The Quiet Road

This, more or less, was the first message that the new leader of the British Labour Party sought to communicate.

Ed Miliband
(as red as his necktie)

His first media offensive didn’t take aim at the savage public sector cuts being implemented by the tory government. It wasn’t focussed on the terrifying levels of control that undemocratic institutions (the financial sector, corporations, the media, markets) now possess over modern society. Or the dreadful mess they’ve made with it. He didn’t even use the publicity generated by his election to establish clear water between himself and the thoroughly discredited governments of his predecessors.

Nope, the ironically nicknamed “Red Ed” chose instead to assure the nation that he is — in essence — no different to every other career politician within a mile of power during the past couple of decades. He is of the Ineffectual Centre, and don’t anyone forget it. His dismissal of the unions was a dismissal of the ever-dwindling working class. Sure, he knows he’ll have to submit to some photo-ops in factories, supermarkets and (wearing a hard hat) on one of Britain’s few remaining construction projects. That’s par for the course for any politician, whatever the party.

Just please don’t get the impression he actually represents those people.

I’m convinced that the “Red Ed” nickname is, genuinely, nothing more than the result of lazy tabloid headline writers who like the rhyme, despite knowing nothing whatsoever about the man’s politics. Yes, he has said that his own ideas for cutting the deficit involve less spending cuts and more tax increases than the tories (or indeed than Alistair Darling, the author of the last New Labour budget). But it’s pretty marginal stuff. He’s certainly not talking about nationalising essential industries or shifting away from a profit-driven model of economic activity (which, whether you agree with them or not, would be the kind of ideas that actually warrant the sobriquet “Red Ed”).

As power has drained out of politics, so modern politicians — even those at the very top — have become middle management. The aims and values of society are dictated to them by markets and tabloids. And like middle management the world over, they have a little bit of leeway as to how best those aims can be achieved and those values upheld. But it is only a little bit. They certainly have almost no control over the aims and values themselves.

Ed Miliband, newly elected leader of the Labour Party, has spent his first day at the helm desperately trying to reassure markets and tabloids that he is willing to toe their line. That he has no plans to challenge their leadership. And that he certainly has no intention of representing the people who actually elected him.

Which, I suppose, makes him perfectly qualified to be the next Prime Minister when the current UK government fails.

I’m watching BBC World News. Currently being broadcast is a debate about Islam, how it’s perceived in the west (particularly America), the “Ground Zero Mosque”, Pastor Terry Jones of Florida threatening to hold a Koran-burning party and other inflammatory issues raised on the eve of the anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

The most depressing thing about the debate is how incredibly predictable it all is. Representing, I suppose, “the average American” is a construction worker whose every utterance seems carefully crafted to further the “insular Yank” stereotype. Knowing, as I do, plenty of intelligent and well-informed Americans, I find myself cringing at the caricature being beamed around the world. And I wonder whether or not this man is genuinely representative of America (more so than those intelligent, well-informed folks of my acquaintance) or whether he has been chosen for his fulfillment of a stereotype prevalent in the media.

Unfortunately, I suspect it’s the former. Partly based on my inherent cynicism and partly based upon my observations of US media and political policy — a very small minority of which appears to come from a place of informed intelligence.

So the construction worker complains that, while he personally doesn’t want to burn any Korans, the pastor should be permitted to do so because America values freedom of expression. In his next breath he condemns the building of an Islamic cultural centre near the location of the World Trade Centre and wishes to see it halted. Rarely has, what George Orwell called, “doublethink” been so perfectly illustrated.

He then wonders why there’s such widespread condemnation of this Koran-burning stunt while nobody is condemning “the Taliban threats” of reprisals. It seems like a near-decade-long bombing campaign and a ground war waged by the combined militaries of the west against the Taliban does not constitute enough condemnation for this guy.

He also wanted to know why it was only ever America who “stood up to extremism”. Why it was only in America that people were condemning the death-sentence by stoning of the Iranian woman accused of adultery? One wonders how he could possibly have known that it was only in America, as he clearly has no contact with international media (for those not following the story, the loudest and most sustained objections to this Iranian travesty have come from the cheese-eating surrender-monkeys of France, but it’s unlikely that Fox News would ever report such a thing).

