The Quiet Road

Last night the British parliament enacted a thoroughly regressive piece of legislation. Called The Digital Economy Bill (DEBill), it is ostensibly designed to — amongst other things — prevent internet file-sharing. In fact, what it actually does is allow large corporations to legally victimise individuals based on nothing more than suspicion. Once again the representatives of the people have sold them out to appease the power of private capital.

And people say the coming election actually matters? Fact is, who ever gets into government, it’s Big Business who stays in power.

According to DEBill, corporations are permitted to monitor the nation’s internet connections and demand that anyone suspected of filesharing be disconnected. Yes, warning letters must be sent out first, but the fact remains that there is no actual burden of proof involved. If your IP address is spoofed, or WiFi network hacked, or computer compromised by a custom trojan*, say goodbye to your net connection. If your 14 year old kid continues to download music without your knowledge, say goodbye to your net connection. If you share your own home movies or music with others and can’t prove that it’s your material (in this case there is a burden of proof… but it’s on you; you must take the issue to court at your own cost), say goodbye to your net connection.

And this has happened in a climate where the Minister for Digital Britain, Stephen Timms, claims that “[b]roadband is no longer considered a luxury — it has become an essential service delivering social, commercial and economic benefits”. A climate where Gordon Brown insists that “the internet is as vital as water and gas” (hyperbole certainly, but he said it, not the anti-DEBill camp).

So Britain now has a Labour-driven law designed to allow corporations to legally withdraw essential services from individuals on the basis of suspicion of wrongdoing.

But of course it wasn’t just Labour who passed the law. It pretty much had all-party support. The tories were firmly behind it. And while the Liberal Democrats claimed to oppose it, they couldn’t be bothered to show up for the vote, let alone the debate. This is supposed to be the liberal party, the one that in theory would be most opposed to this kind of corporate power grab, and yet less than a third of their MPs were present in parliament to speak or vote against it. While Nick Clegg and his liberal democrats jet around Britain talking like they’re an alternative to the two large parties, their actions tell a somewhat different story.

Politicians are constantly lamenting the perceived public apathy with politics. Young people, they say, are disconnected from the political process. But here we have a bill that’s arguably of particular interest to young people and yet anyone tuning in to watch the proceedings last night would have seen a handful of disinterested and ill-informed MPs in a half-empty room acquiescing to the wishes of big business. If even the professional politicians can’t be arsed to attend a vote on important legislation, is it any wonder nobody else is interested in the bloody process?

UPDATE: It appears that the office of Stephen Timms, Minister for Digital Britain, is under the impression that IP (as in IP address) stands for “Intellectual Property”. I just don’t know what to say about that. Am I the only one who believes that perhaps MPs should actually understand the laws they are passing? That part of their job should be to research things before they legislate on them? Rather than merely being rubber-stamps to the whims of capital? Perhaps that’s why so few MPs showed up to vote… they were too ignorant to grasp the importance of the bill and too damn lazy to do anything about that fact. (via antonvowl on twitter)

A few years ago in a longish piece about Nukes in Ireland, I discussed a report commissioned by the Irish Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Compiled by the advisory body, Forfás, I described it as “the Buzz Aldrin of peak oil studies” as it was the second major government study (in English) of the peak oil situation. The first such study was The Hirsch Report carried out by the US Department of Energy. Both came to very similar conclusions.

In the intervening four years the recommendations of the Forfás report have been roundly ignored by the government that commissioned it. Of course, governments commission a lot of studies and reports and can’t be expected to follow every recommendation in every one. But when presented with strong evidence from your top advisors that the entire country will go down the tubes unless something is done quickly, it takes either a criminally negligent or deeply moronic set of politicians to sweep that evidence under the carpet in the hope that ignoring it will help matters.

The report suggested that the crisis would start to seriously impact Ireland within ten to fifteen years. It suggested that radical measures needed to be taken immediately as it would take at least that long to prepare for peak oil and that even a ten year lead time was cutting it very fine indeed. The Hirsch Report, remember, suggested that twenty years was the bare minimum to implement a mitigation strategy that had any chance of working.

Sadly, the reality is, credible warnings were sounded and it is now simply too late to deal effectively with peak oil without significant damage being done to the fabric of global civilisation.

