A rather gloomy analysis about the next few years!
One makes decisions all one’s life. But too few of us are making decisions that will prevent our planet from over-heating.
Patrice Ayme wrote a comment in a recent post that said (in part): “However we are tracking to a much higher temperature: + 7 (seven) Celsius in some now temperate parts… imminently. That is going to be catastrophic.”
There is a terrible change going on right now. From the deforestation in the Amazon rainforest to the unseasonable heat in Europe, as reported in the Guardian newspaper: “The result of this advection has been anomalously warm temperatures across large parts of Europe – in particular across France and Spain, where temperatures soared to over 10C above normal. Maximum temperatures widely exceeded 30C in parts of Spain on Thursday, with 35.2C measured at Morón de la Frontera, south-east of Seville.“
One would think that our governments would be pulling together in order to have a co-ordinated global plan. But there’s no sight of that yet. What we do have is a sort of craziness of Governments that causes me to lament over our, as in a global ‘our’, distractions. We are running out of time!
To this end I am republishing in full the latest George Monbiot essay. I hasten to add with Mr Monbiot’s permission.
ooOOoo
The Oligarch’s Oligarch
Published 30th October 2022.
Just as we need to get the money out of politics, we have been gifted a Prime Minister who represents the ultra-rich.
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 26th October 2022
Before we decide what needs to change, let’s take stock of what we have lost. I want to begin with what happened last week. I don’t mean the resignation of the prime minister. This is more important.
Almost all the media reported a scripted comment by the newly reinstated home secretary, Suella Braverman, about the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati”. Astonishingly, scarcely any of them reported what she was doing at the time. She was pushing through the House of Commons the most repressive legislation of the modern era.
Under the public order bill, anyone who has protested in the previous five years, or has encouraged other people to protest, can be forced to “submit to … being fitted with, or the installation of, any necessary apparatus” to monitor their movements. In other words, if you attend or support any protest in which “serious disruption to two or more individuals or to an organisation” occurs, you can be forced to wear an electronic tag. “Serious disruption” was redefined by the 2022 Police Act to include noise.
This is just one of a series of astounding measures in the bill, which has been hardly remarked upon in public life as it passes through Britain’s legislature. What we see here is two losses in one moment: the final erasure of the right to protest, and political journalism’s mutation from reporting substance to reporting spectacle. These are just the latest of our losses.
So extreme has inequality become, and so dangerous is the combination of frozen wages, lagging benefits, rising rents and mortgage repayments, soaring bills and food inflation, that millions of people are being pushed towards destitution. Unless something changes, many will soon lose their homes. In the midst of this crisis, we have been gifted a prime minister who owns four luxury “homes”. One of them is an empty flat in Kensington that he reserves for visiting relatives.
While Rishi Sunak was chancellor, the government repeatedly delayed its manifesto promise to ban no-fault evictions. Landlords are ruthlessly exploiting this power to throw their tenants on to the street or use the threat to force them to accept outrageous rent rises and dismal conditions. Had Sunak’s “help to buy” mortgage scheme succeeded (it was a dismal flop), it would have raised house prices, increasing rents and making ownership less accessible: the opposite of its stated aim. But this, as with all such schemes, was surely its true purpose: to inflate the assets of existing owners, the Conservative party’s base.
Public services are collapsing at breathtaking speed. Headteachers warn that 90% of schools in England could run out of money next year. NHS dentistry is on the verge of extinction. Untold numbers are now living in constant pain and, in some cases, extracting their own teeth. The suspicion that the NHS is being deliberately dismembered, its core services allowed to fail so that we cease to defend it against privatisation, rises ever higher in the mind.
But Sunak appears determined only to hack ever further. Sitting on a family fortune of £730m, he seems unmoved by the plight of people so far removed from him in wealth that they must seem to exist on another planet. He is the oligarch’s oligarch, ever responsive to the demands of big capitaland the three offshore plutocrats who own the country’s biggest newspapers, oblivious of the needs of the 67 million people who live here.
