellow city buses lined up in an aesthetically pleasing way.
    More and better public transport is key. Photo by Rodolfo Gaion on Pexels.com

    I wrote four years ago about why we need to ban private cars. I thought at the time that the climate situation was so severe that we had to take drastic sounding, emergency measures in order to protect our future. In the four years since, I think it’s fair to say that humanity has done next to nothing about the climate crisis (relatively speaking). The climate itself has been speeding ahead, getting hotter and hotter, moving further out of our control, and with extreme weather events continuing to ramp up in frequency and severity. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

    It’s hard to overstate the bleakness and absolute urgency of our current predicament. But with that said, we can’t just throw in the towel and give up. We have to never stop working to make the future better. We know it’s going to be pretty awful in future decades; but we can do everything in our power to make it as tolerable and liveable as possible. All of the methods and tools we have available to us for addressing the climate crisis also make our quality of life better too, so we might as well use them no matter what else happens. It’s just simple logic – something that’s been in short supply around the world in recent years, as what feels like the entire Earth has taken a fascist turn.

    Of all the topics I’m discussing in this series, I’ve definitely spent the most time talking about transport in the past. It’s a topic I have a lot of experience with and I feel most qualified to offer my opinions about. I’m a cyclist, transport user, and former motorcyclist and EV owner. I’m confident that I have some useful observations to share. And I think this is important; because you still, even today, see a reluctance of climate scientists and communicators to mention specific policies – the types of policies that are required if we’re to act as humanity in-line with the latest science. They still don’t want to upset people or cause controversy. Not that it should be controversial to offer policy ideas, but these people tend to be cowardly liberals. Some people need to step up and offer bold solutions that you’re not always going to hear, even from good politicians like Zack Polanski. I’d like to think I’m one of those, but we need many more otherwise we’re just going to be screaming into the void as humanity’s living conditions continue to deteriorate.

    Car ownership and EVs

    As I’ve previously stated quite a long time ago now, when I naively thought the world was as bad as it could get politically and environmentally; we must end car ownership. Or to be specific, in areas where people don’t live in the middle of nowhere. Especially in urban centres. At the very least, severely reducing the number of private cars in use should be common sense among our media and political class. Unfortunately, we’re a very long way from that being the case in the UK, (along with much of the western world). It may never happen with these people in charge, or anyone like them. It often feels like they’re deliberately trying to make the country and the world worse places to live. They seem to be ideologically committed to doing things people hate, and then they get mad when voters opt for someone authentic who pledges to actually serve the public. They call people who want to help “the extremists on the left”. The fact remains that car ownership is not compatible with a sustainable planet, despite the fact that EVs are much less bad than their fossil powered equivalents.

    There are many ways to go about this necessary transition away from car ownership, so I won’t redo this whole thing to death. The main points are that we need to provide people alternatives that are clearly better, and therefore attract ridership. I would rather avoid measures which inflame tensions in the population, such as increasing costs via taxes, or making driving more of a chore in terms of making drivers go the long way round. I’m not saying no to low traffic neighbourhoods or other modal filters. I just think we need to be smart about what we do and where. We can focus on implementing those in specific places where we know they’re likely to be well received; and then use those as examples for other places to follow. There are already good examples near where I live of bollards being put in place to block off rat-running. No one thinks of those as LTNs, but they’ve worked extremely well for at least 20 years already. There are also likely be places where you have parallel roads running for significant distances. In which case, you could look at banning cars from one of them and turning them into bike lanes. these are things that we can do quickly and affordably. They’re no-brainer policies.

    There will be a time limit for this type of non-confrontational strategy though as climate action gets more and more urgent in the public’s consciousness. We don’t know how long we have until that point. We just need to play it by ear until then. Being flexible in our approach will enable us to pivot to stronger measures quickly when necessary. These can include bans from city or town centres, more complex LTN systems, tax rises, and restrictions on EV sales in future years. Perhaps banning SUV models would be a good place to start if we want to stop our roads being turned back into gravel tracks due to the damage from heavy vehicles that councils don’t have the budget to fix. This would really hamper cycling for transport in rural areas. Of course, this is only a problem within our current neoliberal paradigm. We can easily fund councils properly in the 6th richest economy in the world. They just don’t want to. And that’s of course not to say we should fund councils in order to keep allowing people to drive SUVs and create more potholes. Rather to invest in things like social housing, cycling infrastructure, buses etc. I’ll get to those soon.

