Offering the libertarian, minimalist-state, and free-market perspective on - mostly but not only – the political economy of Jersey's government and society
This Friday, another time-defying classic from those alternative giants of Southern Rock – Little Feat, pounding out Oh Atlanta! in the studios of radio station WLIR-FM, at Hempstead, Long Island, NY, in September 1974.
Despite drummer Richie Hayward having to take time out since August to fight the Big C, and founder and inspiration Lowell George no longer being with us, Feat, believe it or not, are still going, still playing, and still touring to huge and enthusiastic audiences, with Fred Tackett’s and Paul Barrere’s guitar interplay and Bill Payne’s keyboarding as good as ever it was. Clameur de Haro somehow doubts that we’ll be able to say that in 35 years’ time about most of the sugar-plastic pap currently filling the airwaves.
CdeH found it hard to choose between this clip for Oh Atlanta! and one from the Grugahalle, in Essen, Germany, in 1977, but feels that the 1974 one just about shades it.
Not bad audio quality for a clip now 35 years old. And not a bad way to start the weekend…….
Clameur de Haro was amused to read today that Mr Simon Cowell (whom he respects as an entrepreneur astute enough to identify a market opportunity and then create wealth out of the resultant product – but er………………not as a judge of artistic talent) has threatened to quit our fair shores in high dudgeon should the Twins Jedward win the current series of The X-Factor. “This really wouldn’t be in the script” he is alleged to have said. "If they win, it will be a complete and utter disaster".
Ignoring the hyperbole, and the implied admission that there is a pre-determined “script”, CdeH is quite tempted this weekend to watch the show, just this once, solely for the pleasure of joining the growing movement to deliver an Agincourt Salute to the phalanx of up-my-own-fundament judges by derailing said predetermined script – just as millions did, to the consternation of the panel of equally up-my-own-fundament judges, by persistently refusing to eject John Sergeant from Strictly.
However, there is, sadly, a serious side to this knockabout. Clameur de Haro is no fan of either show, which he regards as the two supreme examples of the dumbed-down saccharine pap, deliberately and cynically targeted at the unquestioning and the undiscriminating, in the cultural and political elites’ present-day replication of the Romans’ “bread and circuses” policy.
CdeH’s fellow blogger Behind Blue Eyes put this, and the causes and implications of it, superbly in this recent post.
Many dystopian novels have, as
part of their premise, a tyrannical government that hides from public view
information and opinions that could embarrass the authorities. In Fahrenheit
451, an elite squad of “firemen” go around burning down any house down which is
discovered to contain books. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the newspaper archives are
altered retrospectively to ensure the state’s narrative is
maintained.
Some say that in the information age such
restrictions could never be enforced. In reality, the government does not need to go to any
effort to hide the truth or subversive texts. All it has to do it ensure that
sufficient numbers of people are not interested in the world around them.
Make sure enough people get a s**t education so that
they grow up lacking curiosity in the way things work, are comfortable with
their mundane existences, and that mass entertainment is sufficiently banal to
stop them from opening their eyes and engaging their brains. As long as the
number of people who can be bothered to keep themselves informed and are
experienced enough to be able to form their own opinion is kept small enough,
who cares what those people think?
If you want “power” in this country, you
don’t need to have the best thought-out policies: you don’t need to be the
brightest mind. This is socialism’s legacy: a nation where the majority are so
ill-educated that they haven’t even heard of the classics, where vast swathes of
society don’t have to engage their brain to feed and clothe themselves, where
generations of parents don’t feel the need to encourage their children to
explore the world.
This country is no longer run by a patrician elite,
but by a cynical class of populist authoritarians who pander to every ignorant
desire of the largest minority. Britain is a tyranny of the ignorant.
Clameur de Haro has on occasions been incredulous at the extent to which some of his acquaintance, by no means unintelligent people, deliberately eschew the acquisition of knowledge about, and the habit of questioning, what goes on the wider cultural, economic and political worlds outside their immediate occupational and domestic environments.
Of course, the right to choose to remain ignorant or unaware is an indivisible concomitant of a free society, but it is in the ways such as Behind Blue Eyes describes that we as a society unwittingly acquiesce in allowing our independence and our freedoms to be gradually eroded, one by one.
Like multitudes of his acquaintance, Clameur de Haro has been utterly disgusted by the selective, one-sided, criminally inaccurate, and blatantly scaremongering “bedtime story” advert now being shown on television. It’s nothing else but pernicious, crude propaganda of which Dr Goebbels himself would have been proud – although emanating as it does from the minions of the shifty, snivelling Ed Marxiband Milliband, one should not be remotely surprised.
Considering the eagerness with which the Militant Green-Left denounce sceptics of the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam as deniers or worse, their silence so far on this classic example of the techniques of totalitarianism has been deafening – and because of that, so unequivocally revealing of their true agenda.
As a critique of the advert, this piece from Janet Daley says it all -
The government is trying to terrify you. That is the only possible interpretation of its latest television advertising campaign on the supposed dangers of global warming. Whether or not you accept the scientific premises behind the “bedtime story” advert which is now to be investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority after attracting over 350 complaints from the public, there is no question that it is propaganda in the strict technical sense of the word.
That is to say, it is an attempt by the state to manipulate opinion and evoke emotional reactions without offering argument or evidence for its case. It accepts uncritically the most extreme rendition of the anthropogenic global warming narrative as if it were entirely uncontentious and presents it in the most sentimentally evocative possible way (ie as a threat to one’s own children and to defenceless creatures generally). It uses the techniques once associated with totalitarian societies not to persuade (which is what advertising properly does) but to coerce: to create fear and guilt.
And to what purpose? Without offering constructive argument or serious explanation of the options, we can only assume that this is a campaign designed to browbeat the public into accepting any new restrictions or “green” taxes which government may choose to impose.
Fortunately, it seems that ordinary people still have the independence of mind to know when they are being bullied.
Indeed they do: and moreover an accurate translation of the Green-Left’s propaganda, and an explanation of its true agenda and motivation, is available. It’s here -
Warning – contains strong language which may offend.
Clameur de Haro would undoubtedly have preferred that the little girl’s comment at the end had been expressed in rather less robust terms – but both the message conveyed by her father and the essential meaning of her own response, are infinitely closer to the truth than the original.
That seemed to Clameur de Haro to be the thrust of the argument (if one can dignify the content with such a complimentary term) advanced by Ben Queree, the Jersey Evening [sic] Post’s somewhat optimistically-named political correspondent in his column last Monday about the contribution of Senator Ian Le Marquand to the civil partnerships debate.
