The sun also rises

Jesse:

... the governance of Britain which as we have said is semi-feudal, ruled by a few corporations and the wealthy elite in partnership with essentially a one party government.This will go a long way in helping to understand the "British disease" of economic stagnation. You start by crippling the middle class through debt indebtedness to a corporate elite.

So sorry, an error in transcription: for Britain and British, I should have written Japan and Japanese. Gomen nasai. But an understandable mistake, you may think. How much difference will a regime change in the UK make? The inclusion of Ken "fags and Bilberberg" Clarke on the Opposition team seems a deadly marker to me.

Returning to our muttons... Jesse has been focusing on the Land of the Rising Sun recently. He's pointed out that an ageing demographic structure is a major brake on the economy, especially with tight controls on immigration (though we in the UK may have have drawn the wrong conclusion from this); and today he looks at how the Japanese have organised themselves to reduce energy costs and oil dependency.

Especially the car: "I have long thought of cars as vampires sucking the economic life out of every household in the US. And the risk of death and serious injury from car accidents is about half what it is in the US (although the statistics may not be directly comparable)." And considered from a coldly economic point of view, think of the enormous overall costs of those deaths; and the possibly far greater costs of medical care and other support for the vast and growing army of injured and permanently disabled.

It's well worth reading the whole letter from Jesse's friend in Japan - not just about energy, but preventive healthcare etc. They walk to McDonald's - not waddle. They're organising themselves; so can we.