All entries for September 2007

Tuck but no TUCs at the TUC

Party conference season is upon us and this past week saw the warm-up act, the Trades Union Congress, hit Brighton. I was there. For work.

I’d never been to Brighton before. It’s a bit like an English San Francisco: hip, hilly, by the sea, with a lot of gays, hobos and people with American accents.

Work involved going to fringe meetings (lunchtime and teatime events with speakers and a policy theme which take place outside the main conference) and eating the free food. I also had to take copious notes then write up reports on each.

The most interesting fringe I attended was organised by the Public Services Not Private Profit campaign, and featured several union bosses and the man who was so very nearly elected Prime Minister, John McDonnell MP.

It was a hotbed of leftie propaganda, which I found very refreshing. It’s a shame there wasn’t a leadership contest because there’d have been a good debate about the neo-liberal ideology of the Labour Government, given the litany of botched privatisations McDonnell et al reeled off.

Bob Crow, the RMT General Secretary and scourge of London’s commuters, was there, calling for a return to nationalisation and talking fondly of his Staffordshire bull terrier Castro (bought on May 1st no less). I don’t know what they put in the water at the RMT, but his oratory was remarkably Prescottesque.

The chief of the Prison Officers Association Colin Moses gave a particularly rousing speech. He may very well be the first black Geordie I’ve ever come across, which, having spent most of my life in Newcastle, says a lot about the city’s demography.

The worst event I went to was on the NHS. They only put on crisps and three types of sandwiches – including cheese and pickle, which I don’t like, and really dry tuna. Next door was the Morning Star’s event, and I checked out their food offering. Boy, if that’s the kind of spread we’d get under a communist regime, sign me up!

Most surprisingly, not one of the events had TUC biscuits.

I’m off to Brighton again in a couple of hours, this time for the Lib Dems.

Daniel Wilson Craw : 16 Sep 2007 13:50 |  Tags: Brighton Politics Trade Unions Tuc Conference |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Holyrood leads the way on asylum policy

Labour’s going to announce that skilled non-EU immigrants will have to speak English if they want to come over here and take our jobs. I wonder if, say, Thailand will retaliate and force British ex-pats to learn their language.

As vaguely hypocritical anti-immigrant policies go, it’s fairly reasonable, even to a liberal like me; it might foster more cultural exchange in our communities and will hopefully shut the Tories up for a bit.

I was rather amazed how different the immigration agenda is north of the border. At work this week I read a debate in the Scottish Parliament on asylum seekers. The motion, made by an Scottish Nationalist MSP, called for them to be given the right to work. They sit on their arse all day, living off the state; why not let them work and thereby contribute to the economy and lift their self-esteem?

It’s a good policy, yet I was surprised that everyone agreed with it – Labour, Lib Dem, the SNP minister, and even the Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary Bill Aitken. In the 2005 General Election only the Lib Dems were advocating it.

To be fair, the Scottish Parliament has no power on immigration issues, so nothing will come out of the debate except a promise from Stuart Maxwell, the Communities Minister, to have a chat to the Home Office about it. But it’s nice to see that public discourse on asylum seekers can ignore the scaremongering press and be progressive.

Daniel Wilson Craw : 09 Sep 2007 20:59 |  Tags: Asylum Seekers Immigration Politics Scotland |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Biofuels: for life, not for climate change

Writing about web page http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/17/climatechange.energy

A year and a half ago, in an attempt to salvage some credibility for my embattled employer the RPA, I evangelised about the wonders of biofuels. It seems like I got a bit carried away.

Western governments are loving biofuels – oilseed rape, ethanol and the like – and have made them a key weapon in their battle against climate change by setting some ambitious targets for their use (the European Union wants 10% of transport fuel to be bio by 2020).

In recent months, however, it’s become apparent that they’re not all they’re cracked up to be. Several scientific studies have reported some flaws and unpleasant side-effects:
- biofuel growth will reduce the amount of land used for food crops so prices will rise, creating “agflation”;
- the orang-utan is facing extinction because farmers in Borneo are destroying rainforests to plant palm trees, the oil of which is in great demand;
- the energy output of a field of biofuel crops isn’t that great;
- the actual effect biofuels will have on combating climate change is pretty negligible. In theory, they’re carbon-neutral – burning them only releases carbon dioxide that was already in the atmosphere before the plants were grown. But in practice there are further emissions involved in the production process. And most green fuel for vehicles consists of 85% or more fossil fuels anyway. (see above link)

Governments have seen the “carbon-neutral” and “renewable” labels, thought it meant the same as “zero-carbon”, and championed biofuels as a panacea to global warming without thinking about how it would work and how the agriculture sector would be affected.

Which is not to say biofuels are totally evil; it’s just that our leaders have managed to conflate global warming with the oil running out. The fact that they’re renewable is good – it’s an area that deserves support to develop. But we shouldn’t chuck targets and public money at producing biofuels until the technology makes them viable.

Daniel Wilson Craw : 08 Sep 2007 22:09 |  Tags: Biofuels Climate Change Renewable Energy |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

News

Follow-up to Spotted: Health Secretary in South London supermarket from Esprit de l'escalier

Alan Johnson was in Sainsbury’s again! And once again, I failed to ask him for an internship. This time he was entertaining a small child – presumably his grandson – so I felt it would be inappropriate.

Plus, I’ve just started a new internship anyway, at DeHavilland, the political monitoring firm. I’m based in the Emap offices just over the road from Mornington Crescent tube station, where I was delighted to discover there’s a blue plaque for the late great Willie Rushton.

It’s been a slightly surreal first week for me, possibly because I started a day after I got back from Reading; possibly because the work is pretty similar to what I did at Quintus Public Affairs, so I’ve just hit the ground running; or possibly because I’m used to the 20-strong Quintus whereas Emap’s a massive organisation but I’m in a tiny team.

I was subject to some rather Kafkaesque bureaucracy yesterday morning. On Tuesday and Thursday front desk gave me a temporary pass to the building and on Wednesday they just waved me in. Yesterday, they decided to implement some draconian changes: without a staff pass I couldn’t enter Emap unless someone with a staff pass could vouch for me. The same guy who’d let me in the previous three days couldn’t make an exception. He had no contact numbers with which to ask someone to come down so if I hadn’t happened to have my supervisor’s number as a recently called number, I’d have been waiting in the lobby all day. I’ve got my photo ID now – unfortunate cowlick and all – so it’s all good.

Apparently, the brothers Miliband have inspired a new game. The Guardian’s “What We’ve Learned This Week” segment mentioned Musical Miliband Three-Way. There’s little on Google. Can anyone explain what it is? It sounds rude.

Cabinet Secretary Glenn Miliband

Foreign Secretary Steve Miliband

Daniel Wilson Craw : 01 Sep 2007 17:26 |  Tags: Alan Johnson Dehavilland Miliband Quintus Sainsburys |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem