Slavery: reparations for today's blacks is immoral
The issue of reparations for descendants of slaves, is on top of this weeks British political agenda - but, it's still not entirely self-evident as to
why the British state should have to pay monies to today's blacks, for a system that was abolished long, long before any of our parents were even born (let alone my generation).
If anything, the very idea of reparation for today's black Briton’s is in the first instance, a diabolical insult. The assumption underlying reparation is that slavery still shackles the feet of today's black Briton's - this notion is rubbish. What I find most objectionable, is the fact that it's millionaire black American lawyers who are the driving force behind all much of this foolish talk.
Besides, Britain cannot seriously afford to entertain ideas about shelling out tonnes of cash to all who demand compensation for things that happened in the distant past - because, it would be only a matter of time before the descendents of Chinese opium dealers come banging on British court doors demanding millions in compensation. Followed closely behind by the Boston tea merchants, and why not South African Boer farmers?
Multi-million pound payouts will not heal any division there may be in our society, but it will surely succeed in incensing a whole generation of white Briton's who could rightfully argue that all this nonsense 'is not fair'.
Labels: Reparation movement
Britain: the world's first 'Supernanny' state
These day's, the modern British government's relations with its electorate is more like the way parents deal with wayward teenagers. A New Labour analyst pretty much confirmed this last year when they told
The Guardian newspaper that the government; 'are like parents dealing with teenagers, who are unwilling to be controlled but not ready to take responsibility for their lives'.
If that doesn't sum up the way the government views the public, the Prime Minister will make it official
today. According to the children's minister Beverley Hughes, the well-being of our kids are at risk unless the government deploys an army of supernannies for the benefit of parents. It makes you wonder how British society has managed to survive for so long without the help of New Labour's parenting experts. In the past, governments used to see the role of bringing up children as strictly a private matter - not any more. The tendency to interfere in private matters seems to be the driving motivational force for the government these days.
Apparently, Tony Blair did try to rubbish those who argued that the creation of a
National Academy for Parenting Practitioner, was another form of state interfering and nannying - of course, the PM was right, Britain isn't a 'nanny state', it's more what
The Times (London) would call a
'Supernanny state'. Britain is fast becoming a state that apparently knows what's best for you and me, and woe betide any fool who has the temerity not to sing
government approved nursery rhymes to their babies.
Labels: Micro-management, New Labour
Green campaign against flying is led by hypocrites
The heavyweight environmentalist George Monbiot, has started a new
website that claims to expose those who call themselves 'green', but are nothing of the sort. In the website, Monbiot argues that environmentalists 'all want people to live by codes rather stricter than those we apply to ourselves'. Of course, when it comes to flying, environmentalists are the biggest hypocrites of them all - including Monbiot.
For example, many of the leaders of environmentalist organisations are targeting the aviation industry as a major cause for concern, and a danger to the environment - yet, these leaders have been flying all over the globe to preach their anti-aviation sermons to a worldwide audience. If Monbiot wants to 'out' some dodgy 'greens' he can start with himself - ok, he's already done that. How about Ashok Sinha, the director of Stop the Climate Chaos, who flew to India for his holiday, and Montreal on a business trip?
Or, how about New Labour's environment minister, David Miliband, who's in
Kenya for climate change talks? Ok, how about the chairman of the Environment Agency, Sir John Harman, who jets off to such places as Germany and Vienna for business, and likes to go to Cyprus and Croatia for holiday? Ok then, how about the organiser of a runway blockade at Midlands’s airport, John Sauven, who happens to be the campaign director of Greenpeace? Sauven likes to take his family to Italy for their holidays, and recently went on a 'business' trip to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil - very nice.
The director of Friends of the Earth, Tony Juniper, is also known to have jetted off to places like South Africa, Malaysia and Holland. He took his family to Slovakia last year, and is currently on a business trip in Nigeria at the moment. Or what about the Green party MEP Caroline Lucus? Lucas warned Briton's last year (all the way from Hong-Kong) about how a typical Christmas dinner may have travelled 30,000 miles to end up on our plates. She was also away in India last month on a business trip.
I'll leave the last words to Monbiot, who once said that 'If even the leaders of the green movement are not prepared to live without flying for pleasure then how can we expect that of other people?'
Read on:
A green snag they emitted to mention... By Johnathan Leake.
The Sunday Times. 2006
Picture:
A Plane Stupid activist at Leeds Bradford Airport. UK Indymedia.
Labels: Environmental hypocrisy
'War' on climate change? Looks just as 'bogus' as the 'war on terror'
According to
Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, the British state is now apparently 'at war' over climate change, just like back 'in 1939'. The ex-minister added that 'I think we are at war over climate change and I think we [New Labour] can lead the country'. In case we didn't quite understand what Meacher was saying, he noted that global warming was a challenge to the very 'future of the human species on the planet'. Ok, message received.
Is Meacher really calling for the re-militarisation of our society, with his ideal image of WWII and wartime rationing? Even back then in 1930s, wartime rationing was only achievable by terrifying the British public into believing that Britain was about to be invaded, hence the need for militarising society and
austerity measures.
More to the point, Meacher's bogus call to arms against climate change is totally unconvincing - the idea that the future of the whole of humanity somehow hangs in the balance because of climate change, is risible. This is not science speaking, Meacher's doom and gloom predictions are based on pure speculation.
