At the end of March, the Brown regime announced plans to further nationalise the control of development in Wessex. Those who thought local opinion could not be sidelined any more than it is already will be sorely disappointed.
Remember that when Labour took office in 1997 it inherited sweeping powers to interfere in local decision-making. Whitehall could direct councils to change their planning policies, and could over-rule specific decisions through the iniquitous appeals system. It still can do all of this but this was not enough.
In 2004, Labour abolished the right of councils to approve their own planning policies. At local level, these are now subject to approval by an unelected civil servant, who has to act within the framework of national policy and new regional plans. Regional assemblies – composed mainly of councillors but with a significant non-democratic element – have responsibility for drawing up the latter. But not the power. The Secretary of State has to approve the draft, with whatever changes he or she likes.
Now the assemblies are to be abolished. Good riddance, we say. We want a real Parliament for Wessex, not a talking shop for some arbitrary administrative zone that is Whitehall’s creature. But a Parliament is not what’s on offer. Indeed, there is no offer. Just more centralist diktat.
For the assemblies’ powers are to be transferred to quangos, the Regional Development Agencies, appointed by Whitehall and answerable to no-one else. As a sop to local democracy, it was proposed that draft regional plans should be signed off by a forum of local authority leaders in the region. But the detail reveals that – in the event of disagreement – the draft will be submitted to ministers with a note merely setting out points of dispute. The Local Government Association has correctly observed that this removes any incentive for the RDAs to take public opinion into account.
The South West RDA gleefully claimed that the new structure could ‘remove the barriers to growth’. In plain English, that’s you and me. The public. The folk who actually live here and see our environment being trashed daily. The folk who, if we were to take back the power to run our own lives, would see these quangocrats spend the rest of their working days making amends. Under the closest supervision.
Because they certainly aren’t fit to be doing any job that gives them the opportunity to ill-treat the environment. Anyone – whatever their role – who uses the phrase ‘economic growth’ positively is a proven menace. Their sanity should be treated as suspect and if they’re politicians they need to be unseated as soon as possible. Those who talk about ‘the economic opportunities of climate change’ are simply beyond hope.
The ‘g’ word – growth – assumes that what humans have done to their planet for millennia is what they can and should go on doing. We’ve lived with the consequences so far, so what’s the problem?
The ground may be perfectly smooth until you come to the cliff’s edge but the edge is there and it isn’t going anywhere. The planet is finite.
Assume that Planet Earth’s carrying capacity is depicted as a ceiling, a straight line. Racing towards that ceiling is the graph of economic growth. We need to stop short of the ceiling if we are to leave any room for wildlife, say 10%. Because even the most selfishly materialist must pause to ask what life-saving medicines are disappearing as the rainforest is cleared?
The bad news is that we breached that 10% some time around 1970. The really bad news is that we breached the ceiling itself around 1975 and are continuing to escalate beyond it. Saving Planet Earth is not about slowing down the rate of economic growth. It is not about stopping economic growth. It is about getting off the escalator altogether. Because otherwise we shall reach a point, perhaps around mid-century, when rocketing population meets collapsing oil reserves. And then it really is every man for himself. Already, there are ominous signs of a global food crisis.
The Scots are starting to get it right, with calls for a greater emphasis on wellbeing in place of self-destructive growth. No wonder their deputy First Minister called last week for a government that will speak up for Scotland – not shut up for London. The same goes for Wessex, whose lack of a voice is legendary.
You might think that some in government would be concerned. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs undoubtedly is, and is spearheading a move for realism within Whitehall. For now though, the Treasury rules. An attempt to introduce a European soil protection directive to safeguard our future food supply was stalled by the UK and three other member states at December’s Environment Council. Brown’s aim is simply to free up more and more land for development, dressed up in greenwash about “sustainability”. He’ll have made sure it won’t be his family who starve.
In the years ahead we may be looking at a kind of ancien regime collapse in Britain, whereby the institutions of government simply cease to function. The control freakery will accelerate as those with their hands on the levers of power become more and more desperate in their authoritarianism. Who trusts the State today? Why should anyone have confidence in those now actively working to destroy our quality of life?
To keep us on the growth treadmill while they and their economic dogmas are losing touch with environmental reality will not be easy. We know that critics will be dismissed as ‘prejudiced’, while Labour’s own prejudices are protected from exposure. We know that Labour will increasingly resort to legalised violence to get its own way, fully supported by the Conservative ‘opposition’. Its gag laws and its ever-increasing centralisation of power indicate the direction of travel all too well. We know that the financial house of cards, the ‘engine of growth’, the City of London, is in fact the engine of our destruction – and that it's becoming increasingly difficult to hide the fact.
The London papers are full of what to them are gloomy stories. Estimates vary, but the credit crunch could cost some 20,000 to 40,000 City jobs. Bring it on. Because is it really such a bad thing? Won’t the world be a better place without them? Won’t Wessex breathe a sigh of relief as fewer of our farms and homes are snapped up as hobbies by those with too many millions to burn? And isn’t the lesson that the time is now ripe for Wessex folk to be running our own resources for our own benefit?
Or will we give the slick spinners of corporate candyfloss yet another deadly chance?
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Minding Our Own Business
"Peace is a coin which has two sides – one is the avoidance of the use of force and the other is the creation of conditions of justice. In the long run you cannot expect one without the other."
John Foster Dulles, 1956
Dulles was not a man whose actions lived up to his words. Nor can anything better be said of the world’s rulers today. Five years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains in turmoil and for those countries involved in its conquest it is the spectre that will haunt a generation. Not simply because there is no peace but ultimately because there is no justice. So long as Bush, Blair and Brown are free to strut upon the world stage, fêted as statesmen, anger will continue to fester and resolution will remain elusive.
Our Party’s policy is clear. It is for judges to decide the legality of war, not politicians or their pocket lawyers. The context for such a ruling must be the indictment of those who orchestrated the invasion, those who, in the formula of the Nuremberg Tribunal, formed part of the common plan or conspiracy to wage aggressive war.
That means, in the United Kingdom context, both Blair and Brown, along with their respective cabinets and the majority of Labour backbenchers. It remains an enigma that the Labour Party continues to exist at all. How can people of goodwill continue to devote their political lives to so vile and valueless an organisation?
But the Conservatives are no less liable to stand trial for war crimes. All but 16 of their MPs present voted for war, an even worse record than Labour’s. (The rebels included three from Wessex.) Apparently they did it because they believed the Prime Minister. The job of Her Majesty’s Opposition is always to do precisely the opposite of that. By failing to do their job they too have forfeited all moral authority. One needn’t think the LibDems are off the hook either. It’s true that they voted against, so no charges stick there, but they gave the war their total support once declared, arguably the least principled position imaginable. Our chaps deserve support, the reasoning goes, because they’re only obeying orders. Now, where did we last hear that excuse?
It is an odd situation in which we find ourselves. In 2003 the majority of the House of Commons became composed of alleged war criminals; an election later, many of them are still there. But that is what happens when the electorate fails to punish politicians for their bad deeds and leaves the meting-out of a harsher and less discriminate justice to the murderous rage of suicide bombers.
We are not the government of Wessex and so, at this juncture, can only take the longer-term view. We cannot magically undo the present mess. We cannot rescue the electorate from the consequences of its folly. What we can do is suggest how the longer-term view should shape a future worth struggling for.
One of the recurrent themes of the past five years has been the extent to which British troops have been sent into combat inadequately equipped. Of course, any sympathy for the troops must be tempered by the fact that no-one forced them to join in the first place; from now on, a boycott of Labour’s armed forces by all principled men and women would do a power of good. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a gap between what the armed forces are capable of doing and what they are currently expected to do. It should surprise no-one that the military would close the gap by spending more on defence. A better way would be to spend less. The smaller the armed forces, the weaker the temptation for politicians to play games with soldiers’ lives, to stake their own legacy upon foolish foreign adventures of no conceivable relevance to the defence of the realm. To lecture others on the evils of WMDs, while continuing to stockpile our own, is the depth of hollowness and hypocrisy. If we would be heard, let us rid our own country of them first.
We say this in full knowledge of the importance of defence and allied industries to the economic well-being of Wessex. Preparation for war has dominated our region for centuries. Defence procurement provides Bristol with one of its largest sources of office employment. Hampshire is ‘home’ to both the Royal Navy, at Portsmouth, and the Army, at Aldershot. Further north, air bases at Greenham Common and Upper Heyford became by-words for Cold War fear. Huge areas of Wiltshire and Dorset remain today fenced off as military establishments and training grounds. The villages of Imber in Wiltshire and Tyneham in Dorset, requisitioned ‘temporarily’ for the Second World War, have never been returned to their former inhabitants.
