Take a break!

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Take a break!

I suppose the fact that the Greek police are running out of tear gas must tell you something about the situation in that benighted country.

One smiles though to see that the Greek authorities are appealing for help to replenish their stocks … to Germany and Israel. What happened to all this EU solidarity? Surely there are stocks of "euro-gas" floating around in Brussels for just this sort of contingency? Or are the "colleagues" reserving it for when things get a bit closer to home?

We are told, incidentally, that Greece is in its ninth day of riots, with as many as nine banks having been targeted last night – an interesting reflection of where the mob sees its enemy. But the longevity of the "disturbances" has also spawned some ruminatory pieces in the media, not least The Guardian.

Here, an analysis by Maria Margaronis in Athens notes that the teenagers and twenty-somethings who have come close to toppling the Greek government "are not the marginalised".

This, she writes, "is no replay of the riots that convulsed Paris in 2005." Many of the rioters are sons and daughters of the middle classes, shocked at the killing of one of their own. They are "disgusted with the government's incompetence and corruption, enraged by the broken promises of the education system, scared at the prospect of having to work still harder than their exhausted parents."

The analysis may be off the wall, but there may well be more than a grain of truth in it and, if that is the case, there are issues here which have a strong resonance in the UK. There are distinct commonalities which should have people over here thinking hard as to whether the same unrest is about to hit here – with urgent assessments of tear gas inventories.

In a saner world, one might expect a long debate in the House of Commons, where the various issues could be chewed over, the parallels considered and some ideas offered as to what relevance these disturbances have to the UK and lessons could be learned, before rather than after the event.

The idea of such a debate, however, is wishful thinking. With the news agenda crammed, serious events happening all over the world - not least the tragic news from Afghanistan, where four soldiers have been killed – our parliament is taking a break.

This, as The Daily Telegraph tells us, is the longest Christmas break for more than 10 years. It will start next Thursday when the MPs pack their bags and return to their constituencies, not coming back until 12 January.

Quite rightly, Tory Diary expresses some dismay but, as we pointed out in our previous post, parliament has become so marginalised that it has little to do. The MPs might just as well go home, for all the good they can do in Westminster.

Some MPs themselves are unhappy with the situation, and we are told that the long break has "renewed accusations that politicians are out of touch with the working lives of ordinary Britons". But this is not merely a question being "out of touch". Parliament is impotent. What it says and does now is of very little importance and the fact that MPs can be summarily packed off home tells you all you need to know.

The trouble is that parliament does have a purpose. It is, in effect, the voice of the people, its debates articulating their concerns. Thus, if parliament is silenced, the people are deprived of a voice. But, as we see in Greece, when that happens, they go elsewhere to express their views. While MPs enjoy their break, therefore, they may care to reflect that it is more fundamental – a break between themselves and the people.

If that continues, it could become permanent and it will take more than stocks of tear gas to fix it.

COMMENT THREAD

What is the point?

The EU "climate deal" – stitched-up at the European Council – is being variously hailed as an "historic agreement" on cutting pollution (they mean Carbon dioxide) and, by the Greens a "failure". 

Generally speaking, anything that pisses off the Greens is something we favour but, in this case, even their "failure" is highly destructive for democracy.

Without going into the finer points of the deal – mainly because they are so utterly tedious – what should strike everyone are some of the broader details, helpfully provided by The Independent.

This paper tells us that the "colleagues" have agreed a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, compared with 1990 levels … nothing new there. Then there is a 20 percent increase in use of renewable energy by 2020. Nothing new there either, except it ain't going to happen (nor is the emission cut, but never mind).

Something newish is a 20 percent cut in energy consumption via improved efficiency by 2020. That hasn't a hope in hell of happening through efficiency but, when the electricity system shuts down, that surely will help cut consumption.

Now we get to the interesting bits. The allocations of "carbon permits" under EU emissions trading scheme is to be cut by a fifth from 2005 levels, power companies will have to buy their permits at auction from 2013 and auctioning for other industrial sectors and aviation will be phased in by 2020. 

The point … always the point. These are to be mandatory provisions, locked in by EU law, agreed by all the member states including our own. That makes 2013 an interesting year – it will be three years after our general election. The year 2020 is at least three if not four general elections away. Yet these matters are being decided and cast in stone by this parliament.

Whatever happened to the doctrine of "no parliament can bind its successor"? And, if this no longer applies, what really is the point of having general elections?

COMMENT THREAD

Friday, December 12, 2008

The erosion of government

It was in July of this year that the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee - prop. Tim Yeo - told the government that it must set a deadline for coal-fired power stations to install technology massively to cut their emissions, or they must be shut down.

In so doing, the committee sought to add to the burden on an industry which is already, for diverse reasons, failing to get to grips with the looming electricity shortage – offering a strategy which would make it near certain that the lights went out in 2012 or sooner.

Now, from the same House of Commons which brought you this lunacy, we have the Business and Enterprise Committee, headed by another Conservative MP – this time Peter Luff. His committee is warning that Britain is threatened by an "energy crunch" with disastrous social and economic consequences.

The warning, we are told, is to be found in a report published by the committee this morning but – at the time of writing – this is not yet on the internet, so we must rely on media reports for the content. That is never a wise thing to do.

However, according to the Financial Times, the reason the Committee feels that we are in this dire situation is because of the impact of the financial crisis on the industry's investment plans.

Thus do the MPs write that: "Generating capacity equivalent to nearly a third of current electricity demand will be made redundant by 2020. It will need to be replaced. We believe that in the current economic climate there is a high risk that the energy companies will not be able to raise the finance necessary to build this."

To ram home the point, Peter Luff then tells the FT (doubtless via a press release) that there was a concern about investment in new nuclear power stations, because of the increased cost of raising funds, and the government's failure to set a clear policy lead. 

"Particularly for nuclear, the important thing for investment is the cost of capital, and that plus the fact that there is not a statement of need for nuclear from the government means there is a real risk of not getting the nuclear investment we need," he says.

Luff and his committee have a point but, of course, there is much more too it – as we all well know. The problem for these MPs is that energy has recently been transferred to the new "climate change" department. Thus they only have a residual responsibility for energy, confined mainly to financial and investment issues. This rather limits the scope of what they can discuss and report upon, without treading on the toes of another committee.

The greatest value of this report, therefore, is the negative messages it sends – that there are conflicting issues and that there is no one with overall responsibility for dealing with them.

Those, unfortunately, are too subtle to be readily appreciated or understood but are the reasons why the lights are going to go out. No one is in overall charge – there is no one to get a grip and sort the problems out. Everything is compartmentalised and detached, everyone doing their own little bit, without reference to their impact on other areas.

That, in a very real sense, is the general paradigm. With power and responsibilities split, and spread between national and international bodies, no one person or entity – like the British government – has any longer the wherewithal to resolve even pressing issues like maintaining our electricity supplies. 

With electricity, however, the outcome cannot be fudged. Soon enough the lights will go out, and it is then that the questions will start to be asked in earnest and the majority of people will begin to learn how badly their systems of government have been eroded. It is a great pity though, that it will have to come to that.