Yesterday evening, I decided to catch up on exactly how out of control atmospheric methane concentrations are in the region around the Arctic :-

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov

When reviewing the charts, the secondmost important thing to see is the high point measurements, the peaks, rising over time.

Much of this methane explosion can probably be blamed on global warming from excessive carbon dioxide emissions – which showed signs of coming under control between 1990 and 2000, but after that lifted off once more.

People dispute why carbon dioxide emissions have risen consistently and sharply since the turn of the millenium – but one of the answers is to be found in the rapid deployment of coal-burning for power generation. Stronger environmental controls on air quality have reduced the health impacts of coal-burning, but mean that the net effect is stronger global warming.

So much could be done to alleviate the strong warming of the Arctic, and prevent dangerous instabilities. It is time to say it – and keep on saying it – and not relent – every measure to keep the Arctic cool is urgent.

Stop Biomassacre Subsidies from You and I Films on Vimeo.

They are even considering setting up a generous subsidy, the kind of subsidy that would encourage massive imports of biomass and bioliquids.

Most people probably think burning wood, wood waste and plant-derived fuels to make power sounds like a good energy idea – stop burning coal and start burning trees – has to be better for the planet, surely ?

There are a number of really deep problems with this agenda. Almuth Ernsting of Biofuelwatch told me this weekend that burning biomass for electricity generation is incredibly inefficient.

She said the UK Government has apparently heard concerns about the burning of bioliquids such as the biofuel bioethanol for power generation, and it shouldn’t be included in the subsidy arrangement.

However, biomass-fired power generation is still set to receive support – although it is still being depicted as making use of agroforestry residues, and all sourced within the country – judging by a recent permission for a biomass burning plant in Yorkshire.

Generous subsidies for burning biofuels to generate electricity will encourage the combustion of food-quality oils, imported from across the world, exacerbating the existing problems with the destruction of tropical rainforest for commercial gain.

Offering significant subsidies for burning biomass for power generation will most probably trigger further logging of virgin rainforest, as it would be cheap to produce and export to Britain.

Even if biomass were sourced in the United Kingdom – with restrictions on imports from areas of the world where there is extensive land grabbing and deforestation occurring – the subsidy would encourage the burning of wood products for generating power instead of being used in the most efficient way – to heat homes.

Almuth Ernsting said, “the big energy companies are going to burn that much wood, small heat providers won’t be able to compete.” The same would be true of street-scale biomass combined heat and power (CHP) proposals.

Almuth Ernsting and others have pointed out that the UK Government public consultation on the subsidy ends on 12th January 2012, but that even after that date, people are being encouraged to write to their Member of Parliament to express views.

Another group, nope, is also calling for citizen action :-

http://nope.org.uk/

In an e-mail to joabbess.com, Almuth Ernsting offered extra resources :-

“All the materials related to our campaign against subsidies for biomass and biofuel electricity can be found here :-”

http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/uk-campaign/rocs_overview/”

“A briefing about the impacts of ROCs for biomass, biofuels and waste incineration :-”
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2011/rocs_impacts/

“A briefing to hand or send to MPs :-”
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2011/rocs_mps/

“A guide to lobbying MPs on this :-” http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2011/mp_guidance_rocs/

“We have got two email alerts on one page just now (http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2011/rocs-alerts/), though we will take down the one to respond to the DECC Consultation when that closes next Thursday, while keeping the one to MPs. However, we very much encourage people to write personal letters or, even better, visit their MPs, which will have much more impact than taking part in a standard email alert.”

Tempus adest gratiae,
Hoc quod optabamus;
Carmina laetitiae,
Devote reddamus.

Deus homo factus est,
Natura mirante;
Mundus renovatus est
A Christo regnante…

Welcome, little Christmas rose, into a big and troubled world. We are so happy you’ve made your journey safely, we could sing heartily.

The world is no closer to a binding, enactable accord on preventing catastrophic climate change, but at least the Durban United Nations conference is over, and many are therefore sleepily rejoicing.