Defence underpins much of the region’s economy, directly or through purchases in the aerospace and electronics sectors. So reduced defence spending must be matched by increased spending on the creation of alternative employment in sustainable industries for those displaced. MoD land is an asset in more than the financial sense. While armoured vehicles have done damage to the archaeology of Wessex it is also true that the exclusion of modern development and agricultural practices has done much for the landscape and wildlife in areas like Tyneham. The future use of redundant defence sites poses huge issues for the planning system. Sites need to be made over to local communities who will cherish them as their environment, not developed, as so often happens, to accommodate the on-going irresponsibility of London overspill.
The world’s nations with the highest quality of life have achieved their enviable position by eschewing the craze for glory. Opponents of the British Empire used to be called ‘Little Englanders’. If we are now judged ‘Little Wessexers’, so much the better. There are so many things to be done around our home, things that centralist governments have put off indefinitely, pleading poverty. So many public service improvements that are needed. So much new infrastructure to prepare Wessex for the post-oil world. Yet sadly, much of the wealth that could fund our future is currently being wasted.
The United Kingdom spends nearly £30 billion every year on defence, £1 billion of it specifically on Iraq. It is also the fifth largest arms exporter in the world and subsidies of arms exports cost taxpayers around £900 million a year. Wessex has a share in this too. Wessex Regionalists condemn the arms trade, whose consequences for global security cannot be limited to the countries to which arms are sold. What hope for peace is there when the ten largest arms exporting countries include all five permanent members of the Security Council?
Another £7.5 billion annually is spent on our behalf on overseas aid. That includes £825 million for India over the next three years. The UK provides one-third of all world aid to that country, one rich enough to have developed its own nuclear bomb in 1974 (grotesquely named ‘Smiling Buddha’). To question these priorities of our government is not to criticise the goal of lifting poorer countries than our own out of grinding poverty. But as well as demanding some responsibility on their own part it is worth remembering that many of these countries were better off when they did not ‘benefit’ from being part of the global money economy, burdened with debts they can never repay. If we would help them now there are better ways than recycling our money through them on its way back to us. Supporting their right to decide their own futures and not suffer the one imposed by the ideologues of the World Trade Organisation might be a good place to start. To buy local, not global, is another. Fair trade is better than free trade. But why trade at all, if we can make it ourselves? If we must give money to other countries, let it be through voluntary contributions, ethically organised, not through the tax and spend policies of governments with murkier agendas of their own.
We have always said that folk on the spot know best what money should be spent on. So let’s be putting that principle into effect, in Wessex, and throughout the world. By all means let us co-operate, more so than today, in the promotion of world peace and justice. But let us also be clear what is primarily our business and what is emphatically not.
John Foster Dulles, 1956
Dulles was not a man whose actions lived up to his words. Nor can anything better be said of the world’s rulers today. Five years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Iraq remains in turmoil and for those countries involved in its conquest it is the spectre that will haunt a generation. Not simply because there is no peace but ultimately because there is no justice. So long as Bush, Blair and Brown are free to strut upon the world stage, fêted as statesmen, anger will continue to fester and resolution will remain elusive.
Our Party’s policy is clear. It is for judges to decide the legality of war, not politicians or their pocket lawyers. The context for such a ruling must be the indictment of those who orchestrated the invasion, those who, in the formula of the Nuremberg Tribunal, formed part of the common plan or conspiracy to wage aggressive war.
That means, in the United Kingdom context, both Blair and Brown, along with their respective cabinets and the majority of Labour backbenchers. It remains an enigma that the Labour Party continues to exist at all. How can people of goodwill continue to devote their political lives to so vile and valueless an organisation?
But the Conservatives are no less liable to stand trial for war crimes. All but 16 of their MPs present voted for war, an even worse record than Labour’s. (The rebels included three from Wessex.) Apparently they did it because they believed the Prime Minister. The job of Her Majesty’s Opposition is always to do precisely the opposite of that. By failing to do their job they too have forfeited all moral authority. One needn’t think the LibDems are off the hook either. It’s true that they voted against, so no charges stick there, but they gave the war their total support once declared, arguably the least principled position imaginable. Our chaps deserve support, the reasoning goes, because they’re only obeying orders. Now, where did we last hear that excuse?
It is an odd situation in which we find ourselves. In 2003 the majority of the House of Commons became composed of alleged war criminals; an election later, many of them are still there. But that is what happens when the electorate fails to punish politicians for their bad deeds and leaves the meting-out of a harsher and less discriminate justice to the murderous rage of suicide bombers.
We are not the government of Wessex and so, at this juncture, can only take the longer-term view. We cannot magically undo the present mess. We cannot rescue the electorate from the consequences of its folly. What we can do is suggest how the longer-term view should shape a future worth struggling for.
One of the recurrent themes of the past five years has been the extent to which British troops have been sent into combat inadequately equipped. Of course, any sympathy for the troops must be tempered by the fact that no-one forced them to join in the first place; from now on, a boycott of Labour’s armed forces by all principled men and women would do a power of good. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a gap between what the armed forces are capable of doing and what they are currently expected to do. It should surprise no-one that the military would close the gap by spending more on defence. A better way would be to spend less. The smaller the armed forces, the weaker the temptation for politicians to play games with soldiers’ lives, to stake their own legacy upon foolish foreign adventures of no conceivable relevance to the defence of the realm. To lecture others on the evils of WMDs, while continuing to stockpile our own, is the depth of hollowness and hypocrisy. If we would be heard, let us rid our own country of them first.
We say this in full knowledge of the importance of defence and allied industries to the economic well-being of Wessex. Preparation for war has dominated our region for centuries. Defence procurement provides Bristol with one of its largest sources of office employment. Hampshire is ‘home’ to both the Royal Navy, at Portsmouth, and the Army, at Aldershot. Further north, air bases at Greenham Common and Upper Heyford became by-words for Cold War fear. Huge areas of Wiltshire and Dorset remain today fenced off as military establishments and training grounds. The villages of Imber in Wiltshire and Tyneham in Dorset, requisitioned ‘temporarily’ for the Second World War, have never been returned to their former inhabitants.
Defence underpins much of the region’s economy, directly or through purchases in the aerospace and electronics sectors. So reduced defence spending must be matched by increased spending on the creation of alternative employment in sustainable industries for those displaced. MoD land is an asset in more than the financial sense. While armoured vehicles have done damage to the archaeology of Wessex it is also true that the exclusion of modern development and agricultural practices has done much for the landscape and wildlife in areas like Tyneham. The future use of redundant defence sites poses huge issues for the planning system. Sites need to be made over to local communities who will cherish them as their environment, not developed, as so often happens, to accommodate the on-going irresponsibility of London overspill.
The world’s nations with the highest quality of life have achieved their enviable position by eschewing the craze for glory. Opponents of the British Empire used to be called ‘Little Englanders’. If we are now judged ‘Little Wessexers’, so much the better. There are so many things to be done around our home, things that centralist governments have put off indefinitely, pleading poverty. So many public service improvements that are needed. So much new infrastructure to prepare Wessex for the post-oil world. Yet sadly, much of the wealth that could fund our future is currently being wasted.
The United Kingdom spends nearly £30 billion every year on defence, £1 billion of it specifically on Iraq. It is also the fifth largest arms exporter in the world and subsidies of arms exports cost taxpayers around £900 million a year. Wessex has a share in this too. Wessex Regionalists condemn the arms trade, whose consequences for global security cannot be limited to the countries to which arms are sold. What hope for peace is there when the ten largest arms exporting countries include all five permanent members of the Security Council?
Another £7.5 billion annually is spent on our behalf on overseas aid. That includes £825 million for India over the next three years. The UK provides one-third of all world aid to that country, one rich enough to have developed its own nuclear bomb in 1974 (grotesquely named ‘Smiling Buddha’). To question these priorities of our government is not to criticise the goal of lifting poorer countries than our own out of grinding poverty. But as well as demanding some responsibility on their own part it is worth remembering that many of these countries were better off when they did not ‘benefit’ from being part of the global money economy, burdened with debts they can never repay. If we would help them now there are better ways than recycling our money through them on its way back to us. Supporting their right to decide their own futures and not suffer the one imposed by the ideologues of the World Trade Organisation might be a good place to start. To buy local, not global, is another. Fair trade is better than free trade. But why trade at all, if we can make it ourselves? If we must give money to other countries, let it be through voluntary contributions, ethically organised, not through the tax and spend policies of governments with murkier agendas of their own.
We have always said that folk on the spot know best what money should be spent on. So let’s be putting that principle into effect, in Wessex, and throughout the world. By all means let us co-operate, more so than today, in the promotion of world peace and justice. But let us also be clear what is primarily our business and what is emphatically not.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Bonfire of the Inanities
Should we have a new archbishop? Not just a new archbishop of Canterbury, but a new archbishopric. Of Winchester.
Wales separated from Canterbury in 1920 and there is a similar demand for a separate Cornish Church today. So why not a separate Wessex Church? It’s not a new idea. Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester from 1129 to 1171, spent years agitating for Winchester to be the seat of a new, westward-facing province with himself at its head. As the North’s population shrinks and the South’s continues to burgeon, Canterbury has more to do and York less, so maybe it really is an idea whose time has (belatedly) come.