After 12 years of Conservative austerity and chaos, the very rich have taken almost everything. They have even captured virtue. They now appropriate the outward signs of an ethical life while continuing – despite or because of their organic cotton jackets and second homes, their electric cars and pasture-fed meat, their carbon offsets and ayahuasca retreats, philanthropy and holidays in quiet resorts whose palm-thatched cabins mimic the vernacular of the people evicted to make way for them – to grasp the lion’s share of everything.
Corruption is embedded in public life. Fraud is scarcely prosecuted. Organised crime has been so widely facilitated, through the destruction of the state’s capacity to regulate everything from money laundering to waste dumping, that you could almost believe it was deliberate. Our rivers have been reduced to sewers, our soil is washing off the land, the planning system is being dismantled, and hundreds of environmental laws are now under threat. We hurtle towards Earth systems oblivion, while frenetically talking about anything but.
In other words, it’s not just a general election we need, it’s a complete rethink of who we are and where we stand. It’s not just proportional representation we need, but radical devolution to the lowest possible levels at which decisions can be made, accompanied by deliberative, participatory democracy. It’s not just new lobbying laws we require, but a comprehensive programme to get the money out of politics, ending all private political donations, breaking up the billionaire press and demanding full financial transparency for everyone in public life. We should seek not only the repeal of repressive legislation, but – as civil disobedience is the bedrock of democracy – positive rights to protest.
All this now feels far away. Jeremy Corbyn offered some (though by no means all) of these reforms. Keir Starmer offers none. Though Labour MPs voted against the public order bill, his only public comment so far has been to endorse its headline policy: longer sentences for people who glue themselves to roads. But if the Labour party or its future coalition partners can persuade him to agree to just one aspect of this programme, proportional representation, we can start work on the rest, building the political alliances that could transform the life of this nation. Without PR, we’re stuck with a dysfunctional duopoly, in hock to the billionaire press and the millionaires it appoints to govern us. We cannot carry on like this.
ooOOoo
So much is really telling but I just want to draw your attention to this sentence: In other words, it’s not just a general election we need, it’s a complete rethink of who we are and where we stand.
It is not just in England and Wales but also in the USA. Indeed, most of the countries in the world.
Here is an excerpt from the latest email from The Economist. It presages the COP27 to be held in Egypt next week.
By burning fossil fuels, humans have altered Earth’s atmosphere, which has consequences for almost everything on the planet. It is reshaping weather systems and coastlines, transforming where crops can be grown, which diseases thrive, and how armies fight . Rising temperatures affect geopolitics, migration, ecosystems and the economy. Over the next century and beyond, climate change—and the responses to it—will remake societies and the world.
And a paragraph later:
This week I wrote about the seven texts I recommend as an introduction to the climate crisis—and explained why each is worth turning to—as a part of our “Economist reads” series. They range from Bill Gates’s assessment of technological solutions to a discussion of international justice by the former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. One book I find myself recommending over and over again is “What We Know About Climate Change” by Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at MIT. At 88 pages, it is a blessedly short, readable primer on the science, history and economics of climate change. The climate crisis touches everything. Understanding it, even a little, is essential for anyone who is engaged with the world and its future. This is a good place to start.
Please follow this advice because it is an excellent place to start.
I wish with all my heart that I am wrong and maybe, just maybe, I am having a ‘down in the dumps’ day. Whatever, my judgement is that we have a few more years at most to find out.
Learning from Dogs 
I could say a lot here upon this subject… One has to ask the question on governments and their objectives and agenda’s ..
And why I do not see them using public transport or electric cars or stopping flying in private jets…
The Good news is I did read an article only today that the Ozone is closing its gap.. 🙂
Sending you and Jean hugs for a lovely November.. ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Sue, thank you for your hugs. They will be passed on as soon as Jeannie is awake this morning. I would love to hear more from you; do you want to write a guest post for LfD? Or maybe several? Think about it!
On the bigger subject of how we are governed I do not know what the answer is. George Monbiot’s essay is an accurate reflection on the issue and all I can add is to repeat the saying that a democracy is the least worst of government systems. Not a very useful saying I must add. I would prefer knowing the best way of being governed. Especially in these uncertain times.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Paul, for the offer of guest post, but too much on at moment to even write fresh for my own blog.
