Friday, April 06, 2007

Beans there. Heard that. Ad nauseam.

Beans are bad for Greens...

Not too terribly sure what the point of this commentary is.

It's a done deal, so may as well give up? We're doomed, so let's go out with a bang... in Benidorm rather than Bali (or vice versa, as advocated)?

Just a wild guess, but I'm guessing the job would not be too much fun, or the paper getting to sell too many more issues, if you restricted your function to cycling around your home and work base reporting on low [mode of transport here]-miles camp sites around London.

It all rather smacks of the regular self-flagellation and rather hypocritical pontification that the media engages upon to show it's up there on the concern front with green issues, but 'please would everyone else change their ways first as we have jobs.... very nice ones, too... to do.'

Will you not be trying out the largesse that follows these press releases? And sharing it? 'As I savoured my first real lamb kebab, courtesy of Tikka Air and Hotel Payola, I could only reflect on how cheap it was...'.

Only yesterday I watched BBC news solemnly advise the latest from the IPCC, with correspondents in Brussels, Mexico and even Antarctica specially flown there to share the anguish of those who are losing tourists... because of the tourists and media going there.

The whole thing would be ironic if it were not slightly more tragic, and an indictment of those who talk a lot, but do very little, especially as whacking a fir in the firmament in compo is now accepted as pretty pointless.

Have a nice Easter . That was something to do with a guy who suffered so others would not, right?

In an ideal world.

What about me, me, me?

'Perhaps it is time we start dealing with...'

Would make a good inscription on the headstone of modern society. It takes seconds to undo something that has taken millennia to build. And often it is almost impossible to realistically consider effective reconstruction. Any more than you can unhire 750,000 unproductive new Brown-beholden, vote-enabled civil servants our pensions are being raided to fund, no matter how sensible or how much one would wish the next administration would do so.

But it does seem to offer some measure of gainful employ and/or fruitful remuneration to those who create the mess and those who write about it all.

A question too sad to answer. Almost.

Are Blair's e-petitions useless?

Ans: Depends on who you ask

Like so much these days, there is what you are seen to be doing, what you actually do, what it is meant to achieve... and actually does by way of anything tangible.

I got quite excited by the potential of e-petitions as it seemed to offer the individual an opportunity of access to the political process, and a voice to the national population, that was relatively free of gatekeepers in the former at minion level, and the latter free of those in the media who are jealous of their role in shaping our lives.

Hence I posted my own, which was a proposed solution to the issues of IHT (which the Express simply wants to kill off, which I deem unlikely) and climate change (about which a lot of 'debate' on money 'in' and where it goes in the name of green taxes still rages).

Sadly, I posted it just before the success of the road petition prompted a shower of rather frivolous efforts, that diluted the impact of any but those managed by those who have the political muscle to move the necessary masses, or the media to do likewise.

Hence the gatekeepers of power and communication have successfully regained their positions in what we get to know about, care about and act upon.

So I'd say that yes, they are now useless, and those with a vested interest in keeping the people out of the process of government worked pretty hard, and successfully, to make them so.

Well played. Sadly.

Poor coral reef spoils diving. Meanwhile, in other news, the planet collapses

An interesting twist on IPCC 2, the sequel.

I haven't quite figured out yet how or why this drib is drabbing out, but we have another doom & gloom from 'them', whoever 'they' are.

But this time it seems to have been designed on another tack. Rather than talk about the totality of it all and how it affects every one of us, the move seems to now be from fear to guilt.

So 'we' are now being told that 'our' behaviour is going to hurt 'them'.

As I say... interesting. If we can't be motivated by threats to our personal situation, I wonder how effective it will be to play it that the Easter holiday flight is hurting a herdsman in Africa.

BBC - Billions face climate change risk
LATimes - Dire warming report too soft, scientists say
Reuters - Stark climate change warning

ADDENDUM - Kids bear brunt of climate warming - report - What next... or the bunny gets it? This seems to be a slight sledgehammer approach where I would advise more caution. Still, what's done is done. Hope it works.