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UK advertising rules save us from the climate lobbying mess in the US
George Monbiot, Guardian
Freedom to buy public opinion curtails US democracy. The UK’s political advertising restrictions are one thing we’ve got right
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They might seem stuffy and old-fashioned. But the UK’s tough restrictions on political advertising are among the few things British politics has got right. If you don’t like them, consider the alternative.
In the United States at the moment, competing lobby groups are trying to buy changes to legislation. The fossil fuel companies – hiding as ever behind trade associations, PR companies and fake thinktanks – are trying to derail the new clean energy and security bill. The new bill seeks, at long last, to cap carbon emissions in the world’s most powerful country.
Without it, there is precious little chance of achieving a meaningful global deal to prevent climate breakdown. Environmental groups are seeking to defend the bill. In both cases the strategy is the same: to spend as much money as possible buying advertisements. Money really does talk in the United States: you can hear it every time you turn on the radio.
(13 May 2009)
Green movement ‘hijacked’ by politics
James Randerson, Guardian
Peers accuse organisations such as Greenpeace of being multinational corporations that peddle fear
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Parts of the green movement have become hijacked by a political agenda and now operate like multinational corporations, according to two senior scientists and members of the House of Lords.
The peers, who were speaking at an event in parliament on science policy, said they felt that in some areas green campaign groups were a hindrance to environmental causes.
“Much of the green movement isn’t a green movement at all, it’s a political movement,” said Lord May, who is a former government chief scientific adviser and president of the Royal Society. He singled out Greenpeace as an environmental campaign group that had “transmogrified” into one with primarily an anti-globalisation stance.
… Lord Krebs, the former chairman of the Food Standards Agency and current principal of Jesus College Oxford also criticised Greenpeace, saying that it had been set up to peddle fear on environmental issues. “Greenpeace is a multinational corporation just like Monsanto or Tesco. They have very effective marketing departments… Their product is worry because worry is what recruits members,” he said.
He added that in some areas, such as warning about the effects of climate change, such an approach was justified, but that Greenpeace sometimes chose the wrong issues – for example, nuclear power and GM crops.
Sauven said Greenpeace’s resources are a “tiny fraction” of those of Monsanto or Tesco’s. “With very few resources, we are a very effective campaigning organisation,” he said, adding that he would prefer to take the comments as a compliment. “I can live with that one.”
(13 May 2009)
This is an inevitable part of the process of social change. “Respectable” leaders realize that they are falling behind the curve, and begin to criticize those who are in the forefront. The classic example is the bitter criticism directed at Dr. Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights movement for stirring things up.
It’s ironic that the worst insult that Lord Krebs can come up with is to be like a multinational corporation.
-BA
Monbiot: Funding for academic research has been taken over by business
George Monbiot, ZNet
Captive Knowledge
Why is the Medical Research Council run by an arms manufacturer? Why is the Natural Environment Research Council run by the head of a construction company? Why is the chairman of a real estate firm in charge of higher education funding for England?
Because our universities are being turned by the government into corporate research departments. No longer may they pursue knowledge for its own sake: now the highest ambition to which they must aspire is finding better ways to make money.
At the end of last month, unremarked by the media, a quiet intellectual revolution took place. The research councils, which provide 90% of the funding for academic research in Britain(1), introduced a new requirement for people seeking grants: now they must describe the economic impact of the work they want to conduct. The councils define impact as the “demonstrable contribution” that research can make to society and the economy(2). But how do you demonstrate the impact of blue skies research before it has been conducted?
The idea, the government says, is to transfer knowledge from the universities to industry, boosting the UK’s economy and helping to lift us out of recession. There’s nothing wrong, in principle, with commercialising scientific discoveries. But imposing this condition on the pursuit of all knowledge does not enrich us; it impoverishes us, reducing the wonders of the universe to figures in an accountant’s ledger.
Picture Charles Darwin trying to fill out his application form before embarking on the Beagle. “Explain how the research has the potential to impact on the nation’s health, wealth or culture. For example: fostering global economic performance, and specifically the economic competitiveness of the United Kingdom … What are the realistic timescales for the benefits to be realised?”(3) If Darwin had been dependent on a grant from a British research council, he would never have set sail.
(13 May 2009)
G20 police ‘used undercover men to incite crowds’
Jamie Doward and Mark Townsend, Guardian
An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.
… Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.
Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.
… Amos added: “He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up.”
(10 May 2009)
Not a surprise. A useful rule-of-thumb is that when social movements are large enough to catch the eye of authorities, there will be agents provocateurs as well as police informers. The reports will be denied, only to be admitted years later.
The surprise for me is how heavy-handed the British police seem to be – the Guardian has been covering their expensive and intrusive strategy for some time now. Why so much police presence in a country that is so politically placid? Is it paranoia? Or do the authorities foresee the snwoballing of events like the G20 demonstrations?
Right now I’d vote for a culture of paranoia, rather than any serious threats from disorders. Overrreaction is a mistake from from the police point of view, since it causes middle-of-the-road people to become radicalized when they are caught up in events. As George Monbiot says, “a liberal is a conservative who has been twatted [hit] by the police.” -BA
