I noted George Monbiot writing this in the Guardian today:
Ican scarcely believe I'm writing this, but it's hard to dodge the conclusion. After 14 years of environmental vandalism, it might have seemed impossible for Labour to offer anything but improvement. But on green issues, this government is worse than the Tories.
I did, of course, suggest this here a week or so ago. Some objected, but I now think it is beyond question.
George lays out his arguments in the linked article. I recommend reading it.
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Bad enough is the neglect of the environment, or deliberate abuse, but the draconian, even fascistic, suppression of dissent is becoming frightening.
“People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
The corrupt UK ruling class state duopoly have been chipping away at all our human and environmental rights for years. It is really worth the time to read the small print in Priti Patel’s Covert Human Intelligence Sources ( Criminal conduct ) Act 2021:
https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2783
This new UK state law makes the predictive state oppression of Orwell’s 1984 look tame.
The Tories corrupted politics in this country and made it toxic, like a corporation rendering a piece of land or water table unusable after poisoning it.
Labour are very weak and uncertain in power I know, but we must face the fact that the Tories have basically won by being very unpleasant indeed.
Remember, we still live in a post-Nazi world, where Hitler’s polices have left indelible marks on societies all over Europe and the near East. Evil lives on everywhere.
It reminds us of something that we seem to have forgotten; that we tolerate the bad too much. We give the bad too much of the benefit of the doubt under the aegis of ‘liberalism’. We have forgotten the warnings of history and we have forgotten about the cunning of unreason. We are going to be reminded of this time and time again I’m afraid until we can redefine the meaning of freedom.
It’s going to take a lot of work.
Agreed
Agree with the article. With the exception of a few odds and end (on-shore wind – in a windy country) it is the “same old same old”. There is no, even tactical, thinking (e.g. more/better hospitals/health care – gets people back to work). None of us are privy to LINO inner discussions. Neither are we elected politicos. But, most of the commentators on this blog (& Richard) could, make a far far better stab at government, than the bunch in office, who, on current showing are functionally incapable of getting even the basics right, or even, seeing things how they really are & how bad they are. Somebody sent this to me the other day. Is this the depths of depravity that the Uk has sunk to. UNDER A LABOUR GOVERNMENT?
“I send money every month to a young professional woman, now with mobility problems herself, who fosters two teenage girls still damaged by trauma in toddler hood , gets Universal Credit – and has virtually no “disposable income.” And hasn’t even considered heating the upstairs of her house since she got ill. And who considers “buying nice fruit eg a pineapple” to be noteworthy treat.
Thanks, Mike
Having this week witnessed a colleague’s handicapped daughter; having fallen over and lost consciousness; waiting 2 hours later stretched to four hours, for an Ambulance. Finally, on advice from the ambulance service, to be taken to Hospital by a family member. And then; spending six and a half hours in A&E on crutches, (They did eventually find a box for her to sit on.)
Yet the likes of Richard J Murphy and George Monbiot would rather spend £100 million building a “bat shed” on a kilometer of HS2 rail line rather than a disfunction NHS.
With respect, read the Taxing Wealth Report. Your comment is beneath contempt, it is so wrong. You are banned.
Mr Acorn, did you read Monbiots article?
He advocated for more spending on health/hospitals. Which would seem to be in line with what you want?
I scanned his article in vain for bats sheds. However, I don’t think Monbiot is in favour of HS2 which would thus render the need for HS2 bat sheds irrelevant.
We have a bat tunnel near us – under a bloody golf course (converted from a horse race track – local imbeciles having neither the wit nor thought to turn it into a nature park.)
I, too , never advocated for HS2.
You are talking such ‘batshed’ Mr Acorn. It was HS2 engineers (read planners) that made the decision to build a tunnel. They always had the choice (at much lower cost) to provide a habitat nearby to which the bats could be moved. They chose not to, I imagine that their percentage profit was greater if they built a tunnel rather than provide a few extra trees and an above-ground structure nearby.
LINO has become the transferable party imo. I believe that comes down to the Mandarins and those secretly trying to evolve under geopolitical pressures. Whilst Trump is ripping through all constitution, then maybe there is a chink of light? Not under Trump but that which manifests with ill judgement. I’ve spent my living years , concerned of the outcomes. Yet either way we shall overcome.
It’s a long hard road of reflection and deliberation , but we will come through this!