Now he’s suggesting that the Koran-burning should go ahead because if it’s only a minority of Moslems who are extremists, then burning the Koran will ensure “the radicals will come out of the woodwork” so that “we can identify them”. His inability to understand that such gratuitous acts of provocation might serve to radicalise further those who are already angry at western policy in Afghanistan is yet another perfect illustration… this time of US foreign policy in general.

On the other hand, it’s heartening to note that a moderate Moslem is arguing against the building of the Islamic Centre, and vaguely amusing that the barbed nature of his reasoning failed to even register on the blue-collared caricature. The Centre, he suggested, could be seen as a celebration of American tolerance and a place where the tensions between cultures could perhaps be overcome. But “Americans aren’t yet ready for that” he suggests, and Moslems should accept this and await a better time to enter into a useful dialogue. He didn’t use the words “you lot just don’t have the emotional maturity to see beyond your ignorance and accept the issue is more complex than Moslems = terrorists and Americans = Number One”. But I could see in his eyes that he wanted to.

Ultimately, Pastor Terry Jones has the right to burn his Korans if that’s the message he wants to send to the world. He’d be a complete idiot and an arsehole to do so, but that would hardly make him unique among southern preachers. In response, no doubt, some idiots and arseholes in the Moslem World would escalate the matter. There’d be (yet more) burnings of American flags and bibles. And a mob would form in some moderate Islamic nation like Egypt and they’d attack a christian church. People would get hurt, perhaps even killed. Then a group of stupid young rednecks in Alabama would beat some random dark-skinned kid to death because he looked Moslem.

Pastor Terry Jones would have blood on his hands. Only a drop, certainly, in the ocean of red that’s been steadily growing these past nine years, since a group of murderers highjacked some planes in North America. But a drop more than any of us need.

There were a couple of web forums that I used to participate in which I gave up on last year. I enjoyed the cut-and-thrust of debate and the social aspect, but in one case the political slant of the forum shifted ground and I began to feel my views were less than welcome. The other I abandoned because it became infected by the hostility that appears to characterise so much of internet discussion.

I have since rejoined the former, but a recent visit to the latter revealed that it has descended into little more than a perpetual shouting match. And it’s far from unique. Take the discussions on any high traffic blog, or on news sites that allow comments, and you quickly discover a tirade of insults, accusations and outright nastiness. Any attempt to highlight this unnecessary unpleasantness is itself greeted with accusations of pomposity or passive aggressive behaviour. The participants on these forums have actually created a world where the expectation of civility is unacceptable and is met with incredulity and accusations of aberrant behaviour.

And there’s a sense in which this saddens me. The internet is an amazing communications tool. Yes, it’s full of pornography, commercial advertising and enough hot air to rival a political convention, but the facility it offers for the exchange of ideas and the discussion of alternative viewpoints is extraordinary.

Yet we are squandering that opportunity.

Decent, intelligent people should be capable of discussing contentious issues without making snide personal remarks. On the internet, hostility has become the first resort rather than the last. And while people point to the anonymous nature of the medium as the reason for this, I’m forced to wonder why that very anonymity doesn’t counteract it. Is there really satisfaction to be gained from belittling a stranger who you will never meet? Being rude to a ghost in a machine may be easy, but what’s the payoff?

I’m no shrinking violet. I’ve fought my way through tough situations, as have most of us. I don’t get offended or hurt by this obnoxious behaviour, but I do get a little depressed. Depressed that this is how people treat one another by default. When there is no direct feedback involved, no person in front of you looking startled at the level of hostility you adopt for no obvious reason, we appear willing — indeed eager — to adopt that hostility. When it would be just as easy to assume a respectful and civil attitude as our initial starting point.

Such a shame.

