The Quiet Road

The Irish media is still filled with talk of the IMF, the ECB and the bailout. And the snow of course. It’s remarkable when you think about it; there’s almost nothing the Irish government could have done to distract us from the economy. But a few days of frozen precipitation does the job. Suddenly the news is filled with images of kids on sleds and people standing next to snow-covered cars. I’ve not yet encountered anyone combining the two stories, but it’s surely only a matter of time before columnists start talking about the shroud of snow being “appropriately funereal”, or how a blanket has been drawn over the face of the Irish state.

In the rest of the world however, the fate of Ireland is beginnning to fade a little. And although the IMF thing is still getting the occasional headline, it’s more distant… something in the background. It won’t be so bloody distant if we succeed in bringing down the euro, mind. And if I was a citizen of Portugal I’d be getting a bit concerned right about now. Nor should the people of Italy and Spain be feeling too confident.

As I write, a huge amount of private debt is being shifted onto the Irish public. On top of that, we’re being strip-mined of our remaining assets. Goodbye National Pension Reserve fund, hello Wave of Privatisation. And given how fruitful this asset grab is turning out to be, only a fool would bet on it being the last. The Irish acquiescence, along with the failure of any of our neighbours to demand a halt to this daylight robbery, is actively encouraging the “contagion” that everyone claims to fear. The international markets are instruments of tremendous power, and our political leaders are giving them incentives to topple nations. I’ve gone from wondering whether it’s incompetence or madness driving this policy, to realising it’s both. What ‘The Market’ needs right now is a hefty dose of nationalisations to get it back in line. At the same time our political classes could do with a revolution or two in order to teach them some humility. Preferably dramatic but non-violent revolutions (violence tends to breed chaos and with chaos comes a whole host of unintended consequences, and while only a fool insists violence can never be justified, it should always be considered a last resort).

Isn’t this post supposed to be about Wikileaks, though?

Sorry, got a bit carried away with the intro there. Let’s shift our gaze away from Irish matters and take a glance further afield. Ignoring the snow — which is now news across much of Europe and North America — a look at the internet media suggests much of the world is fixated on the Wikileaks saga. And who can blame them? Suddenly the headline “Website sparks war” doesn’t seem entirely fanciful.

As is so often the case lately, I find myself irritated by the polarisation that has emerged as a result of this issue. Two narratives have emerged which reluctantly I find rather simplistic and lacking nuance. And I say “reluctantly” because many of my friends, plus commentators for whom I have a great deal of respect, are promoting one of those simplistic narratives (the “Julian Assange is a hero and the various charges against him are a big American plot” version). The other narrative — less prevalent amongst those I know, needless to say — being the “Julian Assange is a traitorous rapist who seeks to destabilise democratic governments and should be hunted down and shot like the rabid dog he is” version.

Before I get onto the “hero” narrative, let me say a little something about the “villain” Assange. Now, it goes without saying that I don’t know any more about the rape allegations than anyone else. However, there are two points worth noting that cause me some consternation with respect to them. Firstly, the general murkiness of the allegations and the extreme confusion surrounding them makes them — certainly not unique — but definitely atypical in such cases. The charges were dropped, reactivated, dropped and reactivated again. So the current charges are being handled by the third Swedish prosecutor to get involved in the case. It might be argued that this is a result of the difficulty securing evidence and, hence, convictions in this kind of case. All the same, from what I’ve read it is far from normal for such cases to be passed from prosecutor to prosecutor in this manner. A cynic might suggest that two people looked at the case, concluded it had either no merit or that — rightly or wrongly — it simply could not be successfully prosecuted due to a lack of available evidence, but that a third person took up the case for reasons of political ideology or personal aggrandisement.

I should probably take a moment to state clearly (because unfortunately we live in a world where it cannot be taken as read) that if there really is evidence linking Assange to a rape or sexual assault, he should face trial and suffer the full penalty. It is perfectly possible for a person to behave with honour in one area of his life while being depraved in another and the former simply does not excuse the latter.

Nonetheless, one only has to spend a little time reading about the allegations against Assange before confusion and apparent contradiction arise. This may merely be a result of bad reporting, but given how politically charged this whole situation is, I honestly feel one can be forgiven for raising a sceptical eyebrow while at the same time hoping that justice manages to assert itself (in whatever shape it takes).

The second question that gets raised about the rape allegations is one I first saw enunciated by feminist writer, Naomi Wolf, in her article J’Accuse: Sweden, Britain, and Interpol Insult Rape Victims Worldwide. Wolf, who has campaigned for two decades to raise the profile of — and seek justice for — victims of sexual assault views the treatment meted out to Assange in even more cynical terms than I was prepared to…

… Never in twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being questioned — for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily proven.
[…]
… the highly unusual reaction of Sweden and Britain to this situation … seems to send the message to women in the UK and Sweden that if you ever want anyone to take sex crime against you seriously, you had better be sure the man you accuse of wrongdoing has also happened to embarrass the most powerful government on earth.