Mr Queree said this of Senator Le Marquand’s contribution -
His was a strange speech. He said that he could not support the proposals because they were too much like marriage – although he preferred an arrangement extending civil partnerships to straight and gay couples. No, I can’t figure it out either.
The argument was too fragmented, too disjointed. It gave the impression of a fig-leaf – an article held up to protect something that the wearer did not want to be seen.
Senator Le Marquand was not the only Member who struggled with his faith, his public mandate and the proposition – and nothing should be said to minimise that struggle, or to trivialise it.
But what Senator Le Marquand has to accept is that his vote against the proposal was a vote in favour of the discrimination against gay couples.
In this, he was of course doing no more than faithfully following the earlier lead of his editor, about which CdeH blogged last week, especially in his snide little comment about a fig-leaf designed to conceal something the wearer did not want seen.
Well, Clameur de Haro listened to the debate, including Senator Le Marquand’s speech, and unlike our esteemed political correspondent, experienced no problems at all in “figuring it out”. What the Senator appeared to be saying was that, despite the need to eradicate manifestly unfair discrimination as widely as possible – which, Mr Queree, was illustrated in his point about extending full civil partnership status to both homosexual and heterosexual couples – the advantages to society overall of reserving to heterosexual marriage only just a few legal, civil and fiscal privileges available to no other form of union comprised a prevailing counter-argument.
It was a complicated, but thoughtful and nuanced exposition of opinion: but if those qualities were the reason for Mr Queree’s finding some difficulty in understanding it, that does not augur well for political reportage.
With a few moments’ thought, it might occur to Mr Queree that Senator Le Marquand, in his previous role, was probably presented on a fairly regular basis with the results of the cultural left’s 30+ year attack on the institution of marriage and the traditional family – and that it may well have been that experience which informed his view, rather than the religious or homophobic prejudice which Mr Queree clearly assumes, and none-too-subtly implies.
In voting against the full proposal, the Senator was not positively discriminating against homosexual couples – if the JEP supplies you with a Mercedes, Mr Queree, while supplying your editor with an Aston Martin, you are not a victim of discrimination – but seeking to uphold the status of traditional heterosexual marriage as the principal societal unit, and for valid reasons.
Clameur de Haro was, to say the least, unimpressed by the both astonishing and disturbing exhibition of presumption, going beyond the remit of one’s office, and straying into the political arena by a supposedly impartial public servant, provided recently by Mr John Rogers, the Acting Head of TTS.
According to this report from BBC Radio Jersey (not always, it has to be said, the most accurate of media outlets), Mr Rogers has taken it upon himself to pronounce it “essential” that an environmental tax is introduced, and has also proposed the levying of taxes on fuel or (did he mean “and”? wonders CdeH) vehicle emissions.
Mr Rogers is clearly a devoted adherent to the Green Religion and its CO2 articles of faith, at one philosophically with the enviro-authoritarians who wish to either police us or tax us into behaving as they think we should, rather than persuading us.
He should perhaps be reminded that a unified set of policy prescriptions stemming from all-pervading Greenism have not been explicitly approved by either the States or the general public, and that candidates who have stood for election on an overtly Greenist platform have been roundly rejected by the electorate.
Were he, moreover, to pause for a few moments’ reflection in his crusade to direct us all how to live our lives, two things might just occur to him. Firstly, that adding further costs to travel and distribution in a island with poor public transport is both ineffective, inflationary, and fiscally regressive: and secondly, that positive, market-driven incentives to recycle are much more desirable socially, and much more likely to succeed practically, than illiberal coercion. A system of tax relief vouchers for regular recycling, for example, might well be far more effective, and should not cost upwards of the quoted £0.5m (plus no doubt an additional clerical “resource”) to administer.
In recent exchanges with Clameur de Haro, one senior States’ Member has unequivocally asserted to him that, contrary to popular opinion and concern, public policy in these challenging times is not made by unelected and unaccountable civil servants, but is exclusively the preserve of ministers and politicians answerable to the electorate at the ballot-box. That this should be axiomatic especially in the case of new taxes, should go without saying.
Mr Rogers however appears not have heard this, or to have unilaterally decided that this need not and does not apply to him. Perhaps his political masters can enlighten him – and ensure that his Acting status remains precisely that, and that only.
Yes, it's true - they're just as bad for the planet as driving 4x4s.
In his book “Time to Eat the Dog – The Real Guide to Sustainable Living”, Robert Vale claims that you should think seriously about either doing without, downsizing, or even eating your pet, because the carbon footprint of domestic animals is out of all proportion to the size of their paws – so much so that a medium-sized dog has an identical climate impact to a Toyota Landcruiser doing 6,000 miles a year. Your average collie, he says, gets though 164kg of meat and 95kg of cereals a year, giving it a high impact on the planet.
And worse still, a pair of hamsters does the same amount of damage as running a plasma TV! Bad news there for all the Greenists who were hoping, come the apocalypse, to salvage precious Gaia by using hamster-treadmill power to light their crofts and power their looms.
But all is not lost: rabbits and chickens are eco-friendly, apparently, because they provide meat for their owners – and a pair of rabbits can produce 36 young annually, which provides 72kg of meat and helps decrease the owner’s carbon footprint. Shame if it’s specifically your Greenism which has led you to be a veggie, but there you go……
Given the alacrity with which some of the questionable science crucial to the perpetuation of the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam is so readily swallowed (oh dear, perhaps not the most appropriate turn of phrase in this context………) by the Enviro-Greenists, Clameur de Haro suspects that, were he a mutt or a moggie in one of our local Greenist ménages this weekend, he might find it prudent to go AWOL when the Sunday roast is about to be carved…..
And the hound in the picture? Why, none other than that belonging to The Sainted One, Our Blessed Barack Obamarama. Given his susceptibility to the tenets of the GACCS, Clameur de Haro wouldn’t bet too much on the pooch making it through till 2012 either….
Favourable comment (most received via e-mail, interestingly, rather than through the Comments link, but who’s worrying?) on Clameur de Haro’s posting of the Lynyrd Skynyrd clip last Friday prompts a further effort to mark the welcome end of this – disappointingly no less adjectival than last - week.
Musical history is replete with outstanding blues guitarists, but not too many of them, for some reason, have been women. They’ve always been out there, of course, from Memphis Minnie onwards, and of the more recently well-known performers in the genre, CdeH enjoys listening especially to Laurie Morvan and Teresa Russell.
However, it’s the truly phenomenal Bonnie Raitt who, for CdeH, overshadows them all: it’s Raitt’s occasional forays into more commercial material which have brought the wider recognition she so richly deserves, but as a blues player she’s just on a totally higher plane.