But whether you think it a good idea or not, it’s a matter for the Church and not for our Party. The formal separation of Church and State is one of the few great ambitions of 19th century radicalism still unfulfilled. The recent interjections of Rowan Williams – Labour’s appointee to run the State Church – have illustrated precisely why religion and politics need to be kept apart. It is not the case that ‘militant secularists’ would prevent the religious expressing their faith through their politics (though supposed ‘militant secularism’ is about as nonsensical as ‘militant human rights’). The point is that any political debate on moral principles must address them as such and not assume that faith can be used to short-circuit rational argument. Otherwise, liberal democracy is doomed. Saddest of all the reactions to Williams’ words are those that bray that Britain is a Christian country, as if the statistical fact of a Christian majority is basis enough for treating non-Christians as second-class citizens. Individuals have religious convictions; countries do not, unless the State is to be envisaged as an instrument for the oppression of the non-conforming.
Make no mistake. There is plenty of that going on under New Labour. Its fear of freedom is deep-seated, dating way back to the puritanism of the Commonwealth, when a despotic Parliament legislated to make sin a crime. Labour still struggles, unsuccessfully, to discern the difference between morality (‘oughts’, achieved by persuasion) and law (‘musts’, achieved by force).
Labour’s gag laws are numerous, increasing in number, and, to the extent that they create political martyrs, counter-productive. Abusing minorities is bad manners but in that context only violence and the threat of violence can justifiably be criminalised. Incitement to murder is a crime because murder itself is a crime. To criminalise incitement to hatred, of any kind, implies that hatred itself is also a crime. In reality, and everywhere else outside the pages of 1984, thought crimes do not (yet) exist, despite all Labour’s witch-hunting efforts to make windows into men’s souls. With the growth of the Internet, and the concomitant pressure to express more and more of one’s views in permanent electronic form, this may be only a matter of time. In many respects, freedom under Labour is already just a memory.
It has been well noted that the targets of Labour’s fear of freedom are always its political opponents, never its political friends. Inciting racial or religious hatred is a crime. Inciting class hatred is not. Lawyers have also been quick to point out how loosely drafted many of the speech crimes are; the result, no doubt intentional, is to further circumscribe debate through self-censorship. It is safer to err on the side of caution than to risk imprisonment for the wrong kind of niceness. Restricting the right to prosecute in such cases to the Attorney-General ensures that only politically motivated prosecutions are launched and that the Labour government is protected from the vengeance of others taking out private actions. The European Convention on Human Rights offers no effective protection for free speech. Article 10 incorporates numerous dubious exceptions, among them the right to ban separatist opinions, inserted to secure the accession of the French Republic, that historic enemy of liberty (and no great friend of equality or fraternity either, despite an admirably secular constitution).
Along with freedom of expression, Labour has targeted freedom of choice. Anti-choice laws do not constrain merely central government and its agencies, legitimate vehicles for public policy. They also constrain the decisions that individuals and private organisations, as well as democratically elected local authorities, may take in hiring staff and managing resources. There can be no justification for such infringements of liberty, for the imposition of one person’s prejudice against prejudice on another no less sentient. Increasingly, the law is being used to discriminate in the very name of opposing discrimination.
The laws are backed up by bureaucracies at all levels, Political Correctness Departments funded by the taxpayer at the expense of cuts to frontline services. We have always been open to immigrants. There can be no disputing the contributions they have frequently made; Isambard Kingdom Brunel is one son of an asylum-seeker who deserves to be mentioned more often whenever immigration is discussed. What is equally true but never mentioned at all is that until the late 20th century immigrants sank or swam by their own efforts. There were no laws to place them beyond criticism, no laws to guarantee their place in the labour market, and no State-funded bodies to provide them with special advantages denied to the common herd.
Because our own freedom-focused tradition is alien to Labour’s fundamental aim of control and coercion, driven by intense self-loathing, Wessex has never voted for a Labour government. Labour, having endorsed the destruction of its old power base in industrial working-class communities, now seeks to build itself a new one. It sees it arising principally through the promotion of mass immigration – way beyond what our environment can accommodate – and through allying itself with the equally puritanical creed of political Islamism.
The results in Northumbria and Mercia are there for all to see: the rise of Labour’s new puppet-masters among immigrant power-brokers, increased political corruption and shameless ballot-rigging, coupled with a growing BNP backlash against the diversion of resources from public services into po-faced parasitism. Sadly for us, the results also include an increasing element of ‘white flight’ as parents who don’t want their children’s education blighted by the School of Babel, or worse to befall them, up sticks and head south and west. If we would save our future food supply from being concreted over, then, until we can regain control of our own lives in Wessex, we must take note of these pressures and publicise them to all who will listen.
No doubt on the far Right there are those who are making longer-term plans. Plans that see Wessex as some ‘national redoubt’ into which a new Alfred will gather what remains of Christianity and the English nation and inspire the reconquest of the Sharialaw. In percentage terms, the South West has the smallest Mahometan population of all the Prescott zones, so it is easy to draw the historical parallels. And a stroll round any of our Somerset coastal towns will reveal as many Mercian accents as native Wessex. Many more will follow; Labour’s plans for the best part of a million new homes in Wessex are not intended to meet our housing needs but the needs of the ‘white flighters’. If we are not to fall prey to others’ visions for us then we must be clear in articulating a vision of our own.
There can only be one law of the land, though infinite scope for voluntary arbitration. The land can be any size but all who inhabit it do so out of choice and are free to leave if its laws displease them (taking their own territory with them if need be). There can be no place for the costly language of ‘community cohesion’: the erosion of majority rights to appease immigrants who have suddenly discovered dissatisfactions they never knew they had. Any who feel alienated from our society must ask themselves whether their alienation is self-inflicted and, if so, the remedy is in their hands, not ours. Finally, if we are to seek an inclusive society, the terms of inclusion must not be so negotiable that we ourselves end up on the outside looking in.
Wales separated from Canterbury in 1920 and there is a similar demand for a separate Cornish Church today. So why not a separate Wessex Church? It’s not a new idea. Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester from 1129 to 1171, spent years agitating for Winchester to be the seat of a new, westward-facing province with himself at its head. As the North’s population shrinks and the South’s continues to burgeon, Canterbury has more to do and York less, so maybe it really is an idea whose time has (belatedly) come.
But whether you think it a good idea or not, it’s a matter for the Church and not for our Party. The formal separation of Church and State is one of the few great ambitions of 19th century radicalism still unfulfilled. The recent interjections of Rowan Williams – Labour’s appointee to run the State Church – have illustrated precisely why religion and politics need to be kept apart. It is not the case that ‘militant secularists’ would prevent the religious expressing their faith through their politics (though supposed ‘militant secularism’ is about as nonsensical as ‘militant human rights’). The point is that any political debate on moral principles must address them as such and not assume that faith can be used to short-circuit rational argument. Otherwise, liberal democracy is doomed. Saddest of all the reactions to Williams’ words are those that bray that Britain is a Christian country, as if the statistical fact of a Christian majority is basis enough for treating non-Christians as second-class citizens. Individuals have religious convictions; countries do not, unless the State is to be envisaged as an instrument for the oppression of the non-conforming.
Make no mistake. There is plenty of that going on under New Labour. Its fear of freedom is deep-seated, dating way back to the puritanism of the Commonwealth, when a despotic Parliament legislated to make sin a crime. Labour still struggles, unsuccessfully, to discern the difference between morality (‘oughts’, achieved by persuasion) and law (‘musts’, achieved by force).
Labour’s gag laws are numerous, increasing in number, and, to the extent that they create political martyrs, counter-productive. Abusing minorities is bad manners but in that context only violence and the threat of violence can justifiably be criminalised. Incitement to murder is a crime because murder itself is a crime. To criminalise incitement to hatred, of any kind, implies that hatred itself is also a crime. In reality, and everywhere else outside the pages of 1984, thought crimes do not (yet) exist, despite all Labour’s witch-hunting efforts to make windows into men’s souls. With the growth of the Internet, and the concomitant pressure to express more and more of one’s views in permanent electronic form, this may be only a matter of time. In many respects, freedom under Labour is already just a memory.
It has been well noted that the targets of Labour’s fear of freedom are always its political opponents, never its political friends. Inciting racial or religious hatred is a crime. Inciting class hatred is not. Lawyers have also been quick to point out how loosely drafted many of the speech crimes are; the result, no doubt intentional, is to further circumscribe debate through self-censorship. It is safer to err on the side of caution than to risk imprisonment for the wrong kind of niceness. Restricting the right to prosecute in such cases to the Attorney-General ensures that only politically motivated prosecutions are launched and that the Labour government is protected from the vengeance of others taking out private actions. The European Convention on Human Rights offers no effective protection for free speech. Article 10 incorporates numerous dubious exceptions, among them the right to ban separatist opinions, inserted to secure the accession of the French Republic, that historic enemy of liberty (and no great friend of equality or fraternity either, despite an admirably secular constitution).