Over on his blog, Merrick highlights the latest U-turn to be performed by the UK’s governing coalition (Kingsnorth: Back from the dead?). Actually, you know what? I’m just going to start referring to the current UK government as a tory government. The presence of the Liberal Democrats*, just like the involvement of the Greens in the government here in Ireland, is an irrelevance; a technical footnote rather than a meaningful truth. The only impact they have on the government is to allow the dominant party to float policies they always wanted to, but that might be unpopular with their own hardline supporters. So here in Ireland, for instance, we’ve had a carbon tax ostensibly as a result of the Green presence in cabinet. In reality, Fianna Fáil wanted an alternative revenue stream to help with the crippling deficit and were delighted to find one they could blame on someone else.

So let’s start again…

Over on his blog, Merrick highlights the latest U-turn to be performed by the UK’s Conservative government. Prior to the election they had unambiguously stated that under their administration, any new power stations would have to meet a strict Emissions Performance Standard (EPS).

This would mean the carbon emissions rate of all electricity generated in our country cannot be any higher than that generated in a modern gas plant. Such a standard would mean that a new generation of unabated coal power plants could not be built in this country.

David Cameron | The choice isn’t between economy and environment

More than that, this pledge wasn’t merely a campaign promise (a term which, let’s face it, has become little more than a euphemism for “bullshit”), it actually made it into their Programme for Government (PDF file).

We will establish an emissions performance standard that will prevent coal-fired power stations being built unless they are equipped with sufficient carbon capture and storage to meet the emissions performance standard.

As Merrick says, that’s clear, definite and unequivocal.

Three days ago, however, they admitted their pledge to introduce an EPS was basically just a lie to make them look more environmentally responsible than they actually are. Despite the unambiguous nature of their promise, they have shelved the EPS and will no longer be introducing legislation to implement it. Instead they will “open a consultation on the idea in the autumn with the results being presented to parliament as a white paper in the new year.”

Be under no illusion, that’s just a diplomatic way of abandoning the idea. It’s the modern political equivalent of holding a press conference and shouting “suckers!”

Of course, you could argue that anyone who believed a tory government would really implement a strict EPS kind of was a bit of a sucker. Sorry. But the fact is, it was pretty obvious that this policy would be unpalatable to any right of centre government in current circumstances.

Climate Change: nothing to do with us

See, the title of this post — Energy crisis Vs. Climate Change — expresses a very real tension that now exists at the heart of modern civilisation. As we lurch towards a looming energy crisis precipitated by the global peak of conventional oil production, many of the steps we might take to cope with that crisis will directly conflict with many of the steps we might take to deal with Climate Change (note: I read an analysis just this morning which suggests that “during 2011, OPEC’s spare capacity may be completely eroded”. This is a serious problem indeed, and will torpedo any economic recovery politicians and economists tell us is underway right now.)

Examples of this conflict are too numerous to mention, but include widespread deforestation to clear land for biofuel production, the draining of peat bogs and marshland for the same reason, increases in coal use (and the mind-bogglingly damaging coal-gassification process) to make up for shortfalls in oil and gas, the exploitation of oil shales and tar sands (also an incredibly damaging resource from an ecological perspective) and so on. All of these attempts to mitigate the energy crisis will result in the acceleration of anthropogenic climate change.

Yet we are ploughing ahead full steam with them. More than that, politicians who made explicit promises to restrict the damage that coal burning might do, for example, are abandoning those promises without even trying to deliver on them.

And it’s not difficult to understand why. In the case of coal-burning power plants in the UK, the government has realised that new electricity generation needs to be brought online within the next few years. The only alternative would be to mandate higher energy efficiency and ultimately a reduction in consumption. It is simply easier, politically, to contribute to Climate Change than it is to speak unpopular truths to the electorate. And if there’s one thing you can be sure of, it’s that politicians will always choose the easy option above the right one. It’s almost a job requirement.

See, Climate Change is too intangible a problem to be blamed on any single government. And they know this. Power cuts, on the other hand, will always be blamed on the government of the day. So Cameron (and his counterparts in damn near every other party… let’s be under no illusions here, Labour would do precisely the same if they were in power) much prefers to contribute to an ecological disaster that can’t be pinned on him, than try solve a political one that can.

It’s a measure of the moral cowardice of the man and of the entire political establishment.