Mr Holden,
They are all the Single Transferable Party (STP). There is only One Party. You only know they are all the same Party – when they win an election and form a Government. Then you find out that you actually have the same government, whoever you vote for.
How do you tell? Until they are in power, you can’t. Once in power you find two things. The promises are dumped, and the fscal rules never change. Result? Nothing actually changes, but the drivel that it is all for you continues endlessly, and it will all be different, sometime soon, and over the rainbow; launched on Heathrow’s 3rd runway, to a bat tunnel far, far away.
Single Transferable Donkey Party in power when it comes to refusing to recognise the existence of climate change! Starmer is busy backing away from the Green pledges he made to get elected. Completely untrustworthy no scruples whatsoever!
And provides another argument against eating meat. Any meat, not just avoiding cow. There is no substitute for factory farming at our consumption level.
I’m a dull 73 year old whose IQ is probably very slightly above average but eroding yearly. I could do a better job than Starmer on the surface, but I don’t believe it’s incompetence, it’s paid for. Labour is both corrupt and vicious. I would not believe I could say that of the Party I first joined as I entered university in 1970. Fallen so far, so quickly.
Agreed, re Labour.
Keep working that brain. It’s a muscle and requires exercise.
I did not vote for La bout they are trying to compete with Reform
They have lost the way
Thank you, Julia.
I don’t know if you have seen my comment about some comments from the McSweeney team that have not been published. “Labour will not be outflanked on the right by Reform, looks forward to fighting on Reform’s turf and even relishes the idea of doing so.”
@ Richard: There was another bit that I forgot to add from my FT source: McSweeney reckons that in the next few years, Europe will be led by the right like Meloni in Italy, the AfD in Germany and Le Pen in France. Labour thinks British public opinion is heading that way, so will morph into a British version and form a quad with that trio and, with a Vance presidency from 2029, a quintet.
Immigrants and their offspring, including the spouse of my FT source and me, have been warned. I told my FT source that my parents and I are hoping to leave over the next year or so and go to where my parents and the parents of the FT source’s spouse come from.
I have a sickening feeling that you are right about Labour’s plans.
Is Starmer what at Moseley wanted to be, or will that fall to Streeting?
It shows that Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest environmentalists who ever lived.
She acted swiftly to tackle the whole in the ozone layer with her friend Ronald Reagan, and helped bring about the treaty guaranteeing no exploitation of the Antarctic for 50 years. There are other environmental achievements or achievements of previous administrations she could have repealed but did not.
I think you vastly overstate your case.
I suspect you, Roy Krebbs, think Thatcher destroyed the coal mining industry and most other industries in Britain because she was a fervent environmentalist determined to end the use of fossil fuels?
Thank you, John.
The BBC says that, so it must be true.
I like the originality. No more football players and boxers. It’s Dallas now. Dynasty next?
The hole in the ozone layer was tackled because
1. It could cause cancer, something that gets most people going, and
2. CFC’s are a ‘mature’ out of patent technology so there were opportunities to develop potentially patentable replacements
So for Governments it was a win-win
Politics these days is like one of those bad horror movies where you watch the characters making one bad choice after another, with the inevitable gory outcomes. “Let’s split up and search for our missing companion”, etc.
Is the Westminster bubble so hermetically sealed that reality cannot penetrate it at all? Have politicians completely forgotten that doing the right thing is always an option, and might even prove popular?
Whilst human beings have benefitted greatly from free market capitalism it does have an Achilles Heel in that if it is not carefully regulated by a determined democratically accountable government it will degenerate into what can only be described as “Leech Capitalism.” Good examples of this are the inflationary housing bubble that has been allowed to blow in this country for over five decades resulting in the current housing crisis and the dreadful pollution of rivers and beaches by the privatised water and sewage authorities. This has all happened because we do not appear to have any political parties in the country who recognise that “Leech Capitalism” is taking place and the means to stop it (especially how to use the country’s monetary system and other economic controls) or indeed recognise it but have corruptly decided to shill for it.
