Political Review – August 2007

One of the main points of starting Websitegeist was to shift away from the blog culture and less of the first-person chatter. Not that blogs should ever be scorned; a lot of people have a lot of things to get of their chest, and it serves as a staple fixture on the Internet.

Some people are deeply unhappy with themselves and their lot, and thus their blog has turned in to a bolus of angst and, if poorly written, emotional ramblings. Others preferred to take only the good bits of their life and splash it across their blog, leaving out the bad bits to deal with themselves. There’s no problem with either of these extremes – pain and optimism are two of the things that make us all different. And for the most part, pain-blogs and optimism-blogs keep both parties content in their writing.

But how about writing about things that other people would like to think about? Thus WSG was born.

The problem with political writing is that it’s a little bit like a meal at a Japanese restaurant – rather than one big course to sink your teeth in to, there’s lots of little dishes to pick and choose. Which is why, rather than writing lots of mini-articles about small fry goings-on in Whitehall, our attentions are turned to the political spectrum once a month.

David Cameron’s had a rough ride of late trying to dampen the ‘Brown bounce’, which has lasted longer than expected. Finally it would appear he’s bringing round the Conservative press to convince them he’s a textbook Tory. Manifestos have been dropped slowly in over the past few weeks in to a melting-pot of ideas.

One of the most tantalising offers is the prospect of lower taxes. It’s certainly a juicy carrot dangling right in front of us as far as pledges go, but this was followed with the hint that it would leave families and married couples best off. For a nation with rising numbers of single parents, it makes you wonder how many people will take the bite.

Slowly, over the course of the month, other blurbs came out. Improvement in the armed forces. Tough crime control. Improved schooling.

It all sounds extremely appealing to the swing voter, and sees a definitive shift to the right from Cameron, and he’s done it with aplomb. The problem with Michael Howard’s pledges was he promised too much all at once – and promising tax cuts with a range of improvements in public services simply doesn’t add up in terms of budget.

Still, with a snap election still a possibility, the careful placement of Conservative values rather than ill-conceived soundbites is enough to have Gordon Brown on his guard.

Finally the new PM appears to have settled in at No. 10 and selected his personal favourite colour curtains (he kept them red); now time for action.

The choicest moment came when the thought of a Bank Holiday in November was proposed. In a shift away from his original British Day brainchild, he settled on the idea of celebrating local heroes. Not the way we all saw it; to us, it’s another day off. Everyone loves a treat from the government.

Elsewhere, though, things have been relatively quiet in the Brown camp. Armed forces remain in Iraq, and Brown has (quite sagely) kept mostly schtum on foreign policy where Blair would’ve been quick to stamp his mark on proceedings. We await further developments, but Brown needs to start picking up the pace as his bounce wanes.

Much more vocal has been Sir Menzies Campbell. For the poor Lib Dems, airtime can be scarce, and press coverage is really dependant on the mood of the editor’s scissors. However, they’ve done well to voice some pretty valid concerns. Problem is, it’s all they seem capable of.

Critical of future flood plans.
Critical of the gambling plans.
Critical of the prison strikes.
Critical of George W Bush.

Alright, I think I speak for all of us that we’ll grant him the last one, and their proposals for zero carbon Britain certainly hold a decent appeal to their electorate. But let’s hear some really practical solutions and we can start to listen to what they have to say rather than laughing things off whenever they run with their latest big idea. Coming up is the Liberal Democrat Blog Of The Year. Maybe we’ll see if my pain-blog / optimism-blog theory is right.

Foot & Mouth II - The Disinfectant Strikes Back

If I were qualified enough to write reviews for films, I’d have the recent release of Evan Almighty down as a whimsy high-budget sequel that’s on the mark in terms of originality but very, very cheesy. Our eponymous hero Evan is called upon by God to start acting like - and dressing akin to - someone called Noah. I’ve never been a fan of spoilers, so I’ll just say he builds something, a certain event happens, and he saves a lot of souls. If the movie doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, the ripoff novelisation is now available in all good bookshops (Genesis chapters 6-9).


The fallout of the downpours in the Bible version was a lovely rainbow, creatures saved and the world cleansed of evil. The fallout of the floods in the south this summer is the much-maligned sequel of foot and mouth disease. In its first modern outing six years ago, the cattle epidemic was the maladie du jour for press and satire when it became apparent it wasn’t half as serious as its BSE big brother. Now the remake is out in farmyards now, and we’re no longer cracking wise with "foot in mouth" gags or making rather corny mad cow puns – it’s a lot more serious now, it would seem.


Yet, somehow, it’s quite comfortably contained. Cordons have been set up and DEFRA are taking the job in hand with professional expertise. I’m no microbiologist, but there’s only so much you can do to stop molecular bacteria from setting up shop in a new farmyard. Thus I wouldn’t call it an outbreak; for the most part, it’s been a lot of mild panic without any immediate cause for concern.


Sorry if this angle on the hot-topic news sounds cynicism border on the apathetic; I must admit, it is. Like the recent flooding, it’s something we can make a whole lot of fuss about without having to take much action. One of the main reasons is that human fatalities from foot and mouth are extremely low. That is, of course, nothing to take mildly; mutations of the disease are a huge risk, and it’s quicker to stamp out the strain now before it becomes too late. In the meantime, though, there’s not too much cause for concern – the disease should be contained and eliminated within time and the wave of paranoia will quickly wane. And sales of Big Macs should be back on the rise – a nation can rest easy.

