Sent off my comments on the Energy Review yesterday, to the lady who is co-ordinating them. Switched the radio on this morning at 8:15 (yes, I admit it, I had a lie-in because I was awake at 3 again) to hear some posh bloke (who turned out to be Rowan Williams) apparently quoting from my comments (I have tried to replay the interview on Listen again but it doesn’t seem to be working – maybe it’s too soon).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/
The phrase he was using when I switched on was something like: ‘The urgency has to be conveyed to people; it’s not a marginal extra’, and didn’t I just know exactly what he had to be talking about?
The interview was followed by one where John Humphreys berated (sorry, ‘interviewed’) Margaret Beckett, and came out with this classic Humphreysism (I loved it so much I actually wrote this one down):
‘Why are you, the Government, not doing more to persuade us or to force us to change our lifestyles?’
Erm, how about, because this is a democracy, John, and you are usually the first person to go off on one about ‘nanny statism’ at any hint the Government is actually trying to ‘persuade us or to force us to change our lifestyles’???
Later, he made this statement, which he made sound like an accusation: ‘It’s all about politics, isn’t it?’ (Well, yes, what isn’t?) He was saying that politicians are scared to do anything (I’m paraphrasing, because I didn’t write this down at the time) because they can’t see beyond the time horizon of the next election, and they don’t want to antagonise the voters – but what ABOUT the ‘voters’? Don’t they bear any responsibility at all? If individuals choose to continue on our present path, and only elect politicians who will allow them to do so, whose ‘fault’ is it when the inevitable consequences start to become apparent? And what is the point of sitting around bleating about whose ‘fault’ it is anyway, when we’re already so deep in the shit?
One of my Euro-buddies (the Irishman, as it happens), was waxing lyrical on our discussion group the other day about ‘democratic renewal’ – but the voice of the people is not necessarily a progressive one.
I thought about writing a book about all this 8 years ago, but couldn’t be arsed because it all seemed so effing obvious that I couldn’t see the point.