Which isn’t to say that nothing can be done. But each day we delay we make that damage all the worse. Each day we live in denial and insist that our strategy must be to achieve a “return to growth” rather than a wholesale restructuring of our economy, our systems of production and distribution, is a day closer to complete systemic collapse.

We are here already

For all intents and purposes we have already passed the global peak in oil production. We’ve reached the tipping point. Which is presumably why that title, Tipping Point, was chosen for yet another Irish report into the peak oil problem. Subtitled Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production: An Outline Review, this time the study has been produced by Feasta (The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability) and it makes very grim reading indeed. If you don’t fancy downloading the full report, a brief summary can be accessed on their website. As I say though, it’s grim stuff.

The Irish Times today reports the study under the headline: Ireland ‘among most vulnerable’ to peak oil. The point I’d like to make — briefly as it’s getting late — is that although there’s a certain truth in that; it doesn’t tell the whole story.

Ireland’s vulnerability to peak oil stems from the fact that modern Ireland is more dependent upon cheap oil than most places. We are the third highest per capita oil consumers in Europe, thanks largely to our heavy use of oil to generate electricity (Dublin’s primary power station is an oil burner). We have squandered billions in recent years on road-building programmes while our public transport systems remain an embarrassment. The “knowledge economy” our government is so proud of building may have funded a decade-long orgy of consumerism but will ultimately turn out to be a betrayal of the people of Ireland. We allowed our traditional agricultural base to decline while hurtling towards a world where the ability to produce real actual food will be infinitely more valuable than being Google’s European base of operations.

And yet, despite the inevitable upheavals that approach us, Ireland does have a few things going for it. We’ve got a couple of aces up our sleeves. Albeit no thanks to the people who actually run the country.

Firstly is the fact that we are one of the few countries in the developed world that has not exceeded its notional carrying capacity. In other words, should there be a collapse in global trade — as predicted by the Feasta study — Ireland could become self-sufficient in food production. Certainly it would take a huge effort to achieve this, and given the kind of people we’ve tended to put in charge of national policy there’s every chance we’ll screw it up completely. Nonetheless, this island has the ability to produce enough food to prevent widespread hunger. The same cannot be said for many of our neighbours.

Another advantage we possess is our broadly socialist culture. Yes, it’s taken a severe knock in the past twenty years as successive governments sought to emulate the neoliberal travesties that rose briefly to international prominence on the back of an over-abundance of cheap energy. Nonetheless, I genuinely feel that the basic vision of de Valera (the most influential political figure in the early years of the Irish state) is still there. Sure, it’s buried beneath a thick layer of dust. And yes, it was always uncomfortably bound up with the darkness of Irish Catholicism. But de Valera’s basic vision of a socialist-leaning nation built upon agricultural self-sufficiency and a firm rejection of the entrenched power of private capital hasn’t been dead so long that it can’t be revived.

Here on this small wet island we possess the raw materials to keep body and soul together. And terrible though it may be to point it out, this actually puts us in a minority of nations. Whether we actually do keep body and soul together though, remains very much in the balance. But our national culture — the collective psyche of Ireland — shouldn’t be as unreceptive to the steps required to achieve this as might be the case elsewhere.

See, a transition to sustainability will happen. There’s not actually a choice in this. We can no more choose another option than we can legislate gravity away. The only question is how much destruciton and suffering will be involved in that transition. And that will largely be predicated upon how quickly we wake up to the need to act. The more preparation we carry out before the oil supply starts to significantly dwindle, the less damage we’ll suffer as a nation — and as a global civilisation.

Meanwhile, as Gordon Brown represented his nation by prostrating himself before the throne of Her Majesty, David Cameron was on the other side of the Thames prostrating himself before the altar of public opinion. He rolled up his sleeves and ran his fingers through immaculately styled hair to symbolise his dynamism and vigour. Unencumbered by other members of his party (almost none of whom can be trusted in front of a microphone) he desperately sought to portray himself in a presidential manner.

He echoed John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you” speech (though his phrasing was far clumsier and ended up being about as inspiring as a wet Sunday afternoon in Basingstoke). His promise to champion “the Great Ignored” called to mind Nixon’s appeal to the Silent Majority. In fairness to Cameron he did have almost as much charisma as Nixon. His body language and “look at how at ease I am” mannerisms screamed Bill Clinton. Though in a supremely irritating, nails-across-a-blackboard kind of way. I’d only have been mildly surprised if he’d pulled out a saxophone and donned a pair of shades.

