|
I could not resist a few comments about the Southport murders updated Commenting on national news stories at the present is rather more straightforward than it usually is, in that there are several distinct and prominent threads dominating the international news which more or less all relate directly to the election of a new labour government in the UK. A salient first observation is that this government's majority is highly illusory in nature, perhaps more so than any majority that has ever been contrived to appear in "the mother of all parliaments." I believe there is enormous scope for hazard, misunderstanding and disorder in the manner in which a party that has captured only one third of the votes cast has captured two thirds of the representation in the legislature, have commented many times that our so called democracy is tragically out of date with its fptp voting system, and that such discrepancies will inevitably have serious repercussions with regard to the long term decline of public confidence in national institutions at home and abroad. Whilst it is interesting that politicians arguably get caught out by their own illusions in being the target as well as the source of a lot of effective and misleading social and political propaganda, I believe the furore over the labour government's withdrawal of the winter heating allowance might signify some admission that Westminster might have to take the PR issue more seriously in the near future. What is of the remark that before long there will be as many pensioners as working people and one relevant observation has to be, that conventional logic tends to suggest that voters are not realistically going to endlessly vote themselves improving benefits or allowances without some helpful intervening circumstance such as general economic growth, improving scientific development and/or production techniques. This article by Tim Burrows for the Guardian in May of '23 paints an eerily discordant note on the Chancellors growth optimism in detailing a less than thoroughly responsible history of waste management in the region. I do not imagine that anyone really doubts the desirability of confronting the environmental issue whilst government seems paralysed to act in the face of demands for reduced immigration. This article by Frankie Elliot for the Mail on Feb 6th this year highlights both the scale of the problem and the lack of effective regulation in relating the recent dumping of 30 000 tons of building waste in the ancient Kentish beauty spot where Sarah Everard's body was found. If you do not happen to have much relevant education or insight it can be difficult to work out what is the meaningful truth about many environmental stories but this story about two retirees Ashley Smith and Peter Hammond who put their investigative and analytical skills to work when they found themselves disconsolately facing a palpably disappearing wildlife in their Cotswolds retreat uncovers some fairly dark truths about the water industry which I tend to suggest is fairly symbolic of government in our time so it is worth reading just in that respect. That they have had some success in mapping the scale of water degradation particularly in England as was related in Oliver Bulough's Guardian article of August 2022 is not quite so noteworthy ignorance in itself as the fact they swiftly found that there is in fact an almost complete and entirely routine ignoring of environmental laws being undertaken by water companies on an enormous industrial scale as there also was with farmers. It is unquestionably a fact that there are increasing numbers of dire warnings about the state of the environment in our modern media but this one really is outstanding and these two gentlemen are clearly to be highly commended for their expose: the facts about how successive tory ministries have left the countryside at the mercy of their farming and shareholder friends will be costing them a lot of votes from their core support base for many years to come. What is as I say of the fact the labour government is touting the idea that it was elected to rebuild Britain which is all too arguably a load of tosh; I do not want to say that I would much rather have a sensible and well reasoned government policy I could happily agree with. The simple fact is rather however that we live in a two party state and have done for a hundred years; when such a matter of fact happens to be the case the opposition party has to get in sooner or later. How anyone with a one third majority can feign to have any kind of a mandate is quite beyond me in many ways. Be that as it may this labour government may represent the last best chance for any kind of genuine government by consensus in this country before we get taken over by AI or succumb to missiles and plague or some other manufactured hazard. The tories were unusually unpopular even for an outgoing ministry but it was not enthusiasm for labour that produced such a disproportionate number of seats but very arguably Rishi Sunak's calling of an early election, in that this rather stymied Reform's backers who were deprived of an expected opportunity to strategise effectively for an expected November election. The fact the tories had gotten themselves elected by promising to get Brexit done and reduce immigration and then spent 13 years or so getting around to the admission they could not do it because of some 80 year old human rights convention has not gone down very well. The Reform vote signified very strongly that there is a clear desire to end the waves of immigration that have filled our communities with all manner of strange outsiders and that this perhaps more than any other issue will dominate voter intentions in the coming few years. Reform are presently too good