Thursday, May 04, 2006

Let's All (Well, Selectively) Get Ethical

Missed the latest episode  of BBC Newsnight's 'Ethical Man', but Emma has kindly forwarded the link to the website... and it seems it was not broadcast on air. Anyway, here it is, though I'm not sure how long it will be available:

Ethical Man web exclusive - too good for TV 

What happened when Justin attended the recent Radiohead gig for Friends of the Earth climate change campaign, The Big Ask? 
CLICK HERE 

In case it does drop off, fear not, for here's is my blow by blow (well...ish) account, with a few eyebrow twitches along the way. I don't think I was too far off in my blog a few days ago in anticipation of not 'being seen at the right event' (as billed in the piece): the Big (Ask) Event.

The title was a good start: 'Ethical man Meets The Green Elite'. I felt sooo part of it all already, which is what a subsequent Green Elite talking head (couldn't quite tell who at 36kb/s) said it was all about, reaching out to all walks of life... with celebrities alongside them.

Well, more like in the VIP Champagne lounge (organic canapes, and I'm sure they shopped locally for the bubbly, Camden being famous for its vineyards) bit anyways, and amazingly no queueing for the Newsnight Ethical Family (hubs and wife - I guess kids were being looked after by ethical granny, sister or possibly green nanny), who were whisked straight in by invitation. My ethical lifestyle is already diverging slightly here, but then I still have, and use, a car (see later).

However, the reporter seemed to go a bit off message if he'd been intended to make the 3Gs (great and good of green) look like they were doing 'the right thing'. I don't know if he was miffed by the major pols being there to be seen but not heard, but he certainly had a spat with the Tory Enviro-mouthpiece about David Cameron's 'Shoegate'. This ruddy-cheeked (son of the soil or a few Moet's too many?) future leader of my country seemed be trying to claim he didn't know anything about it, which was plain daft. Then he went high horse. Foot. Shoe. Shoot.

As I wrote before, this was/is a 'so what' if handled correctly, but from the big green embrace onwards it simply has not been, so they are reaping what they sowed. Onward and... er.. elsewhere...

Apparently, FoE has 'signed' up 50% of MPs to a 'commitment' to year on year cuts. Not sure quite what that means tangibly, but I guess better than nothing. Sadly, this whole effort, at least as reviewed by Newsnight, only served to distance the Green Elite even more than before from me in terms of where they are, what they are doing and how they are trying to do it. Hope it was a good concert, though.

Speaking of which, Thom did make a 'speech' (More like sentence. I think I saw the edited version). He did make a good point about our 'outdated notion of economic growth', and how 'we' should stop assuming everything was limitless'. And that we shouldn't. Spiffy.

Would I have gone if invited? Like a shot. Would I have had fun? For sure. Would I be a hypocrite? No, because we're not telling everyone how they should behave from rather shaky pedestals. We know we are deeply flawed, if often constrained by circumstance and trying to be sincere. 

So, it's back to trying to do some more in our own little way. Not easy as it's costing us a lot. But feel free to join us. Which it is (free). Wonder how much this latest effort cost?  And/or made? And for what/who? And did all the employees of the various particpating organisations claim O/T and travel? Who covered all that?

ps: Apparently no limos (on presumes there is a stretch Prius now, as he surely jests when he said there were big cars outside) for EM & Spouse. They just caught a night bus after being ignored by one. Nice image for Mayor Ken to explain. 

pps: What was interesting in passing was this, in another section:

IN THE AIR 

"Newsnight 1" has taken to the skies. 

Michael Crick is spending the day assessing the damage to the government caused by every political woe imaginable - perhaps excluding plagues of frogs, and an outbreak of boils (though, given events of recent days, perhaps these can never completely be ruled out.) 

Michael will be landing in the political stamping grounds of John Prescott (Hull) and Charles Clarke (Norwich). 

I'm presuming by 'to the skies' that "Newsnight 1" is not a train or even a Prius (actually, as we know, not the best for loping along motorways). Seems the Green Elite are not the only selective ones in what to do and what to say we do, then.