generation gap

The Government are trying to spin Kingsnorth and the myth of clean coal as a matter of keeping the lights on. Perhaps they are pre-occupied with the conundrum of what damage a toothless government might do to itself should it ever decide to bite the bullet

What if 'the lights went out' and nobody noticed?
Hoards of brave men and women are amassing at Climate Camp for a bit of police harassment. The police harassing the people, that is, let's be clear. Never before have so many "people like us" decided they must go, whoever the "us" may be. Not the usual suspects at all (officer.)
Even left and right unite. But the 'overactive policing' tactics will backfire. The fear factor is only increasing the resolve to attend.
This is a good thing. At this point in history anyone can see (even without the lights on) that fossil carbon is best left undisturbed.
A nice little twist, mostly overlooked, is that the thousands at the camp who consider the climate crisis far more vital than the dratted "lights
going out" will all be fine this week, in the event of a power cut! The camp is crammed full of renewable energy sufficiency. Perhaps it is the camp technology that 'those in power and addicted to it' wish to confiscate.
(Dave Hampton - letter to the Independent))


If you create your own heat, electricity, food and water, then you
create your own politics. (Pete Myers)

Bloody monkeys!

We are a troubled young species - lashing out at our family and indulging in reckless self-destructive behaviours. We'll be lucky to reach maturity. Never mind, - plenty more where we came from. Oops - no there isn't.

At the Camp for Climate Action the boys in blue are serving their masters to the best of their ability. It's a shame that the ordinary people haven't got a police force to represent them, isn't it?!

Manichean delusions

There is no need to actively engage in the workings of a democratic state, or to commit oneself to understanding, questioning and influencing the decisions of governing elites through a perpetual process of mass-education, consideration, argument and action - if all the problems of the world are down to the bogeyman.
The existence of a bogeyman makes the whole thing moot, because any questioning becomes disloyalty.
Thus democracies lose their vigour and flop uselessly back into elective aristocracy.
The malaise of western democracy is a gullible sloth.

A chance well worth taking

The odds are so poor that the bookies won't touch it and the Insurance companies are running for the hills. This is usually a sign that the chance isn't worth taking. In our risk society we are all familiar with what this scenario means. The best information points to caution, ie - not being gormless reckless fucks with our common wealth. It's simple enough. Yet some - usually the scientifically illiterate with the TV viewing habits of poorly adjusted 14 year olds - insist that the cost (of being arsed to take action) far outweighs the benefits (of still having a planet to inhabit.) They believe that nothing should be done to forestall ireversible chaos untill ireversible chaos arrives at our door and announces itself like a Hollywood biblical epic. These people would, presumably, drive vehicles that every respectable mechanic has written off as deathtraps, use gas appliances certified as lethal and ingest medicines declared illegally toxic by the medical community. These people are dangerous. Don't let them drive. Don't let them babysit. Don't put them on Juries. Don't let them vote.
This is not a call to abandon research or to silence dissent. I love a bit of dissent, me - it's my default position. In fact it pains me to find myself entering the mainstream in this matter. But what can you do. Eggs is eggs, and there's no point in pretending they're not.

Rights and Wrongs etc

As Climate campers prepare to get their collars felt in an effort to prevent an infinitely greater crime, the Police are sandwiched between the carbon age and an age of new realism. Many of them, no doubt, are as worried as working people anywhere -or at least as worried as their knowledge and individual attention spans allow. I wonder- will they be deployed with such fervour and over-timed expense when it is the likes of E-on who are in breach of the law. Or will the old order be maintained, regardless of the cost?
I suppose we'll know whether we're actually serious about tackling this once the answer to that is clear

Evidence of the 6 degrees of separation theory is being collected. It occurs to me that maybe these small efforts of mine could easily be spread to everybody everywhere in no time at all. I have 6 readers. The rest should be child's play.

Climate Camp

Climate camp is setting up this year at Kingsnorth, where industrial folly on a grand scale is due to be perpetrated in the interests of no one. Frank has other plans, but if you get the chance please go along and lend support, bear witness, join in etc

Stolen Joke

Throbgoblins all went to see Daniel Kitson - which is always an uplifting experience - and stole a joke. This is it.
I'm referring to a particular kind of corporate creature, obviously, but the contagion is not confined to the boardrooms of giants. "Business" is an ugly and duplicitous word and conceals a whole world of evil as it is concerned only with money. Enterprises and initiatives with wider and deeper purpose need not take offence.

Meanwhile...
Optimism abounds, in small measures; MIT announce new breakthrough in solar technology, Doha collapses and the nuclear barons shoot themselves in the feet - whilst Centrica PR men make arseholes of themselves in every conceivable way

Now perhaps we can get on with the important stuff

From GreenHumour; courtesy of Noel Lynch -

Tribal Wisdom vs Government

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to
generation, says that, "When you discover you are riding a dead horse,
the best strategy is to dismount." However, in government, education,
and in the corporates, more advanced strategies are often employed,
such as:

1. Buying a stronger whip.
2. Changing riders.
3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride
horses.
5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
6. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.
7. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.
8. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
9. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead
horse's performance.
10. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve
the dead horse's performance.
11. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is
less costly, carries lower overhead and therefore contributes
substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do some other horses.
12. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

And of course the favourite.... .......
13. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.