at making expensive sounding promises and there is no reason to believe another political party can achieve real change without reform of the voting system itself. Perhaps the worst aspect of this complete ignorance of democratic principle in electing a government that is supposedly a democracy is the extent to which labour grandees seem oblivious to this general disaffection though this is perhaps not quite entirely unacknowledged by front bench ministers. Perhaps the most outstanding example is that of the Health Minister Wes Streeting who has had little hesitation in oft repeating his view that the NHS is in a broken state. Such a remark does of course entail much in the way of qualification and description for it to be meaningful in that it really necessitates a broad understanding of and societal consensus around what the Health Service should be according to various differing parties and what it actually is in reality. Notwithstanding these things we do at least have a new government with some kind of a brief to modernise the role and functioning of the state as the 21st century continues to unwind into the goggling addle pated minds of voters and citizens with endless real and legitimate concerns. It seems however that detailed debate on the domestic agenda, even the squealing of the nation's farmers at inheritance tax plans, is going to take second place whilst eastern conflicts and a new Potus insist on monopolising so much media attention. The notion of modernising local government specifically poses an interesting challenge for the nation's professionals and public servants in particular. Offhand I do not think much of the notion of having a Mayor for two counties like some sort of regional governor. A Mayor is supposed to be a master of ceremonies and a figurehead for a specific community whether it be as the Mayor of London or Mayor of a remote shire community of a few hundred. I am personally very concerned that preconceptions about democracy and the rule of law are already far too illusory in nature, and that creating mega councils may find local councillors even more removed from the communities of which they are supposedly representative. One example of this sort of accepted pretence of democracy being the single major force in managing the lives of the population which demonstrates quite well this rhetorical illusion is in respect of the murder of Billy McNicholl on Ipswich's Chantry estate in recent months which I believe is still under investigation. I recognise him as very much a Chantry resident of about my age from the newspaper articles about his death, and what is relevantly of the remark that having lived in several different corners of the town by the time I was twenty two I arguably recognise most people of about my age in the Town. The point is to say that some Tory County Councillor by the name of Nadia Cenci who happens to represent Chantry on the County Council has had the remark published that Billy was a much loved resident of the estate published several times in the EADT and I do not believe she has the faintest idea what sort of person he was or was not. Saying that it is generally more appropriate for a town/borough councillor to make such comment really betokens the remark I definitely had noticed whilst still in my teens that councillors, even labour councillors, do not really take that much interest in their electorate. Town Councillors are in theory the first link between communities and the political establishment but for instance I have never once heard of a labour councillor actually living in any of the poorer working class wards in the town. The observation tends to reinforce the remark that our pseudo-democracy is something arranged from above and that political representation is not something that spontaneously arises from dialogue in local communities which in theory it is supposed to. What is in further commenting on the current political landscape, very much of the remark that Reform UK's electoral success is not solely a genuinely spontaneous reaction to the anomie and ineffectuality of the major parties but significantly rather a calculating attempt by certain kinds of erstwhile Tory extremists and American financiers to define future political narratives by playing on ignorance and populism for their own ends: the same seems to be true if perhaps not similarly so, of the German AfD of whom it is also widely reported that they have been bankrolled by the Muskrat. This story by Anna Orwin Algeo and Iain Overton for the Byeline Times on 28 02 25 investigates the manner in which taxpayers' funds are being routed via private arms contracts to Reform UK. This article by Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Secretary General of Civicus, a global alliance of civil society organisations for the Guardian on 06 03 25 provides a lot of meaningful and useful information about the larger political and economic context to these domestic developments. This article by Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield for the Guardian also on 06 03 25 provides further detail in investigating the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system, a set of private courts which had been opposed by President Biden in which companies can sue countries for billions. Such a putative perspective on international economic realities in which nation states are pawns of capitalist investors rather than vica versa, may lie behind such sentiments as are expressed by Caroline Lucas in another Guardian article of 29 01 25 which bemoans the labour government's disinterest in traditional social justice issues in respect of the undermining of the right to peaceful protest. As far as the state of the nation goes in a more purely national perspective I am