UKIP - Greener than the Greens?

FACEBOOK - GREEN BRISTOL

Well I've still not got it together enough yet to write a big piece on the election results, and things are still settling down out there.

I will say that the result has had the affect of turning almost the whole country against the so-called 'government' and it looks like most people are now looking locally at last.

One party existed purely for entertainment and humour and that was of course UKIP. As expected by most of us they won just one seat, but I think Dummy Nigel's after election cabaret did surprise most of us. He has of course now destroyed whatever political career that he thought lay in front of him.

And the 'party' itself seems to be in terminal decline, with the tories stealing many of their maddest ideas and presenting them as if saying something means it will happen. In/out referendum, bringing back foxhunting, trying to ban EU citizens living and working here etc etc. Mad stuff that wouldn't be believed in a work of fiction ...

UKIP's sole MP Douglas Carswell started flirting with the Green Party soon after winning his seat, suggesting we had a common issue over the way votes are counted, that we smaller parties should push for AV or whatever system is currently fashionable, so that small parties can get an appropriate amount of seats. (Of course the stunning SNP victory proves that a small party CAN win under FPTP, but he seems to have missed that).

It got me thinking how UKIP and the Greens resemble each other. Well the Greens aren't absolute supporters of the EU in the way that the big parties (and Labour) are. But our reasoning is completely different to the Little Englander drivel spouted by the kippies. I'm sure that eventually the EU will collapse under its own weight but for now the ability to live and work anywhere in Europe is esomething we don't really appreciate it - until some idiots threaten to take it away and force us to live in this bland little island!

If we did leave the EU we'd take a huge hit to our economy - I reckon anywhere between a 10% and 15% fall in GDP. Even the Greens don't want the economy to shrink that fast, but UKIP do! Greener than the Greens ....

And their other bete noire, immigration? Let's think about this ... why does immigration exist? The answer is simple - growth and demographics. Corporatism and consumerism is based on endless growth. Yeah, I know WE know that's impossible and unsustainable, but the less bright parties - all of 'em - don't. And demographics - we've an ageing and not particularly fertile population and if governments are going to continue to be able to pay pensions and benefits they need a supply of young, fit and employable imported people. UKIP wants to close this door so we have to imply that they also want to start reversing growth - and they plan to do it far quicker than we ever could. Again, UKIP, Greener than the Greens.

You couldn't make it up ...

positive negatives

FACEBOOK - EROEI

It was announced today that UK inflation is now 0.1%. We economists fear deflation, its inevitable effect is to delay consumption in the hope that prices will fall further. Companies lose sales, workers lose jobs, the economy falls further.

But wait - isn't this a good thing from a Green perspective? Surely we WANT the economy to slow down, for consumption to fall.

And this cuts to the heart of the irony in a Green worldview. 'We' want to stop austerity which means we want the economy to expand. But we don't want an expanding economy, we want a contracting economy that eventually evolves into a steady-state economy. So we should be supporting austerity, which should result in falling GDP. Falling inflation or even deflation. Falling interest rates. Falling savings. Above all falling consumption and investment.

My answer? You expect too much - which is both a cop out and an answer.

Becoming Green, becoming a citizen of a steady state economy state isn't going to be easy. The only way we can ease it is by bringing it in gradually. Step by step. A genuine free market would of course make this process so much more straightforward, but no nation on Earth has a free market. Every nation has the dreaded scourge of politicians, desperately fishing for votes and baiting the hook with bigger and bigger promises of more, more, more. And the little voter fishies fall for it every time. 

We've had permanent 'teaser' interest rates now since 2008, and they're not going up any time soon. Now deflation makes the issue even more complex. As energy and resources continue to stutter on the cliff edge of rapidly falling EROEI and raw materials perhaps we finally have the real first harbinger of the contracting economy, just as we gain a fresh new government that doesn't even know about these issues, and even if they did would ignore them as they bait their rods ready for 2020 ...

7th May 2015

FACEBOOK - GREEN PROGRESSIVES

Well we're there - General Election (UK) 2015. All I will say is vote Green.

I do think it's going to be a groundbreaker, as it's the first election where the 'smaller' parties are the key and the big parties (Tory, Labour, LibDem) are on the sidelines. There's been growing disillusionment with British politics for years now, something that started in Scotland and Wales and has now spread over the whole country. That's no surprise. The Scots have felt disenfranchised for decades now, and the SNP have cleverly moved into the vacuum. It's a little different in Wales, but I think that confidence is growing there too, having a language isn't enough any more! The Cornish are forging ahead and here in Wessex we're starting to think of ourselves more as a nation than just a region, and why not?

The other important thing is of course the heady and deadly blend of climate change and falling EROEIs that are going to change absolutely everything for every one of us. Yet listening to the parties, with the small exception of the Greens, you'd think we were heading towards some sort of utopia where the economy will continue to grow, where miraculous new (and cheaper) energy sources will appear and where illness, poverty, discrimination and disatisfaction will all be consigned to the history books.

It isn't all grim. This very change in our political structure gives hope that as the old toff mafia starts to vanish into history community based politicians with a gift for the hard sell will slip into the positions of power and influence that need to be handed over to people with a clue what's going on. The fracturing of the old UK will make this transition so much easier as the governed and the governers get closer to each other.

This'll be an election that does get into the history books but over the longer term the reason for that will change. It's the first small sign that we are beginning to 'get' what's almost upon us, and that we're not going to just roll over and be dead. 

We've got this!