Along with freedom of expression, Labour has targeted freedom of choice. Anti-choice laws do not constrain merely central government and its agencies, legitimate vehicles for public policy. They also constrain the decisions that individuals and private organisations, as well as democratically elected local authorities, may take in hiring staff and managing resources. There can be no justification for such infringements of liberty, for the imposition of one person’s prejudice against prejudice on another no less sentient. Increasingly, the law is being used to discriminate in the very name of opposing discrimination.
The laws are backed up by bureaucracies at all levels, Political Correctness Departments funded by the taxpayer at the expense of cuts to frontline services. We have always been open to immigrants. There can be no disputing the contributions they have frequently made; Isambard Kingdom Brunel is one son of an asylum-seeker who deserves to be mentioned more often whenever immigration is discussed. What is equally true but never mentioned at all is that until the late 20th century immigrants sank or swam by their own efforts. There were no laws to place them beyond criticism, no laws to guarantee their place in the labour market, and no State-funded bodies to provide them with special advantages denied to the common herd.
Because our own freedom-focused tradition is alien to Labour’s fundamental aim of control and coercion, driven by intense self-loathing, Wessex has never voted for a Labour government. Labour, having endorsed the destruction of its old power base in industrial working-class communities, now seeks to build itself a new one. It sees it arising principally through the promotion of mass immigration – way beyond what our environment can accommodate – and through allying itself with the equally puritanical creed of political Islamism.
The results in Northumbria and Mercia are there for all to see: the rise of Labour’s new puppet-masters among immigrant power-brokers, increased political corruption and shameless ballot-rigging, coupled with a growing BNP backlash against the diversion of resources from public services into po-faced parasitism. Sadly for us, the results also include an increasing element of ‘white flight’ as parents who don’t want their children’s education blighted by the School of Babel, or worse to befall them, up sticks and head south and west. If we would save our future food supply from being concreted over, then, until we can regain control of our own lives in Wessex, we must take note of these pressures and publicise them to all who will listen.
No doubt on the far Right there are those who are making longer-term plans. Plans that see Wessex as some ‘national redoubt’ into which a new Alfred will gather what remains of Christianity and the English nation and inspire the reconquest of the Sharialaw. In percentage terms, the South West has the smallest Mahometan population of all the Prescott zones, so it is easy to draw the historical parallels. And a stroll round any of our Somerset coastal towns will reveal as many Mercian accents as native Wessex. Many more will follow; Labour’s plans for the best part of a million new homes in Wessex are not intended to meet our housing needs but the needs of the ‘white flighters’. If we are not to fall prey to others’ visions for us then we must be clear in articulating a vision of our own.
There can only be one law of the land, though infinite scope for voluntary arbitration. The land can be any size but all who inhabit it do so out of choice and are free to leave if its laws displease them (taking their own territory with them if need be). There can be no place for the costly language of ‘community cohesion’: the erosion of majority rights to appease immigrants who have suddenly discovered dissatisfactions they never knew they had. Any who feel alienated from our society must ask themselves whether their alienation is self-inflicted and, if so, the remedy is in their hands, not ours. Finally, if we are to seek an inclusive society, the terms of inclusion must not be so negotiable that we ourselves end up on the outside looking in.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
More is Less
Just before Christmas, Labour issued a draft of its new statement of planning policy on what it laughably terms ‘sustainable economic development’. It turns out to be no less than a manifesto for sacrificing our quality of life on the altar of globalisation.
Buried within it is a proposal that henceforth housebuilding should be considered as a form of economic development. So Labour’s demonisation of the environment continues. Those who ask awkward questions about population growth – and how to look after a population already two or three times its optimum – are now to be branded as the enemies of prosperity itself.
Of course, in many ways we get the government – and the planning policies – we deserve. Housing has morphed subtly over the past 30 years from a means of shelter – a matter of social need – into a means of investment – a matter of economic greed. The complaint today is not that people are homeless but that they cannot get onto the property ladder. And the answer to the complaint is not to abuse the baby boomer generation for pulling up the ladder behind them (which they’ve done in so many ways, student grants being the prime example). Nor is it to convert ever more fields and woods into bricks and mortar. It’s to tackle the issues of vacant and second homes into which money has been poured on the basis that there’s nothing as safe as houses. It’s also to question why immigration continues unchecked, since immigrants don’t bring their homes with them.
Cynics – and they’re often right these days – will see Labour’s plan as being to stay in power for ever on the votes of grateful immigrants. And besides, just where would a champagne socialist be without the illegal nanny? But if we take Labour’s best shot at face value then we need to scrutinise the shrill claim that more people, more growth, more of everything, good and bad, is the outcome that everyone with a brain must welcome.
Standard of living and quality of life are not necessarily compatible. We should always be wary of equating well-being with prosperity as measured by the economists. That’s because what they measure as the national wealth – Gross Domestic Product – is simply the sum of goods and services produced on the national territory for sale to others. It measures ‘exchange value’ – economic busyness – not ‘use value’. So if we all grew our own vegetables instead of buying them in the shops, GDP would fall.
Some ‘goods’ are actually ‘bads’. A crime wave is excellent news for the economy. More insurance policies are sold, and premiums go up. More locks and burglar alarms are bought, and more security guards employed. It all counts towards GDP. And so does war, an opportunity to use up all that stockpiled military equipment and order anew. Treating avoidable diseases and injuries, cleaning up pollution, and the whole nonsense of planned obsolescence are all ‘wealth-creating’ activities. None of this should come as a surprise. James Robertson, a man whose career spanned the heights of public and private sectors, exposed it all in a book called The Sane Alternative back in 1983. But we just love to go on being conned.
The deepest trap into which we fall is to believe that a growing economy must be good for us, and not just for the super-rich (the 400 people whose earnings now top £10 million per year). So let’s cram in 30 million more workers because the national wealth will double. It might. But the wealth per head will not. Every new worker brings extra demands on public services and infrastructure. Traffic congestion. Water shortages. Astronomical house prices. Longer waiting lists for everything. And looming over all, the elephant in the room, the question of where all the food and fuel will come from when the oil runs dry.
The Economic & Social Research Council has published Britain in 2008, a ‘state of the nation’ report filled with fascinating facts and figures. It tells us that the UK is the world’s 6th largest economy, measured by total GDP. But in terms of GDP per head it comes a lowly 13th. The United States and Canada are ahead of us, but they're the only large countries in the top 12. The little Gulf state of Qatar comes in 9th place and all the others are small European countries. In reverse order: Finland, Austria, Denmark, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, oil-rich Norway, Ireland and, top of the league, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy, with a population the size of Cornwall, has a GDP per head figure that is 2.3 times that of the UK. The combined populations of Luxembourg, Iceland and Norway come to much less than that of Wessex, which is also more populous than either Finland, Denmark, Switzerland or Ireland. Austria and Sweden have slightly larger populations but are in much the same league. Who ever said that big is beautiful?
And who ever said that money can buy happiness? There is generally a positive relationship between income and reported satisfaction with life. But the level of satisfaction is lower in the UK than in Sweden, Belgium and Finland, which have similar levels of income. The highest levels of reported satisfaction are in Denmark, then Ireland and Austria. The average level of satisfaction in the UK is lower today than it was 20 years ago, in spite of higher incomes.
Now, let us consider a third variable: population density. The UK is the 51st most densely populated country on the planet. It’s more densely populated even than China, which comes in at 74th. But where are those countries we have seen earlier as models of prosperity and/or well-being? The Netherlands is 25th, Belgium is 31st (ahead of India at 33rd) but the rest are trailing: Luxembourg (62nd), Switzerland (64th), Denmark (82nd), Austria (104th), then Ireland (141st), Sweden (194th), Finland (200th), Norway (213th) and Iceland (232nd). So, of Europe’s top 5 countries by GDP per head, all have lower population densities than the UK, the two Scandinavian ones by a considerable margin. The three happiest countries too tell the same story.
Wessex has, or rather had, as growth has been rapid since the last census in 2001, a population density of 260 persons per square kilometre. If Wessex were an independent state, it would rank 48th in the world. That is to say, its place is not held down, as the UK’s is, by the empty mountains of Scotland, Wales and the north of England but only by pockets of wilderness in a rising tide of urbanisation. Since the planet’s overall density is 45 persons per square kilometre, Wessex is nearly six times as dense as the global average.
Rising population means rising stress. It means less countryside, and more fraught access to it as Green Belt disappears and roads fill up. It means a shallower experience when we get there, as beauty spots become crowded and tranquillity shrinks and fragments. It means more pressure on the use of land, so higher land and house prices. Already we have the smallest new homes in Europe (and that is not because a wicked planning system is preventing builders from doing good but because a tiny band of far-seeing folk are doing their best to prevent the destruction of our future food supply). And stress is not the only risk that increases. If Labour’s plans are forced through despite the pleas of the sane, many thousands of homes will be built on floodplains, there being no more suitable land left.