Digressing for just a moment, Clameur de Haro would willingly see the Biased BBC broken up, its Charter revoked, and its protected status abolished. His socially libertarian, economically free-market principles abhor the perpetuation of a blatantly partisan state broadcaster which is funded almost in its entirety by a highly regressive tax, compulsorily extracted from the populace on pain of imprisonment, irrespective of whether they choose its product or not – and which then competes directly with its commercial rivals in disseminating dumbed-down pabulum to the unquestioning and the undiscriminating.
But - there are some things which the Beeboids alone have done, and still do, very well, and which CdeH would willingly exercise freedom of choice to buy on pay-per-view or pay-per-listen subscription. Among those are The Proms, and of course, The Old Grey Whistle Test (again, yes, yes, I know, I know…)
Which brings us back, albeit a tad tortuously, it has to be admitted, to where we were, because, yet again on a Friday evening, here’s another Whistle Test absolute gem – from 1976 this time, Bonnie Raitt performing “Love Me Like A Man”.
Clameur de Haro finds it utterly chilling to contemplate the all-pervading, cross-border, national sovereignty-disregarding, worldwide socialist regime that is going to be imposed on us, irrespective of whether we want it or not, and before we are very much older, if the treaty being hawked around for the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is actually signed.
A world government, massive redistribution of wealth, and supra-national enforcement regime are all openly and expressedly envisaged as the first three purposes of the draft treaty -
a) The government will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.
b) The Convention’s financial mechanism will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change, including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, (c) a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions
c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include: (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; (c) a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange
This became horrifyingly and undeniably clear in the presentation given last week to the Free Market Institute of Minnesota by Lord Christopher Moncton. In the 1990s, Monckton was one of the principal scientific advisers to the British Government, and he is acknowledged as a true scientific expert on the entire subject of so-called global warming and anthropogenic climate change – so much so that the high priests of the Green Religion, from that inveterate junk science peddlar Al Gore downwards, refuse to engage in debate with him.
His presentation, amplified by a multitude of peer-reviewed data, charts, facts and figures, comprehensively demolished the warmist-alarmist case, but it’s the end of his presentation on the political run-up to Copenhagen which should shock anybody.
Watch it, and weep for our freedoms which the international Green-Left alliance are going to sign away.
Clameur de Haro observes that a Stuart Syvret increasingly coming across as being at some distance from reality starts his latest blogpost obsessive rant with a portentous quote from Milan Kundera, author of, among other works, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Joke.
So it’s somewhat ironic, to say the least, that a widening constituency considers more and more the strong possibility that, despite the overt anti-communism stance of his works, Mr Kundera may well in actual fact have been a communist informer responsible for the arrest and imprisonment for 14 years with hard labour of a Czech dissident.
The recent piece in the BarclayTorygraph on this explains the background, but has elements of re-hashing under a new by-line, but this article in The Economist from about a year ago is more revealing.
Mr Syvret’s post, intriguingly, bears the title “On The Art of Forgetting”. Quite so.
Did anyone else, wonders Clameur de Haro, catch a TV news snippet in the past couple of days about the extent to which the deployment of CCTV systems in schools is increasing dramatically?
The item featured the UK organisation Classwatch, which openly markets itself as “the answer to effective classroom management”.
What was shown was not just a passive function, i.e. creating a record to be available in the event of either a crime or serious misbehaviour occurring, but an active, virtually real-time, management of the tuition delivery, from a remote control centre. So that the remote controller was actually monitoring and correcting the teacher in her teaching technique, and directing what aspects of the subject material for that lesson she should be according greater or lesser emphasis.
Classwatch, moreover does not come cheap – a system for one single classroom costs about £50 per month on lease, and about £3000 to buy.
The whole item raised in CdeH’s mind some uncomfortable questions about invasion of privacy through excessive, pervasive surveillance, which all too often seems to be imposed on a unwilling, or even unaware population, whether students in school or shoppers in the precinct, either on spurious security grounds, or in an exaggerated response to a perceived threat.So perhaps Jersey’s Education Minister might be moved to answer the following -
To what extent, and in what areas, is CCTV used in Island schools? And if so -
Has its precise use been cleared by Data Protection?Have parents had all the intended uses explained to them, and been specifically to give consent to their children being under surveillance?
Is it used purely in a passive role, or actively to monitor and correct teacher and pupil behaviour / performance?
If so, for how long, and under what conditions of security, are the records retained?
Have the teaching unions been consulted and acquiesced in the remote monitoring of their performance?
And of course, what costs have been, and continue to be, incurred?
No-one, not least Clameur de Haro, would quarrel with the advisability of using CCTV to keep school perimeters secure. Too often, however, meeting a basic need like that provides a convenient cover for a grossly excessive and invasive extension of surveillance, to the ultimate detriment of all our freedoms.
Clameur de Haro found it disturbing to see yesterday’s JEP editorial borrow an ugly argumental tactic straight out of cultural marxism’s handbook of debating methods: and hopes that it will indeed be merely borrowed – temporarily - and not become a regular feature.
Writing about the proposition on civil partnerships which was piloted, sensitively in the opinion of CdeH, through the States today by Senator Philip Ozouf, Chris Bright said much that is accurate about the need to eliminate unfair discrimination towards homosexual couples. But Mr Bright also said the following –
“….it is generally true that this proposal will not find favour with all Islanders. Like it or not, homophobic prejudice remains far from uncommon in our society……"
Thus did Mr Bright seek to insinuate that no objection to the proposal could possibly originate from anything other than homophobic prejudice – an accusation which he will, if he follows the logic of his own argument, presumably now be laying, rapidly and publicly, at the door of Senator Ian Le Marquand.
Clameur de Haro blogged recently about this typical tactic of the cultural left: it is known as “closing down the argument”, and is much used to circumvent debate and choke off the expression of a legitimate contrary view at source. My opponent, it seeks to imply, is by definition so unspeakably vile / prejudiced / homophobic / racist / whatever, that his views cannot possibly be accorded a hearing, never mind taken seriously. We see it in one of its most virulent forms in the equating of anthropogenic climate change scepticism with Holocaust denial.
There are in fact perfectly valid objections to according homosexual couples identical rights to married heterosexual couples which have nothing at all to do with prejudice, or homophobia, but much to do with the objector’s conviction that, despite the acknowledged need to eliminate as much harmful and unfair discrimination against homosexual individuals and couples as possible, society overall nevertheless benefits from a special status being reserved to the traditional heterosexual family. This view was elegantly articulated today by Senator Le Marquand, who deserves a substantial plaudit for taking the lone stand that he did, not from prejudice, but from principle.