…Ezechielis porta
Clausa pertransitur;
Unde lux est orta
Salus invenitur.

Ergo nostra concio,
Psallat iam in lustro;
Benedicat Domino:
Salus Regi nostro.

Audete, Gaudete !
Christus est natus
Ex Maria Virgine,
Gaudete !

One stream of people with banners was moving east to west, on their way from Cheapside to Blackfriars Bridge. The other stream of people with banners and a large Police accompaniment was making their way from west to east on a “Walk of Shame” of the City of London.

I read the Scripture passage, in my normal theatrical style, “…I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God…”

Later, as we made our way into St Paul’s Cathedral for choral evensong and prayers for the planet, I stopped briefly to chat with some Occupy people smoking and jamming a little guitar. “We’re going in to pray for good things for the climate change talks. Do you want to come in too ?”. A young man replied, “It’s too late. There’s so much carbon in the atmosphere already, the Earth is going to fry.”

The singer of the Collects for the day made the very arch of the nave of St Paul’s resonate. Tradition. Lasting.

There were nearly 3,000 people on the Climate Justice March that we had been on. Transient.

The City-wide Christmas Market brought reindeer to Cheapside this morning. There they were, just the two of them, in a pen made of traffic control railings, munching on straw. Here, for one night only. Incongruous. Sometimes I wonder why people do these things.

PRAYERS FOR THE CLIMATE AT ST PAUL’S CATHEDRAL

Prayers for the success of the United Nations Climate Change
negotiations in Durban will be said during choral evensong at St
Paul’s Cathedral on Saturday 3rd December 2011 starting at 5.00 pm, following the end of the annual Climate Justice March in Central
London.

Ruth Jarman of Christian Ecology Link said “I am delighted that St Paul’s has announced today that the prayers will be said. It is vital for our children’s sake that we curb greenhouse gas emissions”, and added, “I can’t think of a better way to end a noisy day of protest that to go to choral evensong at St Paul’s.”

Throughout the day, representatives of the faith communities will be taking part in a range of events in London to mark the global talks. Members of the Green Christian community will end their Climate Justice March day as they started it – in worshipful prayer.

Other events during the day are set to include :-

(*) A Climate Vigil beside the Thames the midnight before (Friday 2nd December 2011)
(*) A Service at 11.30 am Saturday 3rd December 2011 at St Mary le Bow organised by Christian Ecology Link.
(*) The Climate Justice March 1 pm and Rally outside Parliament at 2.30 pm, Saturday 3rd December 2011.

PROGRAMME OF DAY

The night before the march, a Climate Refugee Vigil will be held on the Thames foreshore near the Millennium Bridge between 11.30 pm on Friday 2nd December 2011 and 1.00 am on Saturday 3rd December 2011, to which all faith community members are welcome.

Christian Ecology Link is holding a time of prayer and meditation at 11.30 am on Saturday 3rd December 2011 at St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside, London EC2V 6AU to pray for the success of the United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa, which is happening during the two weeks either side of that weekend. Revd Steve Paynter, member of the Operation Noah board will lead the service. All are welcome.

At 12.00 midday on Saturday 3rd December 2011, the faith communities will leave the church to join the Climate Justice March and Rally organised by the Campaign against Climate Change. The march will start from the north end of Blackfriars Bridge at around 1.00 pm. People are asked to march in support of the tens of thousands mobilising in South Africa, demanding climate justice at the Durban climate talks.

The London march will culminate at 2.30 pm with a Climate Justice Rally outside Parliament. Attendees will physically form a photo opportunity by splitting into two groups to represent the 7 percent global privileged versus the 50 percent suffering climate injustice, and demand urgent action to achieve a Zero Carbon Britain by 2030.

Christian Ecology Link members and supporters will continue on to St Paul’s Cathedral for the commencement of choral evensong at 5.00 pm.

