It’s been a long time since I’ve posted here, but the wheel turns and once again I find myself without an avenue to vent my spleen.

This time it’s the market economy.  Or rather the unregulated, unfettered market economy.

Since the Economic Collapse and Global Recession the market economy has come in for a bit of a kicking.

In “the popular press” this is mainly because a few rich bankers have made squillions by ensuring big piles of the public’s money was deposited into their bank accounts, even if they mucked up.

However the unfettered market’s influence upon life goes a lot deeper into society and touches our very spirit to such an extent that we may not realise until it’s pointed out to us.

Take journalism, for example.

Journalists by and large pride themselves in being able to report events independently.  This is a professional ethos which overrides any political, social or editorial bias.

So while I may hate rabidly right or left wing papers, I can always trust the journalists there to report news fairly and accurately.  It may then be spun editorially, but that’s a different matter.

Then there’s the investigative journalist.  These are a different breed to the common-everyday news journalist.  It would be unfair to say they look to dig the dirt, but they do seek to question and challenge authority, to out hypocrisy wherever it is found.

That sounds horribly like moralising, but who among us expects our favoured politicians to be morally WORSE than the general public?

Raise your hand… no, no one? So we’re agreed our politicians have to be “better” than us, and so have to be held to account in the public gaze. This is what journalists do.

Key fact: no national newspaper in the UK has been self-sustaining for, oh, donkeys’ year.  All are supported by a benefactor (owner) who puts in more money than they get out.

So, in short, sales and advertising revenue never meet the cost of running the paper.

This was what was so special about The Independent when it was launched.  It had an owner who would support it, but it was “independent” because that owner would exercise no editorial control over the paper’s content.  Quite an eye opener when you think about it.

However, for all the brassy blares and trumpets of national papers’ exposés of a model’s sex life, a pop star’s drug habits and some MP’s duck pond, this is not where democracy rests.  It rests in the even more impoverished backwaters of the local rag.

Why? Because to be shamed in the national press is nothing for someone who holds power: a politician, businessman, academic, or suchlike.  You can ride that out.

But if your local paper decides to get hold of you: expose the fact a highly regarded local figure has been having an affair/sniffing coke/laughing at the locals’ stupidity, then it would be curtains.

Hi Ho Silver!  Electronic Democracy To The Rescue!!

Actually, no.

But wait, isn’t there this electronic online web thingamy which is much much cheaper to run? Yes, but it has one crucial drawback .. it relies wholly upon advertising.

The Times, The Telegraph, The Mirror, The Mail (deep breath) The Observer, The Sunday Times, The  … oh witchamwoosit; The South Bucks Star; Northants Herald; Durham Trumpeter .. all of these are available online (I made up the local paper names by the way).

But they’re all available free — no subscription needed.  That means their only source of revenue is advertising.

All but a few local newspapers are owned by national or international media companies.  These papers are being culled because they bring in no national kudos, and even less revenue.

And so the heartblood of democracy starts to sputter out from it’s severed arteries.

Can You See What It Is Yet?

However this reliance upon advertising brings in different questions.

For instance, a tweet went past me earlier today which said, in paraphrase, “Sigh, will there ever the a communication  technology which doesn’t attract spammers?”

My answer is “No, so long as that communication technology relies upon advertising”.

In the brave new world of  Web 2.0 spammers are simply amoral advertisers.  It would take a braver man than me to draw a dividing line between the two, and I suggest that someone who could draw that line deserves a stonkingly well paid position in a government of their choice.

In the meantime, my local town-based radio station recently closed.  Redundancies: about 10.  Service to the community: priceless.

I live in South Buckinghamshire: our only alternatives are BBC Berkshire (ummm.. wrong county) or BBC Three Counties (Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire) (umm .. wrong counties!!).

So we have no local radio. None. Zippo. The only way to find out how bad traffic is .. is to get into your car.

Do you want it to be the same for your politicians and businessmen .. that the only way you find out how corrupt they are when they’ve retired with squillions of taxpayers’ money safely stashed into their bank accounts?