To some who believe that the status of the traditional married heterosexual family as the bedrock of a free society is deliberately threatened – under the cloak of ending perceived discrimination - from both the state and the non-state cultural left, the wish to reserve to it alone just a few legal, civil and fiscal advantages available to no other form of union is a societal judgment, not a homophobic one. Treating non-married couples, whether homosexual or heterosexual, identically, as well as eminently fairly and justly, save for a few advantages enjoyed only by married heterosexual couples, can legitimately be argued from a standpoint which is neither prejudicial nor discriminatory.
Clameur de Haro does not necessarily adhere to the views described in the two preceding paragraphs: but he does however adhere to the view that their opinions deserve a rather more respectful critique than Mr Bright’s rather crude attempt to denigrate them as being merely rooted solely in homophobic prejudice.
CdeH can find that in the Guardian and other organs of similar ilk any day of the week – not, please, in the editorial columns of the Jersey Evening [sic] Post.
The militant Enviro-Greenists, and not least Jersey’s home-grown communicants to that cult, are fond of portraying those, like Clameur de Haro, who are sceptical about the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam as rabid, swivel-eyed deniers who, if not actually insane, spend their days plotting how to ravage fruitful, bounteous, Mother Earth, in between eating their own first-born. Altogether not the kind of monsters, therefore, who deserve any kind of hearing whatsoever.
Whereas the Enviro-Greenists themselves of course are all, without exception, calm, sensible and rational people, studiously, unemotionally, and dispassionately evaluating the scientific evidence and coming measuredly to the only possible, and naturally the "correct", conclusions.
So here’s an example of the latter, so that Clameur de Haro’s readers can see for themselves how absolutely spot on accurate the Greenists’ portrayals of themselves are.
This is good news, for one of the other key speakers is Richard Teather. Apart from his role as Senior Lecturer in Tax Law at Bournemouth University Business School, Mr Teather is also the author of the much acclaimed “The Benefits of Tax Competition”, probably one of the seminal works on the economic justification for, and benefits arising from, the competition provided to high-tax jurisdictions by their relatively low-tax counterparts. CdeH’s own copy is much read, and extensively bookmarked. Mr Teather, thankfully, is also an adviser to the States of Jersey scrutiny functions on tax policy and tax matters.
Mr Cook himself has sound views on the futility and hypocrisy of the attempts by high-tax jurisdictions to deflect attention from their own macro-economic and fiscal deficiencies by attempting to coerce low-tax jurisdictions into emulating them, and Clameur de Haro makes no apology for repeating them.
If through the populism of voter appeal or through some systematic ideology the means of wealth creation are overburdened, the incentive to create wealth is diminished, and governments consume a greater and greater proportion of the total economic value available. Eventually the economic engine becomes too dependent on an inverted pyramid of wealth creators. The creators become disincentivised and go elsewhere, or simply down tools.
Free markets, globalisation and tax competition have all combined to produce stellar growth in world GDP over the last thirty years pulling countless millions out of poverty.
An unlikely alliance of tax hobbyists, left wing newspapers, trades unions, and development agencies has catalysed around calls for greater concentration of the means of wealth creation in the hands of governments, and implicitly greater taxation of business and wealthy individuals through the outlawing of wealth structuring and planning, together with restrictions on cross border capital flows. They hope that their own constituencies will be beneficiaries of this new ‘contract’, with the authors, the tax hobbyists, gaining fame and funding, and their supporters feeling validated in their enduring distrust of the wealthy and their advisers.
Moves are in train to stigmatise wealth structuring and planning; to restrict capital movement through attacks on the use of international finance centre:, and to undermine transfer pricing arrangements. If successful the combined effects of these protectionist measures will be to trap capital within borders, significantly reducing overall economic activity.
Such measures will restrict wealth creating activity and encourage growth in central government expenditure. The net effect will be a constriction of wealth, a reduction in tax bases and a loss of global prosperity, driven by a short sighted grab for tax, all delivered through the Trojan horse of transparency.
To accuse banks, or companies, or individuals, of illicit or immoral behaviour because they plan their international affairs in perfectly legal ways simply raises the spectre of wrongdoing in a misleading and mischievous manner. Paid for ‘research’, produced by the tax hobbyists, supported by self interested union groups, and trumpeted by sympathetic bugles, claims that billions is being misappropriated through international finance centres. These claims have no credible evidence underpinning them, demonstrating an opacity which these same sources would find intolerable were it postulated by others.
Hopefully Mr Teather and Mr Cook will be both inclined, and able, to convince the Chief and Treasury Ministers of the need for a robust response to the EU and HMG – particularly as the current HMG has a future lifespan measurable in months at most.
Back in September, Clameur de Haro blogged about the further example of the intrusive state and its cavalier approach to data protection which seemed to be represented by Environment’s apparently selective targeting of oil consumers for an advisory about the steps necessary to prevent oil spillage pollution.
Data Protection actually responded to the blogpost very quickly, and (with due apologies for the time gap) CdeH is delighted to thank them and share the information they provided –
Distribution of the Oil Care Sticker
The Oil Care Group was established in 2008 in conjunction with Environmental Protection’s ‘Oil Care Campaign’. The group provides a forum for the oil industry (including the Island’s three fuel distributors and a number of boiler engineers) and Environmental Protection to discuss oil related issues and develop environmental best practice with regard to reducing the risk of oil pollution of the aquatic environment.
The Oil Care Sticker aims to provide simple and practical advice to domestic oil tank owners on how to stop oil pollution occurring and what to do if oil is lost to the environment. The Oil Care Group agreed that the best way to distribute the stickers to householders was through the fuel companies. Environmental Protection provided the oil companies with pre-packed sealed envelopes, which contained the sticker and an advisory letter from Environmental Protection. The letter was written on 26 June, 2008 and does not contain any address data. This method of distribution was decided to avoid data protection issues associated with the provision of personal information.
Oil Care stickers are only sent by the fuel companies to their customers if they do not have an oil sticker visible on their tank. To date approximately 10,000 stickers and advisory letters have been given to the fuel companies for distribution.
Distribution of an advisory letter providing information regarding single-skinned oil tank
Following a request from one of the fuel companies, a further advisory letter has been produced to advise people of the environmental risks of owning a single-skinned oil tank. The advisory letter is distributed at the fuel companies’ discretion and aims to support them in reducing the number of high risk oil tanks on the Island. The single skinned oil tank letter was written on 22 August, 2009, with approximately 50 letters provided to the fuel company.
So it appears that, in deciding the best method of distribution, both Environment and Data Protection had very much of the forefront of their minds the need for the protection of the oil distributors’ customers’ confidential personal data. A large Clameur de Haro plaudit to each of them.
A large raspberry, however, to those oil distributors who clearly didn’t feel it remotely necessary to reassure their customers that receiving a targeted advisory from Environment did not mean that confidential customer information had been disclosed.