The alternative is obvious. Happiness is fewer of us, organised in smaller political units where the environment is what we live in, not what we sell from under our feet to whoever waves the biggest chequebook.
Buried within it is a proposal that henceforth housebuilding should be considered as a form of economic development. So Labour’s demonisation of the environment continues. Those who ask awkward questions about population growth – and how to look after a population already two or three times its optimum – are now to be branded as the enemies of prosperity itself.
Of course, in many ways we get the government – and the planning policies – we deserve. Housing has morphed subtly over the past 30 years from a means of shelter – a matter of social need – into a means of investment – a matter of economic greed. The complaint today is not that people are homeless but that they cannot get onto the property ladder. And the answer to the complaint is not to abuse the baby boomer generation for pulling up the ladder behind them (which they’ve done in so many ways, student grants being the prime example). Nor is it to convert ever more fields and woods into bricks and mortar. It’s to tackle the issues of vacant and second homes into which money has been poured on the basis that there’s nothing as safe as houses. It’s also to question why immigration continues unchecked, since immigrants don’t bring their homes with them.
Cynics – and they’re often right these days – will see Labour’s plan as being to stay in power for ever on the votes of grateful immigrants. And besides, just where would a champagne socialist be without the illegal nanny? But if we take Labour’s best shot at face value then we need to scrutinise the shrill claim that more people, more growth, more of everything, good and bad, is the outcome that everyone with a brain must welcome.
Standard of living and quality of life are not necessarily compatible. We should always be wary of equating well-being with prosperity as measured by the economists. That’s because what they measure as the national wealth – Gross Domestic Product – is simply the sum of goods and services produced on the national territory for sale to others. It measures ‘exchange value’ – economic busyness – not ‘use value’. So if we all grew our own vegetables instead of buying them in the shops, GDP would fall.
Some ‘goods’ are actually ‘bads’. A crime wave is excellent news for the economy. More insurance policies are sold, and premiums go up. More locks and burglar alarms are bought, and more security guards employed. It all counts towards GDP. And so does war, an opportunity to use up all that stockpiled military equipment and order anew. Treating avoidable diseases and injuries, cleaning up pollution, and the whole nonsense of planned obsolescence are all ‘wealth-creating’ activities. None of this should come as a surprise. James Robertson, a man whose career spanned the heights of public and private sectors, exposed it all in a book called The Sane Alternative back in 1983. But we just love to go on being conned.
The deepest trap into which we fall is to believe that a growing economy must be good for us, and not just for the super-rich (the 400 people whose earnings now top £10 million per year). So let’s cram in 30 million more workers because the national wealth will double. It might. But the wealth per head will not. Every new worker brings extra demands on public services and infrastructure. Traffic congestion. Water shortages. Astronomical house prices. Longer waiting lists for everything. And looming over all, the elephant in the room, the question of where all the food and fuel will come from when the oil runs dry.
The Economic & Social Research Council has published Britain in 2008, a ‘state of the nation’ report filled with fascinating facts and figures. It tells us that the UK is the world’s 6th largest economy, measured by total GDP. But in terms of GDP per head it comes a lowly 13th. The United States and Canada are ahead of us, but they're the only large countries in the top 12. The little Gulf state of Qatar comes in 9th place and all the others are small European countries. In reverse order: Finland, Austria, Denmark, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Iceland, oil-rich Norway, Ireland and, top of the league, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The Grand Duchy, with a population the size of Cornwall, has a GDP per head figure that is 2.3 times that of the UK. The combined populations of Luxembourg, Iceland and Norway come to much less than that of Wessex, which is also more populous than either Finland, Denmark, Switzerland or Ireland. Austria and Sweden have slightly larger populations but are in much the same league. Who ever said that big is beautiful?
And who ever said that money can buy happiness? There is generally a positive relationship between income and reported satisfaction with life. But the level of satisfaction is lower in the UK than in Sweden, Belgium and Finland, which have similar levels of income. The highest levels of reported satisfaction are in Denmark, then Ireland and Austria. The average level of satisfaction in the UK is lower today than it was 20 years ago, in spite of higher incomes.
Now, let us consider a third variable: population density. The UK is the 51st most densely populated country on the planet. It’s more densely populated even than China, which comes in at 74th. But where are those countries we have seen earlier as models of prosperity and/or well-being? The Netherlands is 25th, Belgium is 31st (ahead of India at 33rd) but the rest are trailing: Luxembourg (62nd), Switzerland (64th), Denmark (82nd), Austria (104th), then Ireland (141st), Sweden (194th), Finland (200th), Norway (213th) and Iceland (232nd). So, of Europe’s top 5 countries by GDP per head, all have lower population densities than the UK, the two Scandinavian ones by a considerable margin. The three happiest countries too tell the same story.
Wessex has, or rather had, as growth has been rapid since the last census in 2001, a population density of 260 persons per square kilometre. If Wessex were an independent state, it would rank 48th in the world. That is to say, its place is not held down, as the UK’s is, by the empty mountains of Scotland, Wales and the north of England but only by pockets of wilderness in a rising tide of urbanisation. Since the planet’s overall density is 45 persons per square kilometre, Wessex is nearly six times as dense as the global average.
Rising population means rising stress. It means less countryside, and more fraught access to it as Green Belt disappears and roads fill up. It means a shallower experience when we get there, as beauty spots become crowded and tranquillity shrinks and fragments. It means more pressure on the use of land, so higher land and house prices. Already we have the smallest new homes in Europe (and that is not because a wicked planning system is preventing builders from doing good but because a tiny band of far-seeing folk are doing their best to prevent the destruction of our future food supply). And stress is not the only risk that increases. If Labour’s plans are forced through despite the pleas of the sane, many thousands of homes will be built on floodplains, there being no more suitable land left.
The alternative is obvious. Happiness is fewer of us, organised in smaller political units where the environment is what we live in, not what we sell from under our feet to whoever waves the biggest chequebook.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
All the World’s a Picnic
It was, of course, insensitive to allow a teddy bear to be named Mahomet. What self-respecting teddy would want to bear a name that remains mired in such controversy? But if Sudanese folk want to make themselves and their religion the world’s laughing-stock by over-reacting, then that’s their business.
The questions which the Gillian Gibbons case raise for us are questions about the organisation of our own society and the terms on which peoples co-exist, without the involuntary surrender of one to another.
Mutual cultural respect is independent of religion. One does not have to worship Allah to appreciate the Alhambra, the Dome of the Rock, Persian poetry or Bengali cooking. Any more than one has to be a devotee of Amun-Ra to comprehend the Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings or the temple complex of Karnak. Culture is not compulsory; you take it or leave it and if you leave it the consequences are not usually fatal. It is inclusive, and because it forms part of the outer life it hangs lightly, like sand over the bedrock of being.
Mutual religious respect is another matter. Religion essentially deals with the inner life and, with few exceptions, is exclusive. Sometimes there are penalties for rejecting it, which can even mean being killed by those you have left behind. Or even by those you never agreed with in the first place. The more fervent the religious belief, the less respect for other beliefs is possible. For the devout Christian, Islam is at best the Mahometan heresy, at worst the work of the Anti-Christ. And the feeling can be mutual. The only alternative to mutual hostility politically is a rigorously secular state that takes no cognisance of belief. Thoughtful religions will appreciate that conversion by force of law is no conversion.
The distinction between culture and religion is therefore one of the most important distinctions of all, yet is increasingly neglected. Universal human rights are being exposed as a sham, determined less and less by objective principles, more and more by fear of those who shout loudest, those with the touchiest feelings and the most extreme forms of self-expression. Terrorism shows that the threats are real enough, though any target country with a long history of self-interested and often violent meddling in the affairs of other states might be judged to be getting no more than its just deserts.
Labour’s cowardice in the face of threats is obvious and understandable. Its power depends on appeasement because, within its heartlands, power depends on not losing the Mahometan vote. So it is with the issue of ritual slaughter. It wouldn’t be such a one-sided issue if the English truly were a nation of animal lovers. If fox hunting was banned for animal welfare reasons, as stated (and that’s a very big ‘if’), then ritual slaughter cannot be tolerated either. If it’s against the law for atheists, Christians and pagans to do it, then Jews and Mahometans should be treated no differently, where they do not form the majority. Different regions could have different laws, according to regional preference, but Wessex, with a tiny Mahometan population, would be unlikely to maintain the exemption. Those who dissent can, if necessary, be either vegetarians or emigrants. At the very least, proper labelling should be mandatory so that everyone eats what they think they are eating.