minded to recall the unnervingly down to earth view I had acquired by the age of seventeen that there was something suspiciously sinister about the manner in which meaningless democracy is peddled as an explanation for everything. This is all too well substantiated by such factual articles as William Ralston's Guardian article of 04 03 25 about a toxic fire which has been burning in east London for years which has been arguably affecting the health of the nearby community for which nobody can be held responsible. It is a devastating indictment of local democracy and the legal system by any reckoning. One person who owned the land recently and was imprisoned for installing a cannabis farm had evaded a legal compulsion to clean up the land by dissolving his company and transferring ownership to himself. Mentioning the fact in a legal context tends to prompt some mention of Sirin Kale's Guardian article of 20 02 25 about a rogue letting agency or agencies operating with a similar sort of impunity from legal censure by the same device of hiding behind the facade of a limited company also strongly tends to substantiate the assertion our criminal justice system is in a state of crisis. Alex South's 20 02 25 article on the state of the Prison Service also tends to raise questions about some perceived lack of a traditional progressivist ideology in the thinking of the labour government. This was arguably a significant element in the context of the trial of PC Martyn Blake for the alleged murder of Chris Kaba in September 2022 in that a new labour government was faced with some general expectation of a more progressivist interpretation of events especially in respect of the usual chorus of disapproval from civil rights groups. I did not find much of the reporting of that case very clear in terms of the actions that took place, and what one might happen to think of the allegation itself really entailed some precise consideration of legal definitions which was neither very forthcoming. The police did behave petulantly with colleagues walking out and threatening to make problems and the only impression I did get for sure was that a lot of the individuals involved felt that the system was failing, in that I expect many jurors did want to find fault with an all too arguably gratuitous shooting but surrendered to pressure to not cross the line of actually convicting for murder. Speculation about the event tends to centre on a sort of subliminal argument about the direction policing is going to take, in that it obviously costs a lot of money to try such matters, and it is too convenient to ignore questions about the future of the criminal justice system. The burden of proof in such cases has to be high but so does the burden of responsibility on police officers. I have to admit I did not understand why it was that an unnecessary killshot on an unarmed person was rejected as murder since that is how murder is defined in the UK. From what I saw of the shot, I suppose it did look as if Mr Kaba had rolled into the path of the bullet but I did not see that PC Blake needed to open fire. Sammy Gecsoyler's Guardian article of 03 03 25 detailing a similar incident also from 2022 in which a man who had been waving a lighter about on Chelsea Bridge was tasered three times before falling to his death in the Thames does nothing to dispel the suspicion that British police are getting a bit trigger happy here and there, perhaps partly as a result of the impact of US interest. The recent story about how two Sussex PC's had tasered a one legged 92 yr old care home resident with dementia has aroused a great deal of derision in the media: not least because he subsequently died in hospital. Nick Ferrari's Express article is quite succinct in its description of the officers as oafs which I feel is rather mild language really. Rachel Salvidge's Guardian article of Sat 19 Apr 2025 provides more information about PFAs in the environment. Specifically detailing that the Environment Agency has identified thousands of sites around the UK that really require detoxification. Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Raphael Boyd for the Guardian in October of 24 in an article describing the dangerous deceptions about water quality being foisted on the public in England. Raphael Boyd for the Guardian also in October of 24 in another article examining the issue of water quality in the Welsh marches where under-investment in infrastructure is impacting the iconic Malvern Hills. Jon Ungoed-Thomas and Raphael Boyd for the Guardian again in October of 24 examining water quality in England present an expose of environmental regulations as a routine box ticking exercise. Robyn Vinter the Guardian's North of England correspondent sadly relates in Guardian article from 26 April this year that long term waste management in England has consisted of little more than short term profiteering and that the country is peppered over with thousands of dumpsites that have no record of what has been discarded in them. It's such a big fat surprise to hear via the Mail's Chief Reporter Sam Greenhill that the government covered up knowledge of Julie Ward's high profile killer for political purposes: she was supposed to have been eaten by Lions whilst on a safari in 1988. Also via the Mail's Chief Reporter Sam Greenhill is an article from 15 May 2025 which concisely goes over the main facts concerning the fact that 'The beast of Birkenhead' Peter Sutcliffe convicted for the aggravated murder/rape of 21 yr old Diane Sindall in 1986 is in fact an innocent man. Coming so soon after the exoneration of Andrew Malkinson and the conviction of Constable Wayne Couzens for rape and murder the matter distinctly raises the public eyebrow in a questioning stare at the Ministry