okay Sunny, you're not an oik but you're still a sociopath

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Correction 08-02-12: Corrected "pedagogy" to "demagogy" in 1st para. Idiot. 

When I read this reply from Sunny to my earlier crowing I had a moment of genuine contrition because he's done some really good work at Liberal Conspiracy building a forum for thinking people and there's some really great stuff posted there. Then I re-read Martin Robbins' original tweet and I thought, "No, fuck it. Martin's about as right as anyone can be." You see, Sunny is happy to purse the truth and to share it with the world as long as it furthers his agenda to put the Labour party back in power. Sunny's a Labour fanboi. He sucks on the teat of social democrat demagogy like a parched camel after two months in the desert. Its his oxygen. And that's why he, like all partisan hacks, is a part of the problem. He's fundamentally disinterested in the entirety of the gritty truth behind any issue. 

Lets dig a little deeper into the issue. Martin's tweet was responding to this one of Sunny's:

@sunny_hundal: First NHS hospital gets privatised - article avoids mentioning company's links to Tories bit.ly/w3OLuL

And yes, the article avoids mentioning the link to Tories' pockets, which have been well established and are broadly appreciated by anyone who has the time and wants to take an interest. That isn't news. We all know the Tories are the Nasty Party, in bed with big business and happy to use their positions of enormous responsibility to throw the interests of the UK population on the bonfire in order to profit personally. I'm happy to read about this sort of thing, despite being already too familiar with it because every time I read something like this it fuels the fire inside me. It drives me to seek justice and to challenge the pricks responsible wherever I find them. The thing is, I'm equally happy to crow about Martin's post because Labour did a hell of a lot to advance NHS privatisation before the Tory's picked up the baton and ran with it. I can't be arsed to research links to it now, my name's not Google. Start with PFI and George Monbiot's book 'Captive State'.

For a Labour slut like Sunny to point and shout at the Tories for doing the same is rank, steaming hypocrisy. That is the opposite of evidence-based politics and it should be scorned for the malignant sociopathy it enables and propagates. Worse still, its the sort of shameless, history-denying points-scoring crap that keeps the endless two-party system in the UK going. Coalition government? What coalition government? All I see are a pack of Tory cunts and neoliberal, populist slags. Split these scum however you want because I don't see a choice between the lesser of two evils as any choice at all. A plague on BOTH your houses.  

And an especially rich, florid 'Fuck You' to you, Sunny.

brief Fisk on Tory Lord electoral propaganda

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My target is this Torygraph article on Lords reform containing the following para:

"One senior Conservative source in the Lords said of the draft [Lords reform] Bill: “This is fantasy land. It’s a joke. How can you have PR for the country rejected in the AV referendum and then bring in PR for the Lords. The whole thing is utterly ridiculous.”"

Firstly, PR wasn't even an option in the AV referendum. This is certainly one of the reasons why the Yes vote was so low.

Secondly, the referendum vote wasn't a democratic rejection of anything.

The only thing that's ridiculous here is UK "democracy".

Rule Britannia - Teenage Riot

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UK democracy

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I try to avoid reading or even thinking about UK politics, being no longer a resident of that sordid plutocracy. However, I encountered this article on electoral finance via Twatter and the urge to rant got the better of me:

Dude, there's a hell of a lot more wrong with UK 'democracy' than just the funding environment. And why is it that the best most reformers can dream of achieving in a Western country in the 21st century is the distant promise of proportional representation? Why have developments in democracy not progressed since the early 20th century? What about Direct Democracy? Why does 38% of eligible voters constitute a majority? What about compulsory voting? What about an elected second house, FFS!!!! What about giving the power to vote on every issue back to the people who should hold it?