I’m just reading Technofeudalism, Yanis Varoufakis. A wider view of capitalism and its changes. I’m not sure how much I agree with it, but well worth considering
Labour seem to have spent so long in the political wilderness that all their goals & ambitions have withered down to but one: attain power by any means, then keep it. They have no idea what to do with it other than use it to continue towards that goal. If Starmer & his cabal had the best interests of the country at heart he would begin negotiations to rejoin the Customs Union & Single Market forthwith, & tell Farage & his fellow Brexiteers go to hell. It’s the one single act that could significantly improve the economy immediately, & according to all the recent polls, lift the mood of the country. When you realise you’re digging for gold in the wrong place, fill in the hole & start digging somewhere else. Instead this government lives in terror of a Farage-led Tory-Reform alliance defeating them at the next election, taking away the power they have lost sight of how to use. Like a dragon guarding its hoard of treasure. And as is the way with these things, it is most likely that their endeavours to prevent such an outcome will be precisely those which bring it about.
Mark, when yesterday poll shows, in varying percentages, that most people now believe Brexit was a mistake, as we in Scotland knew from the start, will Starmer, and his cabal, as you describe them, change their mind? Not a hope in hell.
Agreed
I gave up trying to read Starmer’s mind some time ago….as did he himself, seemingly….
Thank you, Richard.
Richard: “I have a sickening feeling that you are right about Labour’s plans. Is Starmer what at Moseley wanted to be, or will that fall to Streeting?”
Richard is right to wonder. There was always a preachy and authoritarian streak to New Labour. The former DPP and friend of the US war machine is taking that streak to a natural conclusion.
Labour’s pivot has become such a carbon copy of the Tories, I detect the hand of Tufton Street. Even the mantra “growth, growth, growth” is exactly what Truss kept robotically uttering.
Do they have some secret Svengali-like hold over government? Or do they simply threaten to use their media connections to destroy the party if they don’t toe the line?
I fear that “the West” has been subjugated to corporate power, who permit so-called democratic governments to exist as a fig leaf to obscure reality. (In the USA they’ve now of course stopped even pretending)
Am I being too cynical?
No, in a word
Piketty warned us of the impending 99% will own 1%/ 1% own 99%…
Driven by the sense that the UK has a far far far more draconian form of capitalism that any of our neighbours, I searched up what I hoped would be my over pessimistic attitude: it was a pyrrhic victory to discover that indeed economists had written about the uniquely dire state of UK capitalism and indeed its ‘draconian’ form…
The media portrays the plight of Europeans on a par with the UK when the truth is we have over bloated behemoth companies here that drive people to suicide …our family in the US, Italy, Switzerland, France etc etc – relay the truth re bills and the Ukraine war – and we have been hit here in every last front: they have not.
We have a vastly higher suicide rate and one that is exponentially growing here in the UK and as anyone who works with young people and with mental health will corroborate …it’s not going away: quite the opposite.
We have a class system so entrenched we don’t even reflect on it and try and stop it …and it has grown exponentially in my life time
Status hierarchy and showing off go as far as allowing ludicrous huge 4×4’s to crush historic village walls as they push through like tanks – usually with one person inside them …I was so shocked to watch this in a village near us – I couldn’t even get my phone out to film it …
A hotch potch of strands that don’t exactly relate to Starmer or Thatcher or Sunak directly ~ but we have a country with all
Its politicians all scared to death of saying no to the inexorable march of greedy draconian capitalism gone so far wrong in the UK – we really are the island that will be remembered as the one that really really broke capitalism
I remember when Orwellian dystopian gloom was a scary never- to be -reality: yet we live and breathe it here ….and some ~ as the island literally crumbles into itself ..
Nothing works
Every last paltry thing is over priced and zero quality, schools and the nhs broke aeons ago, and in the same way we wait for theatre roofs to collapse – then fix them – we have allowed what tragic infrastructure we did once have – to also collapse and now we’re all scratching our heads to work out why we didn’t fix it before it broke …
And now it seems we’re on the final stretch, with the long-gestating SEZ/Freeport/charter-city project being pushed through. And by Labour, of all parties, which must be because they clearly don’t have a clue how to manage an economy (what do you expect if you put “Rachel from customer services” in charge?).
I can only assume the thinking is “these huge corporations know how to make money, if we put them in charge of the country, they’ll make the country rich”. It’s hard to imagine a more deluded idea.
I am repeating this because nobody is listening it seems. One major reason we are in a mess is the FPTP archaic voting system. It has resulting in Labour incompetents replacing tory incompetents through a system which gives labour 63% of the seats for 34% of the votes. Hence Labour hasno fear of opposition votes : 66% of opposition votes got only 239 seats. This a democratic disaster.
Sorry to point this out, but I have been saying this here for a decade or more. And I have been a promoter of the idea since joining Charter 88 in 1988. And it has been said in comments here tens of thousands of times.