This pattern is going on across the UK and it’s lifeblood is draining out of local communities.  It’s local paper which keep local politicians honest. Without them…..

The Government Doesn’t Care About Democracy

The final nail in the coffin has come from the Government’s “grand” commission on Digital Britain , whose chair recently announced that:

The Commission’s role and expertise do not lend themselves to examining the health of local newspapers or isolating the impacts of specific local authority practices on commercial bodies.  This element of Digital Britain invitation appears better suited to regulators with a specific competition remit.

Please read this quote very carefully. It says alot more than you may think at first glance.

Remember what I said before about journalists priding themselves on always being accurate and fair?  How can you be accurate and fair if you are regulated … can a regulated body attack the people it is regulated by?

This is the quandary which is forever landing the BBC (the only wholly regulated news outlet in the UK) in trouble, and they have no advertisers.

Imagine the scene if you had both regulators and advertisers vying for editorial influence .. who would win?  The people who make the rules, or the people who pay you?  Think long and hard before answering.

The truth is there is no such thing as a free press..

… and except for a few examples there never has been.  Everyone has a point of view, but the wonderful thing about mass media to date is that they have been free to express that opinion.

However, tabloid journalism and reality TV have started a trend when sensation in a story is more important than substance.

If, under the current model,  journalism becomes wholly web based,  journalists will have to ensure their stories promote the interests of the advertisers, because that drives traffic, and therefore the pay packet.

And if that happens we will have reached the zenith of the market economy, where commercial interests override those of public interest,  What wonderful irony in the depth of a recession.

As Dominic Cooper, General Secretary of the Chartered Institute of Journalists recently said,

last week a council publication in Cornwall closed after 11 months at a cost of £700,000 to taxpayers – but unless their overall effects are studied the question still remains: What price democracy?

Now, I don’t want state run newspapers

But nor do I want newspapers whose sole rationale is to ensure advertising revenue (”traffic”, in Web 2.0 speak) dictates their editorial policy.

Somewhere there has to be a level head, someone who can understand that supporting local newspapers and the democratic principle which they represent is more important than simple commercial gain.

If this person isn’t found, and fast, then we may we rewinding very quickly to the feudal landlord who can control and punish all who speak against him. The unfettered market economy.

If it wasn’t so serious, I’d be wetting myself with laughter right now.

At the top of the cliff are clustered all the countries of the world. You first, one says. No sir, you first, say the others. They all push and jostle, each trying to get as close as possible to the edge without actually jumping off.

We must all jump together they say, nodding their heads wisely as though being a leader was something to be ashamed of. What’s more, we won’t jump right now, but we’ll half jump in forty years’ time. If we’re all in agreement that is.

What’s so laughable is that most of these countries are market economies, basing their entire rationale upon commerce and the trading of products and ideas.

This isn’t just an industrial picture: the UK, for instance, is leading the way in gene therapy and embryo manipulation. Rather than producing pig-iron to be exported abroad, this is all about enhancing skills and producing techniques which can then be used to bolster the country through the international knowledge economy.

So why doesn’t the same go for sustainability and emissions? Heck, if your country “broke the code” and managed to get hyper efficient renewable solutions to our carbon reliant lifestyles, you’d be laughing. All the other slowcoach countries would come clamouring to your door for the solutions.

Yet no-one will jump. Despite being guaranteed that they will be able to fly, no one will jump. They’re a bunch of scardy cats, with as much conviction in their own policies as a warm blancmange .

I have only two posts in this blog which I’ve never finished, and both are about stimulating an economy through the introduction of sustainability friendly carrots. For example as well as taxing petrol so highly, cut VAT on LPG car conversions etc.

The first country to introduce such measures will find itself in an enviable position. It will find its economy starting to pick up as spending goes into products which will save people money in the long term. And any incentives to encourage innovation and attract entrepreneurs should bear fruit within a decade.

The down side? Well, for starters a country will have to give up serious amounts of tax revenue. Get the beancounters in, because most countries should have a surplus coming in from the high price of oil. Stiff regulation will also have to be brought in, to force the pace of innovation.

Whisper it quietly, but a country may also have to become uncompetitive for a time, falling behind its oil guzzling competitors for a short time.

