And Another Thing…

And? Why waste glue remover on them? They’ll get hungry or need the toilet soon enough.

I think I’d enjoy you lot watching them slowly starve or dehydrate to death on your doorstep on a number of levels. Not least that the morons will have assumed they’d be saved by 3rd party intervention, during which they can make a fuss about ‘brutality’ as they are removed and a few days of watching them come to the realisation that, whoops, nobody’s coming to stop them would be hilarious.

Well, hilarious enough to take my mind off swine fever which has already done more harm to travel stocks than protestors ever will!

Could someone sidled up to them and ask them to estimate how many premature deaths would result from an unreliable electricity supply? I recall that many thousands of deaths, mostly amongst the elderly and/or infirm, were said to have resulted from the three hour rota cuts back in the early seventies.

Perhaps they think culling a few million old folk would be good for the environment.

Oh and ask if any of them have cuddly greenhouse gas producing pets (or children) back home.

Harumph…

Forget the coal fired power station, when do the nuclear power stations we need start being built?

They’re environmentally friendly and don’t produce CO2.

No one would complain about them if they truly believe in global warming and the need to reduce CO2 emissions.

@Chris’ Wills

I completely agree. No nukes is bad nukes.

Our uranium deposits aren’t in such good shape, mind you. But coal is good too. Preferably our own.

I think whilst the climate protesters are there, and holding hands, we should only do our best to encourage them and not mock them.

To this end we should leave them self attached and -in order to prevent growing cold at night – plug one of them into the 240 volt mains supply. Thus ensuring they glow with inner warmth as their bodies shake involuntarily.

Good Idea Tom. Perhaps you could suggest to your dear leader that it’s probably a good idea to get a democratic mandate from the entire country to have any legitimate claim to govern, as opposed to the “votes” of 363 spineless MPs????

Your words proclaiming democratic supremacy run very hollow in the face of such hypocrisy!

356 spineless MPs i’m sorry!

Not the unelected PM again. OK, some of us don’t like him.

Sigh. OK. I’m on the bell then. Just the more recent ones though.

That chap, wotsisface, Marlborough
Man, was appointed PM solely by HM King George VI was he not, rather than the popular vote, and there wasn’t an election for a while. Then there was Macmillan, Home, Callaghan and Major.

Give it a rest folks.

Tom, people have been trying to give the government a wakeup call for years, but you’re still dozing.

Do you really, really, understand what science is telling us about the impact of increasing global climate instability? That Nicholas Stern was probably optimistic about the consequences for the environment and the economy?

Or do you agree with the majority of the commenters here that we shouldn’t bother to change how we source and use energy cos, after all, it won’t be us who suffer?

Just as well we don’t live in Dhaka, Kolkata, Mumbai, Miami, New York or London, isn’t it?

When I heard the story, I couldn’t help but wonder if the glue is eco-friendly (is there such a thing?).

On a more serious note, things like this just means security gets tightened up and it is harder for us who occasionally visit for less disruptive purposes to get in.

One day, the building might cease to be a public building for all to enter – which will be a shame.

Does that mean that in your view there is no need for anyone ever to protest because they can vote and form parties? I think that is a bit unrealistic.

Personally, I favour new coal power stations in the manner the government envisages, but the question of protest is a lot wider than the specific issue. There is no likelihood of a minor party having any real influence on this policy and to vote other than for one of the mainstream parties is frankly a waste of a vote with the current system, so a great many people are disenfranchised from political debate without the ability to protest.

No sign of this story in the news, that I’ve noticed anyway. That seems to be dominated by the swine flu scare, which looks set to be as much of a dud as avian flu a few years back, which arch-scaremonger Liam Donaldson said could cost 500,000 lives, and actually cost none.

Anyway, I used to be quite sympathetic to Greens and environmentalists, but I’m getting increasingly sick to death of people who quite clearly hate the human race, and wish to see it exterminated. No big surprise, when you get to read about the ancestry of the Green movement.

