Rachel Coxcoon

I'm sure there was a song about blokes like this when I was a kid...🎶"Those inadequate men in their flying machines... 🎶.. or something like that?

And a journal article, for anyone who's a real glutton for punishment....https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ad937f

89: Citizens assemble: participatory approaches for climate action — Local Zero After catching up on professional and personal news, Matt, Becky and Fraser welcome Rachel Coxcoon to the pod. Rachel, a former councillor and founder/director of Climate Guide, and is currently doing...

www.localzeropod.com/episodes/89-...

I talked about this issue in the Local Zero podcast last year with @matthannon.bsky.social, @fraserjfstewart.bsky.social & Rebecca Ford. The concept of 'Assemblies' is being co-opted by those who believe participation, per se, is always good. But if only the usual suspects turn up, nothing changes.

This is a glorified panel discussion, not a #ClimateAssembly! #CitizensAssemblies are widely understood to be in-depth processes, descriptively representative of the citizenry. When we co-opt these words for 'in-group' chats, they lose their impact, and with it, people's trust. (1)

Today marks one year since Labour won a landslide majority on just 34% of the vote.

No wonder trust in politics is so low when we keep getting governments that most people didn't choose.

There is an alternative: a proportional system where Parliament reflects how people voted. #PRnow

WTF is 'renewable gas'? Industrialist Farts?

'lately' doing a lot of heavy lifting there..... It's both heartening to see government ministers finally putting this back on the agenda and just so extremely frustrating that we have lost more than a decade since the binned Community Energy Strategy. Agreed - kudos to all who kept the faith!

The whole thing came off as "we basically got knocked up too early and are now properly pissed off with all the responsibilities we brought on ourselves, so we thought we'd just, you know, skip out on them". I'm sure their daughter will go far in life with 'adding up different currencies' skills...

Figure 1 of Nesta report on rebalancing levies on UK gas bills. Shows that households using gas heating who are NOT eligible for bill support could pay between £20 and £76 per year more on energy bills as a result of rebalancing. Households using non-gas heating will be £215 to £304 a year better off, depending on whether they are also eligible for bill support. Households heated by gas, but where the householder is eligible for bill support, will also be better off, from £29 to £83 per year.

Really useful new report from @nestauk.bsky.social on the impacts of rebalancing the costs of Great British Energy Scheme and supplier ECO targets by moving the levies off electricity and onto gas; media.nesta.org.uk/documents/Ho...

TLDR: Only well-off households using gas pay more, by £20-£76pa

Sky News headline with a picture of the UK Chancellor and the headline ‘Where is Rachel Reeves getting her bus money’?

I dunno, maybe she nicked it off one of the younger kids at lunch break?

“…and why can’t I hear the birds singing?”

Anybody who works on educating the public about climate change, here is a fantastic new resource from @roostweather.bsky.social .

@carbonliteracy.bsky.social , this could be a really nice exploratory tool for those training councillors?

'Car Brain' - 1920's style!

@ianwalker.bsky.social @rantyhighwayman.bsky.social @brenttoderian.bsky.social @modacitylife.com

Yes but when manly men are scared that they won’t have manly-man jobs that will ensure we all know what very manly men they are, everyone else has to bend the entire system to accommodate this need.

🧵 REVEALED: Community energy projects in Scotland are generating 100x more local wealth than privately-owned wind farms.

But just 0.5% of the renewable power is community-owned. Why this staggering imbalance?

Coalition gov. set up the Urban Community Energy Fund (which I was once lead administrator for!) & its rural equivalent. Both sadly underfunded, cut before their time. Both proved the basic principle that funding the risky development stage unlocks community energy success. Both need reviving!

So maxing renewables makes security sense, and would make massive social economic difference too if community/municipal/decentralised ownership structures were prioritised. I personally think genuine community stake in grid has to also be part of that. Not sure whether Ofgem would agree!

So that leaves us looking for sources that are more secure. Renewables are the cheapest per unit right now. Can deliver most demand. Above about 70% national demand, price per unit really jumps. So nuclear likely to be the remainder (some fuel import issue there too, looking at where uranium is...)

Grid needs upgrading anyway. Absent any climate concern, North Sea gas & oil are in terminal decline anyway, so we need new sources. We could replace with imported oil & gas (if emissions were not a problem), but increasing concern over national security and price vulnerability mean that's not wise.

It doesn't really. ~ 83% of UK popn. lives in urban areas. Getting power from generator to consumer has & will always be the issue. Nuclear is located coastally (for cooling). Wind resource is higher/exposed land/offshore. Solar more southern, more distributed. None perfectly aligned with demand.

This is symptomatic of the wider problem that music education has been destroyed by successive govts. What teen would apply for this degree who’s never benefitted from immersion in musical education generally?

Amen to that!

The word 'rich' is just hopelessly vague. Depending on who is using it, it can mean anything from "my neighbour who earns £70k and has a nice car" to "that Duke who owns half of Scotland." Which type of 'rich' person does your message mean when you say 'stealing all your money?

Yeah, interesting that the author only mentions countries which have English as an official language in this. Feels to me like the best way to protect any country from the toxic influence of US religious fundamentalists is to be non-English speaking. Maybe I should move to Finland....

When we let all the mad Puritans piss off to America 400 years ago, we should've encouraged them to develop a new language. I swear the only reason this stuff is happening in the UK is that US religious nutters don't speak any other languages so they'll always meddle first in English-speaking laws.

Hallucinations, Errors, and Dreams On why modern AI systems produce false outputs and what there is to be done about it

Because we still believe computers ‘calculate’, whereas LLMs ‘predict’. Often accurate enough to be useful, but seldom entirely correct. The difference is sometimes wild enough to be an alternate reality? Useful article here.. medium.com/@colin.frase...

I can't help but think it would sound even better if sung by The Levellers...

...Quite the difference to November, when it spilled over several times! Managing these extremes is something I fear a lot of UK cities are just not properly prepared for. #climatechange #adaptation #flooding

I'm seeing the effect of this on my daily commute. The bed of the Wye in Hereford is visible in places, you could walk across it in wellies right now. This time last year, the water level was at least 3 feet higher... #drought