'Green authoritarianism'

I alluded early in this blog's life to the debates within the Camp for Climate Action and some potential implications for horizontal politics. One debate I didn't discuss in that post, but which is very much at the heart of the controversy, is the issue of 'green authoritarianism' - a concept that, depending on the political outlook of the person using it, spans a continuum of meanings from any state interference regarding environmental impact to a full-scale system in which liberties are severely curtailed for environmental reasons. (The specific issues being objected to by those in the CCA who adhere to the original horizontal principles are 'green' taxation of various sorts and state-enforced population control.)

Anyway, today I heard someone - a very good friend with a talent for playing devil's advocate, not that this alters what she actually said - come very close to advocating the latter end of the continuum in a question to a visiting speaker, her rationale being that this is the only way people are going to be significantly moved to change their environmental impact. Now, granted, if you are not taking an intrinsically horizontal or anarchist standpoint and your main concern is preventing environmental damage, this may seem like a tempting solution to the issues Mathew raises at Election 2010: specifically that, while people claim to desire a reduction in environmental damage, they are less keen to personally bear the costs of doing so. However, just off the top of my head, I can think of a few counter-arguments:

• Making something government policy doesn't change people's attitudes towards it, except maybe making them resentful. Hence, people will be busy looking for polluting loopholes rather than considering whether their behaviours are unsustainable.
• Some aspects of environmentally damaging behaviour can be policed fairly easily, but how far can this go? You can certainly monitor how much recycling a household generates compared to landfill, or their use of a car, but it is harder to keep tabs on whether people switch their lights off, unplug phone chargers and so on without severely infringing civil liberties.
• Moratoriums on certain products are possible, but who's to say it won't just lead to a thriving black market in those products and an increase in their desirability? Yes, even toxic cleaning crap, if people still believe that the wretched stuff is the best product for the job and either don't care about or think efficacy outweighs the damage to the waterways.
• Giving the state that much power over people's everyday lives has a destructive potential all of its own. It mandates the government to intervene in an unprecedented range of areas, which is liable to spread.
  
• Who decides what is an environmentally necessary law? Can governments be trusted not to have any hidden agendas? I'd be especially concerned about population control here...
  

On the latest BNP business

I've been a lazy-arse blogger lately, so I'm sure I'm not breaking the news to anyone that BNP members are not to be banned from teaching in schools. I have to admit to being a bit conflicted about this. I hate the BNP, but in general also hate the idea that someone could lose their job because of their beliefs, especially if they are generally quiet about those beliefs. To give an example, I honestly don't believe that Simone Clarke should be chucked out of any given ballet production due to her BNP membership. Boycott her performances, sure, maybe picket outside because any opportunity to get the anti-fascist message out is good, and if the ballet company want shot of her because she's bringing them adverse publicity I will have no sympathy for her, but it isn't like she's getting much of a chance to preach racist crap from the stage.

A school, however, is a very different scenario. Teachers can exert a whole lot of influence on young people. And BNP members are not known for keeping their gobs shut about their beliefs. Even if they do, there's the deeper issue of merely holding a racist attitude in a classroom - if a teacher objects, even without speaking these objections out loud, to the presence of black, Asian, or any immigrant children in a class or to friendships (or more than that, if we're talking high school) between children of different races, it is far from impossible that the children will pick up on the bad vibes anyway.

I hope John Dunford is right when he claims that 'Teacher racism is rare', but to be honest any racist incident in a school classroom is unacceptable, even between the children themselves, and especially if instigated by the teacher. And, as above, there's the question of attitude and unspoken racism and the effect that could have.

Oh, and there's also the small matter of giving the BNP respectibility, which while a bit of a side issue in this case is certainly never a good thing...

Hello, my name is Lise and I am AGAINST the death penalty

You may wonder why I feel the need to assert that, given that I live in the UK and was born nearly two decades after the death penalty was abolished here. Here are some reasons:

• The idea of the death penalty as a deterrent is bullshit. I seriously doubt London and Birmingham have less of a murder problem than certain US cities where capital punishment is deployed.
• If the state can kill you, that's a very high level of control...
• Killing someone because killing is wrong? Er...
• The death penalty is still used by too many countries, including the US and China - still used = worth being against it in my fairly considered opinion.
• You think it's irrelevant here? When I was young bringing back hanging was voted on reglarly in the House of Commons. The reason it hasn't been raised there for a while is down to an EU ban. I don't trust Eurosceptics not to gain sufficient power to resist it.
• And let's not ignore that 'bring back hanging' is can be heard Every. Damn. Time. there is a high-profile murder.
• Regardless of whether you agree with the death penalty in cases where guilt can be proven, the fact remains that it has been wrongly deployed in too many cases. Scratch that - one such case would be too many!
  

See the truly ace Reprieve for more information.

Albert Pierrepoint, the last executioner in Great Britain, turned against the death penalty later in life: