The politics of stoopid

Sunday, April 19, 2009

The politics of stoopid

One thing that does not come over from the growing collection of videos on "police brutality" during the G20 demonstrations is the context. Greenie protestors have developed and refined the art of provocation to a quite remarkable degree, calculated to try the patience of a saint and geared to trigger precisely the responses which have been so assiduously filmed.

As to the demonstrators themselves and their creed, one can only marvel at the police restraint – that there were in fact so few instances of "brutality" when the natural and human instinct would be to irrigate the area liberally with tear gas or, preferably, Zyklon B.

The nature of the beast is well described in The Australian this week, an atavistic creed which is uniquely damaging to our way of life and our prosperity. Says Christopher Pearson in this newspaper:

The environmental romantics have a loathing and fear of population increase, seek to return to the past and promote pagan superstitions. Well before the crunch of global warming appeared, the environmental romantics hated the modern world despite the fact that in industrial societies we live longer, we are healthier, the air and water are getting cleaner, the area of forests is expanding and we have far greater freedom than in past times. It is the energy-intensive communication systems of the modern world that allow the environmental romantics to spread the word.

Quite how stupid and dangerous these "atavistic romantics" are, however, comes not from the streets of London but from the local US press which reports that "Oklahoma is getting a late dose of winter weather as a storm system pushes through the state, dumping snow across northern and western sections of the state."

Amazingly, the US National Weather Service issued a blizzard warning through Saturday for much west-central, northwest and north-central Oklahoma. A winter storm warning also was in effect through Saturday for southwest, central and northeast Oklahoma.

For the consequences of this weather anomaly, however, you have to read the Tulsa World which tells us that the freezes before this last one have already done serious damage, having devastated Oklahoma's winter wheat. It could end up killing 40 percent to 60 percent of the crop.

Mike Schulte, executive director of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, is saying that most wheat fields in the southeastern part of the state had 90 percent of the crop destroyed, adding that only areas close to the Kansas border have avoided most of the damage. "Its real bad out there," Schulte says. "In some places it's a total loss."

Actually, the situation is not that happy in Kansas either and there aredisturbing signs beginning to emerge from commodity markets worldwide, with damage and disruption by no means confined to the United States.

As Booker has sought to point out many times in his column, we are no longer seeing a warming trend and, over the last seven years there has in fact been a distinct cooling trend. With the climate models sharply diverging from reality and an ominous quiet sun, there is now real, observable evidence to suggests that we are going to have severe global stress on crop production.

Where there have not been intensive periods of cold, there have been serious floods (pictured) all of which have conspired to reduce crop yields which, this year, could drive down global stocks to critical level.

The possibility of a global food crisis resulting from cooling was one we flagged up last year, almost exactly to the day. The possibility now looks more frighteningly real. But – as we have observed before – the consequences are manageable as long as there is an early and well-directed policy response.

That is the reality of politics – the politics of global (and national) food production – which lies at the heart of our survival and prosperity, and on which the world relies upon for its stability. But, since our politicians have outsourced food policy to Brussels, and our idle political gossips probably think food comes from Tescos, there is absolutely no prospect of the issue being given even momentary thought.

Instead, wrapped up in their interminable court gossip, the "atavistic romantics" dominate the street demanding exactly the opposite of what is required, screaming "police brutality" to an eager audience, when we should be shooting them all before their warmist creed drives us all into starvation.

That our political claque can no longer focus on anything that even remotely approaches serious issues – like our survival – is the politics of stoopid.

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The stench of corruption

Whatever we have seen over the last week, it has not been politics. Instead, we have seen the spill-over of low-grade court gossip that preoccupies the prattling claque of courtiers, traded over the coffee tables of Portcullis House and the restaurants of Westminster to a ready and willing audience.

Such is the nature of court gossip that its purveyors are as low-grade and tacky as those who are currently the focus of the claque. Those of us with longer memories will recall the flood of highly descriptive tales of Gordon Brown's homosexuality, the graphic accounts of orgies in No 11, and his "sham" marriage to Sarah – merely a ploy to conceal from the public the dark side of the man who was to become our prime minister.

For politics, therefore, you will have to skate past the newspaper pages which bear the names of paid members of the court gossip-mongers and go to the Booker column.

There, you will find an account of how, last week, demonstrating French fishermen were also protesting at the shocking treatment of the two Northern Irish fishermen, Charlie McBride and his son Charles. These were the fishermen imprisoned a few weeks back for their pathetic efforts to pay off the crippling £385,000 fines imposed on them for falsifying their documentation in a bid to get round EU quotas. 

This, of course, is the stuff of politics – the end result of the Common Fisheries Policy … note the word "policy", from which the word politics derives.

But while the French fishermen have an acute sense and understanding of the political issues that dominate their lives, you will not find a word of protest from the Westminster claque about the shameful treatment of the McBrides. You will get plenty of faux outrage about Damien Green but, in the Westminster village, they don't do politics any more – they just do soap opera.

It is a wonder therefore, that we even got to see a tiny voice of sanity in theletters column from Nigel Bowker of Banchory, Aberdeenshire. He declares that politicians "are deeply unpopular and it isn't just because of their unashamed looting of the public purse or the defamatory emails emanating from Number 10." 

The last 12 years, he writes, have seen at least three political disasters: foreign policy, which we were promised would be ethical; economic policy, unless this is what an end to boom and bust looks like; and a lack of Opposition – the Conservatives have acted as loyal stooges to the Government in both of the other calamities. 

And yet, by a peculiarity of our constitutional system, both of these failed parties know that one of them will form the next government because the barriers to competition are so high. No wonder so many people are disillusioned with our political system. 

But if anyone is rash enough to expect change, they are wasting their time looking to the fourth estate for any guidance. There we have Iain Martinpontificating that Cameron's "first essential" in office will be to engineer a "quiet revolution in how Britain is governed".

We then see a trite list of marginal, cosmetic changes which will do nothing to address the deep-seated spiritual corruption of the political claque, reflecting the same fog of incomprehension that afflicts The Independent, with its equally lame proposals.

But then - in contrast with Americans, who at a remarkable level seem to have a very clear idea about the realities of power and how their government works - you will have to go a long way to find any similar level of understanding within the ranks of the political claque.

Just try to mention over the coffee table of Portcullis House the tyranny of the Statutory Instrument. Try if you will to discuss how it has changed the face of government and irrevocably altered the relationship between Parliament and the executive and you will get the rolling of eyes and the subject rapidly changed.

But this is a culture that lionises the prattlers and revels in low-grade court gossip. It is a political culture in the final stages of infantalisation where serious analysis and attempts to understand the nature of power – and how it has been corrupted – have been consigned to the margins (and the ghetto of the Booker column).

This is a political culture in terminal decay, crowned by a miasma of prattle redolent of the haze of flies that surmounts a piece of rotting meat. Inevitably, though, those who exude the stench of spiritual corruption are themselves the last to be able smell it. But stench there is, and it is going to take more than a change of government to clear the air.

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