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September 12, 2007 - Jennifer's Ear

Politicians have always seized on particular instances to build swingeing generalisations about the state of society as a whole.

For instance, I have a rather vague memory of what I think was described as “the war of Jennifer’s ear”, where whoever was in opposition at the time seized hold of the wretched Jennifer ear (metaphorically speaking) to accuse whoever was in government at the time of total, heinous dereliction of duty in the management of the NHS.

At least Jennifer lived to tell the tale. One hopes that her ear is fully operational again, and that she has no abiding grievance against those who so ruthlessly manipulated her affliction.

By contrast, manipulating a child’s death is an altogether different matter. Personally, I feel a deep abhorrence at the sight of politicians (of any persuasion) jumping on the coffin (metaphorically speaking) of any child or young person as victims of street violence to argue that the entire country is collapsing in a state of unprecedented anarchy, and that it is all the fault of the disengaged, incompetent government of the day.

The implication that any one political party “cares more”, collectively or as individuals, about the tragic death through violence of young people, is just grotesque. And with the suggestion that one set of policy overlays (by which I mean if superficial bells and whistles are laid on top of decades of economic and social decline in areas of profound disadvantage) is going to do a massively better job than any other set of policy overlays, is headline-grabbing politics at its worst.

Self-denying, respectful sympathy would obviously be the ideal political response at such moments, in the immediate aftermath of such tragedies. But that would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it?

Posted on September 12, 2007 2:06 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

February 12, 2008 - Loony vs Mainstream

Politicians must be finding it harder and harder to work out in the wider sustainability agenda what still falls in the ‘loony’ category (as climate change once did) and what now falls in the ‘emerging and increasingly mainstream’ category – which they better get their heads around for fear of appearing out of touch. The speed with which issues move from the former to the latter must be mind-boggling for them, persuaded as most of them still are that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with today’s model of ‘progress through growth’ that can’t be sorted out by a few timely touches on the tiller. Bless!

For instance, only a couple of years ago, if you so much as mentioned the need for Ministers and officials to think much more seriously about ‘food security’ (in other words, how this nation will secure access to enough food of the right kind at the right price in the future), you were definitely consigned to the loony category.

Indeed, Defra and Treasury combined forces in 2005 to produce a ‘Vision’ for the Common Agricultural Policy which oozed contempt for any such lame-brain recidivism: food security may have been a big deal after the Second World War (when the Common Agricultural Policy became our principal response), but today’s global food industry is deemed to be totally immune to any such pressures.

It all looks very different now – and although Treasury is unlikely to be found giving voice to such an heretical concept, Defra is beginning to think much more seriously about food security. This may have something to do with the highest-ever recorded rises in the price of food in 2007, or the fact that prices in various food commodity futures markets are climbing higher and higher, or that food imports into China are rising every year, or that harvests around the world are being seriously impacted by extreme weather conditions (which you may or may not link directly to climate change, depending on how cautious you are in pointing out cause and effect in such phenomena), and that ill-thought-out strategies for converting land to produce biofuels rather than food are already having an effect on food prices in different parts of the world.

So watch out for further developments on this front within Defra – if not in Treasury, or even in the FCO, where David Miliband has just junked sustainable development as one of the Foreign Office’s over-arching objectives. But more on that later!

Posted by JP on February 12, 2008 6:50 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

March 28, 2008 - The Battle for London Mayor

I blame London’s taxi-drivers personally. How else can one possibly explain the lead over Ken Livingstone that Boris Johnson has apparently taken in the polls for the London Mayoral Election? On the rare occasions that I have to endure a ride with a garrulous cabbie, any conversation all but instantly comes round to the evil, scheming, cabbie-hating monster that is Ken Livingstone - according to them. I have never come across such a vein of venom and vituperation.

The prospect of Boris as Mayor of London is just so scary. Either he is a genuine, out-and-out buffoon, in which case London becomes a laughing stock alongside its Mayor, or he is a pseudo-buffoon, in which case his true ideological nastiness will soon be revealed. The prospect of Boris taking over London’s Climate Change Action Plan is even scarier. He may have learnt not to reveal his full contrarian bigotry on climate change, but he really doesn’t get it, and would rapidly scale back or completely get rid of the ambitious targets in the Action Plan. And that would be a massive set back. Internationally, London is widely recognised as one of a handful of cities showing real leadership on climate change.

And Ken Livingstone has driven that personally, in a very effective partnership with his deputy, Nicky Gavron. Just as he has driven a host of other environmental and sustainability priorities. The surreal sight of Boris on the TV castigating Ken for his “lack of environmental vision” was almost too much to cope with. So I just hope all the environmental NGOs can rally the troops in London in a pro-Ken campaign, even if they can’t come out and explicitly endorse him.

Lastly, right now, I can’t help comparing Ken’s approach on these issues with other luminaries in the Labour Party. He really does understand how to make the joins between a high quality physical environment, sustainable resource use and a commitment to social justice, whilst still driving forward plans for increased economic prosperity. Particularly through a different kind of energy economy. It’s sort of grown-up.

Unlike the jejune fantasising about a “nuclear renaissance” in the UK, creating “hundreds of thousands of jobs” which now emanates from BERR – the sort of over-hyped nonsense which has to be put on a par with claims made nearly 50 years ago that nuclear power would one day be “too cheap to meter”.

Wouldn’t it be great, just once, to hear a senior Labour Politician (other than Ken) enthusing in similar terms about the hundreds of thousands of real jobs that would be created were we ever to get serious about energy efficiency?

Posted by JP on March 28, 2008 5:09 PM | | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

April 29, 2008 - Boris and Ken

Writing entirely in my personal capacity (ie without any Government, charitable or business hat on), I am bound to say that nothing I have heard over the last few weeks has in any way diminished my sense of horror at the prospect of Boris as Mayor of London. He may well be a cyclist, an enthusiast for tree-planting, and indeed the son of Stanley Johnson (who is a serious environmentalist), but pro-Boris ‘greenies’ really should wake up and smell the elitist, growthist, consumerist, hedonist, gas-guzzling, contrarian brand of ‘green’ that Boris represents.

Of course Ken hasn’t got it all right (in fact I find it hard to understand how he’s let Boris even begin to threaten him on Thursday), his political instincts are sometimes totally off the wall, and he can be arrogant and idiotically offensive. But having spent a lifetime, literally, observing politicians getting to grips with sustainable development, my headline conclusion is that Ken is one of the few I’ve seen with some real vision as to the way in which sustainable development can transform people’s lives in practice, and some real courage in taking on vested interests and doing the difficult things that most politicians wouldn’t touch.

In politics, as in everything else, you have got to look beyond the messy minutiae of just keeping things trucking along, to some sense of a higher purpose. And in our world of sustainable development, Ken’s got that, Boris hasn’t. End of story.

Posted by JP on April 29, 2008 9:21 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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