UK resilience in uncertain times

[Class 317]

Given we are in increasingly uncertain times with increasing geopolitical threats from Russia, Iran and elsewhere coupled with increasingly unpredictable weather what do people think the UK should do to build better resilience.

To start the conversation I suggest the following:
- Increase homegrown food supplies.
- Stockpile key materials including metal ores, rare earths.
- Require the utilities to stockpile spare parts and equipment you to and including things like transformers.
- Survey buildings and other structures for emergency use.

 

[xdbjacx]

Decouple our military and intelligence operations as quickly as possible from states whose actions systematically undermine our resilience, e.g. by needlessly sparking conflict in the Middle East, deliberately disrupting global supply chains, or by openly supporting the sinister machinations of the Russian regime.

 

[AlterEgo]

Encourage young people to join some form of uniformed youth organisation. The Scouts and cadet forces are great for building more resilient young people for example by exposing them to responsibility and unique experiences.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Plan to build more nuclear power stations and build domestic skills regarding them, as well as renewals, and accelerate moves away from fossil fuels in all forms, be that home heating, rail or road towards electricity.

 

[sor]

And loosen planning news in pursuit of the same. Sorry, that power station / mobile phone mast / reservoir is part of our resilience plan, so it's going ahead anyway and we'll pass new laws so you can't tie it up in legal challenges for 30 years

 

[The exile]

How about “there is such a thing as society - and what’s more, it comes first”.

 

[Class 317]

The suggestions that people should be more resilient and a sense of society are good but they only go so far in creating a resilient country.

Infrastructure and key facilities need to be resilient too.

 

[The exile]

The suggestions that people should be more resilient and a sense of society are good but they only go so far in creating a resilient country.

Infrastructure and key facilities need to be resilient too.

Absolutely, but that’s outside the (immediate) control of any one individual and takes a bit longer to achieve. And, tbh, is going to be very hard to achieve while people are only thinking of their own short term comfort.

 

[cb a1]

In broad terms, resilience is a trade-off with efficiency / convenience.
I saw a good idiom about convenience on Bluesky the other day. "Convenience is like a ratchet. Easily accepted in one direction, huge resistance in the other."
How far do we need to go? At the extreme end, you have preppers. Once you get past the guns, their aim is for no supply chain dependency.
Next tier could be to look at remote communities where it is very expensive to connect them to grid and supply networks. For energy, they are bypassing expensive grid infra with distributed community solar, wind and battery solutions for energy independence. Power stations, be it nuclear, fossil fuel, hydro dams, etc. are highly vulnerable nodes (depending on the nature of the threat). A distributed system reduces node dependency, but requires effort by many more individuals to fund and maintain their system. We also need to have a discussion about household occupancy. 10 people in 10 houses needs a lot more energy than 10 people in 1 house.
Food can allow a low level of specialism if coordinated, within limits of seasonal variation. Are you willing to live without avocado toast for breakfast , but seriously we are now used to having pretty much anything we want want any time of the year. However, with short supply chains, it allows for Joe to specialise in chickens and Maud to specialise in sheep and Angus to specialise in oats.

 

[Class 317]

In broad terms, resilience is a trade-off with efficiency / convenience.
I saw a good idiom about convenience on Bluesky the other day. "Convenience is like a ratchet. Easily accepted in one direction, huge resistance in the other."
How far do we need to go? At the extreme end, you have preppers. Once you get past the guns, their aim is for no supply chain dependency.
Next tier could be to look at remote communities where it is very expensive to connect them to grid and supply networks. For energy, they are bypassing expensive grid infra with distributed community solar, wind and battery solutions for energy independence. Power stations, be it nuclear, fossil fuel, hydro dams, etc. are highly vulnerable nodes (depending on the nature of the threat). A distributed system reduces node dependency, but requires effort by many more individuals to fund and maintain their system. We also need to have a discussion about household occupancy. 10 people in 10 houses needs a lot more energy than 10 people in 1 house.
Food can allow a low level of specialism if coordinated, within limits of seasonal variation. Are you willing to live without avocado toast for breakfast , but seriously we are now used to having pretty much anything we want want any time of the year. However, with short supply chains, it allows for Joe to specialise in chickens and Maud to specialise in sheep and Angus to specialise in oats.

