Yesterday blogger Tim Ireland took part in the 10:23 ‘overdose’ event and shot this footage in Guildford.
He applied the visual effect as a fast way of anonymising staff/bystanders.
The 10:23 event was coordinated by blogger and occasional LC contributor Martin Robbins, who has more here.
There’s a worrying tendency emerging in some sections of the left to cite China as a positive example for the UK.
At the Progressive London” conference, Ken Livingstone gave a speech in which he declared that the proof that government investment ends recessions lies in China’s staggering rates of state spending, and enormous correlate levels of growth.
Later, John Ross of Socialist Economic Bulletin (and Ken’s former economic adviser) took some time out from claiming that Britain’s national debt didn’t need to be repaid, that the triple-A rating is meaningless, and that all spending cuts are completely a choice and not imposed by brute economic circumstances, to cite China as proof-positive that government-led investment ends recessions. He waxed lyrical about China’s 9% growth in the last quarter, and how the Chinese government simply told banks to lend and – hey presto – they lent.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keeping government spending as high as possible to protect the tentative recovery. But citing China as a model for UK growth is idiotic, and deeply troubling.
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David Cameron’s office recently wrote this email to a voter in response to the standard Tory grassroots view that Global Warming is a global conspiracy.
I can see that you feel recent allegations have cast doubt over the case for climate change, and the integrity of the science. However, our view is that public policy on climate change has been built over many years, with input from a wide variety of expert sources, and we do need to significantly reduce our carbon emissions.
It is always right to keep an open mind, and question scientific theories. But, those in favour of doing nothing on the basis of scientific scepticism need to show that the risks we run by not acting are small and manageable. Given all the information and evidence we now have, that is a very difficult case to make.
I will, of course, ensure that David is made aware if your concerns, but I am afraid we may have to agree to disagree on this issue.
Whatever your views are, we cannot afford not to go green. The UK economy is still dependent for more than 90 per cent of its energy needs on fossil fuels, which increasingly come from imports. With the era of cheap oil now well and truly over, our fossil fuel dependency is making us uncompetitive and vulnerable to geopolitical shocks.
We can build a secure, prosperous future, but only if we start the work of transforming our national energy infrastructure now, by increasing energy efficiency and reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels.
Being at the cutting edge of new technologies in the energy industry is precisely the action that is needed to prevent the power cuts the Government is predicting by 2017, and it ensures that Britain’s consumers and businesses are protected against the consequences of volatile and rising oil prices into the future.
We need to make the transition to a low carbon economy urgently, and I hope you’ll agree that our plans for a Low Carbon Economy will help create hundreds of thousands of jobs, raise skills and improve Britain’s competitiveness.
The answer will no doubt disappoint many Tories. It’s interesting however to note that Cameron’s office uses the ‘energy security’ argument to make their case rather than a more traditional Tory approach that may appeal to conserving local environments.
In the US, Democrat Senator John Kerry and President Obama have repeatedly stated that energy security makes investment in renewable energy a top priority.
Today’s Progressive London conference was packed out. And by that I mean packed out. Clearly that means there is a hunger amongst lefties to find ways to hit back at the right and find out what people are doing.
Our session on new media and politics was very enjoyable, and Clifford Singer, Andy Newman, Alex Smith and Helen Gardner all made excellent points, I thought.
But let’s look at the bigger picture here. The problem with Progressive London is that it is billed as a broader left response to Conservatives in London. And while it does bring together a wide tent (too wide in some cases), it ends up merely being Ken Livingstone’s re-election vehicle.
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Charlie Brooker’s latest Newswipe on BBC4 looks at how the media generates and then reports on controversies.
This clip focuses on the media outrage involving Islamist Anjem Choudhary and his group Islam4UK’s plans to march on Wootton Bassett.
Much as I’ve enjoyed Flying Rodent’s wittily insouciant commentary on the Chilcott Inquiry, you’ll see from the comments that it hasn’t persuaded anyone to stop raking over the various theories and conjecture about the whys and wherefores of the Iraq War.
The problem here, as with almost everything else that’s been written on the subject in the last six years, is that the majority of people expressing opinions on this issue don’t really understand how foreign policy actually ‘works’ and how it different it is from domestic politics. What they do, for perfectly understandable reasons, is try their best to make sense what they see in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine, Zimbabwe and anywhere else you’d care to mention, by applying their understanding of domestic politics and policy-making to the situation.
This, as you might imagine, often results in them misreading or misinterpreting what actually going on and, more importantly, why?
Take the Vietnam War, for example.