Bishop David Atkinson, member of the Board of Operation Noah which is supporting the St. Mary-le-Bow service, said, “Care for God’s creation is a crucial dimension of Christian discipleship and a central part of Christian mission. Responding to the threat of climate change by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is a Christian responsibility and one which we share with all people, especially on behalf of the poorest parts of the world, future generations and the wellbeing of all creatures. Our prayers are for all those involved in the United Nations talks in Durban, that they may be given wisdom and courage to act with justice for the good of all people and all God’s creation.”

In November the World Council of Churches general secretary, Revd Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, called the United Nations UNFCCC COP 17 meeting a “last opportunity for the international community to be responsible in addressing climate change”, and called on the meeting to “act now for climate justice.”

For further details on the role of the faith communities in these events, contact Ruth Jarman, Climate Change campaigner for Christian Ecology Link.

ENDS

NOTES FOR THE EDITOR

1. South Africa is host of the next round of talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will be held in Durban from 28th November – 9th December 2011. The timing is critical, as the only legally binding international agreement to limit emissions that we currently have – the Kyoto Protocol – is due to end in 2012.

2. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in a recent publication has reported that the risk from extreme weather events due to climate change is likely to increase.

3. The International Energy Agency has announced that it will not be possible to stop global temperatures rising 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels without a rapid decision to reverse the growth of the current fossil fuel infrastructure.

4. Christian Ecology Link believes we are responsible for our impact on God’s creation. The organisation helps members to understand and relate these responsibilities to their faith. Members can then encourage others in their local church to think seriously about these issues. CEL was formed in 1981, and formally constituted in 1982 and supports Christians from all backgrounds and traditions. http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk

5. Operation Noah is a Christian charity providing leadership, focus and inspiration in response to the growing threat of catastrophic climate change. http://www.operationnoah.org

6. Founded in or around 1080 as the London headquarters of the archbishops of Canterbury, the medieval church of St Mary-le-Bow survived three devastating collapses before being completely destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, it was destroyed once more in 1941 but was again rebuilt and re-consecrated in 1964. http://www.stmarylebow.co.uk

7. The Climate Justice March and Rally are being organised by the Campaign against Climate Change http://www.campaigncc.org and supported by Artists Project Earth http://www.apeuk.org/.

8. The focus of this year’s national Climate Justice March is the 7:50 percent injustice divide – where 7 percent of the world’s population produce 50 percent of the world’s emissions and 7 percent of the world’s emissions are produced by 50 percent of the world’s population.

9. Zero Carbon Britain is a plan from the Centre for Alternative Technology http://www.zerocarbonbritain.com

He asked after my interests in peace, and I described my ambition for renewable energy. The only way we can have peace and security is to have distributed energy solutions : homegrown climate-protecting energy in each country.

I sat down on a park bench to meditate on the poems chosen for the day, facing the British Medical Association, recalling how its stone facade was sprayed with innocent and misguided human blood on the day of 7th July, 2005. I was sitting under the weavework of the Hiroshima tree.

I saw a woman making her way towards the plaque under the tree. She was carrying a movie camera. I knew why she had come. She saw my white poppy, and realised I could answer her enquiry. “Is the peace meeting here at 2.30pm ?” I explained it had been at 12.30. I invited her to sit down on the bench next to me, so we could share.

Her name was Tomoyo Nakao, and she is at Okayama University in Japan, teaching in oral history. She was wearing Fair Isle design legwarmers given to her by her students. I gave her the sheet of paper with the memorial service poetry printed on it. I introduced her to Albert Beale of Housman’s Bookshop who had called the gathering, and was still in the square.

Together with Bill Hetherington of Peace News, they sat down on the bench. And that is how I became their cameraman, recording their discussion about poppies, peace and politics.

And then Tomoyo invited us to tea. Albert gave her a copy of the 2012 Peace Diary. And we carried on talking. As we walked past Gandhi’s shrine. We did a lot of remembering today. Tomoyo had been at the other end of Tavistock Square on 7/7. She took a picture. Albert had heard the bus blow up, but hadn’t known what it was. I had been in Stirling, at the EcoVillage camp convened for activists there for Make Poverty History and the G20 summit, and had listened to the radio in someone’s car over the course of several hours, as it became clear the scale of the atrocity that had been committed in London.

We talked about Fukushima Dai-ichi and the realisation in Tokyo of the risks posed to the people on the coast because of the city’s high power consumption. The unstable coast, where Tectonic plates regularly scrape and shake. We talked about why countries are deciding to walk away from nuclear power. We talked about safety concerns about nuclear power stations in America. We talked about the sense of coerced, artificial nationalism at the Albert Hall Festival of Remembrance the evening before. “It was just like my country in the 1930s”, Tomoyo said with anxiety. We talked about the people at the Occupy camp by St Paul’s Cathedral, and how they were wearing white poppies.

We shared what we knew about Japan trying to negotiate surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped. About why the bombs were dropped. We talked about depleted uranium shells, the lasting impact of war on generations of family, of nationalism being a response to austerity. We spoke about the reconciliation work going on in Japan, and how some things are being swept under the carpet, but should be remembered, explored, absolved. We spoke about the peace movements, the anti-nuclear movements.

Tomoyo finds her life in tension. She is criticised for pointing out problems in the way her country is handling the crises of the present and the past. People say she is against the peace movement. I said that she needs a strong heart. She must keep telling the truth. She is a prophet.

On the Tube, I met a 94-year-old woman with bandy legs, chest stiff with medals and the insignia of the Freedom of the City of London. She had been at the Cenotaph.

Later on the Overground, I saw a young man in a tee shirt that read “War is Over“, ironically also wearing a belt of bullets.

Yes, if we want it, war is so over.

Wait for the howls of frustration.

Since the Chancellor George Osborne, the “Vicious Smirker” as some have it, appears to have no idea what will happen by bringing forward the cut-off date from April 2012 to December 2011 (or has every idea and just wants to make everyone suffer) and since I blame him personally for everything that is fiscally disastrous in this country (because it makes so much sense to have one target to concentrate all ones opposition upon), here’s the draft of an e-mail :-

Dear, no, expensive, George (and I’m calling you “expensive” because you are costing this country a lot of economic woe),

Since this is Monday 31st October 2011, and I expect the Department of Energy and Climate Change to be announcing a major, early reduction in the Feed-in-Tariff for solar power, may I be the first to congratulate you for destroying the small-scale solar power industry in the United Kingdom.

I’m holding you personally responsible for this decision, as you hold the pursestrings of the nation, and you have well-reported but completely uninformed opinions about renewable energy, mirrored accurately by the faceless gentlemen of the press.

Your total lack of perception about the impact of this decision does not excuse the fact that you will be directly responsible for the loss of high technology UK companies and the subsequent unemployment.

On the plus side, you will be fulfilling your own prophecy about the low growth potential of renewable energy; but on the negative side you are going to make a lot of people very irritated. I can hear the faint rustle of votes being withdrawn as we speak.

Your failure to understand the wealth creation and genuine long-term assets that renewable electricity and renewable gas can bring to this country means that you are unFIT to be in charge of energy policy subsidies. In my humble, aggrieved opinion.

Here’s what an almost immediate cut in the feed in tariff will achieve. I’m basing this on my own individual circumstances, just to give you a flavour of the pain you are inflicting on your countrymen and women.

On 8th July 2011, I invited a photovoltaic engineer into my loft to survey it for a solar power installation. Over the next week or so, they designed a lovely clever-sounding system, so I paid my deposit. I chose a small company because I wanted to support the industry from the lower rungs, to help build it up by giving it my custom.

The PV company were confident that they could arrange the installation on 25th August 2011, so I paid the second tranche of the bill. However, that installation date was missed. And this was because, on the other side of the world, a vital component of my system design became unavailable.

The solar company were highly apologetic and re-scheduled an installation date with me for 13th September 2011. I did not have the time to make any in-depth enquiries into the situation at this point as at the time I was head-down in writing my Master’s Degree dissertation – my thesis researching readiness for change in the energy sector.

The September installation dates came and went without me getting a solar power system on my roof.

On the 21st October 2011, I received a call from the manufacturer of the missing system components, explaining the problems, apologising, and offering hope that shipments were re-starting.