of Justice and the legal services community. Whilst I have no general interest in seeing further societal chaos erupt at such disclosures, my natural concerns are obviously rather diluted by the effective denial of citizenship rights these have inflicted on me. How many more such characters are we going to fish out of our penal institutions in the near future I wonder? Mr Malkinson did go to some lengths in expressing his view that there were quite a few who should ..... I suppose I cannot help but obtain a certain amount of bitter satisfaction from the evident discomfiture of the legal establishment at these events seeming to signify a more fundamental crisis of confidence in institutions generally and from my own particular point of view in the first instance that of the legal establishment in general. The various incoming comments about the million pound compensation cap on such cases echo various comments I have made over many years about the necessity for a complete re-evaluation of the country's criminal justice system; independence of the judiciary is one thing but as it exists the current system gives too much power to lawyers and the performance of judicial figures is all to arguably haphazardly lacking in any kind of strategic consistency. It seems to have been rumoured that Mr Sutcliffe was a patsy for someone connected to the local underworld in Birkenhead during the Thatcher heyday so the affair might also agree with my oft repeated assertion that people learn to play the game and that characters who are professional or habitual sorts of criminals learn how to manipulate the system. Simon Hattenstone's Guardian article of 25th May examines the question as to whether or not our boys and girls in blue have stooped to fabricating terrorist convictions in an attempt to reassure the general public: one of four young Indian males two of whom had almost once made it to a terrorist training camp before bottling out, is supposed to have handed over his car keys to his courier company boss so that the boss could move the car, with weapons and explosives left in it. The article portrays the trial as farcical in its irregularity and tends to suggest that the convictions have been obtained with evidence fabricated by an under cover police team: when it is of course the fact that our darlings in blue have never been known to do anything of the sort. A propre discussion of contemporary law and order in such a context as might seem to present itself, ie the present carelessness of the new labour administration toward the ineluctable necessity for the CJS to fulfil its function in society, with due attention to various ideological considerations and perspectives in framing some kind of long term strategy for a world that has changed rather a lot since trial by jury was instituted. This seems to progress logically toward another major headache for the CJS with the question as to the various impressions people may have acquired as the result of the publicity ensuing from the Nurse Letby conviction for multiple infanticide. David Conn's Guardian article of the 14th of May goes over many of salient details as well as anyone's I suppose. Anyone might be forgiven for being confused by the enormity of the discrepancies between what the prosecution have put over and what leading experts from around the globe have said about the quality of the medical evidence itself. One internationally renowned neonatologist has reacted with severe indignation at the use of one of his research papers by the CPS. It is difficult to credit the extent to which his indisputably top drawer credentials in fact support the remark that there were no murders at all, and that if the standards he had found at the hospital in question had occurred under his jurisdiction he would have had it closed down: he particularly stressed poor staffing levels. Among other things I tend to suggest that if not so much the judges in the case that certainly many in the CPS are not sufficiently scientifically literate to readily comprehend the medical issues and biological nomenclature and that this mixes badly with an antiquated legal system heavily reliant on testimony and adversarial courtroom decisions obtained by arbitrary preparation. Some of that is admittedly a bit outside my own range of insight and experience in that the judges in this country are all public school network characters but I am probably a little less ignorant of much of the science than the average kind of defence lawyer that was ambushed with a certain kind of story from what is in fact very much a minority medical opinion: Mr Conn describes in quite superlative terms how overwhelming and unprecedented the evidential dispute is but our legal system has it as irrelevant. On the downside from the young Nurse's point of view is the families largely seem to believe her guilty and at least one parent had thought he had seen her tampering. Dr Lee does address this point to some extent and my own experience tells me, as do healthcare professionals I have known, that we should be prepared to believe not only that our hot political potato NHS is in fact very fallible, but that many do spend too much time glossing over its failings for various motives that can hardly be described as anything more virtuous or congenial than cheap social propaganda. It seems very arguable the conviction is too convenient for a health service that is too good at failing to acknowledge its failings and limitations and One tends to consider that also unlearned families will tend to believe what they are told. What must have struck many as most damning were these notes in Letby's house which most again would definitely seriously consider as evidence of confession so the obvious question is to how these may have