Hairdos and electric baths
"It's a bit like breaking wind in a hurricane". Top Gear's former man Quentin Willson has given the best political analysis of the day so far. That was his description (on Radio 4's Today programme) of the environmental significance of David Cameron shunning the oh-so-green and picking instead the luxury but not quite so green instead. With the entire British economy contributing just 2% of the globe's warming gases, political journalism risks focussing on what car Dave's picked when he's not on his bike.
That is, of course, partly his fault as he's chosen the politics of symbolism - , and - to launch his Conservative "green revolution".
It's partly our fault too for finding the personal so much more interesting than the political. We love learning about - and then usually condemning - the lives of those who aspire to rule us whether it's about hairdos, MMR or (that last example's for the nostalgic among you)
It's my fault too. In my interview with Gordon Brown last week I asked him how green the Brown household was.
He visibly winced and then talked rather uncomfortably and indirectly about what he did. After the interview he chided me gently for the line of questioning. His implication was clear - it trivialised important policy dilemmas which is what politics should really be about. At the time I thought him unduly defensive, unappreciative of the ways we try to make politics interesting and nervy that Cameron is so much better at talking about himself than he is. Ever since, he's been mocked for telling people that they should switch off their tellies at the mains and should unplug their mobiles overnight. So maybe he had a point.
Yes, the personal is the political. Yes, the success of political ideas depends on them resonating with people's own lives - Cameron is tapping green sentiment in just the same way that Brown channelled symapthy for the poor of the third world. But, no, the future of the planet does not depend on a choice of a Lexus or a Prius or on whether junior Brown or Cameron's nappies are binned or washed. It depends on who can find a way to persuade us to live within our planetary means but, more importantly still, who can persuade the Chinese, the Indians and the Americans to do it too.
P.S. Off to Tony Blair's monthly presser soon to discover why this is the NHS's best year ever. Or maybe I should ask him the Mrs Merton question about Labour and peerages. What do you think? Ideas gratefully received.
I'm 
Comments
I think Cameron's choice of car just proves what a hypocrite he is, all this green stuff is obviously just warm words.
Please, please don't ask the PM when he's stepping down (again)! It's such a waste of your 'first question' privilege!
I'm glad to agree with you about the unfortunate obsession that most of our media has with personality rather than policy, please do your best to show that there can be another way.......
Hi Nick, why not ask Tony if he is having his best year ever?
Without cameron Brown wouldn't have even been asked about the environment be grateful for that. the green lobby's obsession with making people feel guilty for emitting so much as a fart turns people off from a cause that is v worthy
In response to the previous comment, I think before he accuses Cameron of being a hypocrite, 'darlodunn' checks out the emissions figures for the cars used by Cabinet ministers. Blair's Jag (with all it's armour plating, etc) probably has a figure closer to 400g / km - over twice that of Camerons new car.
And given how much use Blair and the rest of his ministers make of the Royal Squadron (most of which are pretty ancient and inefficient in their use of fuel), Labours 'green' credentials are virtually non-existent!
Nick,
Perhaps you could ask TB why he and Labour have not (yet?) solicited donations to the NHS in exchange for peerages? The NHS's best ever year might even have turned out to be good enough.
BT in NL
Surely the obvious question is:
'Will you be offering peerages to donors willing to take on the NHS deficit?'
Summarises current woes nicely.
"With the entire British economy contributing just 2% of the globe's warming gases [..]"
I am not very happy about this trivialisation.
Considering the UK has approximately 60 million people living in it, i.e. 1% of the entire population of the planet, this statistic says that every Briton polutes twice as much as the global average.
Doesn't that strike anyone else as incredibly disturbing?
Regarding your comments on David Cameron, I must say that while I had initial high hopes that he would turn around the Conservatives, I've become disappointed in his antics and his continued style over substance approach.
He's coming across as been the Arthur Daley of politics - he will say and do anything in order to make a sale.
Before we either beat ourselves to a pulp or completely ignore 'green' issues, if a recent article in the Sunday Times is to be believed, in terms of overall emissions (manufacture, life cycle, etc) a Toyota Prius is actually worse than a Hummer 3..!
Does make you wonder about statistics - lies, damned lies.. etc....
Getting other countries to take our political priorities seriously is the nub of the issue. How can anyone do that who so conspicuously fails to take other countries' political priorities seriously in return. A new approach to international politics and international political institutions is a pre-condition of getting anywhere on fighting climate change. Does David Cameron agree?