    Taxis

    Clearly, we will still need taxis in future. There are too many scenarios in which they are essential. It would be completely unreasonable to call for their withdrawal from service. But I do think there are plenty of common sense reforms we can look at. Firstly, I’d like to get rid of the private, big tech ride-hailing apps (Uber, Lyft and so on). All taxis will need to be regulated and licensed by the local authority. We could also look eventually at nationalising the taxi companies and integrating them all into one combined, affordable service that riders can trust with no worries. One optional app for all taxis, and easy contactless payments. Cash payments would continue to be offered as long as there remains demand for it. And I think only under a communist system would demand for cash ever really go away.

    Obviously if taxi companies are nationalised and merged, it would be easier to transition to EVs. But the reality is that it’s already happening, and the transition will be completed very soon. EVs are cheaper to run than fossil cars; and that’s especially the case when you drive a lot. Taxis drive more than anyone else except perhaps long-haul truck drivers, so they’re extremely aware of the savings that can be made on fuel and maintenance. And because these cars drive around all day long, all of them becoming EVs represents a significant reduction in pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.

    Self-driving

    As far as self-driving, it’s harder to comment since we simply don’t know what’s going to happen even in the next year or so, let alone beyond that. What I can say is that whatever the timeline for self-driving taxis; we must ensure that they’re nationalised, and the worst people in society aren’t profiting from their use as they threaten to now (Musk, Bezos etc). We need to make sure people aren’t surveilled unnecessarily when booking or riding. Most importantly, we need to make sure robotaxis are affordable and safe. At least as safe as the best human drivers. We have to be extremely thorough in how we allow them to be programmed to deal with crash situations. To ensure the cars take practical decisions that are purely in the interest of reducing injury. Not taking into account things like age, gender or race for example. This is a complicated problem that will require nuanced debate to come to a decision society can be content with. This type of nuanced, detail oriented debate is practically impossible in our current reactionary society. Our mainstream media would constantly break the disingenuity meter, if such a thing existed. With any luck, this won’t always remain the case and we will be able to have serious debates in this country and elsewhere.

    There’s also a conversation to be had around their use beyond the types of scenarios where taxis are used now – eg: for drunk people to get home, hospital trips, for people with certain disabilities, people carrying heavy or bulky items etc. There would surely be a temptation; especially if self-driving taxis continue to be owned and operated by billionaires and their corporations, for self-driving cars to replace buses, trains, trams, and even walking and cycling. We have to strongly resist that temptation as a society. It won’t end well if we allow them to take us down that route.

    Buses

    We clearly need to nationalise all of the bus companies in order to make up for lost time and investment over the last decade or so we could and should have been acting. Our situation is actually now so bad that we’re being overtaken by countries that the vast majority of people in this country wouldn’t expect. In this particular scheme in Dakar, the Senegalese government controls 30% of the project. They’re not even fully nationalising the buses. They’re doing public / private partnerships. I may not like PPPs; but at least these politicians aren’t just saying they’ll do it in future to score political points now. They’re doing it now. Because they actually want to reduce pollution and car ownership. They seem to care about the material conditions of their constituents, which is a foreign concept in this country. Only Jeremy Corbyn and Zack Polanski in recent times have been able to break through and made people believe that they care about them and their lives. And even then, there’s a long way to go in that regard. A lot of British voters or non-voters tar all politicians with the same broad brush. Part of that is laziness, but a lot of it is genuine hurt at being let down so many times in the past.

    Unlike the traditional establishment Labour and Tories in this country; who have forgotten who they’re supposed to be serving; these Senegalese politicians understand that it helps to do things people like if you want to get re-elected. That way, you don’t have to resort to lies and dirty tricks on the campaign trail.

    It goes without saying that I’d rather avoid any private involvement in our essential public services. But this shows that even under that sub-optimal situation, you can still improve things massively for people. And it really shows how fucked up Britain is. Public / private partnerships (PPPs) are as far as I’m aware, universally associated in this country with profiteering and falling standards within public services. Higher prices, less frequent services, older, more polluting, less efficient vehicles. Perhaps most notoriously, worse healthcare in the NHS; to briefly broaden out beyond the scope of this article.