Two illuminating examples of the effects of 40 years of the cultural left’s capture, then domination, of Britain’s education system, and the ethical degradation which both have worked so assiduously to propagate, have been available in the last couple of days.
Opposite is a picture of Sapper Matthew Weston, 20, who in June this year lost both legs and an arm after stepping on a concealed land mine while serving with the Royal Engineers on his first operational tour in Afghanistan. A few weeks ago, in brief interlude from his recovery in Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, he was taken out shopping in the surrounding streets, in his wheelchair, by his mother – only to be abused and mocked on account of his injuries and disability by a group of “boisterous” youths.
Well, Clameur de Haro, unreservedly and humbly, salutes Matthew Weston as a shining example of what used to be commonplace in this nation before the cultural left succeeded in fastening its malignant fingers on to the levers of opinion-forming and values-creating – and thanks him for his service, his bravery and his fortitude.
As for the excrescences who mocked him, Clameur de Haro fervently hopes, and will nightly pray, that abject misfortune and misery blight their entire lives, for they are sub-moronic scum beneath contempt.
Also opposite is a photograph of one Philip Laing, 19, who, a couple of nights ago in Sheffield, was rendered so tired and emotional by the prospect of having to endure the hardships of his next term at university that he was compelled to seek solace in relieving the pressure on his bladder over a war memorial.
Mr Laing, clearly as strong a candidate for the contemptible scum epithet as his contemporaries and soulmates in Birmingham, is shortly to be up before the magistrate. Clameur de Haro hopes that the Beak throws the proverbial book at him. Perhaps a substantial fine to be donated to Help For Heroes, plus a 2-year spell of community service helping Matthew Weston and his similarly wounded comrades with their rehabilitation, might provide the modicum of education so conspicuously lacking from either his upbringing or his time at university so far.
Just where did the worldview and value system of these two examples of scum emanate from?
Sometimes all of us, including not least Clameur de Haro, need a little lightening up and R&R at the end of a distinctly average week. And with that malignant pipsqueak Stuart Syvret purporting to decide for himself which aspects of legal process should or shouldn’t apply to him, the continuing myopia of Jersey’s public sector employees to economic reality, and an EU tax bombshell blowing a hole through an already questionable fiscal policy, this week has certainly fallen into that category.
So on this grey-ish, adjectival October Friday, here’s a classic from CdeH’s not too outrageously mis-spent youth – the great, great, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s legendary performance of Sweet Home Alabama for The Old Grey Whistle Test on (CdeH thinks) 11 April 1975.
Clameur de Haro remembers his youthful self, in those far-off days possessed of long-ish and blond-ish locks and always an aficionado of Whistle Test rather than TOTP, watching the performance, mesmerised. It was one of those moderately seminal experiences we can all recall in our lives, in CdeH's case a Damascene conversion to the blazing vibrancy and musical integrity of Southern Rock that’s lasted now for 34 years.
But looking it again after all this time got CdeH thinking - why is it that the greatest and most successful rock bands of the past 40 years have come predominantly, not just from the democracies of libertarian capitalism, but specifically from their Anglosphere countries?
Is it just the superficially obvious answer of commonality of language and culture? Well, maybe, but that doesn’t quite feel like the whole story.
Or could it somehow be more than this - a subtle consequence of the systems that regulate the Anglosphere societies being based on common law with the presumption that we are all free to do anything we like which is not actually prohibited, rather than the Continental tradition of codifed law that restricts citizens' freedom to only that which is specifically permitted?
So that a bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida in 1964 could just go ahead and get together to express themselves without needing 27 separate permissions plus elf'n'safety and risk assessments from state, county and municipal bureaucracies? And in the process create, out of nothing, an artistic and commercial product that millions have exercised their freedom of choice to buy for 30 or 40 years, and still do.
And perhaps that’s a handy reminder also to the dirigiste leftists who argue that libertarian capitalism is a zero-sum game, that there exists by definition only a fixed total of wealth, which requires activist governmental intervention to re-distribute it “fairly”. The amount of wealth isn’t fixed – it can be created out of apparently nothing, provided that individuals and entrepreneurs are allowed the freedom to create it.
Is it really that fanciful to wonder whether, if the enviro-militant Greenists get their way, in five years time, 50 years after Skynyrd was formed, the local jobsworths of the Barack Obamania Federal Energy Use Control & Allocation Agency will tell another bunch of music-mad teenagers in Jacksonville, Florida that they’re not allowed the obligatory licence to just get together for a band practice and jam session in a friend's garage, because the power requirement would represent an irresponsibly unnecessary and frivolous use of the planet's precious resources?
What a lot of enjoyment future Clameurs de Haro would miss. And what an unrelievedly dreary and joyless world it would be. We have to stop it happening, and with the wheels slowly but inexorably starting to come off the Great Anthropogenic Climate Change Scam wagon, we will. But in the meantime, and just for 5 minutes and 41 seconds, click the video clip to full screen, turn up the volume on your speakers, sit back, and enjoy those classic riffs.
Reluctant though Clameur de Haro is to compete with Daniel in the confines of the Lion’s Den, on examining more closely Mr Wimberley’s comments on some of the Greenism issues aired in CdeH’s recent post On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs, and Definitions ………, it does strike CdeH that Mr Wimberley’s response is, interestingly, equally significant for what he doesn’t say, rather than what he does.
Looking at some of these in more detail (with the original post in blue and Mr Wimberley’s comments in green) -
"The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen" –
which uses exactly the same techniques as he accuses Nick Palmer of using.
"scare" –
errr well no, actually thousands of peer-reviewed articles written by scientists who are each of them would just love, wouldn't they, to become famous by DISPROVING or throwing at least a little spanner in the theory of anthropogenic global warming
"industry" –
Oh, since when were Exxon paying Hansen et al to do their work? On no, sorry, silly me, "industry" refers to the support given by those industrialists who cannot put the common interest above their own narrowly defined interest, to people who can be paid to spread doubt, the key weapon, (exactly as was done by the tobacco giants, which is why I am justified in talking about "industry" and about "weapon")
"Godfather" –
well we know who that was. . .
These are eminently fair points in response to normal journalistic knockabout, but Mr Wimberley did not attempt any rebuttal of CdeH’s salient point, which was the castigation of Hansen’s demand that any who merely question the claims of catastrophic warming should be put on trial.
Mr Wimberley did not rebut CdeH’s condemnation of the 2006 proposal of David Marxiband Millband that we should all be forced to carry a personal carbon footprint use swipe card.
He did not deny the proliferating use of CCTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits.
