In the soup

An interesting set of 'servings' in this morning's news.

I was already unclear as to why our national broadcaster was devoting prime news time to the wife of a foreign country doing some photo op work in a soup kitchen, when it soon became clear as she had obviously just served the Plane Stupid protester who then lobbed the First Lady's dollop over Business Secretary Peter (I fear his ennoblement was a step too far for me to see any substance to the honours system any more, not that I did much before) Mandelson.

However, not that he is my favourite pol, I will concede that he conducted himself pretty well afterwards, I must say.

Which brings me to the protest, and its effect. The successful 'attack' on a high profile figure (what were the security up to... or not? Maybe they'd outsourced it to Pakistan?) will have the desired result to many, namely extensive publicity. However, my immediate reaction was sympathy for Mr. Mandelson, and that takes some doing. He claimed she stated no point during her action, but I'm pretty sure I heard her mouth off quite a lot, so who knows?* And in any case the scrum who interviewed her soon after left us in no doubt that it was about the 3rd Heathrow runway. Not a bad point with a climate conference held as soon as Gordon Brown has just landed back from one of his crucial overseas jaunts.

We also were treated a lot to the hundreds of thousands of green jobs (I still am trying to equate meeting environmental aims and targets with all the rhetoric about growing economies to satisfy growing, more aspirational populations).

My ears pricked up when Mr. Mandelson was asked about the car industry in this regard, as a few things didn't quite compute, and sadly the 'reporter' (some bozo holding a mike and script) failed to press him.

First up was that I think I heard he thought cars were the major CO2 emitters in the world. Not too sure that's true.

Second was in answer to why there are notions of propping up car makers such as Vauxhall if cars are not the best thing. Ignoring the 'costs' of making new ones and simply trying not to travel so much as options, the reply was that they have plans for an electric one on the drawing board.

I have to come back to what I bang on about so often in this regard. Electric cars do emit CO2. They emit it being made, and in the generation of the energy to run them; the exhaust pipe is just in another place.

Without sensible clean generation and distribution of 'leccy in place FIRST, I can't see how they match up on any enviROI level. So my box-ticking, target meeting, subsidy-collecting, lobbyist-satisfying antennae are aquiver.

Reuters - "Green New Deal" to help fix economy

Addendum -

BBC - Mandelson custard attack probed

BBC - Degree honour Clarkson hit by pie - Different event; different reporting?

*Addendum 2 -

Indy - Why I threw green custard over the Business Secretary - from the horse's mouth, as it were. I didn't even know you could get green custard.

Guardian - This is not youthful rebellion. We see the catastrophe ahead

Times - Why I custard-pied Jeremy Clarkson - Not getting the best reaction, it seems

Plain foot in it?

Top anti-aviation activist secretly FLIES to airport protest in New York

A bit like the bowl of petunias in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, when this protest first broke, I thought: 'Oh no, here we go again'.

Frankly I think they achieve little more than giving the media a reason to get excited, those not involved breath a sigh of relief to have dodged a bullet, and those who very much are involved to err on being a tad miffed.

I was a little concerned when I heard this latest wheeze explained away by a senior activist (do they have 'ranks' like the military?) on the basis that they'd done a petition, had another protest and so it had become necessary to 'escalate'. Hmn. I wonder if there are any salaries, or at least donation-uses, that require a rather shorter timescale than in the past to satisfy the internal demands more than anything else?

So we come back to my eternal point about the right messengers for the message.

Not sure this has advanced the cause, really. A bit like causing vast disruption to a finely tuned system, which doubtless mainly resulted in many more emissions.

Hope she got some nice gifts in NY. It would have been a shame if the flight had been cancelled for such a critical trip.

Guardian - NEW - Lily savaged - The mouths of babes? A new media darling emerges. I just worry a tad about the allusions to taking things further if 'they' don't get 'their' way.

BBC - NEW - A distant climate - for a buffet of irony

From a blog (unconfirmed), to the news that the group is financed by the Lush founder: 'Yet, there is a Lush store at terminal 3, heathrow'.