    Private involvement always makes things inherently worse. But especially in the UK where there’s so much corruption. The Japanese railways are privatised, and they work well. That says a lot about how well Japanese society functions compared to ours.

    Trains

    Railway “nationalisation” has been gradually ongoing for years now, since the Tories were forced to bring franchises including LNER (formerly Virgin Trains East Coast) and Northern into public ownership. Labour pledged to go further and nationalise all of the train operating companies as their contracts with the government run out over the coming years. This doesn’t seem like a bad policy on the surface. But as usual under neoliberal governments, it doesn’t go remotely far enough. It doesn’t include the rolling stock leasing companies; which charge the TOCs for the use and maintenance of the trains they operate on the network. This is a ridiculous middle-man situation and these parasites should be immediately kicked out of the system. British Rail used to do it all in-house, and we can again. Speaking of British Rail, that brings me to the name and livery. I know these seem like trivial things, but I think it does matter. You want people to feel pride in their transport system and the vehicles that run on it. You want them to think it’s a desirable way for them to get around so they ditch their cars.

    With that said, we have to talk about Great British Railways – which to me comes across as a Trumpist, flag-shagging name for authoritarians. Hence why the Tories came up with it, and why Keir Starmer is happy to keep it. Have you seen that extremely tacky livery that they’re bringing in across the network? One of my favourite video games, Train Sim World, helped out with the announcement; using the in-game livery editor to bring the god awful concept to life. There was nothing wrong with British Rail. It was simple, classy and understated. It didn’t give off nationalistic overtones. It was comfortable with what it was. Just like the British people historically. That’s what’s supposed to make us special. We don’t feel the need to express a level of national pride that makes other countries around the world hate us; as has always been the case with the United States; and especially now. (I wrote that sentence before the illegal and disastrous Iran war by the way).

    I would return it to being called British Rail, and I’d reinstate all the same regional names and liveries as they were before the Tories ruined the system by underfunding and then privatising it. BR Blue, Network SouthEast, Intercity, Regional Railways etc. Not exclusively to piss of the right wing. I do really like those liveries. But it would be a nice added bonus. I’m not averse to a bit of childish pettiness if it annoys all the right people. Especially after the endless policy misery and societal decline we’ve had to endure since before I was born at their hands. And the fact that right wingers seem to think of politics as purely a game. While we suffer emotionally (from listening to their bullshit endlessly) and physically from the damage they inflict on all of us, and vulnerable communities especially; they don’t care at all. It’s all just a strategic game and nothing more as far as they’re concerned.

    As far as other substantive changes I’d make – I would obviously increase investment in the rail service as much as possible to bring it up to the standard it should be. It’s hard to put a figure on this. But given how much money has been wasted through privatisation, it wouldn’t be difficult to fund it how it always should have been and make up for lost time. I’d roll out battery trains on all branch lines in the country. The newly refurbished Class 230 former D-Stock Underground trains recently came into service, so it’s certainly doable. Whether via these types of refurbs, or with brand new, purpose built battery EV trains, I don’t really mind. Probably a mixture of both.

    I’d finally place OHLE (overhead line equipment for you non-train nerds) over the full length of the Midland Main Line and the Great Western Main Line; as well as any other mainlines which aren’t suitable for battery trains. I generally prefer battery trains where at all possible because I feel as if OHLE is inherently vulnerable to worsening extreme weather. It just doesn’t make sense to build infrastructure in 2026 that’s going to be vulnerable to heatwaves and storms if we can avoid it. But I think battery trains aren’t ready for the mainline yet. I suppose it might be possible to rapid charge at stations, and avoid building the overhead lines everywhere along the route. That would be something to look into if I had my way right now. I suppose the truth is that what I want isn’t going to happen any time soon. And therefore, by the time we actually get around to electrifying these mainlines, battery and charging tech for fast trains will likely be ready for that application. Until then though, we should increase our deployment rate for battery trains on branch lines. That’s definitely something that even the current do-nothing Labour government could easily make happen.