In multi-cultural Britain, the one culture conspicuous by its absence is ours. It’s not one of which we should be ashamed in any way. If it cannot thrive in its homeland, where can it thrive? By ‘ours’ is not meant just English culture in the round but our specific Wessex dimension, still looked down upon by the London media as the butt of ‘West Country’ jokes. Substitute blacks or Irish and see if the jokes are still politically correct. (Wessex folk, it must be said, can be every bit as bad about the Cornish, just as the Irish joke about those from Kerry, and Kerrymen in their turn about the folk of West Kerry.) That’s not to say that we want to take up the standard assigned role as victims. Political correctness – politicheskaya pravil’nost – was invented under Lenin, so we know where that’s taking us. It shouldn’t be necessary to kick up a fuss in the first place and life would indeed be better without ever-more intrusive legislation criminalising thought and choice. Common sense and common respect is all we ask for, not bureaucratised bullying to take the place of every other kind, nor the idea that those who don’t live in London are intellectually and morally retarded by lack of exposure to the big wide world.
We can take care of ourselves, thank you. And so can the world. A common reaction to events in Sudan has been ‘no more aid for ungrateful Africa’. It’s been over 50 years since independence and it’s true that Africans should by now be able to stand on their own two feet. Believing otherwise may be good for a sense of post-colonial guilt but it does Africa no favours at all. Simply contrast what little the decades of aid have done for that continent with China’s runaway success almost entirely from its own efforts.
It’s inexplicable that any teacher from Britain should give priority to teaching Sudanese children over ‘charity begins at home’. Children here are leaving primary school unable to read. One might question whether they should even be going to school until they can, always assuming that their parents are literate enough to give them that start in life. Our education system is in meltdown and centralist attempts to save it have only made matters worse. The National Curriculum was supposed to raise standards, not lower them. But that’s what happens when schools are taken out of the hands of the community and subjected to patronising interference by Whitehall-knows-best. Thanks to the National Curriculum, all schools now teach at the level of the worst and all initiative has been throttled. Transmission of culture has given way to novelty for its own sake. Labour, instead of confronting the teaching profession’s abdication of responsibility constructively, is throwing billions at unnecessary new school buildings. A huge waste of money, accompanied by school re-foundations that wipe out any continuity of ethos. The oldest of the buildings at Eton College is from the 15th century; the fact doesn’t seem to deter parents who can from sending their children to be taught there, nor stunt the pupils’ careers.
The mess created by centuries of centralism will not be put right overnight but the principles are easy to define. We all of us start from where we are and work outwards. Our local community comes first, then our region, and we help the rest of the world with what’s left over. All those who wish to join us in the task of repair are welcome; those who come to sneer, whinge or exploit are not. We mean others no harm and we expect no less of them.
The questions which the Gillian Gibbons case raise for us are questions about the organisation of our own society and the terms on which peoples co-exist, without the involuntary surrender of one to another.
Mutual cultural respect is independent of religion. One does not have to worship Allah to appreciate the Alhambra, the Dome of the Rock, Persian poetry or Bengali cooking. Any more than one has to be a devotee of Amun-Ra to comprehend the Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings or the temple complex of Karnak. Culture is not compulsory; you take it or leave it and if you leave it the consequences are not usually fatal. It is inclusive, and because it forms part of the outer life it hangs lightly, like sand over the bedrock of being.
Mutual religious respect is another matter. Religion essentially deals with the inner life and, with few exceptions, is exclusive. Sometimes there are penalties for rejecting it, which can even mean being killed by those you have left behind. Or even by those you never agreed with in the first place. The more fervent the religious belief, the less respect for other beliefs is possible. For the devout Christian, Islam is at best the Mahometan heresy, at worst the work of the Anti-Christ. And the feeling can be mutual. The only alternative to mutual hostility politically is a rigorously secular state that takes no cognisance of belief. Thoughtful religions will appreciate that conversion by force of law is no conversion.
The distinction between culture and religion is therefore one of the most important distinctions of all, yet is increasingly neglected. Universal human rights are being exposed as a sham, determined less and less by objective principles, more and more by fear of those who shout loudest, those with the touchiest feelings and the most extreme forms of self-expression. Terrorism shows that the threats are real enough, though any target country with a long history of self-interested and often violent meddling in the affairs of other states might be judged to be getting no more than its just deserts.
Labour’s cowardice in the face of threats is obvious and understandable. Its power depends on appeasement because, within its heartlands, power depends on not losing the Mahometan vote. So it is with the issue of ritual slaughter. It wouldn’t be such a one-sided issue if the English truly were a nation of animal lovers. If fox hunting was banned for animal welfare reasons, as stated (and that’s a very big ‘if’), then ritual slaughter cannot be tolerated either. If it’s against the law for atheists, Christians and pagans to do it, then Jews and Mahometans should be treated no differently, where they do not form the majority. Different regions could have different laws, according to regional preference, but Wessex, with a tiny Mahometan population, would be unlikely to maintain the exemption. Those who dissent can, if necessary, be either vegetarians or emigrants. At the very least, proper labelling should be mandatory so that everyone eats what they think they are eating.
In multi-cultural Britain, the one culture conspicuous by its absence is ours. It’s not one of which we should be ashamed in any way. If it cannot thrive in its homeland, where can it thrive? By ‘ours’ is not meant just English culture in the round but our specific Wessex dimension, still looked down upon by the London media as the butt of ‘West Country’ jokes. Substitute blacks or Irish and see if the jokes are still politically correct. (Wessex folk, it must be said, can be every bit as bad about the Cornish, just as the Irish joke about those from Kerry, and Kerrymen in their turn about the folk of West Kerry.) That’s not to say that we want to take up the standard assigned role as victims. Political correctness – politicheskaya pravil’nost – was invented under Lenin, so we know where that’s taking us. It shouldn’t be necessary to kick up a fuss in the first place and life would indeed be better without ever-more intrusive legislation criminalising thought and choice. Common sense and common respect is all we ask for, not bureaucratised bullying to take the place of every other kind, nor the idea that those who don’t live in London are intellectually and morally retarded by lack of exposure to the big wide world.
We can take care of ourselves, thank you. And so can the world. A common reaction to events in Sudan has been ‘no more aid for ungrateful Africa’. It’s been over 50 years since independence and it’s true that Africans should by now be able to stand on their own two feet. Believing otherwise may be good for a sense of post-colonial guilt but it does Africa no favours at all. Simply contrast what little the decades of aid have done for that continent with China’s runaway success almost entirely from its own efforts.
It’s inexplicable that any teacher from Britain should give priority to teaching Sudanese children over ‘charity begins at home’. Children here are leaving primary school unable to read. One might question whether they should even be going to school until they can, always assuming that their parents are literate enough to give them that start in life. Our education system is in meltdown and centralist attempts to save it have only made matters worse. The National Curriculum was supposed to raise standards, not lower them. But that’s what happens when schools are taken out of the hands of the community and subjected to patronising interference by Whitehall-knows-best. Thanks to the National Curriculum, all schools now teach at the level of the worst and all initiative has been throttled. Transmission of culture has given way to novelty for its own sake. Labour, instead of confronting the teaching profession’s abdication of responsibility constructively, is throwing billions at unnecessary new school buildings. A huge waste of money, accompanied by school re-foundations that wipe out any continuity of ethos. The oldest of the buildings at Eton College is from the 15th century; the fact doesn’t seem to deter parents who can from sending their children to be taught there, nor stunt the pupils’ careers.
The mess created by centuries of centralism will not be put right overnight but the principles are easy to define. We all of us start from where we are and work outwards. Our local community comes first, then our region, and we help the rest of the world with what’s left over. All those who wish to join us in the task of repair are welcome; those who come to sneer, whinge or exploit are not. We mean others no harm and we expect no less of them.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Food is the Future
We’ve nothing against townies. Many of us live in towns. Some exiles even live, in Babylonish captivity, in the very heart of London itself. But as Wessex Regionalists, we all know better than to believe that food grows itself on supermarket shelves.
If only that realisation were universally shared. London, which grows next to nothing itself, is part fed by the farmers of Wessex (in the future, perhaps fuelled by them too). You wouldn’t think so, judging by press coverage of planning matters. According to Richard Morrison in the Times this month, Green Belt is “unused land”, waiting to be built upon. His article adds that Gordon Brown’s three million new homes will only increase urbanisation from 11% to 13% of UK land area. But what if 11% is too much already for one of the most crowded countries in the world? If 2% of land is lost from agriculture every ten years, how long before we run short of food?
It’s true that some farmland is indeed unused, and we pay farmers £4 billion a year in subsidies, including subsidies not to farm. That’s an expensive insurance policy but it’s the price of keeping options open for the longer term. Forever is a very long time and getting farmland back once it’s built on is no easy task. In the nature of things, it’s the sites picked for expansion around towns and villages in the river valleys that tend to be on the best and most versatile land.