I had a new installation date set for me for 18th November. A bit late, but well, OK. Being considered as a non-priority customer was tolerable as long as I could get my PV system before the full Feed-in-Tariff ran out in April 2012.

I had missed all the solar power from the bright summer months, but I reasoned that would be OK if I could still get the full feed in tariff deal.

And then, on Friday, I received a bombshell – positive confirmation that the Coalition Government were going to pull the rug out from underneath the solar industry by cutting the feed in tariff by half in December, not April.

That changed everything, George.

Let me spell out for you what this means for me personally :-

1. I could lose my deposit and half the cost of the photovoltaic system.

The sudden “haircut” in the feed in tariff will inevitably cause lots of disturbance in the solar power sector. Customers will walk. Small firms will go bust. And that in a time of high unemployment. What a great move, George !

If the small company I trusted goes belly up, then, despite any system of guarantees, I may well lose my money. I could end up with no PV system to show for all that cash. A large number of people are likely to be in the same position of risk, and they are going to be livid.

2. I could end up missing the full feed in tariff.

Clearly, the solar photovoltaic company who are holding my deposit have had problems in fulfilling my order. Our contract was based on the economics of the full feed in tariff. My intention was to use the proceeds from the full FiT to do something useful – help other people to get solar power on their roofs. If I miss the full FiT cut-off date, I won’t be able to do that. Great, George, you have just knived in the back my plan for a small-scale mutual solar funding scheme !

3. I could end up with a lesser quality solar photovoltaic system.

If I suddenly become important enough to justify getting a solar system before the full feed in tariff cut-off date, but the missing parts don’t arrive in time, my chosen installer will have to offer me a lesser design. I won’t get the most from my roof or the feed in tariff.

4. I could end up without a solar photovoltaic system.

If the decision about the early cut-off date is announced on Monday, there will be, I can guarantee you, a stampede at the gates, as customers besiege solar PV firms for installations before December.

Great job, George ! Lots of business just before Christmas, but people could get crushed, and I could be one of them. If my chosen installer cannot make the dates, and I decide I’ve been strung along for long enough and jump ship to another installer, I may end up chosing a company that not only cannot deliver, but go bust at the same time.

Small firms can expect lots of custom before December, but very little afterwards. So, a great massive hole in the order books for the New Year. What a party. Balloons and everything.

And if all the small photovoltaic companies go bust, so will the investment funds that have put peoples’ hard-earned savings into solar. Some peoples’ 2012 Christmases are going to be very poor indeed.

5. I could end up without a career.

If you succeed in killing off the small- to medium-sized solar photovoltaic companies with this nonsensical sudden cut-off date and cut in subsidy, how on Earth is anybody going to justify to themselves that they need to be working in solar power ? And with a contraction in the renewable energy sector, I could end up without career prospects in energy engineering and very, very miffed. Have you thought about that, George ?

Mr Osborne, I want accountability.

In order to grow a recovered British economy, there needs to be at least one sector that has the capacity to grow. What you need to ask yourself is – what areas of the economy have the capacity, the capability, to grow and create wealth and genuine assets ? This is macroeconomics. Know anything about that ?

Selling financial products or charging for currency transfers does not qualify as economic growth. The fabled Knowledge Economy does not qualify as economic growth, when there is such a high international mobility of brainy people. Privatisation of everything including utilities and local/national public works companies, and the cherry-picking of profitable services, have led to low levels of investment across the board, which has allowed the basic roads, waterways, energy networks and built infrastructure of the economy to slide into decrepitude, even as private companies have been enjoying rising share prices. But that does not count as economic growth.

Because successive UK Governments have been pro-business, they have been pro-globalisation, and so most manufacturing industry has left the building. What things could the British build and make money, George ? Wealth and assets that stay in the country, George ?

And let’s consider the energy crisis – who is going to pay to keep the lights on ? Ofgem in their Project Discovery said that the UK should spend £200 billion pounds by 2020 to renovate the energy sector with new investments, including low carbon energy plant. There is little movement. What on Earth is going on ? Low carbon energy investment can count as proper growth. Why aren’t we doing it ?