An energy crisis is looming folks. It’s very real, and it’s not far away. But we seem willing to burn down the entire planet rather than accept a change in our outrageous over-consumption. And this is despite the fact that our over-consumption doesn’t even seem to be making us all that happy.

Back in April I predicted that the collapse of the Irish economy would lead to a new wave of Irish emigration. Figures published a few days ago confirm that this is now underway.

In fact, in a survey of EU members, outward migration from Ireland is already almost double that of Lithuania — the country with the second-highest rate. The Irish per annum emigration rate currently stands at 9 per thousand people. That’s almost 1%. Which is very high indeed. What makes it even more startling is the contrast with a decade ago when Ireland’s inward migration was the second highest in the EU (at 8.4 per thousand).

Of course, this fact suggests that much of the current exodus is a result of our immigrant population returning home. The people who came to Ireland to meet the massive demand for labour have seen that demand dry up, and those who didn’t put down roots are now moving on to pastures new. It’s a strategy that served the Irish well for almost 200 years.

But according to the Economic Social Research Institute, while returning foreign nationals do make up the largest percentage of the current emigration, young Irish males also account for a very large proportion. Of course, it’s hardly a coincidence that this particular demographic would usually form the bulk of the workers in the construction sector. When the choice is between an ever-decreasing dole cheque or a job in exotic climes, a lot of young men find themselves choosing a one-way ticket to Melbourne.

And even the fact that an increasing number (albeit still a very small number) have chosen to join the British army and seek their action in Helmand province rather than the nightclubs and beaches of Australia doesn’t surprise me. Personally I don’t ever get bored, but I’m told it can be a powerful motivator*. After all, what other explanation can there be? I can get my head around young British men signing up to be shot at, half a planet away from home. Misguided though they are, I assume they believe that at some level they are protecting British interests, and that’s important to them.

Presumably though, that can’t be the motivation for the average Irish lad who signs up. So it must be boredom. Either that, or they just want to do violence to strangers.

I dunno, maybe I’m being harsh. Maybe they seek a kind of nobility… the life of The Warrior. Honour in duty and all that stuff. Frankly I think it’s all a big con. Defending your home from attack… yes, there’s an honour in that. But flying to Central Asia to kill people who pose no real threat to you or those you love? There are vested interests who want young people to do that, and they’ve fed them a bunch of lies to get them to willingly comply.

It’s been the same for millennia.

Of course, the youngsters getting shot at beneath a British flag in Afghanistan don’t exactly form a significant proportion of the new wave of Irish emigration. They are merely a dramatic example of the desperation that faces many, now that the corpse of Celtic Tiger has finally begun to stink. For me, growing up in Dublin in the 1970s, Ireland was a place that promised little and delievered even less. The generation born in 1990 were raised in a completely different Ireland. One that offered excitement, prosperity and fulfillment. Leastways, that’s how it seemed.

The reality, of course, wasn’t like that at all. Built on debt and absurd claims of everlasting growth, it was the hollow promise of consumerism. A dark, gaping emptiness that gnawed away at the soul of Irish society. Better to be promised nothing and take delivery of it, than be promised happiness and fulfillment only to take delivery of alienation and neurosis. The Celtic Tiger was a hoax from the start. Even the good days weren’t all that good. Yeah, we’ve got plasma screen televisions and BMWs but we’ll be paying for them long after they’re landfill.

Trouble is, the generation leaving their teens now have been raised on those promises. Indoctrinated — like so many others, the world over — by celebrity culture and advertising. Genuine fulfillment in family, friends and community becomes almost impossible to achieve when you’ve been raised in a culture that savagely undermines them. From infants they’ve been shown a world where wealth equates with happiness. And denied the opportunity to test it for themselves, they simply don’t understand it’s a lie.

David Byrne is currently preparing a lawsuit against the Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, for the use of Road to Nowhere in a political campaign. Check out the full story.

Besides being theft, use of the song and my voice in a campaign ad implies that I, as writer and singer of the song, might have granted Crist permission to use it, and that I therefore endorse him and/or the Republican Party, of which he was a member until very, very recently. The general public might also think I simply license the use of my songs to anyone who will pay the going rate, but that’s not true either, as I have never licensed a song for use in an ad. I do license songs to commercial films and TV shows (if they pay the going rate), and to dance companies and student filmmakers mostly for free. But not to ads.

I’m a bit of a throwback that way, as I still believe songs occasionally mean something to people — they obviously mean something personal to the writer, and often to the listener as well. A personal and social meaning is diluted when that same song is used to sell a product (or a politician). If Crist and his campaign folks had asked to use the song, I would have said no — even if they had offered a lot of money, such as I have been offered in the past for ad use (though I’ve always turned these offers down).

David Byrne | Yours Truly vs. the Governor of Florida

Byrne is one of my favourite artists, as regular readers will know. The fact that he has made, and continues to make, records that mean more to me than almost any others is further enhanced by his remaining one of the few artists who have resisted the lure of commerical advertising. One can only imagine how much money he’s been offered for the use of certain songs in his back catalogue and deeply admire his artistic integrity. For me, hearing a song or piece of music in an advert almost always destroys it. So given the importance of his music to me personally, I hope and pray he maintains his stance.

Go David!

In what’s being described as “a bid to bring stability to the UK after a general election which has created a regrettable vacuum of power”, the queen has declared herself absolute monarch and summoned the three party leaders to Buckingham Palace, where she earlier arrived by helicopter from Windsor Castle. In a statement released through the queen’s spokesman, she plans to “sit down with the three leaders and knock some heads together”. She also plans to broadcast an emergency statement at 9pm this evening on all British television and radio channels.

Having established the firm support of the army and 50 of the 60 police authorities, with only a handful of authorities — in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — choosing to abstain from a hastily arranged secret poll of Chief Constables carried out by civil servants, it is thought that the leaders of the parties will wait until they hear what the queen has to say before making any statements.

Sources close to Prince Charles, however, appear to be claiming that the Royal Family have little to do with this “Stabilisation Process” and are merely being used as a mask of constitutional legitimacy by senior figures in the civil service, armed forces and intelligence community. “The queen is taking some very bad advice”, one insider is quoted as saying. While another suggested that there may even be an element of coercion involved with threats being made against the lives of several of her family members.

While little remains clear at this moment, one thing does seem certain; The Policy For a New Direction, a document that was rumoured to exist in the weeks leading up to the election, will be part of the agenda at the Buckingham Palace meeting. The existence of this ‘covert manifesto’ was only substantiated early this afternoon when it was leaked from within the Police Force of Northern Ireland. It now appears that the document, which has been couriered to every police authority and armed forces installation today, bears the Royal Seal and carries the signature of the queen along with that of General Sir David Richards (on behalf of the entire General Staff of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces) and the heads of the Metropolitan Police Service, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, Ministry of Defence Police and British Transport Police, as well as MI5 and MI6.

Leastways, that’s what I dreamt last night. That, and some stuff about a massive asteroid hitting the Atlantic Ocean and being in the West of Ireland and trying to think of ways to escape the approaching tsunami.

Too much election night coverage, I feel.

As I write, there are still 9 seats to be declared in the UK elections. The initial exit polls appear to have been roughly correct, but pretty much all previous polls over the past three weeks, as well as all the reflected media coverage appear to have been spectacularly wrong. I picture a good week of media self-analysis… in the media, of course… once the actual political outcome has been settled. How did we get it so wrong? they’ll ask themselves. And sell you their answers at 30p a copy. Or beam it into your home for the price of the licence fee — or more expensive still — a commercial advertisement.

And the thing they got so wrong, of course, was the insistence that it was a three horse race. It wasn’t. It’s not quite over yet, but one thing is very clear, Nick Clegg did not drag his party above the rank of also-ran. He may yet hold the balance of power, but it’ll be by default rather than because they genuinely increased their stature. Even their share of the popular vote has only risen by 1%. Admittedly that was from a pretty decent starting-point in terms of their recent history, but it’s hardly the line the public were being fed from the media. They’re actually down 5 seats at time of writing.

During last night’s election coverage, the likeable Prof Brian Cox showed up on Channel 4 and told the gathered electorate, gazing at our glowing rectangles, that they were “stupid”. We all sat there and laughed, and insisted it was “those other people” he was talking about, not us specifically. Yes indeed. Though let’s face it. If you’re one of the ten and a half million people who voted Tory, then you’re definitely one of the people he’s talking about.