The question we should be asking is why the money is spent not to grow food rather than spent to grow it. DEFRA figures show that the UK’s overall self-sufficiency in food fell dramatically in the period 1995-2006, from 73.7% to just 58.1%. We now import 70% of the apples eaten in the UK (a majority even during the UK apple season). Over 60% of apple orchards – many in Wessex – have been destroyed in the last 30 years. Between 1995 and 2005 domestic production of cheese (another traditional Wessex product) fell by 7% to just 63% of cheese consumed. The worst case scenario calculates that, at the current rate of contraction in food self-sufficiency, the UK could be importing all its food by 2051.
Radical changes to the CAP have been pushed harder and implemented more incompetently in England than anywhere else in the EU. Even the Government does its best to avoid buying food produced in Britain. Why? Because agricultural ‘reform’ is part of the drive for globalisation, an economic system that cannot last. A sustainable farming policy would be seeking a Wessex self-sufficient in basic nutrition. So what, if others can grow and transport food across the planet for less? They simply won’t be able to once oil prices escalate. Meanwhile, intensive farming is destroying soil fertility worldwide, at a time when global population is increasing by 75 million a year. That’s another Bristol every two days.
Official statistics for Wessex aren’t readily available, but figures for the South West published by Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the NFU make startling reading. The South West is more than usually dependent on agricultural enterprise, with 14% of businesses in this category (6% in England as a whole). Agriculture contributes 1.2% of the South West’s GVA (Gross Value Added), compared to 0.7% in England as a whole. The South West’s agricultural output is three times that of Wales, which has its own rural affairs minister to fight for it. Wessex, as part of England, doesn’t. (In a 2001 report on food and farming, FoE recommended that decision-making on subsidy payments should be devolved to regional level. The recent fiasco over delays in making payments certainly suggests that central government lacks the necessary competence.)
The South West and South East together account for over half the organic land and organic producers in England, with the South West well in the lead. Farmers’ markets were invented in Bath in 1997. A 2002 survey found that food sold at farmers’ markets in the South West was on average 35% cheaper than food of similar quality in supermarkets in the same towns. Meanwhile, in Winchester, it was found that shops reported 30% greater takings on days when there was a farmers’ market. Research by the Institute of Grocery Distribution shows that 70% of people in Britain want to be able to buy local or regional foods, while in a 2005 survey by BMRB over half considered food and drink to be one of the three main factors defining their regional identity. Yet food miles – the average distance from field to plate – have doubled in 20 years.
The closer one gets to London, the more the economics turns real farms into hobby farms and horse paddocks, especially now that the latter are eligible for subsidy. In the South East, 73% of holdings have diversified out of agriculture, substantially the highest figure in England, where the average is 50% and even the South West – the home of agri-tourism – only reaches 45%. Diversification accounts for 46% of South East farm income (double the national average) and nearly 60% of this income is accounted for by buildings let for non-farming use. These are options not available to farmers in parts of Wessex more remote from London.
There is a complacent tendency to write off farming, which shows in the attitude of some local authorities, only too keen to view allotments and smallholdings as assets to be sold rather than as a continuing service to the community. A long-term view is needed if the skills base is to be ready to meet future home demand. A loss of critical mass in any sector is always difficult to regain.
Making the connections is also vital. Attempts to tackle obesity are hampered by the economics of the food industry itself. Adding value to agricultural produce, to enable it to compete, often means producing highly processed foods with much poorer nutritional value than the basic foodstuffs. Then there are the consequences of animal diseases and drug and pesticide residues to consider. We all pay for the higher NHS costs that result from false economies. And the final chapter of the GM story may not be written for generations to come. Confused thinking has become the norm. Why is real food separately labelled as ‘organic’? Surely it’s the artificial food that should bear the truth-telling labels, if not indeed the Wessex Government health warnings?
Wessex Regionalists demand trustworthy, wholesome food from a farm system that promotes regional self-reliance, landscape quality, bio-diversity and good animal and soil husbandry. Fundamental reform of global trade rules, European policies, UK decision-making structures, land economics and the accountability of institutions ranging from schools to supermarkets are all prerequisites. Recognising the barriers to this, we argue for unilateral action wherever practical.
Food is the future. Our future in an increasingly uncertain world. So let’s think carefully about the often-contradictory pressures we place on those whose livelihood it is. And before it’s too late, let’s stop destroying the very land that grows it.
If only that realisation were universally shared. London, which grows next to nothing itself, is part fed by the farmers of Wessex (in the future, perhaps fuelled by them too). You wouldn’t think so, judging by press coverage of planning matters. According to Richard Morrison in the Times this month, Green Belt is “unused land”, waiting to be built upon. His article adds that Gordon Brown’s three million new homes will only increase urbanisation from 11% to 13% of UK land area. But what if 11% is too much already for one of the most crowded countries in the world? If 2% of land is lost from agriculture every ten years, how long before we run short of food?
It’s true that some farmland is indeed unused, and we pay farmers £4 billion a year in subsidies, including subsidies not to farm. That’s an expensive insurance policy but it’s the price of keeping options open for the longer term. Forever is a very long time and getting farmland back once it’s built on is no easy task. In the nature of things, it’s the sites picked for expansion around towns and villages in the river valleys that tend to be on the best and most versatile land.
The question we should be asking is why the money is spent not to grow food rather than spent to grow it. DEFRA figures show that the UK’s overall self-sufficiency in food fell dramatically in the period 1995-2006, from 73.7% to just 58.1%. We now import 70% of the apples eaten in the UK (a majority even during the UK apple season). Over 60% of apple orchards – many in Wessex – have been destroyed in the last 30 years. Between 1995 and 2005 domestic production of cheese (another traditional Wessex product) fell by 7% to just 63% of cheese consumed. The worst case scenario calculates that, at the current rate of contraction in food self-sufficiency, the UK could be importing all its food by 2051.
Radical changes to the CAP have been pushed harder and implemented more incompetently in England than anywhere else in the EU. Even the Government does its best to avoid buying food produced in Britain. Why? Because agricultural ‘reform’ is part of the drive for globalisation, an economic system that cannot last. A sustainable farming policy would be seeking a Wessex self-sufficient in basic nutrition. So what, if others can grow and transport food across the planet for less? They simply won’t be able to once oil prices escalate. Meanwhile, intensive farming is destroying soil fertility worldwide, at a time when global population is increasing by 75 million a year. That’s another Bristol every two days.
Official statistics for Wessex aren’t readily available, but figures for the South West published by Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the NFU make startling reading. The South West is more than usually dependent on agricultural enterprise, with 14% of businesses in this category (6% in England as a whole). Agriculture contributes 1.2% of the South West’s GVA (Gross Value Added), compared to 0.7% in England as a whole. The South West’s agricultural output is three times that of Wales, which has its own rural affairs minister to fight for it. Wessex, as part of England, doesn’t. (In a 2001 report on food and farming, FoE recommended that decision-making on subsidy payments should be devolved to regional level. The recent fiasco over delays in making payments certainly suggests that central government lacks the necessary competence.)
The South West and South East together account for over half the organic land and organic producers in England, with the South West well in the lead. Farmers’ markets were invented in Bath in 1997. A 2002 survey found that food sold at farmers’ markets in the South West was on average 35% cheaper than food of similar quality in supermarkets in the same towns. Meanwhile, in Winchester, it was found that shops reported 30% greater takings on days when there was a farmers’ market. Research by the Institute of Grocery Distribution shows that 70% of people in Britain want to be able to buy local or regional foods, while in a 2005 survey by BMRB over half considered food and drink to be one of the three main factors defining their regional identity. Yet food miles – the average distance from field to plate – have doubled in 20 years.
The closer one gets to London, the more the economics turns real farms into hobby farms and horse paddocks, especially now that the latter are eligible for subsidy. In the South East, 73% of holdings have diversified out of agriculture, substantially the highest figure in England, where the average is 50% and even the South West – the home of agri-tourism – only reaches 45%. Diversification accounts for 46% of South East farm income (double the national average) and nearly 60% of this income is accounted for by buildings let for non-farming use. These are options not available to farmers in parts of Wessex more remote from London.
There is a complacent tendency to write off farming, which shows in the attitude of some local authorities, only too keen to view allotments and smallholdings as assets to be sold rather than as a continuing service to the community. A long-term view is needed if the skills base is to be ready to meet future home demand. A loss of critical mass in any sector is always difficult to regain.
Making the connections is also vital. Attempts to tackle obesity are hampered by the economics of the food industry itself. Adding value to agricultural produce, to enable it to compete, often means producing highly processed foods with much poorer nutritional value than the basic foodstuffs. Then there are the consequences of animal diseases and drug and pesticide residues to consider. We all pay for the higher NHS costs that result from false economies. And the final chapter of the GM story may not be written for generations to come. Confused thinking has become the norm. Why is real food separately labelled as ‘organic’? Surely it’s the artificial food that should bear the truth-telling labels, if not indeed the Wessex Government health warnings?
