Sunday, October 11, 2009

David Cameron speech; we're all doomed.

I have been meaning to blog on David Cameron's conference speech. Late I know, but perhaps comment does not have to be instant on-the-dot reaction.

So today I went to look at his speech, looking for matters of substance to follow, perhaps disagree with, perhaps to agree with.

Nothing. Nada. Niente. Zilch. A puff of wind. A misty lowland. A vacuum. Emptiness.

So. Nothing to report. Nothing to get at. Nothing with which to argue. An inconsequential symposium of verbiage.

Cameron is a man with a sound heart but absent brain, surrounded by people with no heart and unsound minds.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and the Tory Hard Right will be rushing in to fill the vacuum the moment Cameron is elected. So that's it.

We're doomed. [Update 1st Nov 2009: Unless Heseltine is right and we get a Hung Parliament
because the electoral hill is too steep to climb . Yes please].

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[update 16 October]

Here is a slightly more developed reaction to Dave's speech by Caroline Lucas MEP, Green Party Leader. If you notice it is late, don't blame me. I only just got it.

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Cameron's speech on "post-bureaucratic age" promises a return to Thatcherism - and a government weak on climate change that would "tiptoe round big business," says Green Party leader


Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has warned that David Cameron's speech this morning showed the Conservative leader's true colours - that despite his green rhetoric, he would put laisser-faire principles before any commitment to meeting climate change targets.
Commenting on David Cameron's speech to the Sustainable Consumption Institute today (1), in which he spoke of a "post-bureaucratic age," Caroline Lucas said:

"'Post-bureaucratic' essentially means Thatcherite. Cameron has shown today that his guiding principle is not that we must make sure we meet our climate targets, it's that profit must come first and government isn't allowed to tell manufacturers what to do.
Lucas: "No time to turn back the clock"
The Green Party leader, whom pollsters have recently tipped to take the Brighton Pavilion seat from Labour at the coming general election, said a Conservative government would essentially turn back the clock - at just the time when Britain needs real leadership to deliver serious progress on climate policy.
She continued:

"We didn't have time to waste last time there was a Conservative government, and we certainly don't have time to turn the clock back now. Labour have been inadequate, but the Tories in government were a lot worse.

"If we have a Conservative government it will be weak on climate change because it will tiptoe round big business. Cameron has shown today that he daren't even legislate for energy-efficient TVs, only 'appeal' to manufacturers to be 'responsible.' Well we've had decades of that, and it hasn't worked. We need a government that's going to take action."
Cameron: "We don't want to resort to legislation" - just use "the power of profit"

The Conservative leader identified five "post-bureaucratic" principles which, he said, if applied to energy policy could help deal with climate change.

He said: "This country emits an astonishing 800,000 tonnes of carbon a year through leaving electrical appliances ticking over, or on standby, when they're not being used. That's completely unsustainable – as well as a colossal waste of money. I believe it's time industry manufactured products that automatically economise on their energy use. Televisions should no longer have standby modes and washing machines should have the 'low-energy' mode as standard. This will not require a giant leap in innovation. It's just the responsible thing to do."

But he went on to say that he would not legislate to bring this about. Instead, he was setting up a working group, chaired by shadow climate change minister Greg Barker, which would work with manufacturers to bring about their "cooperation."

"We're not doing this to boss business around – we're doing this because we don't want to resort to regulation."

Mr Cameron said a Conservative government should "go with the grain of human nature" and use "the power of profit" to encourage a more environment-friendly pattern of behaviour.


Note

1. See "Cameron outlines 'carrot not stick' approach to make UK greener," http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/16/david-cameron-climate-change-plan.

12 comments:

Dorothea said...

Bit puzzled why you're so generous as to allow that Cameron's any better than his shadow cabinet. Maybe he's just a better actor?

As to your penultimate paragraph, this left-right lanuage is not helpful to my mind. How exactly would you characterise the people you're referring to, in more meaningful terms?

If you read ConHome, it's quite clear that there is a big gulf between old-fashioned High Tories, if you like, many of whom do care about the environment and 'social cohesion', and the swarming hordes of Thatcherite and transatlanticist fanatics.

As Plato put it recently “… the real danger from a ConHome poll is that it looks like an official site when it's not and represents a very specific type of party member/UKIP mischief maker.”

It is the latter who are dangerous, and are champing at the bit. If/when the Conservative Party gets in, they will keep up the pressure, doing everything they can to force Cameron to ditch any decent policies and do things their way. Nasty. And more than that, it'll never work.

DocRichard said...

Hi Dorothea
I think you have answered your question in identifying the UKIP types.
The threat comes from the hard line individualists - the ones who believe in their hearts that there is no such thing as society, that wealth is created by entrepreneurs, and that they and their companies should be allowed to operate in as free a way as possible, with minimum, preferably zero, regulation and taxation.

I always expected the Hard Left (there I go again, using the left right divide, but it is a shorthand) to go in to Tony Blair's office and put him in a half-nelson as soon as he got into No 10. It didn't happen, but this does not mean that the core free marketeers will not take over Cameron when he gets into office. Evidence: the association they have formed in Europe, and their highly dangerous lust to cut public services in the midst of a recession.

Dorothea said...

To be fair, I think it was Plato who answered ...