I support Richard Green's observation above, and it's indeed sad that the poor nations are propping up the ever polluting Brit.
Very rich words from Quentin Wilson this morning, as driving a hybrid Lexus is way better than the gas guzzlers he's been known to own including the Mercedes E55 AMG which has a rather large 5.5 litre engine.
Hey Nick,
We all know that there is no way this could be the NHS' best year ever. Why not just ask him how stupid he thinks we all are....
So what if my TV and computer use energy on standby. They will only be warming my house as a result, hence I will use less energy running my central heating system.
Now, reducing stamp duty on a house if it has so many square feet of solar panels on its roof is an idea I would willingly sponsor.
Criticising politicians and public figures for their choice of car needs to be done with some care. David Cameron is the latest in a line of people who have been subjected to this Top-Gear-meets-save-the-whale commentary. Notably, the Prince of Wales with his Aston Martin Vantage Volante and Sir Menzies Campbell and his sorely missed Jaguar XJS have both come under fire.
Now, Sir Menzies, I particuarly feel for. The poor guy felt he had to sell his beloved 5.3L V12 G-reg XJS and instead devote all his driving hours to his VW Passat. The Jag wasn't even a car that was being driven that much - lord knows how many miles it will do with its new owner. Not only that, like the Prince's Aston, it's a British car built by a British company (Jaguar was not for owned when the XJS was built) in a British factory using British labour. The VW is patently German. But it's not patritotic devotion that's the real problem here. I know of plenty of people who drive older cars (I drive a four year old Jaguar), and I think that we need to look at whether changing the car for a newer, more fuel-efficient one is really a carbon-neutral thing to do. How much energy goes into making your new hybrid, far-eastern, perfume-breathing planet-lover? And then how much does carbon does it take to ship it from it's Kyoto-exempt country of manufacture to the UK?
Until somone can show me the full, holistic picture and demonstrate that scrapping an old car and buying a new one to save fuel has less impact on the environment than continuing to keep the old steel rolling around, then I will continue to drive my Jaguar and commiserate with those who feel edeged into losing theirs based on an ill-thought-out green arguement.
Very simply, In the year of huge NHS debt, Trusts who drew up financial recovery plans with leading Management Consultants being told by the DoH to ignore that advice and do it in half the time, the resultant job losses and subsequent procurement freezes and increasing loss of staff morale: How does this constitute the Best Year Ever, and does Tony Blair honestly think it's worth what it has cost?
Richard Green wrote:
"Considering the UK has approximately 60 million people living in it, i.e. 1% of the entire population of the planet, this statistic says that every Briton polutes twice as much as the global average.
Doesn't that strike anyone else as incredibly disturbing?"
Not really. It's a direct result of Britain being a rich country. I find the standard of living in parts of the third world a good deal more disturbing.
Nick,
With great respect to your undoubted skills it matters little what question you ask. The 'pretty straight sort of' answer you'll get will be to whatever suits Blair to answer at that time.
Questions are entirely a means for him to pronounce on some completely unrelated matter.
How often do you get a pretty straight sort of 'Yes' or 'No', for example?
It is surely a clever thing for Cameron to pick-up the Green Agenda as his "brand". It is an issue of the middle and upper class, it is an issue of the future (which means youth, women, mothers, family)that he claimed belong to him. He hasn't work out the policy and certainly no ground in his past. So, while there are nothing in substances it is smart to play a long life issue such as environment. He will always have an issue on hand to feed the media and the public and at the same time to attack the Labour.
He have the time at his side giving the fact that general election is still years in front. It is stupid enough for Gordon Brown to be involved on this Cameron manufactured debate. Not because environment is not important but he rather work on real things that matter to people. He ought to listen than to do the talk too much.
Dear Nick, actually I think you are absolutely right to focus on the personal. If progress is to be made in cutting greenhouse gas emissions, everyone needs to take responsibility for their contributions. Of course a Lexus versus a Prius is trivial in itself - but when you multiply that by 5 billion people, it is far from trivial. Cuts will come from us each thinking a bit more about our consumption; not from empty policy measures. Such things rather increase global warming due to the extra hot air emitted by politicians jostling in front of the TV cameras.
The environmental brigade are selling us all a con. There is no scientific proof that global warming is caused by human activity. The earth has been much hotter and much colder than this before we came along. The scary bit is that all political parties seem to be buying this rubbish. Where should I put my x on election day when I believe in business and economic growth, not a flimsy theory advanced by scientists who depend on it for their next research grant?
