📈 Responsibility without Power
✊ Solidarity with Rail Workers
📃 National Care Service (Scotland) Bill
🌅 Nuclear Sunset
🏊♂️ Scotland Can’t Swim
🥕 OCH: Food
Jim Cuthbert says the Scottish Spending Review casts a sombre light on the next 4 years & implies significant cuts in services as @scotgov walks into the Treasury's fiscal settlement trap as its jaws are closing.
@NikBiggerstaff notes over 40,000 @RMTunion members across the UK have downed tools in their biggest walkout in over 30 years. She says that if we believe in workers' rights, we must support their right to strike.
@Nick_Kempe has been looking at the new Bill with concern. It is clear even from a preliminary reading that this bill will not deliver the vision of an NCS for Scotland that we set out in Caring for All.
@thecommongreen reports a historic milestone in the long campaign against nuclear weapons & looks at where Scotland stands after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force last January.
Kaitlin Dryburgh is an experienced swim teacher worried that Scotland is the only UK country where swimming lessons aren't in the curriculum. With increased drownings each year, children in poverty are especially at risk.
Robin McAlpine says there was probably no more difficult or contentious section of the Common Home Plan to write than Food & that he's come to realise just how passionately people feel about food & how we produce it.
Scotland has the most concentrated pattern of land ownership in the developed world, with only 450 landowners owning half of the private land in the country, preventing new industries & stifling innovation.
This needs to change. 👇
Land is essential to Scotland’s response to the climate crisis, but the current approach is simply failing to deliver what Scotland needs.
This transition should benefit everyone, not a small number at the expense of the rest. To do this we need to diversify land ownership. /2
So what’s wrong with the way we do land now? 🤔
⛰ Hill farming
🦌 Deer stalking
🐦 Grouse shooting
…not to mention the undemocratic distribution of ownership & the impact this has on rural employment opportunities. But let’s focus on the direct environmental impacts first. /3
🏴 Finally, the Campaign Continues
🗣 Roe vs Wade & its implications
🏚 Tenants’ Rights & Rent Controls
🤔 A Different National Care Service
⛰ OCH: Land
@thecommongreen says it looks like we’re finally off into a new independence campaign, just shy of a decade after the previous one. He talks through Plans A, B & C & suggests it's going to be a busy 16 months!
@NikBiggerstaff talks about her worries after SCOTUS overturned Roe v Wade, which allowed constitutional protection for anyone seeking the termination of their pregnancy, & its implications in Scotland.
In the Common Home Plan we call for the use of regenerative agriculture to protect the natural environment.
But what does this actually mean? Take a look at this thread to find out. 🧵 /1
Agroecology is a term for what can be considered 'regenerative agriculture' – a system of farming in which the essential elements of the agricultural process (soil, water, pollinators) are managed so they regenerate themselves. /2
What is a District Heating System and why do I need it?
Yesterday we gave you problems. Today let’s look at the solution. 👇
A District Heating System is a method of distributing heat through a heating grid by creating a ring main carrying very hot water in highly insulated pipes fed by heat-generating plants at any point round its circumference & sub-grids to distribute hot water directly to homes. /1
Since all options for decarbonising heat are expensive & disruptive it is helpful to focus on the quality of the outcome.
It is the only future-proofed option since any new heat-generating technologies can simply be 'plugged in' to the ring main & feed the existing system. /2
In Scotland, 95% of our heating emits greenhouse gasses – the highest proportion in Europe. We need to change on a big scale & invest in a new heating system.
Here’s a thread to explain the challenges we’ll tackle this week. 🧵 /1
There are multiple ways of heating a house:
⚡️ Electricity
☀️ Solar thermal
🪨 Geothermal/heat recovery
⛰ Heat pumps
🏭 Industrial heat recovery
🗑 Waste incineration
🪵 Biomass
🔥 Biofuels
🅷 Hydrogen
But all of them present significant challenges…
/2
⚡️ Electricity
Would require all existing radiators & pipework to be removed/replaced, & double pressure on the grid which is esp challenging when usage in peak periods creates instability.
This is an expensive way to do it & could lead to a x3 increase in heating bills. /3
The Common Home Plan pulled together lots of our previous research, and other campaigners, activists, and researchers.
If you want to share particular pieces of policy with your MSP, MP or Cllr, without them having to go through the whole #GreenNewDeal, then take a look below 👇