Of course, he was actually being more general than that. Prof Cox was making a point about our collective decision-making and how it seems to have ended up firmly dedicated to self-destruction. Our seemingly cruel lack of self-awareness as a culture and our ten thousand year war against nature… externalising our collective schizophrenia into the wider ecology of mind. OK, so he didn’t use those exact words. I was translating into Batesonian.

Anyhoo, that proved to be the highlight of the election coverage… Prof Cox calling us all stupid.

But enough about the coverage, what about the outcome?

Well, that’s the thing… even with just 9 seats left to declare, we don’t know it yet. It appears that the media may have got that much right — the possibility of a hung parliament / minority government is a very real one. The Tories are going to end up the largest party, but far enough away from an overall majority to make things complicated. Oh, and just what the Welsh were thinking by making it easier on them, I’ll never know.

But of course, the real reason the Tories aren’t as far from an overall majority as was being predicted isn’t the appearance of more spots of blue on the map of Wales. Rather, it’s the failure of the Lib Dem swing to show up on cue. They were supposed to grab a bunch of seats from the Tories. But they didn’t. In fact they actually lost ground to the Tories overall. The opportunity to unseat Oliver Letwin in a real Lib Dem / Tory marginal was squandered. For that, the Lib Dems should publicly apologise. As should the people of Dorset West.

Meanwhile Labour also held their ground against the Lib Dems overall and didn’t lose as many seats to the Tories in the north as was being predicted. Certainly they’ve retained enough to allow Gordon Brown first shot at forming a government, constitutionally speaking. Though whether that’ll happen is anyone’s guess, with the Tories moving to declare victory even though lots of people are saying they have no legal right whatsoever to do so.

That kind of magical thinking can be very effective though. Ten and a half million tory voters all believing in a Conservative victory at the same time is the kind of thing that can manifest such a victory in reality. Especially when you have the Murdoch Press acting as a Great Unholy Sigil. The fact that far more people voted against the Tories than voted for them isn’t necessarily relevant either. If a sense of doubt creeps into them, as it surely must be doing if you’re a Lib Dem after the past three weeks of ecstatic preparation; and perhaps is also happening with many Labour voters who will view the loss of 90 seats and the body language of so many Labour MPs as signalling defeat.

So a minority Conservative government using the Ulster Unionists as additional muscle? The worst of all possible worlds? There’s a part of me that’s sadly unsurprised.

Alternatively we could technically see a rainbow coalition with a Lib-Lab pact recruiting the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, the SDLP and the incoming Green MP as a broad left coalition. Labour can promise the Lib Dems electoral reform in return for their support, but I’m not sure they’d be willing to offer the others what they’d demand.

Which reminds me… congratulations to Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party and new MP for Brighton Pavilion. I wish her well; it’ll be good to have a Green voice in parliament even if it’s likely to get drowned out most of the time.

Meanwhile there’s also the other possibility of Clegg bringing the Lib Dems into government with the Tories. The fact that this is even being discussed seriously by the Lib Dems is clear evidence that they are the deluded free-market capitalists that I suggested they might be. All the same, if they wrestle electoral reform out of the Tories in return for their support, they’ll still have been worth your vote. Possibly.

With 9 seats left to declare, the Tories have passed the 300 mark, but only just (302). Labour are on 256 with the Lib Dems at 56. So a Lib-Lab pact would bring them to 312 and clear of the Tories, though short of a majority. And even though Cameron will be trying to cast his “I have moral authority” spell upon the land, a look at the popular vote is revealing. Certainly it demonstrates the kind of distortions wrought by a First Past The Post electoral system.

With 23% of the overall vote, the Lib Dems won less than 9% of the seats (they should have about 148 seats if each vote was treated equally and proportionally). The Tories, on the other hand would drop about 70 seats, if representation was roughly proportional to the votes cast. You can see why they oppose electoral reform.