However, the G8 are currently thinking about maybe…possibly…half-jumping in 2050. If a country was to take the courageous step and fast track serious renewable incentives and strong regulations (eg. banning plastics in food packaging), there is a good chance they could be ahead of this thumbs-in-the-backside brigade within 40 years.

In the meantime the cliff all these countries are clustered at the top of is continuously being undermined by the rising sea levels. Let’s hope that someone jumps before it collapses beneath them.

Site Tags: sustainability, emissions, regulation

The debate about whether companies should be obliged, by law, to participate in CSR activities has been going on for years and looks set to continue for some time yet.

The UK Companies Act (2006) took a step in the right direction through its compromise between the Yes/No extremes of this argument. In essence, it is not mandatory to participate in these activities, but all companies listed on the Stock Exchange are obliged to publish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure their impact on and involvement in “environmental matters, employees and social issues”.

The next round of debate will undoubtedly move onto what these KPIs should be. At present there is a situation where companies can choose their own measure making it impossible to compare one company with another easily or fairly. Some form of mandation seem likely.

However there is another way. Rather than mandating specific KPIs, those which can be used should be categorised and ranked in order of perceived importance. So, as a very basic example, you have environment and social categories and performance against an emissions cutting indicator is ranked more highly than performance against a carbon-sink creation indicator.

Then you create a green certification scheme for a company’s supply chain. What this scheme does is measure/aggregate the KPIs for a company’s supply chain and give it a familiar A-E ranking, much as is currently required for electrical items and offices.

At a single blow you’ve just created two things: a framework for comparing different KPIs which is flexible enough to accommodate new ones and changing priorities and a system for monitoring and encouraging companies’ sustainability through the their business activities.

Of course, the next debate is whether the scheme should be mandatory or not. Maybe or maybe not, but self-certification available for companies not listed in the stock exchange looks an interesting proposition. A discussion for another time.

Site Tags: sustainable, supply chain

Have you ever had the squits? No, seriously. I mean its a serious question….

Good. Now that we’ve established that you have let’s move on to the next question … do you understand how the squits happen? Well, here’s an outline to help you along.

Something enters your body, something which shouldn’t be there. Your body, delicate thing that it is, goes “Oh No! Gotta get rid of that otherwise I’ll become horribly ill and die” and launches an all out attack on whatever that nasty thing is.

All sorts of to-ing and fro-ing goes on, sometimes with your body winning and sometimes with the horrible whatever it was winning. Sometimes the battle gets rather frantic and you get gut pains. At other times there’s a sudden victory on the part of your body and you find yourself running upstairs to re-read “War and Peace” while sitting on the toilet.

Eventually this hard metabolic battle results in the horrible whatever it was being squitted out and your body left back in good health. Which is just as well, because otherwise life would not have gone on for much long.

I hope you’ve seen he analogy coming: the horrible whatever it is was is Man’s behaviour and the body is the Environment. Like a squitty infection, Man’s behaviour has sought to try and dominate and change the environment around him. So bad has this behaviour become the Environment is currently undergoing a bit of gut pain, commonly known as Climate Change.

If you really are serious about combating Climate Change, forget all about your carbon footprint and fossil fuels. That is only a first, tentative step towards the overall solution. It’s a great headline grabber, but something more subtle, more meaningful needs to take place alongside it: a change in attitude.

We common mortals must be that change in attitude. We can have a look at the environment around us and try and understand where our behaviour has changed the World around us, how we are causing the squits to happen.

For instance, where have we drained land marshes to destroy richly diverse reedbeds in favour of pesticide poisoned cornfields? Why have we straightened rivers, destroying lazy and meandering environments in favour of fast moving drains?

When was the last time you saw roadkill? Did you think “poor thing: I really wish they could understand roads and cars and keep away”, or did you think “would it really hurt us so much not to hurry about in such a hurtful way”?

How about the last time you saw a wolf, or a lynx or a bear. Did you think “I need to treat that animal with respect, it could hurt me”, or was your attitude simply to reach for a gun?

