The EAN directors have only created those legal and financial structures that helped the working groups within the EAN to develop. Classic case: Treebourne, rightly highlighted in this paper as a success, was able to secure large grants and funds, and to manage its finances, because of the legal and financial infrastructure provided for it by the directors. So the claim that the EAN directors hampered local eco-action is simply unfounded and represents a harmful distortion of the history of the EAN. A certain amount of bureaucracy is inevitable in a CIC, but the operating procedures set up by the EAN directors allowed working groups like Treebourne to focus purely on creating projects and fundraising for them without having to worry about the basic bureaucratic stuff.

As one of the "remaining EAN directors" myself, the allegation that the directors played a role in hampering the development of local eco-actions is very misleading and disingenuous. Indeed, it's the complete opposite of the truth. Pauline's EcoEd2030 organisation was actively enabled by the EAN directors and when EcoEd2030 developed its own governance structures and financial resources, the EAN CIC made a very generous cash donation to enable EcoEd2030 to set up its banking facilities.

This depends on the existence of flourishing local food networks that make such organic food available and affordable. Such networks also need protection from predatory food producers and suppliers that can undercut local food systems in all sorts of way (eg. giant supermarket chains pushing down the prices they pay for local produce through their superior buying power).

This is a good enough reason for introducing a Universal Basic Income. Starting/joining new businesses require a degree of entrepreneurship that is impossible if there is any risk of falling into deprivation and poverty during the process.

This is just plain wrong. All the Universal Basic Income pilots I know of show that UBI actually incentivise participation in economic activity. Because people can now get their basic needs met, they are freed up to engage in activities that increase their economic status, such as setting up their own businesses or learning new skills.

So why was the unified public rail system privatised in the first place? Fragmentation was the direct result of privatisation!

Is this the first step on the road to full nationalisation of rail again? Indeed, hard to see much difference between contracts imposed on private firms by a central public body as much different from a nationalised service. Only real difference is that the private companies involved can extract profit from revenues raised from the services they are obliged to offer. In a fully nationalised service there would be no profit extracted out of the rail system and probably out of the public sector altogether, only surplus revenue reinvested in the railways or extracted out of the railways into the central government's treasury for expenditure elsewhere across government. Question: will Great British Railways be setting the profit margin for the rail companies, or will it simply be setting the overall budgets for the companies to operate within and then it's up to those companies to work out how much profit it can extract within that budget?