God The Scapegoat

Returning from a holiday where the blazing sun was melting and terraforming the pavement underfoot, it was a bizarre feeling to be told that our flight was delayed because Heathrow’s main runaway was in danger of becoming riverbed to a shoal of marine animals. Very well, I’m embellishing a little, but to be informed of such apocalyptic flooding in 35 degree heat just didn’t feel quite right.

In 1953, meteorologists were consulted at length by those orchestrating the coronation of Elizabeth II. The general consensus was that, from previous meticulous record-keeping and that year’s trends, 2nd June was the best time for the big day. Let’s just say that it was a good job Lizzy’s crowning was an indoor event.

For those not familiar with the British fixation with weather, I only hope you can understand that our temperate climate is prone to throw up the most dramatic and bizarre weather possible. Sure, folks across the pond will report of hailstones in Maryland, mudslides in San Francisco and a dozen tornadoes in between. But you know what to expect there. As folk who are frankly unsure what the weather’s going to hurl down at us, we feel the need to comment on it ad nauseum.

This year, flooding on the business end of the River Severn and the western area of the Thames has had anyone clutching a microphone with cameraman in tow scrambling for soundbites of despair from the poor folks whose homes have just been wrecked. Some reporters even got so close to the water it seemed as though one quick plunge and they’d be ably breast-stroking their way to their next story.

Still, far be it from me to go off and lambaste the media. This article is all about blamelessness.

Another fixation in this country is to always find blame for someone or something when it all goes to pot. The best example of our fascination for a hate figure is every other summer, when English national football team are either dumped out of the European Championships under dubious circumstances, or dumped out of the World Cup under utterly diabolical circumstances. Be it a crucial refereeing blunder, a bolus of players unable to handle the pressure of a penalty shootout or a striker getting himself needlessly sent off for stamping on opposition testicles, we’ve got the lot.

Still, this year there’s no major football, so we’ve got something else to find blame for. Problem is, when its Acts of God we’re talking about, how can we shake our fists at the Almighty? Noah certainly didn’t, he just nodded politely and built the Ark. I don’t mean to get tangled up in to a pseudo-religious rant, it’s just rather humorous to observe so many people getting extremely agitated, trying to blame the lack of the Azores High squarely on the shoulders of any politician who dares to don a pair of Wellingtons.

So who’s the big winner? Well our new PM must be pretty pleased with himself – his first national crisis he could do nothing to prevent. David Cameron’s been caught out in Africa, rather unfortunate timing with Commons currently in recess. Meanwhile, the biggest winner has to be August – never has this month when we usually pin our hopes on good weather carried so much expectation. As I post article this with just minutes of July left, it’s safe to say optimism never felt so good.

Jamie Shoesmith is currently away.

Live Earth - Greener Than Green?

Bounding down the stairs on Christmas Day at five years old trying to catch Father Christmas doing his business right in the middle of the living room under tree, I rounded the corner only to find he’d already been. Fortunately, I’d been a good boy that particular year, and sitting there was a brand spanking new Amiga 500+ rather than anything unpleasant.

Joining the state-of-the-art computer system (well, it was at the time) was a box containing a rather sought-after video game. Straight from the cartoon was the platform game, to give it its full name: Captain Planet® and the Planeteers™ by Mindscape Games. Environmentalism, back then, had a rather corporate edge.

So inspired was I by Wheeler, Kwame, Linka, Gi and Ma-ti’s heroics in saving the planet, I had the back pages of the instruction manual photocopied, which contained ten eco-friendly tips to help save the planet. A poorly-drawn poster later and the word was out; I’d send anyone who gave a damn about our Earth a copy if they provided a stamped-addressed envelope. One person replied. Still, I think I managed to get through to him, and that I’d done my bit for the environment. I threw the other 19 unused copies in the bin and thought no more of it.

In a similar fashion to the above anecdote, Live Earth's resulting fallout is a confusing lot. Intentions were unclear from the outset; sound bites on Radio 1’s Newsbeat bulletin had many of the US acts struggling to explain what, in fact, climate change actually is.

More to the point, many of these acts were indeed being ferried to their respective stages about by means that were, to put it bluntly, taking rather a large dumped on our o-zone layer. Razorlight appear to be the worst offenders, who went to great troubles to get very enthuse the message in to their art well before their set at Wembley, only for the band to realise they were due to play a gig in Scotland on the same evening. How did they get there? No prizes for guessing. The Planeteers would be spinning in their bio-degradeable graves.

With detractors pointing out that 90% reduction in carbon emissions is pretty much unfeasible, what exactly was the point of Live Earth? That statistic, which may seem like a load of hot air (sorry), was the ‘big picture’. Problem is, it didn’t serve as a call to action to anyone. America won’t bow to such an outlandish idea in the meantime. China has just emerged as a key player in climate change; how to take them on is still a grey area.

Sorry to sound so negative – it’s just things don’t quite add up.

Live8 had a tremendous pressure point aimed directly at Gleneagles, and without it ever taking place, the summit would’ve probably harked back to the days when it was no more than a fireside chat instead of exactly how much each country could pledge to make poverty history.

Even Captain Planet had more of a point to it – do what you can, personally, to reduce waste and leave the planet as you’d expect to find it. That seems to be the soft undertone of Live Earth, but to many (including the 1% populace of the USA who actually tuned in) the message may well be sadly dwarfed by those picking apart the logistics of saving the world.