And even though Labour would also drop roughly the same number of seats, you can see why they wouldn’t be quite as unwilling to consider some kind of electoral reform… it’d be Labour that the Lib Dems would be more likely to deal with if both offered a working majority. And under PR, a Lib-Lab pact would have a clear majority (though not a massive one), while the Tories would have far less claim to ‘moral authority’ with not nearly enough MPs to form a stable minority government.

There’s still plenty of twists and turns to come. But my suspicion is that we’ll see David Cameron in 10 Downing Street by the end of the weeked. I was going to say “it’ll be funny to see how he deals with the economic crisis, resource depletion and climate change”. Except it won’t be funny. It’ll be fucking tragic.

Tomorrow the UK goes to the polls in the hope of electing a new government. I say “in the hope” because there is a slim possibility that a hung parliament could lead to political paralysis and force another election in the near future. That is, however, a slim possibility. It’s more likely that a hung parliament will lead to some form of coalition between Labour and the Lib Dems. This is potentially the most desirable outcome, given the current voting system, as it may well usher in electoral reform (in my view the best thing that could happen to UK democracy).

More likely still, however, is a small Conservative majority. I’ve heard talk of a two seat majority, but I suspect it’ll be a little larger than that. Large enough, certainly, for David Cameron to form a government despite receiving a near-record low proportion of the popular vote.

A Tory win will be bad for two specific sets of people.

Firstly, it’ll be bad for those on a low income or welfare. Not so much “the poor” as “the not rich”. The economic policies to which the tories are wed will not fare well in the face of the problems to come.

Secondly, it’ll be bad for the Conservatives themselves. The Governor of the Bank of England recently suggested that whatever party is in power over the next five years will be forced to drink from a poisoned chalice. They will frantically try to blame anyone but themselves, but will nonetheless find themselves associated with the problems they fail to solve. The Bank Governor believes the next ruling party will be cast into the political wilderness for thirty years.

My advice (for the little it’s worth) is to vote Lib Dem. “What’s that?” you gasp, “You’re surely not endorsing one of those centre-right, free-market parties you heap so much scorn upon, are you?” Well, no. I’m not endorsing them per se. Rather, I’m endorsing the electoral reform they may bring with them. That way, by the time the next election comes round, a vote for the Greens or the hard left won’t be a wasted vote. I don’t necessarily want to see a green or hard left government in the UK, but I do believe that the presence of those voices in parliament would be a positive thing in a world where sustainability becomes our over-riding concern.

So yeah, vote tactically to ensure the Lib Dems get some say in what happens next. Not because they offer hope of good governance (they don’t!) but because they offer hope of finally destroying the two-party capitalist duopoly that has dominated the UK landscape for so long.

This advice doesn’t extend to those constituencies where the Greens have a genuine chance of winning (there’s one in Norwich and one in Brighton, I believe), nor to constituencies in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland where an alternative to the Big Three stands a realistic chance. But everywhere else, the sensible vote is for electoral reform.

The general election campaign is coming to an end over in the UK and the public will soon place an ‘x’ in a little box on a sheet of paper… this act — performed every four or five years — is modern democracy in action. Government by the people. Apparently.

This particular election is being contested by three main parties plus several smaller ones. And although there is a real possibility of the smaller parties gaining a couple of seats in parliament this time round, the British electoral system is heavily stacked in favour of the larger ones (of course the “local” parties in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will all win seats in Westminster, but I’m concentrating here on parties with a UK-wide presence… my knowledge of Scottish and Welsh politics is severely limited and Northern Irish politics have little bearing on the UK as a whole, mired as they still are in local sectarianism). Indeed with the recent surge of the Liberal Democrats in the opinion polls, it’s possible that the Greens, UKIP, Respect and others will be even further marginalised by the consolidation of power on the centre-right.

And let’s not be under any illusions, all three (Conservatives, Labour and Lib Dems) are centre-right parties. None of them propose real change, none of them — despite claims to the contrary — can be considered progressive, except by twisting the definition of that word until it means almost its precise opposite. All three are dedicated to free market capitalism even as they pay lip service to public service. All three promise a “return to growth”, betraying not merely a sorry lack of imagination but also a dreadful ignorance; one so extreme that it’s difficult not to suspect it’s willful; of the current situation regarding energy resources and global sustainability. None of them will even use the word “sustainable” except, oxymoronically, as a prefix to the word “growth”.