The idea of elected representatives being the only viable form of government was accurately criticised as "elective dictatorship" by Lord Hailsham 35 years ago. Why has this issue not been considered further since then? The answer is that the UK is a pseudodemocracy where power is concentrated in the hands of professional politicians and their backers. The electorate remain ambivalent to this because much of the mainstream media conducts itself according to the propaganda model made famous by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.

sheer bloody genius

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SW election results

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The Green Party beat the ruling party into 5th place! Shame about the filthy UKIP's success though. What the fuck point is there voting for an anti-EU party in European elections? I can't begin to voice my disgust at being beaten by these wankers, let alone the dirty Tories.

Conservative 468,742
UKIP 341,845
Liberal Democrat 255,253
GREEN 144,179
Labour 118,716
BNP 60,889
Pensioners 37,785
English Democrat 25,313
Christians 21,329
Mebyon Kernow 14,922
Socialist Labour 10,033
Misc 39,702 (6 other groups mostly around 7,000)

UK democracy is dead

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From the synopsis of The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby:

"[T]he author argues that anti-rational government is not the product of a Machiavellian plot by “Washington” but is the inevitable result of “an overarching crisis of memory and knowledge” that has left many ordinary citizens and their elected representatives without the intellectual tools needed for sound public decision-making."

This applies equally well to the UK. If the electorate cannot make sound public decisions then democratic elections become dysfunctional. Elected governments become plutocracies, which then entrench themselves and install policies that suppress any attempt to enact reform and reinforce the antidemocratic cycle; typically through demagoguery and assaults upon the professional classes, who are the only people with the intellect to perceive the threat and challenge it.

Sound familiar? It ought to.

libel tourism in the UK and Obama's dodgy Syrian friend

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Cool article from Wikileaks that points out- surprise, surprise- that UK libel law is shit and a threat to freedom of speech, good investigative journalism and democracy, generally.

carbon trading won't stop climate change

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This New Scientist article is just bloody brilliant!

"All these methods of pricing carbon permit the creation of a carbon market that will allow us to pollute beyond a catastrophic tipping point. In other words, they require us to put a price on the final "killing" tonne of CO₂ which, once emitted, tips the balance and triggers runaway global warming. How can we set such a price? It's like saying, how much is civilisation worth? Or, if you needed a camel to cross a desert alive, what is a fair value for the straw that breaks its back?"

"Even if you could price the killing tonne, it is a transaction that should never be allowed. Economics becomes redundant if it can rationalise an exchange that sells the future of humankind."

"Governments are there to compensate for market failure but seem to have a blind spot about carbon markets. They could counteract the impact of low carbon prices by spending on renewable energy as part of their economic stimulus packages, yet they have not done so. The UK, for example, has spent nearly 20 per cent of its GDP to prop up the financial sector, but just 0.0083 per cent in new money on green economic stimulus."

Green Stimulus or Simulus?

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Report out a few days ago from Greenpeace and the New Economics Foundation. Pertinent statistics include:

• New and additional green spending included in the green stimulus package of the government’s Pre-Budget Report (PBR) is astonishingly small compared to other recent spending commitments, at just 0.6% of the UK’s £20bn recovery plan. This key element makes up just 0.0083% of UK GDP, but in the wake of the banking crisis nearly 20% of UK GDP has been provided to support the financial sector.

• New and additional green measures could save just 0.128 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (MtCO2) per year from the atmosphere and will only delay the accumulation of UK carbon emissions by six and a half hours by the end of 2011.

• Just over £100m is being allocated to spending that is genuinely new and additional; this is a fraction – less than 13% – of the annual bonus package given to staff at the failed Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) which is estimated at approximately £775m. £100m represents just 0.0083% of UK GDP. Estimates for necessary new annual spending on environmental economic stimulus and transformation range from £11bn to £50bn.

• Figures from HSBC and the IMF indicate that among the major economies, the greater the proportion of GDP spent on bailing out banks coincides with a lower proportion spent on green stimuli.
  

• Several of the government’s measures are, in fact, in conflict with the environmental stimulus. By comparison with the new and additional spending of the PBR’s green stimulus, £2.3bn – around 22 times – has been put aside to assist the car industry. If spent on energy efficiency measures this would save about 3 MtCO2 annually.