Man’s behaviour is one of domination and confrontation. Like a horrible something in the gut, his bloody-minded attitude is giving the Planet a bad dose of the squits and the future is looking dangerously toilet-pan in its outlook.

We have to stop this. Stop thinking that we are the Planet, because we are not. The Planet is a system of life all living with each other through systems so complex that it’s unlikely that we will ever fully comprehend them.

But we don’t need to comprehend them, anymore than we need to comprehend the mechanics that dirty hands can lead to diarrhoea. It’ a fact, that’s all that matters.

Our bodies are tuned to handling a certain amount of these bacteria, but not too many. So it is with the Planet: it’s not that Humans are “Bad”, it’s just that our behaviour has become too much. Like a growing child, it’s time our attitude changed and we started living as part of the environment, not against it.

Site Tags: living, life, environment, climate change, squits

The following letter was sent to The Independent letters section in response to Skippy For Supper, published 24 January 2008. The bits in bold are the bits the editor cared to publish on 28 January.

Re: Skippy For Supper; 24/01/08

Sir,

Many people, when they think of cutting greenhouse gases, think primary of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Slowly the information is seeping through that that methane is more damaging than carbon dioxide and that its greatest source is our society’s reliance upon lamb and beef. The serious greenie should therefore think about reducing their consumption of these animals in favour of other alternatives, as well as using the car less.

To that end, “Skippy for Supper” is welcome as it highlights a meat which can help to reduce greenhouse gases. However, it failed to address one important question: is shipping frozen skippy half way around the World better for the environment than eating a flatulent cow from next door? Personally I don’t know but I’m disappointed that the article didn’t mention it.

I also have to wonder whether any thought has been given to the expected rise in skippy-meat once peak oil starts to bite. It’s all very well to highlight it (and ostrich, springbok and bison) as meats more atmosphere-friendly than beef and lamb, but it doesn’t do the environmental movement any favours if importing these from across the globe is basically unsustainable.

Given these flaws, I think the article would have been better as a green-angled foodie article rather than a foodie-angled green one.

Yours etc

Site Tags: meat, sustainability, independent, letter

According to the Washington Post, the US Food & Drug Agency (FDA) is set to say that it is safe to eat cloned animals. Commentators have said that is probably means the parents will be cloned and their children sent to slaughter. When the parents start to get old and rickity then they will be recloned.

The paper also reports the FDA as saying that while it looked at moral and ethical concerns it decided to go with science alone.

Much of biological science is now based upon Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution”. Simply put, and allowing for all the research which has taken place in the ensuing hundred years or so, this describes how all life’s DNA changes in order to accommodate its environment. Generally such changes are thought to happen over hundreds or thousands of years, but there is concrete evidence to show that they happen much faster (for instance, Darwin’s finches show how man harms evolution and Scientists watch Darwin’s finches evolve).

What worries me most about the idea of using cloned animals in this way is the fact that its based upon the idea that when you take a copy of some DNA it is an immutable snapshot. It is not. The animal produced is a very close copy to the original, but is not exactly the same.

This leak from the FDA is in fact the latest milestone on the long road in the US to approve cloned animals for human consumption. The process was kicked off in 2002 as one of the first acts of the current Bush administration, which leads to the inevitable suspicion the there may an invisible corporate hand somewhere in the story. Back in 2002 it was admitted that there simply wasn’t a good enough data sample to reach a definite conclusion. This cannot have changed in under six years.

There is a welter of reasons why we should be cautiously sceptical about cloning at the very least: animal welfare, “playing God” and the Law of Unintended Consequences to name but a few. However, to maintaining a purely scientific line like the FDA, is there enough science to say it is safe to eat cloned meat?

I would have to say “No”. Simply because a) clones are not duplicates, they are close copies, and b) evolution can cause DNA to change within a couple of years. Put these two facts together and you realise that this is definitely a case where trials involving the cloning of animals and then the examination of their offspring several generations later need to be undertaken before any serious conclusion can be arrived at.

Site Tags: FDA, animal, cloning, safe to eat

Sent to Paul Goodman (my MP — lucky chap) and DEFRA

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