Keep Assange in prison without bail until he is questioned, by all means, if we are suddenly in a real feminist worldwide epiphany about the seriousness of the issue of sex crime: but Interpol, Britain and Sweden must, if they are not to be guilty of hateful manipulation of a serious women’s issue for cynical political purposes, imprison as well — at once — the hundreds of thousands of men in Britain, Sweden and around the world world who are accused in far less ambiguous terms of far graver forms of assault.

Anyone who works in supporting women who have been raped knows from this grossly disproportionate response that Britain and Sweden, surely under pressure from the US, are cynically using the serious issue of rape as a fig leaf to cover the shameful issue of mafioso-like global collusion in silencing dissent. That is not the State embracing feminism. That is the State pimping feminism.

It’s a difficult point to argue against. For no matter what you believe about Assange or the crimes he is accused of, it simply cannot be denied that his treatment is completely inconsistent with that of anyone else in the same circumstances. I honestly believe that the authorities in most nations fail to treat sex crimes as seriously as they should do. However, Assange’s experience doesn’t redress that; it merely highlights it further and illustrates the willingness of the judicial systems of Europe to bend to the political will of the United States when it suits them (on a day when “[t]he United States and European nations said the [Khodorkovsky] verdict raised doubts about the Kremlin’s commitment to the rule of law and human rights” an idiom involving pots and kettles springs to mind).

Nonetheless, while the Swedish allegations carry at the very least a whiff of conspiracy and political opportunism, I can’t help but be cynical about Assange’s decision to become “the face” of Wikileaks. A decision that has allowed his personal behaviour to begin overshadowing the work being carried out by Wikileaks. It seems it would have been perfectly possible for Assange to have pursued a different strategy… a small collective of semi-anonymous people (akin to “The Yes Men” perhaps?) could have become the voice of Wikileaks rather than a single figurehead whose personal behaviour — whatever the truth behind the charges — has at the very least opened him up to attack and risked discrediting Wikileaks in the eyes of many.

The sad thing is that what was once a low profile but nonetheless powerful collaborative tool for exposing government and corporate corruption around the world has become one man’s high profile stick with which to beat America. As such it’s less radical and less generally useful. Most worryingly though, it may be starting to inflict some collateral damage of its own.

Because moving away from Assange and the rape allegations there’s a larger issue at stake here. I still possess the remnants of the anarchist idealism of my youth. But it’s long been tempered by a realisation that while information may want to be free, it’s not always in the best interests of people that it should be.

It’s possible, for instance, that the North Koreans already knew China and the United States had discussed — however informally — the desirability of Korean reunification under a Seoul government. But if this is the first they’re hearing about it, then there’s a real possibility Wikileaks might provoke another ship being sunk, or another artillery barrage. Or worse. The politics of the Korean peninsula are complex to say the least, but I don’t think it can be denied that the latest escalation in tension can be at least partly attributed to the actions of Wikileaks. If the publication of these cables turns out to be a contributory factor in a new Korean War can anyone really say that these leaks were worth the lives of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people? It’d certainly take someone seriously committed to anarchism and freedom of information to consider so much death and suffering to be a price worth paying.

Especially when you consider the practical usefulness of the revelations. I mean, who seriously is shocked or surprised by anything they’ve read in the published cables? Or even in the previously published documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? We learnt that US troops callously killed civilians in both nations. There may have been a handful of people in Iowa still resolutely denying that such things happened until that famous video of the gunship firing upon injured civilians hit the internet, but I suspect 98% of those who saw that footage were merely receiving visual confirmation of something they already knew was going on.

Similarly, the news that China and the US were discussing ways of sidelining North Korea, or that the Saudis were agitating for a US attack on Tehran were probably well known by the various parties involved — as well as by most informed members of the public — so the public confirmation merely serves to heighten tension, rather than genuinely inform. And the notion that it will force the US (or China or Saudi Arabia) to moderate their behaviour in the future is beyond naive. It will simply force them to tighten security while simultaneously seeking ways to crack down on internet and press freedom.

Ultimately I find myself deeply ambivalent about Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The man appears to be embracing shallow celebrity with a certain eagerness that undercuts his campaign, while the potential usefulness of the website (and the world is indeed improved by a system that facilitates whistle-blowing) is — I would argue — compromised by becoming so highly politicised. It needs to be more discerning, and dare I say it, more responsible, about what it publishes. What was once a facility that could be used to expose government and corporate wrongdoing, has recently become little more than a political powderkeg, helping ratchet up tensions between nations, providing recruitment videos to militant organisations and placing more importance in the ability to access information than in the actual importance of that information.

