Carbon Offset Debate goes satirical

The debate on climate offsetting continues, this time on CheatNeutral
They are heavy on the guilt-offsetting objection to carbon offsets.

Try this thought experiment:

2 people heat identical homes with identical gas condensing boilers, both fully insulated, using identical amounts of gas.

One pays a green enterprise to plant indigenous diverse woodlands locally, in such a way that the local community benefits. He plants so much that the weight of usable timber (i.e. the boles, and discounting the firewood from the branches which will be recycled into domestic heating energy) produced in 100 years time will be equivalent to the carbon that he has used to heat his house.

The other does not, because he thinks this is a silly and un-green thing to do.

Q: Which of these 2 has done more harm to the planet?
A: The one who does not plant the trees, because trees, if planted with due regard for the local community and ecology, are an asset to the locality and the planet.

Blair Trident Debate Shock

to strobes@private-eye.com

Dear Sir

Tony Blair may be already showing the first sign of the dementia that has so
sadly affected other presidents of our fine country (Wilson, Reagan,
Thatcher). He recently admitted to a conference of Labour Youth in Glasgow
that he is baffled by the absence of any debate within the party about his
proposals to replace Trident [see image below]. His short term memory has failed to register
that seventeen motions on Trident replacement from Constituency Labour Party
groups were ruled out of order before the Labour Party conference in 2006,
as were three motions on Trident from members of the Labour National
Executive Committee in January.

Do you think Social Services should be informed before he starts wandering
all over the world in his pyjamas?

Concerned,

Richard Lawson

Iraqi trial acquittal

Occupation : Jobbing Squaddie

It's what we're trained to do, it's just our job.

If jumped up Hitlers want to get tooled out

with nukes and gas and germs that they can lob

at us, we'll bring them down, no fuckin doubt.

It wasn't so much warfare as a rout.

The worst our unit faced was sand and heat.

Talk about open doors - if we got out

to piss, they'd stick their hands up. They were beat.

It wasn't really such a major feat,

it's just our job, it's what we're trained to do.

First they were friendly, nice as you could meet.

We all relaxed. Nobody had a clue

how it would all go sour. Nobody knew

exactly when we overstayed our leave,

but when a roadside bomb took out our crew

I got the first faint sus we'd been deceived.

We didn't mind the looters and the thieves

we're trained for that, it's all part of the job.

The thing that always makes my stomach heave

is facing down a screaming angry mob.

Stones hurt, bottles can burn, but when they gob

and spit at you, that is the thing...

we sweated blood to save the fuckwit yob

who's screaming hate at you...it's that what stings.

We chased and caught them. Some one brings

them back inside the compound walls.

I heard our sarge say "Make them sing".

We laid in with our toecaps on their balls.

We got court martialled. Told us all to crawl.

Told us what not to say, gave us a gag.

They called it torture. I say we lost our rag.

We'll pay with years for one five minute brawl.

What stupid bastard sent us to this war?

How is this supposed to help the British nation?

They lied to us - we're here for Bush's oil.

No paddle in a shit-creek situation.

Two years have passed since liberation.

There were no WMD. That lying slob

Blair, he fouled up. This is an occupation.

He should jailed, not us. It's not our job.

(c) Richard Lawson 28.5.05

Key Issues: Nuclear Weapons: Issues: Accidents: 20 Mishaps that Might Have Caused Nuclear War

Key Issues: Nuclear Weapons: Issues: Accidents: 20 Mishaps that Might Have Caused Nuclear War

That (non-existent) Trident Debate

[Illustration: a Trident missile seeking a target.]

A sample letter to your MP to get the Trident Debate ball rolling:

John Penrose MP

House of Commons

London SW1A 0AA

Dear John,

I am writing to ask whether you would very kindly either vote against or abstain in the Parliamentary Trident debate in March.

This is a lot to ask of you I know, as the Conservative position it to support an early decision on replacement of an independent nuclear deterrent because it is our insurance policy against future uncertainties. However, there is another side to this argument.

Dan Plesch and other experts can show beyond reasonable doubt that Trident is not independent. It cannot function without American agreement. Neither is it a deterrent, in the sense of a last ditch act of massive retaliation in the event of an attack from a nuclear armed enemy state, since it now functions as part of a first-use and nuclear war fighting strategy, although Mr Blair is at pains to conceal this change of strategy.

The ethical case for using nuclear WMD as a means of keeping the peace depends entirely on the premise that their hideous effect means that they will never be used. While it is true to say that they raise the threshold at which nations would go to war, it is not true that it is impossible that they could ever be used, since it has been shown that a combination of political crisis and uncertainty, coinciding with technical and communications failures. (see 20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War, by Alan F. Philips, M.D. www.nuclearfiles.org )

This leaves the insurance policy argument, which is a powerful argument at the emotional level; after all, who would like to go into an uncertain future without insurance of some kind? Insurance is prudent and sensible. But does the insurance metaphor stand up to scrutiny?

