“Vote Blue, Go Green.” Remember that? And, of course, “the greenest government ever”? Listen as the peals of maniacal laughter echo down the corridors of power.Last week DEFRA launched its triennial review of Natural England and the Environment Agency. According to his foreword to the consultation paper, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson sees his job asContinue reading "Seismic Shift?"
The Quintarchy
“[The accepted code of behaviour in politics] may be stated as follows: Talk about problems. Never mention a solution. Solutions make people mad as hell... Never excite a minority. Therefore all solutions should be anodyne, even if public affairs need bold and imaginative solutions. Never tell the truth. The people are too weak to acceptContinue reading "The Quintarchy"
Constitutional Engineering: Fail
British parties of the far Right are often treated as interchangeable. No-one on the Left can be really bothered to explore what nuances separate them. But the differences can be quite significant. Clearly, the English Democrats want a centralised England, having given up any hope of a re-centralised Britain: they’re a rearguard party that regardsContinue reading "Constitutional Engineering: Fail"
Our Friends in the North
For successful autonomist movements, politics is a spiral. There are achievements. There are also setbacks. But campaigners learn from them and when the debate begins again they have already moved it up to a higher level than it occupied before. We can see that process at work in all the Celtic nationalist movements. None isContinue reading "Our Friends in the North"
Whose Europe?
"Every step forward is preceded by a suppression; every reform by the exposure of some abuse; every new idea is born because of the inadequacy of the old concepts."Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)Please don’t call us Europhiles. Please don’t call us Eurosceptics. We won’t be driven into any Manichaean pigeonholes. We might perhaps settle for ‘Euro-wary’, attentiveContinue reading "Whose Europe?"
The Long View
“Economics, said Mr Stanley [Oliver Stanley, then President of the Board of Trade], is 50% psychology … What we need, apparently, is not statesmen but hypnotists, not scientists, but witchdoctors, not confidence born of scientific prediction of the future, but confidence created by a political confidence trick. There is nothing surprising in this. It isContinue reading "The Long View"
Sowing Bricks
The Conservatives, one-time party of the countryside, continue to plot their destructive, and self-destructive, course. Planning Minister Nick Boles told Newsnight this week that he wants to concrete-over 1,500 square miles, twice the area of Greater London, though he didn’t seem quite sure of the figures. Never mind. A million acres. Or thereabouts. Did heContinue reading "Sowing Bricks"
Blue Touch Paper
It’s an interesting possibility that those who want a kind of war, on terror, on non-growth, or whatever, are in fact aching for a real fight between countries. War is the dominant thought that occupies their waking moments. David Cameron and his party don’t do morality. The idea of a supposedly ethical foreign policy, with itsContinue reading "Blue Touch Paper"
The Great Dictator
David Cameron told the CBI yesterday that he wants a war economy, with himself as Winston Churchill, to pull the country out of recession.Of course, it’s all ridiculous, prep school nonsense. The only real war is being fought by British troops in Afghanistan, despite public opposition. No-one in the UK is going to be shotContinue reading "The Great Dictator"
Winners & Losers
Writers on Bristol, from the Rev. George Heath in the 18th century to Bryan Little in the 20th, have seen in it ‘the London of the West’, a city that would dearly love to outshine its larger rival but is not above copying its every move. So ‘a Boris for Bristol’ stands firmly in thatContinue reading "Winners & Losers"
Wessex Regionalists 