A couple of days ago, over in the UK, there was a large student demonstration against government policy. A group of protesters split from the main march and occupied the Tory Party headquarters in Millbank. There were clashes between this group and the police resulting in some minor injuries and property damage. An estimated 50,000 students took part in the main demonstration and somewhere in the region of 50 of them were arrested for the building occupation. Yet almost without exception, the reports in the media have focussed on those 50 rather than the other 49,950. The actions of 50 people have apparently “overshadowed” the entire event.

One week earlier, a similar protest took place on the streets of Dublin. Somewhere between 25,000 and 40,000 (estimates vary wildly as they always do with such things) students took part. Once again the march splintered, and in this case the Department of Finance building on Merrion Row was occupied. As with the subsequent London action, around 50 people were blamed for this occupation. Or, in the words of the Garda (repeated over-and-over in the media coverage), the protest was hijacked by “a hardcore of around 50 protestors intent on trouble“.

In both cases, the respective national student unions loudly condemned the actions of the “hardcore” minority, acknowledging that while they do indeed oppose government policy, they do so only in a “softcore” fashion. Heaven forbid anyone get the impression they took the matter seriously.

Now, I happen to think that the occupation of government buildings is a perfectly proportional response to the policies being implemented on both sides of the Irish Sea — which is not to say I condone every individual act carried out during those occupations; the chucking of a fire-extinguisher off the roof of the Tory headquarters was reckless and counter-productive (in my opinion). But let’s ignore the rights and wrongs of the occupations for now… that’s not the focus of this particular piece.

Instead let’s talk about how the protests have been covered in the media. Because, while the media’s tendency to give massive coverage to confrontation at the expense of covering the actual issues is a well-known phenomenon, I don’t think enough has been said about their complicity in that confrontation.

Let’s examine again how the demonstrations are described by the media. We’re told that the violence “overshadowed” the peaceful march. That a group of 50 people “hijacked” the protest. But let’s not mince words… those are just lies. Shameful lies disseminated by almost every single journalist who covered the events. The Irish protest wasn’t “hijacked”. It went off exactly as planned, with a mass gathering featuring tens of thousands of people who felt they had legitimate grievances that deserved an airing. Large numbers of people voiced their discontent and (though I wasn’t at either of these demos, I’ve been at enough such occasions to say this confidently) speeches were made that articulately dealt with the policy issues at hand. And the people who occupied Tory headquarters didn’t “overshadow” the main march, the media decided that their actions deserved more prominence. So it was the reporting that obscured the main march, not those who occupied the building.

Now, the media’s justification for this is that a few scuffles, some (minor) property damage and a short-lived group-trespass are somehow more worthy of airtime than the main protest. But that’s nonsense of the highest order. Palpable nonsense.

Visit the centre of any city or large town on these islands at pub-kicking-out time on a Saturday night and I guarantee you’ll be in with a decent chance of finding more scuffles and property damage than occurred at both student protests combined. And it’s not national news. A few bruises, one broken nose and a handful of smashed windows is not important in the sense that 50,000 people taking to the streets to condemn the actions of their own government is important. To suggest otherwise is, as I say, a lie.

The truth is, it’s just easier to make the confrontation the main story. The photographs or film footage is more dramatic, and the journalists get to use action verbs like “smashed” and “charged”. It takes a reporter with genuine talent to turn a peaceful mass-opposition to government policy into a good story. They need to do far more research and to genuinely understand the issues involved. Plus they need to be good enough writers to hold a reader’s attention without the use of action verbs and dramatic photographs.

If the media actually covered the protest in terms of what was important about it, rather than in terms of what was easiest; it would be a full page article about government plans to shred the principle of universal access to education. It would cover issues like the subordination of the education system to the profit-motive… like the gutting of the arts and humanities, not because they aren’t important, but because the free-market places less financial value upon them… like the social engineering programme being implemented by capitalist governments to exclude whole classes of people from higher education on the grounds that their parents aren’t wealthy enough.

In that full page article there would be a couple of lines about how roughly one tenth of one per cent of those who demonstrated ended up smashing a few windows.

And what’s worst of all, damn near every person on those marches is smart enough and educated enough to realise that without that one tenth of one per cent, the entire mass demonstration will hardly get mentioned at all. In the eyes of the media, it will be considered largely unimportant. So, Caught-22 as they are, it is almost inevitable that demonstrations now include a confrontational element. The media demand it.

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.

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.

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.