Most of all though, he was aiming for that Barack Obama vibe. He never actually said “Yes We Can!” but you could see how much he wanted to. It was all about Change. Vote for Cameron and he’d usher in an era of change. It’s a time for change. Indeed, it’s the Year Of Change. So everyone in Britain should Vote For Change. Change and Hope. Oh, and Optimism. Change, Hope and Optimism. That’s what President Cameron would represent.

Unfortunately though, a vote for President Cameron would actually result in the election of Prime Minister Cameron. And if you thought the shower of fools and villains flanking Gordon Brown on Downing Street were depressing, just wait ’til you see who Cameron will be taking into power with him. Tawdry backward-looking reactionaries who actually mean it when they sing God Save The Queen. Bankers, puppy-killers, nuclear weapons enthusiasts… and that’s just Oliver Letwin.

Still, at least the moats will be clean.

And as Daveybloke Cameron was filmed in front of a carefully selected crowd of young, ethnically diverse supporters on the South Bank he spoke passionately about the sort of people he would represent. The sort of people his government would really listen to. “The Great Ignored” he called them. They were black and white, he said. They were rich and poor, he said (though I found it difficult to swallow the idea that “the rich” are really part of The Great Ignored). They were hard-working taxpayers, he said.

In the background you could see a short scuffle as Conservative security guards wrestled a megaphone from shadow home secretary Chris Grayling who was shouting “not the queers though, Dave, not the fucking queers!”

Indeed, if anything illustrates just how shallow this tory ‘change’ really is, it’s the ugly homophobia that seeps from under the pretty plastic facade that Saatchi & Saatchi are fashioning around the party. The past couple of weeks have seen Cameron spectacularly implode during an interview with Gay Times. An interview in which he first claimed that homosexual equality was “a fundamental human right” and then suggested that he was unwilling to put pressure on other tories to support it. The next leader of Britain, it seems, is pretty damn equivocal on the subject of fundamental human rights.

Gay Rights campaigners predictably criticised Cameron for his less than forthright support of their fundamental human rights. At the same time, Conservative elder statesman Lord Norman Tebbit was also attacking Cameron for this wishy-washy attitude to gay rights. Except he was under the impression that Cameron’s lip-service to equality was actually going too far. All a bit limp-wristed and pink for Grand-Vizier Tebbit’s liking, it seems. Daveybloke shouldn’t be concerning himself with such “trivialities” as “political asylum for African homosexuals” says Vice-Emperor Tebbit. Protecting fundamental human rights shouldn’t be a high priority for the British Conservative Party. At least, not according to the British Conservative Party.

Then, to top it all off, out comes Chris Grayling — shadow Home Secretary let’s not forget — with his suggestion that people who run Bed & Breakfasts should have the right to refuse entry to guests on the grounds of their sexuality.

That the people of Britain look likely to elect these bigots as their next government is very sad indeed.

Queen Elizabeth II.
Kindly permitting democracy in Britain.

The sorry spectacle of an elected leader travelling to the palace of an hereditary monarch to request permission to hold an election played out in the UK this morning, as it has done prior to every British election in living memory. The people of the United Kingdom (the clue’s in the name) doffed their collective cap to Queen Elizabeth in recognition of the ruthless ability possessed by her ancestors to violently subjugate the masses. Well done Liz! And well done people of Britain, for permitting such a weird and demeaning custom to continue for the amusement of the rest of the world.

And yes, we all know the queen’s role is technically ceremonial but the symbolism of the prime minister’s visit to Buckingham Palace is surely distasteful — at the very least — to anyone with a commitment to social justice and equality. Brown’s announcement on Downing Street, flanked as he was by his profoundly unlikeable and discredited cabinet that “the queen has kindly agreed” to allow the democratic process to get underway merely underlined the cringeworthy absurdity of the charade.

The thing it called most to my own mind was the explicit promises by the current government (promises that have been echoing in their speeches and manifestos since 1997) to remove hereditary peers from the House of Lords. This assembly possesses plenty of real, non-ceremonial power and influence, yet there are still over 90 members of the legislature whose position is predicated on who their dad was.

And this is a nation that feels comfortable exporting democracy at the barrel of a gun?