… that Neville Chamberlain… fancy nipping off to Munich like that and trying what he tried without a personal mandate…

Sorry. The topic. There are carbon capture systems for coal-fired power stations now are there not, even accepting the anthropogenic principle?

“Do you really, really, understand what science is telling us about the impact of increasing global climate instability? That Nicholas Stern was probably optimistic about the consequences for the environment and the economy?

Or do you agree with the majority of the commenters here that we shouldn’t bother to change how we source and use energy cos, after all, it won’t be us who suffer? ”

Well, John, first of all I think you have to agree that the science is not settled. Scienitific method tells you that it can never be settled and common sense says there are many eminent and reasonable scientists who demurr from what is portrayed in the media as a foregone consensus.

So yes, I’m a skeptic. Not a denier, but frankly since things like the RCP took a tactical decision at the end of the Soviet era to disband and do a Trotskyite entryist number on the green movement, and since the solutions proposed by the ‘greens’ either involve mass murder (UK IDEAL POPULATION 30 MILLION, they claimed the other day, coming close to being honset about their genocidal leanings) or sending our civilisation back to pre-industrial levels while massively undoing individualism and replacing it with totalitarian control (what’s in YOUR recycling bin?), I think I’m right to be skeptical. We have so much to lose and frankly I want to see fairly incontrovertible science (of the gravity kind, or the kind that gives us any *product*) before I willingly surrender my hard-won liberties to any Green Overlord.

Hell, I’d have more respect for them if they even followed science as their fallen idol Lovelock has and embrace a new generation of nuclear power. But no, its easier for them to sacrifice the young, the old and the infirm on their Green Altar (since they are the groups who will suffer more and die more in our coming energy shortage). Nice, eh?

In response to John Adams and Blackacre, I respect people’s right to protest peacefully, provided my right to object to such protests is also respected. But let’s beware of making the argument that people with strong views who feel those views aren’t represented in the main parties have no alternative but to make such high-profile protests. The BNP could fall into that category.

And of course we have to fight climate change. But no matter what measures any government takes, there will always be those who feel we’re not doing enough and who just know they are so much better qualified, so much better informed, so much cleverer than the rest of us, that they simply must give us the benefit of their wisdom, whether we want it or not.

And of course we have to fight climate change.

No we don’t. Climate change is always happening, and can’t be stopped. ‘Climate change’ is the new weasel word for ‘global warming’, of course. And that increasingly appears to be an artefact generated by climate simulation models, given that global temperatures have been falling for the past decade.

@Jim Baxter

Precedent doesn’t make it right! It was wrong then, it was wrong in the 70s, it was wrong in the 80s, it was wrong in the 90s and its wrong now!

Any Prime minister should seek his own mandate from the people, if you ask me it should be enshrined in law, obviously the last 40 years have demonstrated that modern politicians can’t be trusted be do the honorable thing!

It was not wrong in the past, and it’s not wrong now. The prime minister is never directly elected. Tony Blair was never elected by anyone except the voters of Sedgefield. The uncodified British constitution says that the prime minister is whoever happens to be the leader of the party with the most seats in the Commons.

Everyone has (or should have) a right to protest. However, too many people in special interest groups feel that everyone else has a duty to listen to them, and that democracy should be the rule of she who shouts loudest.

It is worth remembering that the green movement who are currently screaming about science and chanting “peer review” as a kind of mantra are the same people who only a few years ago were trashing science over GM foods. They are people who use science for support, not illumination, and scientists need to be aware that these campaigners are not their friends.

Modern society needs an energy supply. How that should be supplied is an important discussion. The green movement aren’t actually interested in that discussion, because they’re obsessed with a rural romanticism. Well, at the risk of being Hobbesian, without copious energy, we’ll be literally back in the Dark Ages, and the harsh realities of subsistence agriculture and the division of labour without heavy industry would rapidly reverse all the social advances we have made, particularly in the opportunities and status of women.

I like the modern world, and I think a lot of other people do as well. If there are environmental problems, fine, let us deal with them in a calm and rational manner. These protestors are part of the problem, not the solution.

(And yes, I’d just leave them there stuck together too, with some safety barriers around them.)

he uncodified British constitution says that the prime minister is whoever happens to be the leader of the party with the most seats in the Commons.

Isn’t it actually whoever Her Maj asks to be her Prime Minister, with a convention that that’s usually the leader of the largest party? In theory, she could appoint anybody from the Commons.

Ian B – Spot on.

Comres
CON 45(+5) LAB 26(-2) LD 17(-1)

While that was very thoughtful of you, Mad, it is a bit off-topic, don’t you think?

Re Ian B’s point:

Her Maj “could appoint anybody from the Commons”.

The Lords as well.

It’s Convention that the PM should sit in the Commons.

Might prompt a constitutional crisis but would address the status of the Upper House once and for all.

TFC

You’re right Tom, that is theoretically how it works. However, when people vote in a general election they are not just voting for an MP, they are voting for a government and a PM at the same time. In fact, i’d bet a fair sum of money that that most people voting in a GE use their vote to vote for a party, a government and a PM rather than a their local MP.

Local MPs are by and large elected on a platform set by the leadership of the party in particular the leadership of the PM. That platform must be ratified by the British people.

The platform the Labour Party stood on in the last election is VERY different from the one they pursue now. Three stark examples stand out:
1) Tony Blair stated that he would serve a full third term, he did not. The British people endorsed the leadership of Tony Blair and NOT Gordon Brown.
2) A promise to hold a referendum on the EU constitution, now the Lisbon Treaty (DO NOT DARE insult my intelligence by trying to say they’re different things, they differ purely in name!).
3) The 50p tax band, the most recent trampled promise (and the least significant!)

Im sick of people throwing the term democracy around when the clearly don’t understand it. Labour in particular (though not exclusively) seem only to care about it so long as they benefit from it. The only reason Brown didn’t hold and election when he became leader was because he wasn’t sure he could win it.

Its obvious to me now why there is so little honor in politics, because there are so few honorable MPs. Would an MP today ever be prepared to lose everything for something he believed in passionately? Would a PM ever be prepared to lose an election and sacrifice the rest of his career in order gain a clear democrat mandate from the British people?

The constitution assumes politicians are honorable and have fair grasp of what democracy is! If you were to ask the British people whether they should have voted for or against Gordon Brown becoming PM they would say overwhelming yes, no matter what intricacies of the constitution you want to quote at me Tom, the British people are ALWAYS right when it comes to matters of their own self-determination!

Shaun Pilkington at 7:04 pm – well said.

The media and edukashun system are making many people believe that we are a cancer on the face of the planet. No wonder some folk do crazy things like this as part of their Gaia worship.

A lot of famous and influential people have been calling for the world’s population to be drastically reduced. They’ve already succeeded in making marriage look unfashionable and large families seem selfish and abortion appear acceptable to many and have now moved on to euthanasia.

How long before the next stage: that a large number of us must sacrifice ourselves to ‘save the planet’. And like the previous stages, the people will first have been conditioned to accept it.

Or maybe they’ve already begun bumping us off with the aspartame, vaccines and chemicals in the plastic, etc. with one in three getting cancer…

We live in elective dictatorship. That’s our democracy. The party that can command a majority in the HoC can do what it likes. It can change its direction, its leader, it can renege and countermarch. It can ignore the electorate entirely.

If the people don’t like it, they can vote them out. But they have to wait.

Deal with it.

@Jim Baxter

No i don’t think i will thank you. That maybe our current reality, but that doesn’t mean i have to live with it!

There are too many people just content to accept things as they are; a pale imitation of what they could be, and i’m not one of those people.

@Ben

Fair enough. Best stand for parliament then.

Good point about them standing for election to further their goals Tom.

Speaking of which – could we have that General Election that we all so desperately want?

NO? Thought not!

Gordon wants to cling onto power until the Camerons are knocking on the door of Downing Street with the removal men. LOL

Honestly, it’s enough to make you want to stand around a statue and glue your hands together to force an election – oh hang on? Isn’t this where we came in?

Tom,

Another post I agree with. What is the world coming to!

Yes, don’t indulge the kiddie-winkies who are having a tantrum because they can’t get what they want (total control of the universe, just like any 2 year old). Yes, they should stand or convince us. No to coercion and Tyranny!

Better still, set up a BBQ and a water feature (intermittent) right next to them to ginger things along a bit.

p.s.
1. We have had “climate change” for 4bln years+
2. Listen, Econazis, we know you have changed the term from “global warming”. We are on to you.
3. There is a boiled ocean’s distance between Man having an “impact” and Man causing, triggering or rendering irreversible climate changes. Man’s impact could be 0.05% variation on an inevitable shift for all we know. Stop hiding behind words.
4. Is it reversible? You don’t know. We know you don’t know. Stop trying to scare people and realise we need to focus on mitigating any effects of natural climate change such as drought, flood, sea level rises etc. To do that we need to be RICH and industrialised. Ergo, sorry Tom, we need New Labour OUT, we will NOT be helped much by Blue Labour and certainly not by the LibDems, chock full of the same kind of Do-gooders who stuck themselves to the statue, but only by the LPUK – “the party they’d dare not speak its name”

>> So why don’t they stand for election and find out if the people of this country would actually prefer to depend entirely on wind/tidal power (otherwise known as “letting the lights go out in the middle of the next decade”)?

Great idea Tom, let’s have single issue candidates!!! Just what the country needs as it tries to get out of an economic mess.

Also, the public should NOT have a say on a complicated scientific and/or economic debate. They elect representatives who have access to the facts and/or experts who process a lot of information that The Sun/The Guardian readers cannot.

‘Also, the public should NOT have a say on a complicated scientific and/or economic debate’.

Hear hear to that. Nor should we expect our representatives always to be ‘listening’. We elect them to do a job for us, one that most of us would find either too demanding or too boring. They can hear us loudly enough at election time. That’s democracy enough for many. accountabilitiy is good, but any candidate who promises to involve constituents more in the decisions he or she takes loses my vote.

‘Also, the public should NOT have a say on a complicated scientific and/or economic debate’.

Hear hear to that.

Another one for the list of “terrifying things authoritarians routinely say”.

Ian, I have a degree in economics but do not have the details (data/models) that the professionals do when it comes to budget time so I would not want to have a huge say on it.

However, I would rather have complete say over the budget with no data than have a bunch of people with no economics training and no access to experts (and newspapers do not count as experts as they take their conclusions from their editor/owner.)

Call it totalitarian of you like, I call it responsible. And we get to vote in someone with different ideas if we don’t like the results of the previous candidate.

Also, people are stupid and vote on propositions for a multitude of unreasonable ideas – look at the prop 8 vote in California (gay marriage), most people voted for a progressive candidate and party but voted against gay marriage in supposedly the most libertarian of the states due to religious pressure.

California “the most libertarian state”? Hardly. The most “liberal”, in the American meaning of the word, i.e. socialist, possibly. But it’s about as far from libertarian as it gets in the USA.

And yes, I do call technocracy totalitarian. It sounds like a good idea, but it isn’t, not least because of that famous cliche “an idea so foolish that only an intellectual would believe it”. The problem is, experts are not soulless automatons. They have self interest, just like everybody else, and as such if you offer them power they will find justifications for extending it. And then there’s the problem of who will choose the experts, which is a variation on “who will watch the watchmen”?

We already see the danger of this “expertocracy” in, for instance, the grasping for control by medical bureaucrats. Do I want my diet forcibly imposed by that minority of doctors more interested in climbing the political greasy pole than in treating patients? Not blooming likely. Do I want economic policy decided by that self-selecting group of economists whose recommendations increase government power, and thus find themselves asked to be experts?Not in the least.

Very bad idea, giving your freedom up to experts. Very bad indeed.

>>Do I want my diet forcibly imposed by that minority of doctors more interested in climbing the political greasy pole than in treating patients? Not blooming likely.

Who would you prefer, the 29 stone woman in Coventry who feeds her 8-month old triplets fish and chips that she has to pre-chew for them as she has no teeth?

