Recent Articles

Britain’s first green city

Arguably, Stoke is already England’s greenest city on the grounds that there isn’t much industry left, or that much employment of any other kind. Still, nowt wrong with making a virtue out of necessity:

This evening, in St Margaret Ward Roman Catholic high school, Stoke-on-Trent is set to become the first city to sign up to the 10:10 pledge to cut its carbon emissions by 10% during 2010…

… Out in the cavernous main hall, waiting for the bingo to start, members Dave Athersmith and Julie Hulme agree: “We car-share to come here. We’ve all got to do our bit, haven’t we?” John Clowes, a retired ceramic tilemaker of 76 (“There’s tiles of mine in the Houses of Parliament”) has just had his loft insulated, and turns everything off at the mains at night. “It’s the young people you need to worry about,” he says. “Those electronic games. What happened to a kickaround in the street?” (In two days in Stoke, by the way, I met only three people prepared to dismiss climate change as a notion cooked up by a control-crazed government (or as one local put it, “absolute bollocks”). Most confessed to at least some concern.)

It’s conventional wisdom that the stout yeomen of the working classes will have no truck with all this environmental nonsense: conventional wisdom, that is, amongst rightwing or otherwise anti-crusty middle class types. continue reading… »

Obligations and privileges

I’m holding fire on the oath swearing nonsense. I mean, if you think that’s bad how about a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, a Green Paper on which is apparently due in the next few months.

This Bill will set out the rights we enjoy and the responsibilities we owe as members of society.

A Bill of Rights is a constitutional document. Constitutions can be more or less permissive in the rights they afford the citizen. Most have a mechanism by which more rights can be added, or which override previously accepted rights. Offhand, I can’t think of a constitution which sets out obligations to the state as a basic condition of citizenship, on which the enjoyment of rights is conditional.
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He’s not the twelfth imam, but he’s a very naughty boy

Following Barack Obama’s surprise victory at the Iowa caucuses, how will Hillary Clinton recover to confirm her place as Democratic frontrunner? Exlcusive to Liberal Conspiracy, we can reveal extracts drawn from advance copies of speeches the junior senator from New York intends to make over the next few months as the primaries roll on…

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The lump of indignation fallacy

Once more, Polly Toynbee steps in to protect the helpless state against the bullying individual:

The Porter view has become fashionable because it allows the middle classes to pretend to be victims, too. But it is decadence for mainly privileged people to obsess over imaginary Big Brother attacks on themselves, when others all around them are suffering badly from neglect by the state – or sometimes from real aggression by government. Indignation is precious, not to be squandered on illusory threats, but saved for real injustices.

Blimey: how to unpick this lot? I like the idea that there’s a finite lump of indignation which has to be saved for special occasions, non-renewable and somehow outside the self. The lump of indignation fallacy, you might say. I like the idea as well that you’re supposed to balance your income against your freedom.
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