    As far as other parts of the network; I wouldn’t scrap HS2, because I think it’s come too far to go back on, but I would try and make changes to how it operates. I’d seek to change the design of the trains if at all possible to make them cheaper, slower (which has become topical since I initially wrote this); and less vulnerable from slight damage to the track. The higher the speed, the more danger there is from tiny track warps or other damage that could be exacerbated by higher forces being put through the rails. I would also seek to run more sleeper trains. Especially to Europe. We gave up on the idea of the Night Star sleeper through the Channel Tunnel before it was able to come into existence. That was a great idea and shouldn’t have been given up on so easily. They should have persevered.

    Cycling and Walking

    Just 2% of the UK transport budget goes on cycling and walking infrastructure improvement as of 2024; which was the most recent stat I was able to find. This is a truly pathetic amount given how much we’re lagging behind European countries. Here, 1 in 5 people cycle, wheel (use a kick scooter, or maybe wheelchair), or walk daily. Whereas in Europe it’s 1 in 4 on average. And presumably that means that some countries are seriously outperforming us by a much bigger margin. But the report linked to above by the IPPR charity doesn’t break it down by country. I also find it quite scary how they lump walking and wheeling in as well with those stats. That really paints a miserable picture of an inactive continent.

    The report also breaks down the spending per head for cycling and walking in the country. It equates to about £24 per head in London, and £10 per head across the rest of the country. It also states that £35 per head would be enough over the next decade to build a decent amount of infrastructure. I would frankly double it to at least £75 per head if we’re really going to be serious about this. I think talking about specific amounts at this point is almost pointless honestly. Cycling has been so underfunded and so deprioritised for so long, that all we need is a shit-ton of cash, and the desire for change. Neither of which we have right now.

    That report from 2024 sums everything up so well, that I don’t think I have much to add. I especially liked this one powerful quote from Maya Singer Hobbs, senior research fellow at IPPR:

    Cycling in the UK peaked 75 years ago. Since then, UK government policy has locked in car dependency, making people walk wary and cycle cautious, at the expense of our health, our environment and our economy.

    What more do you really need to say? I do see people cycling. Even outside the house, next to the speeding cars, forced onto the uneven and slow pavement, defiantly riding bikes in a country that actively hates people doing it. Speeding, distracted, drunk, or raging drivers; or any combination thereof will undoubtedly find you wherever you are, if you happen to be cycling in the UK in 2026. I honestly don’t think any of that is an exaggeration.

    I mentioned earlier a few simple things we can do. Turn parallel side roads into bike lanes, create more LTNs in carefully chosen locations, and talked about the potential for local car restrictions or bans. Things we can do with very little funding. Improving public transport is probably the biggest opportunity that could revive cycling for transport; because I don’t think the public in such a fascist country with such awful media would support cycling infrastructure first.

    Even in my ideal world, I don’t think you would be able to invest in cycling significantly until you encourage people out of their cars through other means first. Perhaps once trains and buses are nationalised and become legitimately affordable and desirable for people to use; they’ll become open to getting rid of their cars and be more willing to cycle on the quieter roads that come as a result. And if you combine that with the more simplistic cycling infrastructure I mentioned above, I think you could make big changes within a few years. But you definitely couldn’t go straight in with huge cycling infrastructure investment, and tear up roads to put in Dutch level infrastructure. That would cause riots in the country.

    At the end of the day, it comes down to a societal culture change. The number of new cyclists right now is so low. It’s been that way for decades, and it won’t fundamentally change until the cars aren’t there. Or at the very least they’re slower, smaller, less frequent, and driven by people not in fits of rage thanks to our broken neoliberal economic system.

    To be frank, it’s pretty shocking that we’re able to get around at all in this country, given the myriad of disastrous decisions that have been made over decades. That kind of gives me hope. The fact that even in this utter shit-show of a country, you can technically still get around, shows how much better it could be if we actually did something right. I was going to say at least it can’t get any worse. But now I’m starting to think about all the ways it could under a fascist Reform UK government. That can never be allowed to happen. or we’ll end up like the United States. I wouldn’t wish that fate on my worst enemy (who doesn’t already live in the United States).

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

    A gaming keyboard with a Playstation controller behind it.
    Photo by Brian J. Tromp 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.

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