EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, UK

        

 

Japan: Seeking higher ground

Tepco may apologise profusely, but the nuclear industry has lost the stranglehold it once had over the energy debate

It took 10 years to rebuild Kobe after the earthquake in 1995, but that timeframe is now looking optimistic for the reconstruction needed along the north-eastern coastline of Japan. Two months ago, the black wave of the tsunami engulfed 16 towns, 95,000 buildings, 23 railway stations, hundreds of miles of road, railway tracks and sea walls. Over 60,000 acres of agricultural land were contaminated. It will take three years just to clear the debris.

In spite of the enormity of the task ahead, there are signs that Japan is moving away from disaster management. It may not be, however, politics as usual. Hauled over the coals, not least by his own party, for the way his government dealt with the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), the embattled prime minister, Naoto Kan, has begun to make decisions which are political in nature. He ordered the temporary closure of Hamaoka – the nuclear plant which sits on an active faultline – while a new tsunami wall is built, and he has abandoned plans to build 14 reactors over the next 20 years, opting instead for a 20% increase in renewables.

This contrasts with the recommendation of Britain's climate change committee this week to increase reliance on nuclear energy. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is also considering a proposal that would cut the subsidy, through feed-in tariffs for generators of solar power. Disaster-stricken Japan is moving in the opposite direction, and it is brutally clear why. Over 80,000 people living within 12 miles of Fukushima have been forced out of their homes and it is far from clear when they will be able to return. Farmers have been forced to abandon their cows, or dump their milk. The compensation bill alone for the 50,000 families forced to leave the exclusion zone could be astronomical. Tepco may apologise deeply and profusely, but Japan's nuclear industry has lost the stranglehold it once had over the energy debate. There are no votes in trying to defend it now.

Stabilising Fukushima and building 70,000 temporary homes are immediate problems. But long-term answers will be just as significant. These are being sought by an ambitious team of philosophers and architects led by Makoto Iokibe, a former professor at Kobe university and someone determined not to repeat the same mistakes. Seeking higher ground for the new communities of the north-east is the least of their ideas. He talks of creative reconstruction – decentralising power away from Tokyo, a reconstruction tax, decreasing the wealth gap between urban and rural areas, creating a springboard for green energy. A truly radical approach will be resisted, but the debate itself has to be had.

The magical Mr Salmond

Beginning his second term as first minister the SNP leader is a political wizard, weaving the spell of national destiny

The end of Britain? Don't believe it, or at least don't believe it quite yet. True, a week after Scotland voted in a majority SNP government, the result looks no less extraordinary. Dozens of first-time MSPs were sworn in at Holyrood yesterday and three opposition parties are looking for new leaders. A referendum on independence of some sort, at some time, is a certainty. Scotland, and Britain, will be profoundly changed by what has happened. Alex Salmond, beginning his second term as Scotland's first minister, is nothing short of a political wizard, weaving the spell of national destiny. But none of this means the union with England is necessarily at its end, or that its future will even be the main issue to confront Scots over the new parliament's five-year term.

What matters in Scotland, as elsewhere in Britain, are the economy, the deficit and the provision of good public services. These are the things the majority SNP government must confront, now without the excuse of minority rule or a Labour predecessor to explain away any failings. Mr Salmond knows this. He will not be so silly as to stage an immediate constitutional fight he would lose – Scottish independence still being more popular in England than Scotland. He needs to show (as it is doubtful he can do) how the universal free provision of services such as university education is affordable without making them worse. He needs to reduce spending by 12% in real terms by 2015, while preparing for the much greater degree of fiscal autonomy now passing through Westminster in the Scotland bill. Most of all he needs to prove that the different path taken in Scotland can lead to a better, rather than a spendthrift and unproductive public sector. There is, Westminster's Scottish Affairs committee (Labour chaired and with a single SNP MP among its 11 members) concluded in a recent report, "a strong element of both a grievance and a dependency culture in Scottish politics". It noted that while state spending in Scotland shot up from £13.2bn in 2000 to £24.1bn in 2008-09, "it is not clear that an ever larger flow of money has resulted in better or more efficient spending".

None of this is to diminish Mr Salmond's brilliant political success. Although, in total, only a quarter of Scottish voters turned out for his party (and many might not do the same in a Westminster election), the result was a personal and party triumph. Mr Salmond was clearly Scotland's choice, winning 69 seats in all parts of the nation. He set out a positive vision, as Labour, obsessed with coalition government in London, did not. The Scottish Lib Dems have lost their role, while the Scottish Tories did not live up to what seemed the promise of their likable former leader. The SNP also succeeded in winning much middle class and business support. As Douglas Alexander points out in an interview in Progress magazine, Labour, north of the border, did not. Unionist parties can no longer take for granted the support of people who once feared nationalism would leave Scotland poorer and more isolated. Instead, Mr Salmond has succeeded in making the opposite case.

Even without an SNP government, Scotland would have remained on course to gain greater powers. The Scotland bill vastly extends Scotland's existing right to vary income tax rates and allows some borrowing rights. Mr Salmond wants more than this, including a possible cut in corporation tax. London politicians will have to judge their response carefully, as Mr Salmond himself did in the last parliament. He showed then that the SNP could run a competent administration and has been rewarded for it. For all the excitement of last week's election, Scotland's future will once again be decided by the slow, boring work of government. Only if they judge the SNP to have succeeded in that, should Scotland's voters be prepared to consider their national constitutional future.

In praise of… LTC Rolt

A journey marks the 60th anniversary of Dolgoch pulling the first passenger train on the newly reopened Talyllyn railway in 1951

On Saturday, a bright red tank engine called Dolgoch will pull a narrow-gauge passenger train from the Welsh coast at Tywyn up into the hills. The journey marks the 60th anniversary of Dolgoch pulling the first passenger train on the newly reopened Talyllyn railway in 1951. Run largely by volunteers, this was the world's first preserved railway, the start of a much loved and still growing global industry. Now lovingly restored, Dolgoch also headed the Talyllyn's very first train 145 years ago. This weekend's event, however, is also a celebration of those who made such enchanting journeys possible in an era of austerity when the preservation of an obscure and archaic railway in north Wales was, at best, an eccentric diversion from the need to build a modern postwar Britain. The driving force behind both the Talyllyn revival and the railway preservation movement was the engineer and writer Lionel Thomas Caswall Rolt. From the age of 16, LTC – Tom – Rolt worked with steam ploughs and locomotives. With a quiet passion for narrow boats, he founded the Inland Waterways Association; he was also joint founder of the Vintage Sports Car Club. He was the acclaimed biographer of IK Brunel. His love of the countryside was captured in a collection of lyrical essays, The Clouded Mirror, published in 1955. An early environmentalist, Rolt did much to make enthusiasm for a gentler and slower world popular. And he proved that you and I, with a sufficient head of enthusiasm and steam, could even run a railway.