been explained; I suppose they could just be taken as an over-worked and under-funded over-stressed and hard-working individual seeking to express a certain amount of professional frustration with work matters and it is surely about time we heard something of this. In summation of the case it is inescapably salient that what we have is the British legal system very questionably acquitting the British health service of responsibility for baby deaths which according to the best informed opinion are rather caused by inferior standards than by some inexplicably homicidal nurse. The public has not quite heard a reasonably complete account of evidence from those actually involved in the deaths in that the media covering the trial referred fairly haphazardly to what people had actually seen her do on the ward. There is also the fact her parents seem unreserved in their asseverations of her innocence and the fact is that they perhaps more than anyone must know the truth about their daughter's actions, and it seems a fair assumption that if they had really thought their child culpable of such heinous and curiously motiveless acts, that they would not have defended her in entirely unqualified terms which they have: I thought offhand that they seemed like the very last sort of people who would dissemble in any way in such a matter. It is boringly predictable that labour MPs should have eschewed some sort of ruthless consensus on reducing the welfare bill: what is of suggesting that the peculiar circumstances in which so many labour MPs have been elected on a minority vote obviously leaves an unusual proportion of the PLP evidencing what would normally be premature concerns about personal majorities. This might prove maladroit in that as far as Commons majorities are concerned the political situation is perhaps more unpredictable than it ever has been. There are perhaps several major issues which could easily over turn the applecart as far as the average labour MP's questionably derived majorities allow for consideration of longer term responsibility in imagining they can fudge their way through the next four years and retain an overall House majority at the next general election. The international political landscape is but one in that e.g. saying it is unlikely Donald Trump will be in the Whitehouse by then only really betokens the remark that he has defied many such expectations though he seems to have at least temporarily run out of steam at the moment with his having managed to annoy many of his own party and supporters. Another is the suggestion that domestic political traditionalists are arguably rather underestimating the willingness of the electorate to vote for a real change of narrative on the single issue of immigration. I did not see what was wrong with Stammer's Island of Strangers speech and I thought he spoke quite aptly for many if not in line with his own activists. I am all in favour of stability but I think an awful lot of what has been alleged about especially irregular migration in terms of the numbers of undocumented illegals that have been living and working here relatively undisturbed by a fat cat legal establishment with little motive or capability to expensively assault a huge black economy unnervingly evidences a disturbingly dystopian view of government in our time. The assertion for instance that ten per cent or more of the capital's population is undocumented is really something more like a characteristic of a failed state than a first world liberal democracy. The notion that a Reform government could suddenly do something about an indeterminate but no doubt enormous number of refugees and illegals is all too arguably economically unreal according to conventional understandings, in that the furore over fuel and disability allowances demonstrates only too well that among other things various interest groups are rather good at lobbying against policy changes. One has to suppose to some extent that many voters felt they had waited long enough for a government that has not endlessly trumpeted a diminution of the state whilst pointing the finger at welfare claimants and the economically inactive as being to blame for poor expectations of a general rise in living standards rather than at say white collar crime, environmental degradation and/or political and judicial incompetence. This kind of unwillingness to confront social problems and market forces, particularly the unsavoury sort of capitalist consumerism pervading the daily lives of the general populace, is also rather well instanced by the PM's opting for an expansion of nuclear energy. That this is contrary to the general wind of sentiment, in that a tasteless and careless consumerism that is profitable for some, has not less than engendered an existential environmental crisis in various respects, this has obviously not escaped many despite a significant conspiracy of silence among many who claim to be responsibly concerned. It surely should be the task for a front rank politician, even when solutions can be devised to facilitate renewable growth, to try and persuade voters and taxpayers that this is a real problem that is going to be costing a lot more if it is not confronted sooner rather than later. The obvious remark is in simpler language that on the one hand it might be better if politicians were to stick to outlining harsh financial facts to expensive categories of sick and disabled, such as that borrowing to pay for anything is always just making more problems for the future without something like a valid investment goal with some kind of worthwhile gain, and on the other hand that going for nuclear is failing to responsibly elucidate further on what our energy expectations have already inflicted on an already crowded island. Suffolk