>>Do I want economic policy decided by that self-selecting group of economists whose recommendations increase government power, and thus find themselves asked to be experts?Not in the least.

By all means lets have a working group of working class people who have a grass-roots view of the economy and can decide the trade offs between defence, health, science, pensions etc.

Or should we let the Great British public vote on all the important matters, after being whipped up into a frenzy by Rupert Murdoch! We are then an effective dictatorship, I’d choose a technocracy over that. Not that we have one, we still have elected officials who make the ultimate decisions (hopefully) after seeking advice from multiple sources of different opinions.

While I agree the self-serving people are often chosen, they have to be somewhat circumspect as if they start to say things the rest of the academic community disagrees with they lose respect and so their positions.

Liberal does not mean socialist. It emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity.

“New Mexico is the most liberal state in America based mostly on their laws pertaining to homosexuality and abortion. Following New Mexico in the top 10 most liberal states are Washington, New York, New Jersey, Hawaii, Vermont, California, New Hampshire, District of Columbia, Oregon.”

California ranks 6th out of 50. Not too shabby liberal-wise. Maybe you should have asked someone technical in the technocracy how to use google.

Paul and Jim Baxter.

Paul knows economics. I have no clue what Jim Baxter knows, but lets have a think.

What if you are both so ignorant over scientific affairs that you are incapable of even deciding who to vote in? Why should your ignorance or abdication trump my engagement? Don’t think this won’t happen. The EU does not trust the Parliament to create legislation, only vote on it. How long before they begin to not trust us because you guys keep telling them you are too stupid or self-absorbed to have an opinion? Very soon, chaps, very soon.

Even if YOU TWO are happy to abdicate YOUR sovereignty over such matters to “the experts”, what gives you the GOD DAMN RIGHT to demand that I do too?

Tyranny of the Majority, of course. The old Authoritarian wet dream.

@Ian B,

Very bad idea to suggest that MPs should have to listen every whim and crackpot idea, and good idea, of their constituents. Some are well-informed, some less so. What is certain is that they will disagree strongly with each other, and the better informed they are the better reasons they will give for why they are right. MPs are elected to represent us and make decsions besed on their own best judgement, not to ‘obey’ us. I loved the argument of the so-called libertarians on here last year who wanted to remind MPs that ‘we are your masters’. I also liked Ben’s comment above about ‘there are too many people content’ with things as they are. I.e. too many people disagree with me. Ben’s task now is to convince me and the rest of the lumpenproletariat that we are wrong and should become more involved. That’s what election campaigns are for.

I think Tom’s point is that if people wish to stand as single issue candidates then fine, the more the better. That’s democracy. And all those lost deposits are handy revenue.

Oh, thanks for the ‘authoriatarian’. I’ll add that to the list of things I appear to be according to folks on here. Very self-contradictory that list, which just reminds me that you would go daft, as would an MP, if you had to take every opinion seriously and respond to it.

@Roger Thornhill,

Tyranny of the Majority? What you mean? That we should all defer to you? Because you know more than we do!? Now, THAT’s authoritarian.

You get as involved as you like and then we in the authoritarian majority can reserve the right to ignore you, possibbly even take the piss out of you, and leave decisions up to the people we elect to make the decisons

If we had tyrnanny of the majority in this country we’d have capital punishment back, matey, PDQ. The country is run by professional politicians and they choose what advice to take. They get it wrong, catastrophically, unfathomably wrong sometimes. Sometimes they get it right. Just like you and your like on the PTA.

@Roger,

We do not demand that you hand YOUR sovereignty over such matters to “the experts”

We demand that you allow the duly and democratically elected MP to represent you in the house and vote on every matter except who the next MP for their constituency will be. We can go talk to MPs, put forward persuasive arguments and hope they will listen to us but must accept that they will go to various experts to get a clearer picture of what the latest and hopefully best knowledge is on the topic before it comes up for debate or a vote in the house.

