This is my remedy for political failure - based on a moment where I myself failed

Nothing brings to mind the awful issues we're facing at the moment more than the disconnect between this intense September heatwave and the fact that both Labour and Tories are "rowing back from their climate pledges" while we've had more wildfires and flooding than ever in human memory.

The absurdity of politicians rowing away from their responsibilities couldn't be starker -

But before I get to my tonic for all this - I have had this memory resurfacing recently. It was when I was probably about 9 or 10 - and we had this choir teacher called Miss McCardle, she played the piano and was very strict. She told me I was a terrible singer, I "sang in my boots."

Overall she was pretty much like that to everyone, a bit of a tyrant, always shouting and ruling us through fear and intimidation and so one day we all hatched a plan. When she came in, we would stage a riot, we would all group up and take control of the classroom.

This was Northern Ireland in the mid 80's probably - a pretty posh little prep school, a sort of extreme place…

Low and behold the hour came, and a little chap called Henry Sinclair jumped up on the desk and shrieked: "Come on everyone, let's get Miss McCardle".

It was the rallying cry, we'd all agreed on the plan, and yet the rest of the class just sat there in silence. I was among them.

Miss McCardle rose from the piano, in absolute control and took Henry out of the class. His mum was the school secretary and he was for it.

The whole experience was pretty shameful on the rest of us, but it was one of those moments you remember. And you vow to yourself, if that happens again, I will rise to the challenge. And so here we are, years later.

So here's our plan:

We have written before about the 5 new streets we're going to turn into distributed Power Stations - 

Is it going to be hard work? 

Yes it is!

Do we know how smooth it will all be?

No, making change like this is an act of faith…

When the hour comes, will we rise to it?

Yes we will - we will go and get Miss McCardle.

Our plan is to launch a new crowdfunder, to give us the time to go and find these streets, make sure they're all viable, make sure that is helping people from diverse situations - demonstrating not just solar panels and retrofit - but the power people feel when they come together to take things into their own hands…

We will film everything, even teach these communities to film their stories -  edit it - make a damn fine feature documentary, influence the public discourse in a way that gives these politicians no place to hide…

and then make sure that things change like they need to.

We have had almost 50 streets write to us - and ask to be included, and we're going through all these applications

My question is whether you will back us in this new phase? We don't have the crowdfund live yet - but it soon will be - let us know - are you in?

If you want to find out more about our current activities and support our crowdfunder click here :-)