All good points but increasing food self sufficiency does not necessarily mean not importing food just having enough food to feed the nation if imports are difficult by not exporting the surplus of other food stuff.

You are absolutely right on power stations etc. The balance has to be made between cost and resilience. Distribution of renewables over wide areas helps etc

They are also key manufacturing capabilities that need to be taken back to being made locally in the UK for critical industries, defence, medical, agriculture etc.

Ports are another example where we rely on a limited number of larger ports for most trade. What's the back up if they were to become unusable for a period of time considering we rely on so much imported stuff for our economy?

 

[AlterEgo]

What's the plan on making the UK self sufficient on food then? A state of affairs not seen since the Napoleonic Wars.

 

[Class 317]

What's the plan on making the UK self sufficient on food then? A state of affairs not seen since the Napoleonic Wars.

It's a case of making use less reliance on imports. Our food self sufficiency has been dropping steadily over the last couple of decades so reversing this is the key rather than trying to become 100% self sufficient.

Don't forget also it's it just food availability it making sure it's being eaten in the right qtys and not going to waste.

 

[greatkingrat]

Encourage young people to join some form of uniformed youth organisation. The Scouts and cadet forces are great for building more resilient young people for example by exposing them to responsibility and unique experiences.

It's not that young people don't want to join such organisations, more that there is a lack of people willing or able to volunteer to lead.

 

[AndrewE]

It's not that young people don't want to join such organisations, more that there is a lack of people willing or able to volunteer to lead.

Good point.
There was some discussion recently about volunteer groups (working parties) as a way for NEETS to get experience of regular attendance, group achievement and hence "job" satisfaction and it struck me that there is an enormous amount of work needing doing (one example) just to block up drainage channels on the peat moors. I guess rolling out any volunteer thing on a wider scale brings big overheads like admin, accommodation and Safeguarding, especially in remote areas. National Service in the forces wouldn't work as they seem to be unable to get to grips with the Safeguarding bit...
Conservation work would be an easy win, as there is no body of workers who previously did the work but who have been casualised and driven down onto minimum wages. Unlike if you turned the potential forced labour into a "scab" workforce doing stuff that should have been a local authority responsibility with proper paid workers doing it.

 

[Darandio]

It's a case of making use less reliance on imports. Our food self sufficiency has been dropping steadily over the last couple of decades so reversing this is the key rather than trying to become 100% self sufficient.

Well yes but how do we do it. It's already been asked, what's the plan?

 

[cb a1]

Define self-sufficient in food (as well as many other things). Take, for example, meat. There is land in the UK that is frankly only fit for grass and thus meat and dairy products (esp. if we started eating goat and goat products). Conversely, the rough ratio is that you need 10kg of animal feed to create 1kg of meat. Where that animal feed is food that humans can eat, then you get a lot more bang for your kg of food, feeding it to humans rather than animals.

Go back in time and we did all of this pretty damn efficiently, but then we made the transport costs way cheaper.

My great-grandfather had a dairy in Liverpool in Victorian times. The cow(s) lived in the dairy and large volumes of grass and hay were transported to the cow. No-one had refrigeration and so you need the milk to be generated close (in time) to where the consumers were. As transport times (and costs) reduced, the cows were moved to fields and comparatively small volumes of milk were now moved to the cities.
This is an example of how supply chains change over time in response to changing transport costs / times. That's a very simple two-step supply chain which simply moved the intermediary.

I used to live in Dundee, former home of jute, jam and journalism. An elderly lady who lived across from me, was actually born in India when the jute industry moved there due to changes in transport costs.

This is a story from the Guardian 13 years ago, about how many miles are involved in making a tennis ball for Wimbledon - https://www.theguardian.com/environ.../26/wimbledon-tennis-balls-miles-centre-court. It's an illustration of how amazingly efficient (and cheap) we have made the global transport trade but also how fragile our world now is. Take out one major shipping route (e.g. Suez or Panama Canal) and costs rise significantly.