He did not question, or attempt to justify, the use of children by local councils for enviro-enforcement espionage.
He did not actually deny or rebut the similarities between current Greenist policy prescriptions and those of the 1970s hard-left marxists.
"authoritarian restriction on private behaviour "
= green taxation or taxes on carbon or a carbon rationing system. Perhaps Clameur thinks it is more rational to tax labour when what we have is a surplus of people needing things to do which are paid, and what we do not need is to consume more. I rather think that ANY tax is seen as some kind of restriction by CdeH
Indeed - but only “Up to a point, Lord Copper”. Any kind of tax, being the state’s self-legitimated appropriation to itself of a private citizen’s legally-acquired wealth, is by definition a restriction on the citizen’s freedom to dispose his wealth as he sees fit. But that does not mean that CdeH advocates no taxation – on the contrary, he readily acknowledges that there are economic goods and public services needed by some or all of the population which only the state can or will fund, and that taxation is both an acceptable and the most practical way of raising the revenue needed.
The problems arise, and CdeH’s objections kick in, when states over-reach their remit or fail to control adequately their own spending, and use increased taxation as a prop – or when taxes are cloaked in a supposedly more acceptable colour conveniently to conceal their underlying purpose.
Mr Wimberley did not however deny the co-incidence of the impetus in vehement environmentalism with the collapse of communism.
He did not attempt to refute the explicit support of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity offshoot Green Left for an electoral pact with the Green Party.
"Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party," –
well no actually, there is no such thing. Poor old Clameur, it never does to check your facts, might get in the way of a nice sneer. The Green Party has a male speaker and a female speaker - or did until they voted recently to go for a single party leader, like the other parties, not sure what they have decided to call this person.
Again a fair point about the precise designation of Mr Wall – but what Mr Wimberley does not rebut is the more serious point about Mr Walls’ enthusiastic advocacy of growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement, in the interests of both.
Like many readers will have been, Clameur de Haro was appalled to read in last night’s Jersey Evening [sic] Post of the litany of crimes committed by the 16-year old miscreant with a history of violence whom the Youth Court on Tuesday sentenced to a restorative sojourn of 9 months at La Moye – although with any time already served, and with no doubt sympathetic assessments from probation officers and social workers bending over backwards to be non-judgmental, he will probably be back on the streets a lot sooner than that.
The youth’s crimes included participating in a vicious gang assault which left the victim with serious injuries, assaulting a police officer, vandalism in Coronation Park, being drunk and disorderly, racist insults to a member of the public, attempted assault on a police officer (again), theft of his grandmother’s keys and car, and violently resisting arrest (again).
And yet, because he is only 16, he cannot be named, because he is regarded judicially as a child.
How ridiculous. We invest children far younger than he with the rights and attributes of adults. Back in August, for example, CdeH blogged about Brook Jersey’s practice of not involving parents in the distribution of emergency contraception and contraceptive advice to “…..some as young as 12”. In what way does this criminal deserve the protection of anonymity on the grounds of childhood?
Jersey’s legislature has recently approved the establishment of a sex offenders’ register. Quite right too, although Clameur de Haro has reservations about the potential for mistake and misidentification, with all the horrendous consequences, and also about the ability of administrative departments to keep the data confidential, if confidential it is to be. But eventually, and hopefully with due safeguards if so, it may be in the public domain, irrespective of the dangers to paediatricians whom the dim may be unable to distinguish from paedophiles.
CdeH however would far rather be aware of the potential danger posed to himself, his neighbours, and his possessions, by the presence in the vicinity of a thug like the one sentenced on Tuesday. Said thug’s potential future employers might appreciate the knowledge too.
If he’s 16, then he’s old enough to have a motorcycle licence. Old enough to get married. Old enough to leave school and get a job. Old enough to join the Forces. Old enough (Heaven help us) to vote.
With fellow bloggers St Ouennais and Nick Palmer both having been kind enough to reveal their positions after taking the assessment questionnaire on The Political Compass, Clameur de Haro can hardly refrain from showing his own.
Attempting reverse analysis here is an inexact science, because the answers do not have corresponding scores on each of the axes, but for what it's worth, CdeH guesses that on the Authoritarian - Libertarian scale, the scoring from his antipathy to excessive state power and legislative restrictions on personal freedom is probably pulled back a little by the scoring from his support for a robust stance on both defence and the protection of the family as the principal societal unit.
But - wouldn't it be interesting and revealing if we could persuade all States' Members to take the test - and then publish the results so that we can all see exactly where they stand? Do any of them have the cojones to take up the challenge?
Possibly due to an undetected last ditch reaguard action on the part of the gremlins which have recently aflicted Clameur de Haro's comment moderation facility, a comment from Daniel Wimberley on his post "On Epithets, Labels, Beliefs and Definitions.........." was not highlighted for moderation.
CdeH therefore presents it as a separate post below -
Begins:
"The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen" –
which uses exactly the same techniques as he accuses Nick Palmer of using.
"scare" –
errr well no, actually thousands of peer-reviewed articles written by scientists who are each of them would just love, wouldn't they, to become famous by DISPROVING or throwing at least a little spanner in the theory of anthropogenic global warming
"industry" –
oh since when were Exxon paying Hansen et al to do their work? On no, sorry, silly me, "industry" refers to the support given by those industrialists who cannot put the common interest above their own narrowly defined interest, to people who can be paid to spread doubt, the key weapon, (exactly as was done by the tobacco giants, which is why I am justified in talking about "industry" and about "weapon")
"Godfather" –
well we know who that was. . .
"authoritarian restriction on private behaviour "
= green taxation or taxes on carbon or a carbon rationing system. Perhaps Clameur thinks it is more rational to tax labour when what we have is a surplus of people needing things to do which are paid, and what we do not need is to consume more. I rather think that ANY tax is seen as some kind of restriction by CdeH
"Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party," –
well no actually, there is no such thing. Poor old Clameur, it never does to check your facts, might get in the way of a nice sneer. The Green Party has a male speaker and a female speaker - or did until they voted recently to go for a single party leader, like the other parties, not sure what they have decided to call this person.
From Toby Harnden, US editor of theBarclayTorygraph, comes this piece (written in September, hence the reference to “next month”) about the reaction of militant environmentalists to the next project of two Irish filmmakers –
Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, whose film Not Evil Just Wrong is due to premiere next month, have been subjected to a slew of death threats and instances of disgusting abuse from the environmental Left. One commenter branded them “Hitler’s Henchmen”.
Their crime? Their film dares to challenge the conventional wisdom about global warming – they prefer to call it “global warming hysteria” – and take on Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.
Rather than try to rebut the arguments of the couple, it seems, their opponents want to shut down any debate.