Meacher once took the British government to task for its role in the
bogus 'war on terror'. He bemoaned the fact that Britain had launched a full-scale war against Iraq based solely on dodgy information about WMD. Yet, Meacher's theories about the 'end of humanity' are just as 'bogus' as the original reasons why Britain went to war with Iraq. Indeed, Meacher’s theory has failed a basic test, Karl Popper's test of
falsifiability. Meacher's dire warning says far more about him, than it does about the future of humanity.
Labels: Environmental austerity, Environmental determinism, New Labour
Greenpeace: going backwards into the future
The
Guardian has reported that the owners of British Gas,
Centrica, plan on building Britain's cleanest coal-fired power station. The plant will cost £1bn, and is thought it will be operational by 2011. Centrica plan on crushing the coal and turning it to synthetic gas, this gas will then fire the turbines. All the carbon produced during this process will be filtered out and pumped to the seabed in the North Sea for storage.
According to Centrica, the new station would only produce 0.15 tonnes of carbon per MW/hour, which is far better than their rivals E.ON and RWE, who's clean coal stations produce 0.7 tonnes per MW/hour. Centrica also claim their plant is suited to run on British-mined coal unlike their rivals. Sound great to me.
Except, the miserabalists at Greenpeace have condemned the project - I'd like to know, what on Earth have they got to object about? It's carbon free electricity production for crying out loud. A spokesman for Greenpeace, in the
Times (London) tried to defend their
highly dubious position by arguing that;
"This plant will lock us into another 50 years of wasted energy. Like all our outdated, crumbling power stations, this proposed plant will waste two thirds of the energy it generates as thrown away heat".According to
Greenpeace, there's no such thing as 'clean coal', that is just a myth. You'd think that a carbon free clean coal power station would be a step forward, and a cause for celebration for environmentalist - but oh no, miserabalism and backwardness seems to be the order of the day where Greenpeace is concerned.
Thanks to
Daniel Ben-Ami for the heads-up on this one.
Labels: Environmentalism, Human progress
Plane Stupid: how dumb can this lot be?
Plane Stupid activists have got to take the title of being the dumbest environmental organisation the world as ever seen - only last week the group attempted to occupy the 'London' headquaters of EasyJet, it was organised as a part of their ongoing national campaign against short haul flights.
So, true to form, this dumb outfit march off to occupy a building in London. Once there, they draped a massive banner on the roof, and formed a human chain around the entrance of the building. However, what this group failed to recognise was the fact they were not standing outside EasyJet's HQ - that, happens to be in Luton, not London.
As you can plainly see in the photograph above, this is the headquarters of EasyGroup, who are in charge of such things like cinema's, buses, pizza's, music, mobile phones and cruises - not aeroplanes.
I can't believe someone actually even posted photographic evidence of their stupidity on UK Indymedia.
UPDATE: Plane Stupid activists are trying to argue that easyGroup own easyJet, but this is not true.
The truth is;
easyJet is a public company of which the Haji-Ioannou family own around 49% (Stelios Hani-Ioannou does own the easyJet name which he leases back to the airline, but that is something very different). easyGroup is a private holding company which is owned by Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The Haji-Ioannou family interest in easyJet is not legally connected with or managed by easyGroup.
Current easyGroup businesses
easyInternetcafé
easyCar
easyMoney
easyCinema
easyCinema DVD Rental
easyBus
easy4men
easyPizza
easyMusic
easyCruise
easyValue
easy.com
easyJobs
easyHotel
easyWatch
easyTelecom
easyCafe
Labels: Anti-progress, Environmentalism, Plane Stupid
Carbon rationing? Thanks... but no thanks
Normally whenever I think about rationing, I think about the period of
instituted austerity for civilians during World War II, that didn't even end until the 1950s. The image is of people queuing up in long lines with ration books in hand to get their 'fair share' of scarce resources like food or clothing.
These days, the scarce resource seems to be energy, and environmentalists are demanding that it's time we made World War II like sacrifices for the sake of the planet. In the
Newstatesman,
Mark Lynas argues that it's not enough to drive less, fly less or consume less, we need to do much, much more that. Indeed, he argues that the;
"best indication of whether a person truly grasps the scale of the global climate crisis is not whether they drive a hybrid car or offset their flights, nor whether they subscribe to the
Ecologist or plan to attach a wind turbine to their house. The most reliable indicator is whether they support carbon rationing".
In an era of plentiful, Lynas is openly advocating imposing harsh austerity. It hasn't even occurred to Lynas, or
George Monbiot that there might be an alternative to green authoritarian carbon rationing. The author
Daniel Ben-Ami points out that giant hydroelectric dams and nuclear power for example do not emit any greenhouse gas - geoengineering also offers many possibilities in the future in terms of energy. Ben-Ami also adds that carbon rationing 'would literally leave billions of people mired in poverty' - but what would environmentalists care about that? All they seemed to be bothered about is the 'war against climate change', like nothing else mattered
Labels: Green austerity, Petty authoritarianism
The issue of reparations for descendants of slaves, is on top of this weeks British political agenda - but, it's still not entirely self-evident as to why the British state should have to pay monies to today's blacks, for a system that was abolished long, long before any of our parents were even born (let alone my generation).