Hello Nick
On April 5 I posted a comment in your blog suggesting 'that you should ask Patricia and Tony and Gordon about the current crisis in the NHS'.
I waited and waited but nothing. I watched the news on TV and listened on the radio but all was strangely quiet.
Do you think that you in the media have been doing your job properly? Or perhaps you just believe the government machine?
It's amazing how much great PR Cameron seems to get over his choice of car etc. Until he makes tough policy decisions about the Environment I think we should all take him with a pinch of salt.
If he commits himself to:
a) Increasing the fuel duty escalator
b) Increasing the cost of cheap flight
c) Banning new road building
d) Stopping the building of new Nuclear power stations.
I will believe he really is green. I question how green he really is when one considers there was not much mention of the Environment in the Tory 2005 Election Manifesto, which he wrote. Ditto he has also said that wind farms are 'bird breakers' and opposed them being built in Wales. Also a Tory Shadow spokesman who's name made such a impact on me that I can’t remember it said she was in favour of more house building in the countryside - hardly very Green is it?
Why not ask about how he is going to support real green transport, and how much money is going to be made available to support it ?
I drive, cycle and walk, but I drive for some journeys where cycling would be appropriate because it is simply so convenient in the UK. All our roads are designed for the convenience of drivers above all others.
What's been missed out in all the green spin is that other countries in Europe manage much higher rates of walking and cycling than we do. For instance, in Germany about 12% of journeys are made by bike, while in the UK it's only about 2%. The Netherlands manage 27% of all their journeys and even mountainous Switzerland is well ahead of us.
What's causing this over-reliance on motorized transport is that we simply don't fund cycling and walking. Just 0.3% of our transport budget is spent on cycling. A tiny figure which results in useless, dangerous and unpleasant paths. A pitiful level of spending is even the case in British cities which have a historically high level of cycling such as Cambridge and York.
Other countries do much better than this. The City of Copenhagen spends 20-25% of their budget on cycling and they have produced an amazing video (in English) about it:
If we were to do similar, we could also reduce our dependance on cars, which would have exactly the green effects that the political parties are trying to claim for any number of other less helpful things, but where is the money ?
Why can't the House of Lords be a nominated chamber?
OK. First up, let's get rid of everyone in the second chamber. Wheel them out onto Westminster Green, wrap them in bubble wrap and leave them there for a bit. Some will come in useful later.
To replace them, we'll need a good representative bunch of oak hearted yeoman.
Best place to find such people is in your own street and community. Everyone knows a neighbour or a friend that they think can be trusted as a politician.
So, we'll split the country into small communities or wards. Oh, that's already been done. OK, so we'll stick with that then.
Then we'll elect people to community councils that cover your parish. We still have parish boundaries even if people often don't know what they are. The councils will have full responsibility for Junior Schools, local policing, primary health care, local transport (like the ubiquitous 'Hoppa Bus'), lighting parking and the like.
The local Parish Councils bound together into an area, be it a rural district, a town or a borough. Each Parish Council nominates representatives to sit on that council. The take responsibility for secondary education and secondary health care.
In turn these second level councils nominate to a third level council - be it county, city or metropolitan authority. These councils set 'minimum standards' upon the lower level authority and generally make sure that they are performing. They also look after the area's main roads, Trading Standards, Environmental Health, Specialist Health Units and all other policing.
These councils then nominate representatives to sit in the House of Lords. Sitting with these in the chamber would be nominees from the CBI, TUC, Charities, Political Parties, Religious Groups and Judiciary.
The House of Lords would operate as now, providing check and balances to Parliament. Parliament would lose responsibility for all matters handled by lower authorities instead setting minimum standards. Parliamentary elections would continue as now.
I think Cherie Blairs hairstyle sets a fine example of labours values: you pay a high price & get a completely dreadful result.
Persuading our neighbours to live within our collective ecological means requires our making sacrifices ourselves to show willing, surely. I cycle. Of course, flying is by some way the worst thing; we need to encourage alternatives - I suppose we should have more terrorists on planes and not so many on trains, please.
Incidentally, I don't think that any recent article in the Sunday Times is to be believed.
In Mr Blairs' last "meet the press" event there were attempts to get him to state that this was the best year ever for the NHS. On one of those occassions Mr Blair pointed at his pretty graphs and, seeming rather frustrated, pointed out the increased number of medical professional in training. I am curious why none of those present pointed out the inconsistency in having an increasing in training whilst at the same time cutting staff numbers. How is it a benefit to have increased numbers in training when clearly at the end of their training period they will most likely be working for Tescos?