One environmentalist sent McAleer and McElhinney an e-mail describing them as “stinking, selfish, sociopathic fascists” and expressed a desire for them to be executed. “It is one of my fondest hopes that whatever remnants of human civilization exists at the end of this catastrophe is able to put people like you on trial for crimes against humanity and give you the same treatment Hitler’s henchmen got at Nurnberg a long drop at the end of a short rope,” the email stated.
A commenter on YouTube wished that McAleer and McElhinney’s children be born handicapped because they were not campaigning against “pollution”. The most vitriolic comments have been deleted by YouTube.
McAleer said he was disappointed by the taking down of the comments. “We wanted to keep the comments so that people could see for themselves the hate being directed at those who dare to ask questions about liberal orthodoxy.”
The couple have been called “hillbillies,” “rednecks,” “zombies,” “dimwits,” “brainwashed idiots,” “muppets” and “slaves to greedy elitists”.
One commenter suggested a tactic for discrediting the couple, writing: “Slander them as tools of big oil/coal. Insinuate they’re on a par with Holocaust deniers.”
Remind you of any comments you’ve seen about Clameur de Haro’s blogposts on green issues?
Clameur de Haro is prompted by recent comments on his posts to muse at length on the potential for confusion stemming from the epithets and labels applied to beliefs, and the benefits of more precise definitions.
Mr Frank Binney (a new commenter, and most welcome) raises the issue of how accurate, or otherwise, it is to apply the “left” or “right” label to the Greenists? Tony The Prof, in his courteous and erudite way as always, highlights the undesirability of debating climate issues with ad hominem arguments. Both comments, and the reasoned, courteous tone of them, merit a full response.
CdeH subscribes to the view of The Political Compass that the traditional “left” and “right” label is no longer sufficiently adequate to describe positions on the political playing field, because the continuum is one-dimensional, and predominantly an indicator of economic position – ranging from communism or overwhelmingly statist collectivism (on the left), to unfettered, unregulated, laissez-faire capitalism (on the right). And that a more sophisticated and illuminating definition of politico-economic philosophy can be made by complementing location on the economic dimension with a statement of position on the social, authoritarian-to-libertarian continuum, ranging from ultimate authoritarian (fascism, in fact) to ultimate libertarian (virtually anarchy).
It should come as no surprise to Clameur de Haro’s more careful and perceptive readers that CdeH finds himself in the area of the 4-o’clock position in the bottom right-hand quadrant of Libertarian Right – being unequivocally in favour of small government, free trade, free markets, low taxes, but light-touch regulation on the economic continuum, and with a moderate libertarian slant on the social scale, believing as he does that the state aggregates too much power to itself and then often proceeds to exercise it illiberally, and has no business, for example, interfering in willingly-undertaken social transactions between competent, consenting adults, provided that others are not harmed thereby.
Not a million miles from the Hayekian and Friedmanite positions, it would appear, which probably accounts for CdeH’s intuitive listing of Friedman’s “Free to Choose” and “Capitalism and Freedom” as among the most influential formatives of his political / economic thinking.
CdeH frequently has the label “right-wing” hurled at him as an insult. On The Political Compass’ economic continuum, of course, this is, as far as it goes, a more correct than incorrect identification of his economic and fiscal philosophy (although quite why the belief that government is not per se automatically efficient and that taxpayers should be entitled to keep more of their own money, should be a cause for insult, is mystifying).
But on the social policy scale, and when hurled at a commentator who -
(1) naturally inclines to concern at the accretion and abuse of power by the authoritarian state and its agents;
(2) has been appalled at the implications for our liberty as citizens of Labour’s 12-year attack on habeas corpus, the right to jury trial, the right to silence, and the presumption of innocence, all on spurious grounds; and
(3) would choose La Moye rather than be forced to carry a show-on-demand ID card or render up his DNA without just cause, believing that it is his property and not that of the state,
the epithet “right-wing” as an insult is hilarious in its inaccuracy (as Clameur de Haro’s friends who know his views on privacy and personal freedom issues tell him), and betrays rather more about the insulter that it does about the criticised.
Where does this take us on the subject of applying labels in that area where politics and Greenism meet?
CdeH has good friends, occupying varying locations on the left-right economic-fiscal spectrum, who are very environmentally-minded but who equally accept that scepticism on green issues is valid, healthy, and should in a free society be widely aired, and that this is all very much a matter of private, personal choice, not public coercion. In no way could they be described as fundamentalist Greenists. On this specific point of socio-political philosophy, we would have to place them in the libertarian half on the authoritarian–libertarian scale.
But others – indeed, many others - appear, regrettably, to be much less tolerant. Consider just the following examples –
The Godfather of the global warming scare industry, James Hansen, being on record as averring that anyone who even questions the postulate of catastrophic warming should be put on trial. Not positively counter-argues it – merely questions it;
The proposal of David Marxiband Milliband, when UK Energy Secretary in 2006, to force the entire population of the UK to carry a swipe card to be presented on every transaction, with every single person in the land being expected to render account for their carbon footprint and being allocated a personal annual carbon allowance – enthusiastically endorsed by the then environment correspondent of The Guardian (now there’s a surprise) in the following terms –
“The move marks the first serious step towards state-enforced limits on the carbon use of individuals……….extends the principle of carbon to consumers, with heavy carbon users forced to buy unused allowances from people with greener lifestyles” ;
The proliferating use of CTV surveillance cameras, originally justified and installed for counter-terrorism purposes, to spy on householders’ recycling habits;
The admission of Ealing Council in West London that “hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged eight to 10,[have been]trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues” and that of Harlow Council in Essex which has said it has “25 ‘Street Scene Champions’, all aged between 11 and 14, who are encouraged to email or telephone the council if they suspect that an ‘enviro-crime’ has been committed”;
The examples of prominent EU Greenists with hard-left, marxist, pasts: those of us of a certain age, (paceTony The Prof) remember, for example, Joschka Fischer and Daniel Cohn-Bendit propagating in the 1970s, revolutionary socialist prescriptions eerily precursory of much of both the authoritarian restriction on private behaviour and freedom, and the “for-the-sake-of-the-environment-and-the-planet” taxation that the Greenists espouse today. Is it really just a coincidence that aggressive environmentalism really started to take off in the early 1990s when communism was finally consigned to the scrapheap?