How does the UK Government effectively stimulate that level of investment in the energy sector ? How are new assets traditionally created ? By subsidy, of course. Clear, targeted support. Sufficient levels of subsidy to attract money to the sector of growth. Once the money is crowding into the growth sector, the subsidy can be gently deflated. But extreme caution should be exercised, or the whole project could fall flat on its face.

If the Department of Energy and Climate Change announce an early cut in the solar feed-in-tariff on Monday, I shall not be afraid to engage Full Derision Mode.

You have failed to win my respect with your careless handling of this issue, and your callous, uneducated remarks about renewable energy engineering show you have been suckling on the large energy companies, fossil and non-fossil. The big players will win, George, from this change in the feed in tariff. They will win, and everybody else will lose. You can impoverish the whole country by destroying small engineering companies. Your logic is definitely on vacation.

I nurture a sneaky half-hope that the newspapers and the deniable young Labour Party researchers find out something about your “sordid past” that boots you right out of your Ministerial role.

You’re not worth it, so stop grinning.

And while you’re at it, sit in some university lectures on mixed economies and the foundational role of public spending. Although you appear not to have taken in the necessity of raising taxes on the rich and corporations to trigger energy investment, you might learn something if you apply yourself.

[ All names and exact details of technology have been redacted. The electronic mail was not finally send-ed. It felt good writing it, though. ]

Image Credit : The Diocese of London

Somebody I know has been praying that there would be heavy rain in London, just so the conditions would be impossible for the Occupyer camp to continue; that they would have to pack up and go home.

What on Earth is this @OccupyLSX protest for ? A camp of principle, to defend the right to protest ? A camp of demands, pursuing a just economics and a just society ? A camp of non-violence, when it deliberately provokes a stand-off between demonstrators and police forces ? How can the Occupyers claim to be peaceful when they know their actions have a fragmentation bomb-like effect on the society around them ? How can the Cathedral Campers evidence their intentions for a juster, saner, economic system, when the net effect of their actions is likely to be a huge law court struggle at taxpayer expense ? It’s not a revolution, it’s an irritation – or at least that is the way that it will continue to be viewed by the governing authorities.

Somebody on the inside track of campaigning in London has told me that the Occupy protest is destined to transmogrify into a Climate Refugee tent city in late November, early December. If it survives that long, then at least it can claim to be a piece of living art reflecting what is happening around the world because of climate change disasters.

Unless and until the Occupyers can take on relevance, everybody with even just a slightly-left-of-centre agenda will attempt to co-opt the Occupy London camp for their own purposes.

Remember, dear Occupyers, you are not “rising up” like the people in Libya – they were supplied with arms from around the world, forces overt and covert from Qatar, Europe and quite possibly America, and fed into a huge psychological operations narrative, ably supported by the media.

The Libyan conflict wasn’t about Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, may he rest in peace. The information management of the North African and Middle Eastern unrest shows that mass propaganda still works, and that media consumers continue to fall for the same fabrications, time after time.

Image Credit : Debbie Portwood

Here’s how it goes : the Daily Mail, to take just one example, raises the outrage level, and repeats arguments that have little substance. People act on the basis of what they read in the papers and see on TV, and they develop poor reasoning, and do things like sign an ePetition. The thing gets publicly debated, partly in the media of course. And then finally the democratic representatives, the Members of Parliament, have to make a choice to stand with the stirred-up outrage or instead, vote with sanity.

A vote on Europe would be a disaster. The wording would be over-simplistic and hide the true agenda. It would be too easy to sway people to vote for the worst option.

Remember the Referendum on the Alternative Vote ? It was the only thing that could have broken the stranglehold of First-Past-the-Post politics. Instead, seats are going to stay safe – the party that holds an area’s vote will continue to take the vote. Democratic contests cannot happen in safe Constituencies, particularly if the boundary lines are changed to fit the demographics. The First-Past-the-Post system in easy-to-hold political wards – that’s one way in which democracy has been killed. If a seat is safe, no will in the world can create a political debate in a Constituency.