Coastal MP Ms Jenny Riddell-Carpenter who replaced the infamous Therese Coffey last year has recently been inveigled into asserting that nuclear power is clean, which no doubt comes as a surprise to many Ukrainian refugees who have never heard any weird stories about power stations exploding: the constituency contains a rapidly expanding Sizewell C which many well informed have motivelessly reported as a sure fire white elephant financial loss in the bigger picture. I do not believe any political party seriously doubts the desirability of an effective conservational environmental perspective on all forms of industrial and economic activity but politicians need to find the courage to tell people that a sound long term political strategy sometimes requires some short term sacrifice if desirable goals are to be obtained. We often forget that with 21st century problems we at least have 21st century tools as e.g. many sorts of disabled persons are after all able to make a much more meaningful contribution than they were in times past with working from home via desktop computer, and they for example need the nation to have functioning cyber defences as well as adequate emoluments for a dignified existence if they really cannot earn or trade for a basic income. I do not personally endorse nuclear power in any respect, I never have, and I never will be among that have conspired to leave an apocalyptically toxic legacy for tens of thousands of years. There are more than enough hazardous dump sites tucked away here and there adjacent various essential aquifers to make any sound minded person's hair stand on end without splitting any atoms. There is something deeply and fundamentally troubling about a community that can protest about temporarily unsightly pylons whilst being willing to endorse such actions for all too arguably short term propagandistic purposes in glowing promises of power for millions of homes. It seems worth making some dramatic clarification of social reality in terms of what we should really be able to expect from the government. There is an avalanche of stories in the process of inundating the media about Pfas in the water table. This one by Tina Deines for thecooldown.com a US environmental advocacy group is a bit of an eye opener in terms of the fact it records unprecedented levels recorded in a lake in New Mexico: it is being alleged that a single mouthful of wild duck from the lake would equal the maximum recommended safe dose for an entire human lifetime! These two stories from France are highly characteristic of the serious long-term and inescapable legacy of fossil fuel burning and industrial contaminants throughout the developed world and beyond and in my view really point toward the necessity for a serious environment first rationale for contemporary economic development: one which has to make an honest assessment as to how some of the post industrial threats to human health might be addressed. Phoebe Weston for the Guardian describes the banning of the use of local drinking water in idyllic looking Franco-Swiss borderlands as apparently owing to the use of firefighting foams in a nearby airport; in another contemporary article she also describes the misgivings of a nearby Alsace community at having over forty thousand tons of toxic chemicals haphazardly tucked away in a decaying potash mine. Thomas Heaton's article for the Pulitzer centre some thirty months ago details another immediate specific significant threat to global ecosystems in the shape of thousands of shipwrecks decaying and releasing huge quantities of various toxic substances. He largely focuses on WW2 wrecks in the US Pacific sphere of interest but there are also thousands in the shallower Baltic and North seas that are of very significant concern. Closer to home Rachel Salvidge for the Guardian on July 7 provides a lot of detailed and very useful information about a lack of effective regulation of what farmers are growing our food from.
As far as growth and business is concerned Tom Burgis's recent Guardian investigation into Salmon farming uncovers an institutionalised unwillingness to confront crime and dirty money on the part of a state that has been hollowed out by endless economies motivated by short term profit, whilst a sinister "theatre of financiers" can afford to employ the best professional private security and spying services to threaten environmental campaigners: what is I suppose relevantly of the remark that most of the nation's progressive political parties and pressure groups have been infested with police spies since the 1980s. I think as far as Salmon farming itself is concerned there might seem to be some good argument it ought to be restricted to land tanks. The issue obviously does elicit profound emotions as they are an iconic animal that in the wild perform the extraordinary feat of migrating across oceans and it does seem rather ghoulish that humanity should have contrived to greet them with diseased and tormented escapees from food farms. ): Edward Siddons and Jon Ungoed-Thomas had remarked on a similarly blithe and farcical attitude toward white collar crime in an article last year in that much trumpeted new powers to prosecute tax evasion facilitators had not been used even once. The article does not quite make it clear as to whether this was due to HMRC forgetting to employ someone to do it, or simply not being bothered, or simply forgetting. In my view the government's propositions for the water industry are little more than an oversized sticking plaster when major surgery is required in that it surely has to be conceded there is a worsening environmental crisis and climate change syndrome clearly at hand for all sorts of people in all sorts of places that ideally ought to be