• £27m has been put aside specifically for development of a new Land Rover vehicle, the Land Rover Group are one of the most climate-unfriendly manufacturers in Europe. The potential CO2 savings of the proposed vehicle have not been specified. This is not encouraging, particularly given that this financial support is likely to delay a shift to greater use of public transport and that historically much of the gain in efficiency in vehicles has been negatively counter-balanced through a gain in weight of the vehicle concerned.

• There has been a further commitment to spend on building 520 lane miles of road expansion. Research indicates that the provision of new lanes leads to relative increases of between 30 and 50% in the number of vehicle miles travelled on that road – in other words, more car use. This happens due to the phenomenon known as induced traffic: building new roads merely encourages more traffic.

There's another report from Greenpeace detailing how investment in an energy-efficiency programme to insulate public buildings and private homes could generate 55,000 jobs, reduce expenditure on energy consumption and bills and reduce carbon emissions.


What's the betting the government fails utterly to address any of these points?

missing the point

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Steve Richards dithers a bit but ultimately makes his point:

"Heathrow will now be a running story, sapping ministerial energy and attention. That is why the whole affair is misjudged. It is not as if the rest of Britain's transport problems are resolved and we have the luxury of moving on. The railways remain an overpriced and chaotic disgrace. Over Christmas we took a sleeper from Euston to Fort William in Scotland. We were kicked out at 3am in Edinburgh because the train was defective. On the way back there was chaos from Glasgow station with Scotrail officials having no idea what Virgin trains were doing. The fragmented monopolies are not delivering. Sorting out the railways is where the intense ministerial focus should be, for economic reasons as well as quality of life ones."

Whereas the UK government (condom machine in vatican) has missed the important details almost completely. Because they are shit.

I love the idea of sleeper trains. I wish they ran to more locations. I remember travelling to Southern Germany when I was young. It was magic. Sleeping in bunks and watching the landscape roll past. Like I said: Magic.

energy insight

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Greenpeace published a review they commissioned on the 2020 renewable generation target. Its got some interesting bits, chief among which is that we won't be experiencing blackouts any time soon, despite what the tabloids say. What it does propose is the eminently sensible idea of a long-range plan for building renewable capacity to replace retiring generation and the establishment of just exactly what comprises "security of supply".

as previously observed, nuclear generation sucks big, floppy donkey dicks

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Merrick rules:

"No British nuclear power station has ever been built to budget. The last one, Sizewell B, cost more than twice the estimate. The first of the new generation stations, Olkiluoto in Finland, found itself more than a billion pounds over budget and two years behind schedule at only two and a half years into construction.

Even with the taxpayer coughing up for a load of British Energy's debts, it couldn't stay afloat on its own. In 2002, just six years after privatisation, the government bailed it out with over £5bn of taxpayer's money.

These days, our government assures us that the owners will pay for all the decommissioning. They are lying. In order to get the industry and investors to sign up, the government agrees a set maximum price for waste disposal and decommissioning when it gives approval for the station. Any over-runs in cost (and when has the nuclear industry not delivered those?) will be paid for by the taxpayer."

Labour rebels try to save the world

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Needless to say all here at punkscience hope they succeed.

"Arms for Peace"

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Such a sweet-sounding slogan for an arms fair. And Her Majusteez guv'ment is balls-deep in the human rights fuck-pile.

"Clearly, the arms industry has lost much of its privileged access but the business remains the same: promoting arms exports. [The UK Trade and Investment Defence and Security Organisation (the DESO's replacement)] is offering to take UK arms companies ‘under its wing’ this November at IDEAS Pakistan, an arms fair operating under the slogan ‘arms for peace’, which has previously hosted delegations from North Korea, Myanmar (Burma), Zimbabwe, Iran, Sudan, China and Indonesia."

Sarah Waldron rules.

today's statistic of interest

The Lazy Environmentalist quoting Phil Woolas MP.

""UK economic activity accounts for 15% emissions worldwide" . . . (note: this is a rarely alluded to fact by our government . . .), "2% of which comes directly from within our shores.""

UK government buries head further in sand over climate change

The government refuses to adopt meaningful targets- even the lproposed increase from 60 to 80% emissions reductions by 2050 is useless. They have no power on the international stage to push others to adopt similar emissions becuase they have lost all credibility over Iraq. And the closing paragraph to this article states this:


"Department for the Environment officials said the bill had been 'strengthened quite significantly' by the amendments, but 'remains largely unchanged', both raising and dashing hopes that they have accepted some or all the changes. Some campaigners fear the government, under pressure over rising oil prices not to introduce what are seen as expensive 'green' policies, are not ready to bow to the demands in full."

You see? Head In Sand. The government still fears to take effective action because it might cost a lot. Its as if the Stern Report had never been produced.

greenwash 101

After reading this post from the Lazy Environmentalist I emailed my MP, Alison Seabeck, to petition for her support on the Early Day Motion mentioned. Her reply:

"Thank you for your email. I regret that as a Government
Minister(Whip) I cannot sign EDMs which are used by back bench MPs to
raise issues. Alan Simpson is a powerful advocate for alternative and
renewable energy on Labour's back benches.

I have recently sat on the Energy Bill Committee which discussed a range
of issues including measures which will enable more microgeneration. It
is important though that we encourage the right type of micro generation
in the right places. Too many people have put up wind energy technology
in places where they get very little return.

During the course of the Energy Bill the Minister did announce that
there would be a strategic overview of renewables this summer and that
the issue of feed in tariffs would be included in that discussion. This
is important. They are by no means ruled out and clearly Alan Simpson
is ensuring they remain on the Government's agenda.

Alison Seabeck MP"

Interesting for several reasons: Firstly, her reference to Alan Simpson as "a powerful advocate for alternative and renewable energy on Labour's back benches" is of note because she specifically identifies him to be an advocate. This contrasts sharply with many members of the Parliamentary Labour Party such as Alison herself and particularly the Cabinet, who- if you are to ignore their propaganda and infer their policy objectives directly from their actions- are opposed to any research and development of renewable generation beyond that necessary to appear to be doing so.

Secondly, Alison's role on the Energy Bill Committee is laudable. However the measures she mentions, “ measures which will enable more microgeneration” and “ we encourage the right type of micro generation in the right places”, are problems that have resulted from Labour's own policies on renewables. Their lack of direction on grants for renewable installations has been well documented elsewhere and I will not go into it here. Also, the reason people install inappropriate renewable capacity is because the government haven't shown any inclination to publicise useful information relating to the suitability of the different technologies. Or any information relating to renewables, really.

Thirdly, the Energy Bill itself has been determined to be illegal by Greenpeace.

Fourthly, the issue of Feed In Tariffs should not be a matter for discussion, it should be a matter for immediate action. There are even websites available that explain, carefully and clearly so that even MPs can understand, how to implement FITs.

Time and again I am appalled by the laissez-faire attitude of MPs towards imminent climate change. Ignorance of the facts can't seriously be an excuse for these people and so what is it? Some mass psychosis towards future generations? Outright denial? Any way you spin this these people are perpetuating the status quo that will result in gigadeaths and the end of civilisation as we know it on this planet. They should be removed from power.

why do people put up with this form of government?

For my entire life its been one bunch of inept, corrupt bastards after another. And here's more of the same. For fucks sake will people please vote for anyone but the tories, the new party, the BNP or nu-lab!!!

Get the message you wankers! They are not working for you- they are exploiting and manipulating you because they can be sure that they will always hold either the top spot or the bastards-in-waiting position thanks to your inability to perceive a simple trend. I.E. the same governments and the same shite results. Time after time.

grgrgrrrrrrrrrrrrrr mumblmblmblmblll whine whinge grit moan etc.etc.etc.