If you ask most people for their view of the Vietnam War, they’d agree with the proposition that it was America’s most significant foreign policy setback of the post-World War II era…
…and they’d be wrong! Continue reading
Outside the Houses of Parliament last week I met two American tourists who were genuinely convinced that David Cameron was the prime minister of Britain. Try as I might, it was almost impossible persuade these people that Cameron hadn’t been in power for at least a year, swooping in to fill the power vacuum left by the universally beloved Tony Blair.
All of this would have been pleasantly diverting if the entirety of the British left didn’t seem to be labouring under the same delusion. On the eve of what’s supposed to be a huge symposium of liberal thought and policy, can we please – just for one weekend – stop behaving as if the Conservatives were already the party in power?
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Just over seven years ago, I got an invite to a meeting which some local people had organised in the ward where I was a councillor.
The organisers of the meeting were worried about the way that their area was changing, as a result of buy to let landlords buying up family homes and renting them out.
This led to increasing amounts of rubbish in front gardens, lack of parking, some homes where ten or more people were crowded in to maximise rental income, and others where tenants received an appalling service from their landlord.
About thirty people turned up to that meeting. They argued that landlords should have a duty to ensure that their properties were kept neat and tidy, that bad landlords were destroying the community and that the council should take action to sort this problem out.
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I thank LeftOutside for introducing me to this topic. I think the following is clearly true:
1. For a great proportion of our scientific beliefs, we have to rely on a long-established consensus. For example, I ‘believe’ that a hydrogen atom has a proton and an electron because I have been told by a huge consensus, it sort of makes sense, and I trust the consensus. For views on evolution, the Holocaust, whether transfats cause cancer, or carbon dioxide causes global warming, no single person can themselves compile enough evidence. You need to rely on scientists who themselves rely on more scientists.
2. Conspiracy theorists seldom or never have enough data for their views, but rely on a profound belief in the bad faith of their opponents. This is a sort of heroic arrogance – ‘I alone in my living room have worked out how misled thousands of others are’. 99% of the time, they are wrong; 1%, we are talking Galileo
3. However, people often form opinions, or choose which ‘consensus’ to trust, on the basis of feelings. This particularly works in a negative way; if you really hate X and X believes somethingis true and important, then thinking and proclaiming it as untrue gives enormous pleasure. This happens whether X is some braying redfaced foxhunter or sanctimonious good for nothing leftie student.
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A growing call has been reverberating across the world to cancel Haiti’s debt ever since the earthquake.
Yesterday the global campaign group Avaaz sent out an email asking people to sign their petition to cancel the country’s debt. Avaaz and partners will deliver it to the IMF and key finance ministers next week.
Their move comes after another anti-poverty group, One, handed over a petition with 150,000 signatures to the International Monetary Fund.
The petition asked that the IMF cancel Haiti’s $165 million debt repayment obligation when the board meets later this week. “Swift action by the IMF would increase momentum and pressure on all creditors,” One said in a statement, according to HuffPo.
This week Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also announced he was canceling Haiti’s $295 million debt to Petrocaribe, Venezuela’s energy regional energy distributor. “Haiti has no debt with Venezuela — on the contrary, it is Venezuela that has a historic debt with Haiti,” Chavez said.
On Facebook, a group demanding, ‘No Shock Doctrine for Haiti‘ – has accumulated over 30,000 members already.
The World Bank, also under heavy criticism along with the IMF, announced this week it was waiving Haiti’s debt repayments for the next five years.
The Nation magazine reported this week on the issue too:
[Naomi] Klein says that this is “unprecedented in my experience and shows that public pressure in moments of disaster can seriously subvert shock doctrine tactics.” Neil Watkins, Executive Director of Jubilee USA, likewise hails the IMF’s response. “Since the IMF’s announcement last week of its intention to provide Haiti with a $100 million loan, Jubilee USA and our partners have been calling for grants and debt cancellation–not new loans–for Haiti. We are pleased that Managing Director Strauss-Kahn has responded to that call.”
Watkins and others will continue to follow the issue, holding the IMF to its commitment to debt relief and non-conditionality. They’re also pressing the case on Haiti’s other outstanding debt. The largest multilateral holders of Haiti’s debt are the Inter-American Development Bank ($447 million), the IMF ($165 million, plus $100 million in new lending), the World Bank’s International Development Association ($39 million) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development ($13 million). The largest bilateral loans are held by Venezuela ($295 million–hello, Chavez!?) and Taiwan ($92 million).
The lesson: public pressure works, especially in a moment of such acutely visible human need. Keep up the mobilization, on Facebook and in real life.