The rallying call of Green Left - an offshoot of hard-left marxist Socialist Unity - for an electoral pact in Birmingham with the Green Party “……….to give a progressive and environmentally aware candidate the chance of taking the seat, and a victory for all those opposing the policies of privatisation, war, greed, racism and environmental destruction. We are firmly of the belief that this will benefit both the Green and progressive movements in this country……….” ;
The author of this, intriguingly enough, is one Derek Wall, former Male Spokesman (yes, I know – no laughing at the back of the class, please) of the Green Party, who in another incarnation also comes up with this explicit summary of the advantages from the growing collaboration between hard-left socialism and the Green movement -
“The creation of an Eco-socialist International network seems a good institutional basis for making European Green Parties more radical and I would like to see EU Greens working with the Nordic Green Left. I hope that it builds an eco-socialist network that links activists in every single state on this planet and, as we agreed in Paris, to work to make greens redder and reds greener.”
All of which suggests to Clameur de Haro that, far from the idea of Greenist Fundamentalism being an exaggeration, when taken overall, ample justification exists for that upper left Authoritarian Socialist quadrant of The Political Compass being the correct location for the activist, militant Greenism most often propounded by the save-the-planet-warriors. This is what he refers to when he speaks of Green Fundamentalists. As we can see, there’s a lot of it about.
And yet CdeH is mocked by a commenter for displaying a “Green is the New Red” logo on his sidebar?
Which brings us inevitably on to Mr Nick Palmer, Clameur de Haro’s most frequent commenter, and serial ritual abuser. Mr Palmer is fond of labelling CdeH as a recidivist perpetrator of what seems in his lexicon to be that most heinous of all crimes, far, far worse than mass-murderer, or child-abductor, or financial swindler, or…………………well, worse than anything at all really, namely being a “global warming denier”.
It sheds, firstly, an interesting perspective on the more strident advocates of radical environmentalism that mere scepticism, inherently just a manifestation of thought or opinion, rather than any illegal actions or criminal deed, should be judged so deserving of such calumny. But given on the one hand the inclination so prevalent in Gramscian cultural marxism (to give the colloquial, more familiar, label of political correctness its ideological origin) to establish, define, and prosecute crimes of thought and opinion, and on the other hand the correlation between Gramscian thought and militant Greenism, CdeH is relatively unsurprised by this.
The attaching to sceptics of the term “denier” in this context is quite deliberate, and no mere accidental or careless use of language. Its users are employing one of the classic tactics of cultural marxism – closing down the argument and thereby circumventing debate. It’s exactly the same technique which accuses someone of racism if they attempt to discuss whether current levels of immigration are sustainable, or of elitism if they suggest that a few more grammar schools with scholarships might actually benefit bright children from modest backgrounds, or of xenophobia if they suggest that handing over sovereignty to an unelected and unaccountable supranational authority might not be a terribly good thing for democracy. By seeking to equate enquiring scepticism about anthropogenic climate change with something as repellent as (primarily) Holocaust denial, they try to convey the idea that their target is so irretrievably and unspeakably vile that anything they say should not even be given a hearing, never mind taken seriously.
For the record, Clameur de Haro does accept that there has been an upward movement in average global temperatures over significant periods of the past century-and-a-half or so, but equally is persuaded that this has not been the case since 1998. As indeed, even the warmists – from the IPCC, who acknowledged that its first apocalyptic predictions omitted the Medieval Warming entirely, through Mann, who eventually conceded the fundamental flaws in the algorithms which generated his infamous hockey-stick, to the Biased BBC, which has just reported that for the last 11 years no increase in global temperatures has been observed and that there could be 30 years of cooling due to falling ocean temperatures - have had to admit.
Noticeable, isn’t it, how in the last few years, it’s all become “catastrophic climate change” rather than “catastrophic global warming”?
He has yet to be convinced, also, by the entire man-made / CO2 argument, having seen too many graphs of data sets showing non-correlation between temperature and CO2 output, temperature cooling during periods of rising CO2 output irrespective of whichever time lag is attempted, and studies suggesting that CO2 levels may be the consequence, not the cause, of temperature movements.
And he feels unable to ignore the peer-reviewed evidence that the Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history (and that a mere 30 years ago, some of today’s warmists were ardently warning of catastrophic global cooling and the strong danger of a new ice age). Climate change isn’t unlikely – it’s guaranteed, as it has been for the last x million years, mankind or no mankind, and CdeH is presently unconvinced that human influence on it, while possible, is nevertheless other than peripheral. The notion of “combating climate change” CdeH suspects, is about as feasible as combating tomorrow morning’s sunrise or combating the advent of next Christmas.
So, the correct term for Clameur de Haro is actually “anthropogenic climate change sceptic”. But then that’s so much less emotive as a term of derision than “global warming denier”, isn’t it? Perhaps those who inadvertently - or more likely deliberately - conflate the two need to put “dictionary” at the top of their Christmas List.
A contemporary take on Clameur de Haro, that ancient Norman customary law right of direct appeal to Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy, for justice or protection.
The Clameur still applies in Jersey, but it should never, ever, be invoked lightly, frivolously, or maliciously.
But for classical liberty and those who value it, these are dangerous times: so this Clameur de Haro raises afresh the traditional plea, but for protection from present-day threats to Islanders' freedom, privacy, and prosperity.
Clameur de Haro appeals and argues specifically........
...on economic & fiscal policy -
for a lower-spending, lower-taxing, less activist, government
and a smaller, more economical and accountable public sector
"Government is hardly ever the solution to a problem: government usually IS the problem."- Ronald Reagan
...on social policy -
against ever more excessive & intrusive bureaucracy, and against ever-expanding official databases
against increasing invasion of privacy, all-pervading surveillance, and the overbearing state
“ "Necessity" is the plea advanced to justify every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” - William Pitt
"Tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive: those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C S Lewis
"When the people fear government, there is tyranny: when government fears the people, there is liberty."- Thomas Jefferson
...on environmental & energy policy -
against the pernicious climate change and CO2 falsehoods peddled by the adherents of the Green Religion
against its authoritarian policy prescriptions and its intolerance of dissenting opinion
for the adoption of less economically & socially damaging alternatives
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it." -H L Mencken
"The global warming scam, the greatest and most successful pseudo-scientific fraud I have seen in my long life" -Hal Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California at Santa Barbara
“The CO2 theory of global warming is not verified by geological and climate records going back thousands of years, or by observed fact. The CO2 theory of climate change is based upon a computer simulation model and flawed data that has been widely criticized in scientific literature." –Terry Wimberley, Professor of Ecological Studies, Florida Gulf Coast University
...and in general -
in favour of libertarian & free-market, rather than leftist & statist, policy solutions
"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy: and the equal sharing of misery." -Winston Spencer Churchill
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Britain Better Off Out!
The European Union is fundamentally anti-democratic, unaccountable, illiberal, inefficient, and corrupt. This blog advocates Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, and Jersey’s maintenance of the maximum possible distance between itself and the EU, its institutions, and its regulations.
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