UKIP are THE anti-environmental party, stm, and loads of UKIP types hang out in the Conservatives, as entryists.

That's one thing to congratulate Blair on - he did tackle Militant entryists. He had to, to make government possible. Cameron will have to do the same.

"the hard line individualists - the ones who believe in their hearts that there is no such thing as society, that wealth is created by entrepreneurs, and that they and their companies should be allowed to operate in as free a way as possible, with minimum, preferably zero, regulation and taxation."

These people are actually a kind of anarchist, but they always get cross when you point that out
;-)

DocRichard said...

I agree, there is a perverse antithetical/synthetic relationship between individualists and anarchists, just as some politicos move from extreme Left in their youth to extreme Right in their dotage - e.g. .Christopher Hitchens

We can but hope that Dave holds his soft line when he is PM, but I would not hold my breath, because his intellectual base is so fragile.

Dorothea said...

"his intellectual base is so fragile" LOL Are you saying he is tick man?

As to anarchists, I don't see any "perverse" or "antithetical" in it. Surely all anarchists, whether Ian Bone, Paul Staines (your "rabid anarcho-libertarian rightist") or any other, simply believe in freedom for individual humans to do as they will, without being dictated to by others?

Human freedom is all very well, but it generally ends up amounting to nothing more or less than human supremacism, because the environment and our fellow species can't defend themselves against modern human power.

That's a major problem with anarchism, stm.

DocRichard said...

"his intellectual base is so fragile" LOL Are you saying he is tick man?

RL: I try to avoid ad hominem insults. I dislike ticks, they keep trying to give me Lyme disease, but I would not even call Dave a jellyfish; I just think his political philosophy is deficient.

As to anarchists, I don't see any "perverse" or "antithetical" in it. Surely all anarchists, whether Ian Bone, Paul Staines (your "rabid anarcho-libertarian rightist") or any other, simply believe in freedom for individual humans to do as they will, without being dictated to by others?

RL: The anarchists I usually rub shoulders with tend to call themselves anti-capitalists and throw things at police, and I do not like that. The individualist philosophers I read tend to support free-market capitalism, and no right thinking person should like that.

Human freedom is all very well, but it generally ends up amounting to nothing more or less than human supremacism, because the environment and our fellow species can't defend themselves against modern human power.

RL: Agreed, 100%.

That's a major problem with anarchism, stm.

RL: What's stm? Seems to me?

Dorothea said...

stm = seems to me

tick = thick in yoofspik

Maybe you need to update your 19th century view of anarchists as weirdoes with bombs under their black capes.

Have you tried reading Anarchy, State and Utopia?

DocRichard said...

I have worked with anarchists and have a great respect in particular for Ron Bailey who has got more bills through Parliament than the average MP. So I am well past the bomb-toting propaganda image. There is, or has been, a fair stream of anarchist thinking in the Green Party, just as there is a fair old socialist thread, but I am of the view that developed human societies generally end up with some form of government, and it is our role to keep on reforming the system to prevent the onset of sclerosis or dictatorship. Continual vigilance. Perpetual reform.

The weakness of libertarianism, which it shares with socialism, authoritarianism, existentialism, individualism and any other -ism anyone cares to dig up, is its anthropocentric nature. The real state of affairs is that man is not the measure of all things, is not a self-existent being, but is an important component of a web of life that has spread itself across a particularly beautiful planet revolving round a moderately sized star in the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy, and as such we are dependent on the vitality of that web of life for our own health and well being. This means that we are obliged to live within constraints. We are not intrinsically free, but by choosing to live within ecological constraints (which includes social constraints, since society is part of our environment)we can then attain the maximum freedom for our selves and for our descendants.

The beauty of the ecological ideology is that it enables the antitheses of the old anthropocentric ideologies to be resolved in its larger framework.


Agreed?

Dorothea said...

I share the spirit of what you write, by and large, but if I may take the, um, liberty of interpolating a tiny bit ... it seemed the easiest way:

The weakness of libertarianism / anarchism which it shares with socialism, authoritarianism, existentialism, individualism and any other -ism anyone cares to dig up, is its anthropocentric nature. The real state of affairs is that man is not the measure of all things, is not a self-existent being, but is an important component of a web of life that has spread itself across a particularly beautiful planet revolving round a moderately sized star in the Orion arm of the Milky Way galaxy, and as such we are dependent on the vitality of that web of life for our own health and well being. This means that we are obliged to live within constraints. We are not intrinsically free, but by choosing to live within ecological constraints (which includes social constraints, since society is part of our environment)we can then attain the maximum freedom for our selves and for our descendants.

The beauty of the ecological philosophy is that it enables the antitheses of the old anthropocentric views to be resolved in its larger framework.

DocRichard said...

Great! We agree. I accept your amendments.

Why do we object to ideology? Because it is under defined, I guess.

I think ideology is a word to describe philosophy in action in real time. Normally it takes about 100 years for philosophy to become common sense (does it not?), while we poor sucker political activists are trying to get our ideas into practice by tomorrow at the latest.

My favourite quote is "Why do we bother, Fawlty?"
"Didn't know you did, Major"

Dorothea said...

Ouch!

Ideology is yet another bad thing we got from the French Revolution. Far too rigid for real life, stm.

DocRichard said...

What do you understand by ideology if not philosophy in action?