Wessex Regionalists demand trustworthy, wholesome food from a farm system that promotes regional self-reliance, landscape quality, bio-diversity and good animal and soil husbandry. Fundamental reform of global trade rules, European policies, UK decision-making structures, land economics and the accountability of institutions ranging from schools to supermarkets are all prerequisites. Recognising the barriers to this, we argue for unilateral action wherever practical.
Food is the future. Our future in an increasingly uncertain world. So let’s think carefully about the often-contradictory pressures we place on those whose livelihood it is. And before it’s too late, let’s stop destroying the very land that grows it.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Power Power
It was back in the 70’s that we first argued for the revenues from Wessex mineral resources (including Dorset oil) to be re-invested in the development of alternative energy sources, and in long-term regional employment opportunities, with the ultimate aim of achieving basic regional self-sufficiency.
Today the oil is running out but the long-term perspective remains lacking. Government at every level is still talking about building roads to end congestion and expanding airports to underpin the mad project of economic globalisation. (Just why do we burn irreplaceable fuel to fly in food we could produce for ourselves?)
In place of a long-term perspective we have the politics of panic. For some in the debate, nothing else matters. The South West Green Party greatly prefers wind farms to local democracy. Yet there are so many huge questions going unanswered.
Supply-side policy rules. We tackle the drug dealers; we don’t ask why they have so many customers. We talk about a housing crisis because we won’t talk about rocketing and unsustainable population growth. And we look to renewable energy sources to avoid discussing where and why the demand for energy exists.
The Government’s own Energy White Paper in 2003 concluded that the cheapest, cleanest and safest way of addressing energy policy objectives is to use less energy. Yet reckless economic and population growth continues to outstrip the potential of technology to ameliorate the crisis. We think we’re awfully clever if we build three million new homes on ‘surplus’ farmland and ensure that each one has a solar panel on the roof. But you can’t eat solar panels. Nor is nuclear power the answer. Uranium is finite, just like coal, oil and gas.
This is not sustainable development. This is just another competition to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. Unfortunately, those who are deaf to the facts are those who are running the country.
Radio 4 this morning, in a programme entitled ‘Energising the West’, gushed for half an hour on the renewables revolution now underway in our region. It’s great, of course, that we have such resources of wind, wave, water, wood and waste. But from the metropolitan viewpoint, these are resources to be plundered for the common good, in other words, for their good. So we end up sacrificing Wessex beauty spots to wind farms just to keep the neon blazing in Piccadilly Circus. We shall not receive anything like the value extracted from our resources. And in the end our tarnished heritage will be cast aside, just like the steam age coalfields and land now blighted by radiation.
The Severn Barrage illustrates the thinking. There are ways to harness tidal power that don’t require destruction of a vast wetland area of international importance for wildlife. Friends of the Earth have the details. Yet in September Labour announced a feasibility study of a Severn Barrage – and nothing else. They are determined to suck out the very last watt of power, regardless of the environmental consequences. Because London demands it (and Labour loves prestige projects). Our view is that tidal lagoon and other alternative technologies are serious options with significant environmental and operational advantages. Additionally, because they wouldn’t turn the Bristol Channel into a lake, they would maintain the separation of Wales and Wessex. A barrage would promote social coalescence to the mutual disbenefit of our respective cultures. Nor would these options require either the closure of all ports upstream of a barrage or the fitting of a lock limiting the size of ship acceptable.
If the aim of national energy policy is the exploitation of Wessex for London’s benefit, a regional energy policy has the equally clear objective of self-sufficiency at the regional level. So how do we secure this?
We begin by auditing the resources we are neglecting. We have an east-west motorway, the M4. Should we not be installing photo-voltaics on the south-facing embankments? We produce around 25 kilogrammes of waste per household per week. Why do we landfill so much and not recover the maximum energy from it? Southampton City Council has made a name for itself in energy best practice. So why are all Wessex cities not performing at the same level?
These are questions that a regional government would be well placed to answer with enthusiasm. National government won’t get involved in the detail. Local government is often too limited by its horizons to do the vision thing. Regional government – a Wessex Parliament – would do the necessary marshalling. Is it better to have a few large energy-from-waste plants that can maximise thermal efficiency? Or more local ones, that minimise fuel transport distances and allow heat and power to be distributed through local networks?
The region is the level at which energy issues come together. That’s why we have regional electricity companies, even though, thanks to Thatcher, they’re now owned by the French and the Scots. It’s been sixty years since they were owned by Wessex folk.
Maybe it’s time to bring back the Wessex Electricity Company? Wouldn’t we rather be paying our bills to that than to a company 70% owned by the French State, whose nuclear power stations are arranged along the Normandy coast so that we’re the first victims of any fallout?
As for the Scots, they’re best known for laying claim to Shetland’s oil, which won’t do them much good in the longer term. But the corresponding issue for the 21st century is who owns the energy of the future. You read it here first. They’re Wessex’s renewables!
Today the oil is running out but the long-term perspective remains lacking. Government at every level is still talking about building roads to end congestion and expanding airports to underpin the mad project of economic globalisation. (Just why do we burn irreplaceable fuel to fly in food we could produce for ourselves?)
In place of a long-term perspective we have the politics of panic. For some in the debate, nothing else matters. The South West Green Party greatly prefers wind farms to local democracy. Yet there are so many huge questions going unanswered.
Supply-side policy rules. We tackle the drug dealers; we don’t ask why they have so many customers. We talk about a housing crisis because we won’t talk about rocketing and unsustainable population growth. And we look to renewable energy sources to avoid discussing where and why the demand for energy exists.
The Government’s own Energy White Paper in 2003 concluded that the cheapest, cleanest and safest way of addressing energy policy objectives is to use less energy. Yet reckless economic and population growth continues to outstrip the potential of technology to ameliorate the crisis. We think we’re awfully clever if we build three million new homes on ‘surplus’ farmland and ensure that each one has a solar panel on the roof. But you can’t eat solar panels. Nor is nuclear power the answer. Uranium is finite, just like coal, oil and gas.
This is not sustainable development. This is just another competition to re-arrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. Unfortunately, those who are deaf to the facts are those who are running the country.
Radio 4 this morning, in a programme entitled ‘Energising the West’, gushed for half an hour on the renewables revolution now underway in our region. It’s great, of course, that we have such resources of wind, wave, water, wood and waste. But from the metropolitan viewpoint, these are resources to be plundered for the common good, in other words, for their good. So we end up sacrificing Wessex beauty spots to wind farms just to keep the neon blazing in Piccadilly Circus. We shall not receive anything like the value extracted from our resources. And in the end our tarnished heritage will be cast aside, just like the steam age coalfields and land now blighted by radiation.
The Severn Barrage illustrates the thinking. There are ways to harness tidal power that don’t require destruction of a vast wetland area of international importance for wildlife. Friends of the Earth have the details. Yet in September Labour announced a feasibility study of a Severn Barrage – and nothing else. They are determined to suck out the very last watt of power, regardless of the environmental consequences. Because London demands it (and Labour loves prestige projects). Our view is that tidal lagoon and other alternative technologies are serious options with significant environmental and operational advantages. Additionally, because they wouldn’t turn the Bristol Channel into a lake, they would maintain the separation of Wales and Wessex. A barrage would promote social coalescence to the mutual disbenefit of our respective cultures. Nor would these options require either the closure of all ports upstream of a barrage or the fitting of a lock limiting the size of ship acceptable.
If the aim of national energy policy is the exploitation of Wessex for London’s benefit, a regional energy policy has the equally clear objective of self-sufficiency at the regional level. So how do we secure this?
We begin by auditing the resources we are neglecting. We have an east-west motorway, the M4. Should we not be installing photo-voltaics on the south-facing embankments? We produce around 25 kilogrammes of waste per household per week. Why do we landfill so much and not recover the maximum energy from it? Southampton City Council has made a name for itself in energy best practice. So why are all Wessex cities not performing at the same level?
These are questions that a regional government would be well placed to answer with enthusiasm. National government won’t get involved in the detail. Local government is often too limited by its horizons to do the vision thing. Regional government – a Wessex Parliament – would do the necessary marshalling. Is it better to have a few large energy-from-waste plants that can maximise thermal efficiency? Or more local ones, that minimise fuel transport distances and allow heat and power to be distributed through local networks?
The region is the level at which energy issues come together. That’s why we have regional electricity companies, even though, thanks to Thatcher, they’re now owned by the French and the Scots. It’s been sixty years since they were owned by Wessex folk.
Maybe it’s time to bring back the Wessex Electricity Company? Wouldn’t we rather be paying our bills to that than to a company 70% owned by the French State, whose nuclear power stations are arranged along the Normandy coast so that we’re the first victims of any fallout?
As for the Scots, they’re best known for laying claim to Shetland’s oil, which won’t do them much good in the longer term. But the corresponding issue for the 21st century is who owns the energy of the future. You read it here first. They’re Wessex’s renewables!
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