The single most important issue facing British — and global — society has been utterly ignored by those campaigning to run the UK for the next half-decade. So whilst a very real, very serious and very physical problem has begun to manifest around us, anyone watching this election campaign could be forgiven for concluding that the only issues facing the modern world involve the social graces of those seeking election and the artificial construct known as money. Currency, debt, money… it’s essentially a human-created system for which we have written (and if we choose, can re-write) the rules. Energy, food, natural resources… these on the other hand are the building blocks of the physical systems by which human life is maintained. Our mistake is to have overlaid the former on top of the latter, and then somehow forgot we did so; so that we have fallen into the trap Korzybski tried to warn us about… that of confusing the map for the territory.

“Getting the economy moving again” has become the mantra for all sides in this election campaign. And one of the ways they intend to achieve this is via a radical shake-up of the welfare system. While I agree that the question of how society supports those without an income is going to become a huge one over the next few years, the ideas being considered in the current political mainstream are wrong-headed in the extreme. Based — as they are — on a mistaken belief; that maximising employment is a good thing.

However, considering what we know to be true about the short-to-medium term sustainability of energy resources (see my recent three-parter on Peak Oil if you don’t know what I’m talking about), this brings me quite neatly to the first of my ‘Unpopular Ideas’. Namely that:

Unemployment is a good thing

I’m aware that this sounds vaguely “wrong by definition”, like suggesting that racism or beating up old ladies is a good thing. We have been conditioned to accept certain premises by the very structure of the society we’ve created. And those ‘structural premises’ are difficult to shake off. If, however, that society is fundamentally flawed (and unsustainability is perhaps the biggest flaw that any society can suffer from)… guilty of what Gregory Bateson calls “epistemological lunacy”… then we are obliged to re-examine those initial premises.

… the premises work only up to a certain limit, and, at some stage or under certain circumstances, if you are carrying serious epistemological errors, you will find that they do not work any more. At this point you discover to your horror that it is exceedingly difficult to get rid of the error, that it’s sticky. It is as if you had touched honey. As with honey, the falsification gets around; and each thing you try to wipe it off on gets sticky, and your hand still remains sticky.

Gregory Bateson | Pathologies of Epistemology

Nonetheless, we must try to rid ourselves of the stickiness before we make too much of a mess. Because when our continued survival (perhaps not as a species, but certainly as a civilisation) depends upon those premises being corrected, then it’s surely a matter of urgency for us to do so. And one of the first of those premises that gets called into question when re-examining society through the filter of decreasing energy resources, is the notion that people should be encouraged to be economically active; furthermore that such economic activity should be maximised.

See, I’m not claiming — by any stretch of the imagination — that being unemployed is a good thing in our current society. Our society, after all, is specifically designed to make unemployment relatively uncomfortable in the hope of minimising it*. What I’m suggesting is that we need to re-imagine our society as one that views economic activity as a necessary evil; itself a process to be minimised. We need to reshape society so that the basic needs of all members are met, while consuming as little energy as possible in meeting them.

Energy, after all, can be defined as “the ability to do work”. Indeed, in physical terms, the SI unit for work (the joule) is identical to the SI unit for energy. So, as I said recently…

A recession is another word for a decrease in economic activity. And because we have built a world that is unable to tolerate such decreases, we strive to avoid recessions and to quickly overcome them via a “return to growth”. It seems to me, however, that we should perhaps view our current recession in a more positive light. We should perhaps find a way to use this slowdown as a springboard towards a powerdown. As unemployment rises, we should be looking at ways to accommodate this as a positive thing, rather than viewing it negatively through the lens of our old premises and searching for ways to reverse it.

I’m not suggesting that our society — in its current form — is capable of sustaining a continuing decrease in economic activity and the subsequent large-scale unemployment such a decrease will bring. I’m instead suggesting that a continuing decrease in economic activity is completely unavoidable, and society must be remodelled in such a way as to turn this to our advantage.