But why did people vote against the Alternative Vote ? Because of the media-assisted rubbishing of the idea.

David Cameron makes the point that a third of the population, if asked, would ditch the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union. They would have very little foundation for doing so, but they would vote for it, just like they demanded weekly refuse collections, and immigration controls, and an 80 miles an hour speed limit, because the newspapers and the television and the radio told them to.

The people have been manipulated, so democracy doesn’t work.

Every mechanism for enabling democracy appears to have withered away.

Campaign organisations and charities are usually given the task of convincing the public to vote with their ethics, with knowledge and with empathy. But with the recession, grants have dried up, so there are not the funds, the staff or the resources to get good things done.

Demonstrations and protests and marches are routinely blacked out of media presentations of political activity.

Writing letters to your democratic representative can be like shouting into an empty well.

Signing online petitions is useless. Signing real petitions is doubly useless.

What forums do people have to debate issues with real information at their fingertips ? What channels do groups of well-informed citizens have to take their well-considered and researched demands to their democratic representatives in sufficient strength to justify their MPs taking the issues on to the Parliament and raising them in the House (of Commons) ?

What ways can citizens use to do politics in their local town ? With Councillors bowled over with insane levels of trivia, can they be expected to engage with genuine informed citizen concerns ?

The news is awash with some inexplicable language :-

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/86398,news-comment,news-politics,eu-debate-exposes-camerons-cack-handed-leadership-
“The eurozone crisis may eventually call for a new treaty, and in that case a referendum is already a legal requirement. It would make sense at that moment to repatriate powers to Britain.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2053011/EU-referendum-David-Cameron-shows-strain-biggest-Tory-mutiny-Europe.html
“‘We’re not going away’ say rebels as PM insists UK will have to wait years to claw back powers from Brussels”

What sovereign powers are these people talking about ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15425256
“Education Secretary Michael Gove insisted on Tuesday that the time was not right for a referendum to take place. He told the BBC: “The most important thing is to make sure we get powers back, so we take more decisions here about employment, about growth, about jobs. These are critical issues. “At the moment David Cameron is battling in Europe in order to make sure that we can have those decisions taken here. It may be that in the future as a result of the battle David Cameron is fighting for Britain that a referendum may be needed, but my judgement is that we need to get those powers back.”"

What on Earth could he possibly mean ? Employment Law ? The right for businesses to make everybody into serfs by increasing working hours at will, reducing wages at will, and demanding high flexibility of the workfoce ? Or maybe Human Rights ? Denying people their human rights so they can be deported or put in inhumane private prisons ?

The right to abandon renewable energy targets, just when we need to seriously develop sustainable power as the North Sea oil and gas are in firm decline ? The right to abandon environmental regulation ? The right to set taxes too low for the rich and too high for the poor ? The right to deny people a living wage and a roof over their head because they can’t work, because there are no jobs for them to slave away at ?

Is it all about banking, then ? Or industrial policy ? I seriously don’t know what Michael Gove’s real agenda is, but I suspect it has something to do with continuing with the neoliberal privatisation agenda – putting all social goods into private hands for profit.

What has Europe ever done for us ? Britain’s involvement in the European Union project has been right at the centre, in agreeing excellent labour law, human rights, technological performance, business accountability, renewable energy. The European project is a British project. Why would anybody want to leave ?

In my humble view, the Conservative Party should expel the Eurosceptic rebels. They do no good to the Coalition Government, and they offer no progress in democratic advancement.

And, I would suggest, the Conservative Party ask the media to inject some reality and pragmatism into their presentation of European Union issues. It’s not the 1970s or the 1980s any more, Mr Newspaper Editor. Like it or not, the European Common Market and its safety and success are in the British national interest.

We’re never going to solve environmental problems like climate change without working hand-in-hand with Europe. And we are definitely not going to address the energy crisis without staying in the Common Market.

It’s time for David Cameron to ditch the dinosaurs.