addressed. Whether you're a Cotswold retiree waxing sadly about the smell of sewage in increasingly empty countryside, or a Pacific islander whose nuclear test toxic alien invasive species infested island is rapidly disappearing under icecap released inundations, or someone who has hardly noticed the warmer winters and not quite yet been affected by any associated personal medical or environmental disasters it sure has to be admitted there is an awful lot of legitimate scope for seeking to establish cross party consensus on the nature and scale of the problem with significant aforethought toward the kind of legislative reform that is clearly going to take place to some extent in the management of water. The environment qualifies everything we are and everything we do because it is what we are: the economy; society; business; agriculture; mental health; fishing and industry all depend on a healthy environment. Any kind of serious political social or economic strategy has to acknowledge the increasingly serious consequences of long term environmental degradation: any other kind of perspective on development is at best second best. The government's attempt to talk up the idea of economic growth immediately runs into an overwhelming body of evidence that environmental decline is a far more fundamental and wide ranging problem than is being admitted: one that is also growing exponentially. My own home town of Ipswich is I suppose much like many others in that e.g. it has usually been considered a marginal constituency generally representative of the average English town: it perhaps lacks a certain amount of character in that it historically it is little more than a commercial centre for local agriculture and associated light industries and like much of East Anglia, particularly Suffolk, it is with little exception uniformly flat and uninteresting farmland. I assume that most English towns have similar problems with waterways as the disturbing data finding its way ever more loudly into the media despite all that various vested interests can do to frustrate a neo-apocalyptic interpretation of the sum of various immediate threats to water quality within an equally disturbing and much larger environmental perspective is rapidy becoming impossible to ignore. If One were to look around at central Ipswich it might seem a fairly valid sort of notion that the kind of expansionism and growth being mooted by the Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor ought to be the way forward as far as trying to secure anything like a general prosperity is concerned. There are any more pricey looking yachts in the harbour than there once were and the luxury flats that have sprung up like giant dominoes around it in recent years are also very much the kind of thing that tend to act as a standing testament to the possibility of an attainable and rewarding future for the industrious individual. If however One takes a closer look at the old central business district the signs of economic malaise are clear and highly visible to those who might have an interest or those who have simply witnessed the changes that time has wrought in the last few decades: there are endless empty untended facades where once household names were littered endlessly throughout a central businees district that almost rudely exhuded prosperity. At weekends the place was wall to wall with shoppers, students, families and old folks, with dozens of pubs always packed out with crime and violent incidents very much an occasional rarity rather than something you might expect to be a matter of routine concern. These things are of course to some extent a familiar symptom of change in that the circumstances which make one urban centre prosperous and another empty are never static and part of any serious discussion with modern analytic tools surely has to saliently observe that it is perhaps the principal recurring failure of progressive governments that they fail to anticipate demographic change. The modern world often accepts capitalism as at best a necessary evil, but it is for instance within this context an interesting paradox as it were, that the privatised financial interests which plastered the countryside with red brick houses in the Victorian era managed to plan sensibly and effectively for hundreds of years ahead. It is arguably a perfectly reasonable and accurate remark that these remain the principal functional feature of the urban landscape in the UK. An all too tempting question is as to why post war governments might seem incapable of doing anything much more than building tower blocks that do not sustain happily functioning communities and rapidly become wrecking ball fodder. Of course that is a little unfair but the fact remains that successive governments have unsurprisingly failed to anticipate or address the present housing crisis or perhaps any of several major issues underlying and accompanying it. It will not fully escape the attention of many that this means the labour government is trying to spend lots of money it did not do much to create, on an ostensibly altruistic refugee management that will coincidentally make it an army of new friends out of nowhere: I am quite taken back to hear that most of these million and a half new houses will be alloted to refugees as among other things I was already jealous of their accommodation and it seems that the DPM is avoiding the allegation quite studiously. The name Ipswich derives from the river Gipping which flows generally east south eastward across the south-eastern edge of the Anglian brecklands into the settlement around its confluence with the Orwell estuary: it was originally termed Gippeswyck which appears to be a conflation of the river's name with a Dutch term for a specialised kind of