In the case of insurance, we pay a certain amount of money regularly into a common fund. The fund increases, and if in time something happens (let us call it a Contingency) to one of those paying into the fund, that person receives an amount of money from the fund which enables them to make good the loss that they have sustained.

It is impossible to see how this analogy has any bearing on our possession of weapons of mass destruction.

In the case of Trident, we certainly pay into a fund, (£75 billion estimated, free of tax, but not free of upward cost revisions) but it is not a common fund in the sense that any other nations pay into the same pot. It is only a fund for the UK and America. If however we accept for the sake of argument that all nuclear weapons states are paying in to some kind of common security policy, what do we get out of it if the Contingency happens? Do we get an amount of money to make good the damage done to our nation by a nuclear attack? No. What we get is the satisfaction that the person or persons who launched the nuclear attack on us will suffer just as much death, injury, burns, destruction, disruption, disease, misery and cancer as we have suffered. If not more.

So Trident is in no way analogous to an insurance policy, and in describing it as such, Prime Minister Blair is demonstrating once again what a stranger he is to the truth.

I have written briefly to cover some of the main points of the argument. I do hope that this open letter will persuade you and some of your Conservative colleagues at least to sample the views of your constituents on this vital matter before the vote, since the pro-Trident position is now a minority view, especially since the Churches have taken a stance against WMD. I hope also that you will find a way to avoid giving succour to the Blair Government in this matter.

With best wishes

Richard Lawson

Acoustic Night, February 12th 2007

A Halo is more than a restaurant up the Gloucester Road, Bristol: it is a traditional depiction of the inner light thought in the past to emanate visibly from certain gifted individuals. Nobody glowed visibly on Monday 13^th February 2007, but there was a profusion of verbal and musical fireworks. Andi set the scene

as our emcee

as she let free

her poetry

about a relationship that ended up in A&E.

Sarah Class, with a great melodious and harmonious guitar, said “Baby I’ll know you, when our hearts beat as one” and most of the men and some of the women in the room were thinking (I can tell, you know) the same. So High was next, and it visibly took us higher. Andi, sensing that we all were drifting off upward, dangerously ungrounded, possibly without direction, wisely brought us down to earth with a plea for money in the jar to buy gaffer tape. It is thought that next time we are all going to have our feet taped to the floor at the written request of Health and Safety officials.

Wendy Day told us the story of a coffee loving couple who went out for a cup of coffee. I will not spoil the story by telling you how it turned out, but it wended up all right at the end of the day. (geddit?)

Andi rightly suggested that Caleb may have Californian genes in him, the way he covered his Neil Young, the wondrous lost lone dusty pathos of the Neil updated by a uniquely modern allure of a catch in his otherwise powerful voice that recalls the effect of a scratched CD that is nevertheless playable – and none the worse for that.

Next up was Richard, your present blogger, limping from a Bad Back brought on by budging outsize butts (Physician heal thyself, if thou canst get thy acupuncture needles round thy back), and poetizing of Sheds. Gina takes up the pen: “His inimitable self. Shed as a male handbag!! Prose poem, evocative memories from stored stuff. Eloquent & multilayered. The second piece mentioned Rudy Lewis, poet and editor of www.nathanielturner.com/ building a shed, taking in gods, trees and war. All in a shed…words flying at a level they are supposed to …” (Thanks Gina, will a cheque be OK ? – RL)

Next up was Keith, who let his fingers do the talking on the frets, talking about the Flight of the Raven, an instrumental, original, its black wings’ lightness worked from the wood of the structurally simple, musically uniquely personal, guitar, his strings wailing the feel of soaring flight (I know, you know) tossing the unspoken lyricism of a bird in swirling currents high above the hill top and the standing pine, rising and falling, at one with wind this is one raven celebrating Life.

Keiths second song: Someday I had a Dream, grabbed it, thinking it real, a song of the (broken?) heart through the seasons. It was a privilege, as always, for us all to be in the physical presence of a human telling the truth for once.

Andi’s enthusiasm for Halo virgins shone as she introduced John Christopher Wood, no virgin he to any but the Halo, for he did things with the names of the diminutive descendants of the dinosaur that we call “birds” – did things that so alien to nature (and yet so much in tune) that if John Reid knew what he had done, he’d pass a law against it before you could say “Thoughtcrime”. He made a steam train out of birds. And then, he did it again, with other birds names, taking their names in vain, not for a train again, but in a sonic avian trail that made even the strongest of us quail.

James White – guitar: what we are searching for …while the living dreams we had as children fade away…help you understand…

Now Derek and Mark are up: we talked amongst ourselves, while Derek had an earnest conversation with his guitar about tension and pitch (Derek’s motto: tune first, ask haiku afterwards). Mark’s rich voice went out to help Radiohead explain why she ran off (because he was a creep. Well, OK). Now we know that Derek’s poetry is better than Radiohead. Nice ploy, Derek.

Mark’s own poem gave voice for all of us who have fallen briefly in love with that well -turned - out maiden sitting opposite us in the Underground, this time with a tear in the eye.

Cute Looney on next! Guitar and bass building up to the sound of a full on 100-piece orchestra, building round a singer who sang in English, not Californish; full musical competence, the song of a black swan, building the music into some great shed of sound, the more intense for knowing that the song was born to die, for this band, this budding building band is bound for breakup. “I am free”, she sang, “‘cos I can’t hear you”. But we heard you, even if it was your last gig. Goodbye, Cute Looneys, good bye!

Next, Bryn on the Steel Guitar! (geddit?) And a unique instrumental improvisation on birth of Stan (Hi Stan) and passing on of Gran (Bye, Gran, we know you lived a good life, you produced a good musician to make the world a better place). Lilting, hunting, birth, death, and here’s the melody in between. Then he Bryn us the Caped Goat, walking along, the future belongs to Lucifure, he said…well, maybe, wait and see (I said that).

Then an nice little harmonious wife-pleasing piece that brought us all down to earth, called “I gotta please Louise”. That’s Louise, mother of Stan.

Brynning it all back home, for a finale, Bryn brought the hidden Ringo out of the audience, doing the rhythm part to “World Keeps on Turning”, tink-tinka-tink on the glasses. If the world turned that fast, we would all be flying off into space, wishing we had given more into the collection jug so Andi could have bought that gaffer tape…

Next – Wooooo – Pete SuperchargedJetTurbineUltrahighRevvingMotormouth Eldridge eruptingvolcanicsonorousjettingflurriesofverbalsound. I heard him say “People don’t always make sense”. This is true. But I would rather listen to Pete than Tony Blair any day. It may be a trifle challenging to catch enough of Pete’s words as they go whizzing past your ears faster than a boxed set of deadlines, to catch their meaning, but at least they sound nice, and they do not grab your heartstrings in a steely chill grip of death.

Pete gave us his North London version of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (I would like to mention at this point that your blogger met that Allen Ginsberg once and he wrote an Om on my hand. He looked as wild in the flesh as he does in the photos. I only mention it as an interesting point, and in no way am I trying to bask in any reflected glory. Ommmmmmmmmmm.) In a rush of words, he gave us a litany of the fallen, the collected lives of a hundred beings of light who came to earth, got messed up, got into heroin, and pegged it. It was a roll call of gonners, of people who chose to die rather than go work on Maggie’s (and Tony’s) farm. Pete, you shining crazy diamond, may you continue to tell their tale until you are old enough to get a bus pass and free prescriptions.

Enter Wilf, enter these walls with words that flood in torrents weaving and flowing in and our of the mountaintops corries coombes valleys woods meadows streams rivers estuaries seas oceans and clouds of human cognition. Those documentaries on TV don’t know the half of it, not a bit, they just do not get it. This is humanity, dig this jazz.

Steve came up and jus put rap into a phat cocked hat, like that.

Misty Blue, O Misty Blue, we all love you, your virgin blues

Big voice, and comely too, come back to sing we all love you.

[continued by Ian as I had to go at this point]

Acoustic Night is every other Monday, counting from this one. Just be there.

Publications : Friends of the Earth, Shop

Publications : Friends of the Earth, Shop

Trident Debate - The Insurance Argument

One of the central arguments used by the Prime Minister for extending our possession of nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction (nWMD) into the indefinite future is that Trident is an “insurance policy”. This is a powerful argument at the emotional level; after all, who would like to go into an uncertain future without insurance of some kind? Insurance is good and sensible. Prudent, even, although our Prime Minister might not care for that word.

But does the insurance metaphor stand up to scrutiny? With insurance, we pay a certain amount of money regularly into a common fund. The fund increases, and if in time something happens (let us call it a Contingency) to one of those paying into the fund, that person receives an amount of money from the fund which enables them to make good the loss that they have sustained. It is difficult to see how this analogy obtains with nWMD.

In the case of Trident, we certainly pay into a fund, (£75 billion estimated, free of tax, but not free of upward cost revisions) but it is not a common fund in the sense that any number of other nations pay into it. It is only a fund for the UK (and America, who, incidentally, have the final say on whether we are able to cash in our “insurance policy”). Accepting for the sake of argument that we in the UK are all paying in to some kind of common security policy in Trident, what do we get out of it if The Contingency happens, which we must assume is a nuclear attack? Do we get an amount of money to make good the damage done to our nation by the attack? No. What we get is the satisfaction that the person or persons who launched the nuclear attack on us will suffer just as much death, injury, burns, destruction, disruption, disease, misery and cancer as we have suffered. If not more.

So Trident is in no way analogous to an insurance policy, and in describing it as such, the Prime Minister  is showing us once again what a stranger he is to the truth.

See also: The logic of nuclear deterrence