People are ignorant of science and economics and ethics and don’t know who to vote in, that is why newspapers get such a ridiculous say in who wins elections. And few, if any, MPs are well versed in all of economics and science and law and ethics and any other subject you deem important.

Opinions are all well and good, but they are much better if backed up by research and science and facts. Opinions are like *cough* belly buttons, everybody’s got one, we just think that MPs shouldn’t have to listen to the ones that happen to be shouted loudest. If you don’t like who your MP listens to, vote in a new one. Or stand yourself, just please have some form of manifesto longer than one soundbite (reduce carbon emmissions, say no to nukes, save the whales, hate the Wales, sack the bankers.) I thank you for your patience.

Tom, I note you didn’t have an opinion about single issue candidates…

And the ‘ignorant over scientific affairs’ is good too. A child of three knows what light is but not a phyicist. The bar-tender down the pub knows all about economics but not the top economists. They disagree with eacj other, you know. The more you know about science the more you know why you don’t know what everybody else knows.

But let’s have the country run by experts. PhDs only need stand for parliament. Get rid of all those lawyers who’ve never had a ‘real job’, remember. Fancy electing lawyers to make laws.

Then they can argue all the time and do nothing. Soemtimes doing nothing might be the right thing to do (Hi Dave) but we can be sure that our experts will do nothing else.

Jim,

Don’t be so disingenuous. How absurd to even think people would fall for your spin on my stance. And yes, you sound like a steaming Authoritarian.

Paul,

Your reply is more sensible and has removed much of the false dichotomy from the argument. The issue I have, and I stated clearly in my original post, is that the government does too much and MPs decide on far too many things in our lives. Can you not see that this sits very badly with the idea of letting them decide in a vacuum or be advised almost entirely by “experts”? Now, I have few problems when it is experts in prison policy, defence, aspects of policing (but not all, as you would agree after G20, no?) and how Courts are run (up to a point – I want due process). But Education? NO WAY. Healthcare? NO WAY. Smoking? NO WAY. Alcohol? NO WAY. Your talk about voting out is meaningless when they are demanding to affect my personal life. We are being collectivised involuntarily and the last thing I am going to do is agree that they should be left in peace to dictate to me.

Roger, you are correct but that simply means we need a written, unchangeable constitution.

I feel the current government has eroded my liberties way too far and shall not be voting for them until this changes.

As for law and order… the experts they speak to are POLICE! Where are the criminals from this panel. Or the libertarians? Police recommend more police power. Who’d have thunk it? Turkeys voting to abolish Christmas.

Roger,

Steaming I may be, from time to time. I’ll grant you that. But how else to interpret what you say? ‘Why should your ignorance or abdication trump my engagement?’

That surely means that you think you know enough to take on the experts, whereas the rest of us might not and, in our ignorance, will just hand power over to them.

I fail to see how a belief that democracy should work by devolving the power of the people to elected represeantives, who are accountable to the people but who do not have to respond to their every whim, is the mark of an authoritarian. Maybe you could explain that one. Just if you have the time.

Paul – exactly, which is why I said only in part should experts be consulted about policing.

Jim,

Let me explain the statement ‘Why should your ignorance or abdication trump my engagement?’

It is basically saying just because YOU are happy with abdication, that should not permit you to give away or deny MY freedoms. You might want experts to decide every detail of education for yourself, but that should not mean you have the right to force me to accept that situation. We are almost there now with education and it needs drastic action. Now do you understand?

We might, in part, be arguing past each other, but as I have mentioned in other posts, if the State is as large as it is and getting larger by the day, having elected reps deciding all these things is moving towards Authoritarianism and on to a form of Totalitarianism, where we ALL must do what the Elite decide “in their wisdom”.

Roger,

‘We might, in part, be arguing past each other.’

We might indeed. I’m not trying to force anybody to accept anything. I’m concerned with who makes the decisions and on what basis; the elected representatives acting according to their own best judgement, however flawed that may be, or, alternatively, acting on the basis of which of a cabal of pressure groups claiming special expertise or insights shouts the loudest. I favour the former and fear the latter. Now do YOU understand?