settlement so it seems a reasonable surmisal that it significantly originally derived from post Roman continental influence and meant something like rivertown which might also have something to do with the fact there is a small island on the watercourse perhaps half a mile or so from where it reaches the old quayside. What is of observing that subsequent Viking incursions laid waste to much that might have revealed a great deal about the so called dark ages in eastern England but it seems a generally reasonable inferral that the area has always been generally prosperous lying as it does in the best temperate zone champion country; or at least it did prior to the industrial revolution when significant alterations were made to facilitate the movement of agricultural products from inland by barge. There seems little question that the region was a focus for an increasingly specialised wool trade in the mid-saxon period in that many modern towns and villages originally arise from sheep farming with perhaps most country roads in Suffolk still following quite ancient pasture outlines. A walk through the town in daylight will also betray evidence of an historical prosperity as its centre is littered with medieaval churches abounding with the lavish tombs of particularly Elizabethan burghers, civic dignitaries and local worthies of one sort and another; these seem to eerily conform with the rank appearance of the hapahazardly mismanaged waterways with murky looking chunks of old barge routes abandoned in needle and condom strewn parks adjacent the football ground full of inedible hazards for domestic animals. Wikipaedia's recent entry for its page on the Gipping wryly concludes after narrating various ongoing attempts on the part of local voluntary groups, private individuals and ineffectual local government to make something less of a stinking managerial embarrasment out of the river, that even what might be described as intermediate monitoring of water quality has only just been implemented: that is quite a testimony to the power of commercial interests given the nature and scale of the problem. It seems inevitably best to consider this question alongside another great issue of our times, that of migration and immigration since it also betrays a crisis of mismanagement on the part of political leadership: what is of reiterating that you have to be a complete drooling mental defective to imagine that in seeking to accommodate vast new numbers of relatively unscrutinised individuals within the urban landscape that the first point of reference should not be waterways management and water quality. What is very much of the argument that this really ought always to be the case and that it should not have to take an artificially created population explosion to elicit anything resembling a sense of genuinely conscientious responsibility: within a behavioural sort of context I really feel it worth noting that these associated problems all too arguably betray the same creeping malaise of macro-psychological short termist self deception woven into the fabric of government. It surely ought not to be expecting too much of our contemporary political establishment that some sort of cross party consensus ought to exist about the nature and scale of environmental degradation along with perhaps some acknowledgement of its consequences. It is perhaps rather more obvious that there is a massive amount of underachievement taking place with regard to long term planning in that e.g. the gloomy apocalyptic condition of inland and especially urban waterways has a direct and decisive impact on the mental health of communities which once they start taking pills for overeating processed food, pills for depression, pills for this, pills for that, pills for the goddam other only worsens the condition of waterways adding a fresh dimension to the threats they are facing. Damian Carrington Environment Editor for the Guardian provides an excellent snapshot of the problems faced by our politicians in an international context in detailing how UN attempts to introduce curbs on plastics production is swamped by well funded industry lobbyists who should not even be part of the discussion. The editorial quotes widely from authoritative sources in substantiating that it is internationally based petrochemical interests, big industry, not manufacturers or suppliers in general who are making a nonsense out of the will of national governments. Saying so quite reasonably prompts the observation that as far as the nationalisation question is concerned in respect of the water industry it clearly ought to be asked how the Thatcher regime got away with denationalising it in the first place just as in respect of environmentalism generally it ought to be asked how we are going to recycle all the old solar panels now building up in waste storage facilities: they are both very sensible questions really. What is very much of seeking to assert that it is essential that we do something about this abysmal foetid culture of failure poisoning the nation and the condition of our inland and especially urban waterways is the best place to start. It extremely difficult to comprehend and utterly intolerable that the general population has allowed itself to be socialised into accepting that moneyed interests have the right to render our waterways a toxic hazard when they should be the focus of our so called civilisation. Notes What strikingly concerns my long standing aversion to the Home Secretary Nitwit Pooper: I need some acknowledgement of the maladroit role played by labour activists in my personal history and as the daughter of labour activists I cannot help but suspect that she has sought to bury some very valid criticism of the party's social activities in Ipswich. |