What I will say is governments have become corrupted in every which
way possible.
They have lost touch with serving The People, only serving big corporations and their back pockets.
It’s scandalous, and in some cases down right criminal, if you dig deep enough into some of these major players within governments.
In my own opinion governments in their present format want dismantling.
Here in the UK our government serves London, elites, and scratch each other’s backs .. and from our perspective in the East Midlands we are the poor relations.
The amount if waste of money and resources is huge. And the UKs Governments slogan this year is “Leveling Up”. Which is laughable.
We are only under the illusion we have Democracy Paul. I doubt we’ve ever had democracy..
And when real truth if ever exposed in the propaganda mouth piece of the media is ever brought to light.
Then people will revolt, like in other countries, which again the msm has not covered.
We have to somehow get back to grassroots, within community seeing what is needed. But even at grass roots we have want to be leaders… 🤷♀️
Our NHS system in tatters.. and the mental Health side is atrocious. I have a friend still working in mental health and its unbelievable what is happening on the ground.
There are no straight answers Paul, for a system that prints money, goes into massive debt while its been systematically allowing small businesses to close.
While all now face huge cost of living increases, in food and fuel and heating homes etc. Which will mean more factories and food produces also face higher costs that then get passed on.
While the big corporations are allowed to increase prices with record profit margins.
The leadership is none existant in the UK government, As they are all appear to be puppeted with the same slogans world wide. Which reflect WEF objectives.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work it all out, but when you voice your independent thinking, you go against a narrative that labels you a conspiracy theorists.
However it’s only a conspiracy unless it becomes a fact..
And too many facts now are being ousted.
So the proof as we say here will be in the pudding.
Please feel free to delete my rant too. But you did ask lol 😂
Take care Paul. Love to you both. 🥰💖
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sue, I am listening to the World At One at the moment! It is almost unbelievable if it wasn’t the truth. Please, your rant is more than acceptable and thank you for taking the trouble to write back. All we have is our love and friendship but they are the most important qualities of all. Our love is returned to you! ❤️
LikeLiked by 2 people
I totally agree Paul… Love and friendship is all that counts.. Oh I did send a short email to your gmail Paul…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Dear Sue, I am no longer using my Gmail address. Stopped using it when I was scammed and now at paulhandover (at) pm (dot) me. Do you follow that? Can you resend your piece to that address? Thank you very much!
LikeLike
Thanks Paul yes I follow that thank you.
LikeLike
Brilliant!
LikeLike
Great your recieved OK
LikeLike
It is depressing to see that there is little or no meaningful opposition to so much that is wrong with this world and its homo sapien inhabitants. Bamboozled by the media in the main, strung along by the politicians and fed scaremongering nonsense by too many of those involved in big business, the media and those who seek to rule over us. If you have an alternative view, you’re a trouble maker or ridiculed. Those who have stood up to say something which is contrary to what the politicians and their media/big business overlords have told them to spout, have been publicly admonished far too regularly. The public, when seeking news, are inevitably force fed inane gossip about some famous person or another. The attention of many has been restricted over decades and now we have become almost attuned to believing that what we are told is the truth because that is what the media have told us. And the bland fashion of how it is reported to us. The utterly impartial BBC here have a morning show which has, for the last weeks and months, gone around the UK asking the same questions of different people about the cost of living crisis. We know that the majority of people are going to suffer be it badly or slightly. Every weekday morning the same set up with the same questions and the same answers. There was nothing on the “news” for days after Lula had defeated that dreadful crook Bolsanaro in Brazil. There is little about the continuing investigation into the 6th January 2021 coup. There is little about the floods in Australia, the reasons behind the devastating drought in Somalia, the invasion of Ukraine haas fallen off the front page. Its all about which MP or celebrity from the UK is going to do a game show in Australia where they live “in the jungle” for around 3-4 weeks and eat all sorts of strange animal body parts for the amusement of the general public. One of the contestants is an MP who was Minister of Health during the height of the pandemic. His decisions cost 100’s of thousands of people their lives and livelihoods, he oversaw vast amounts of public money syphoned off to private companies allied to his political persuasion and he was finally removed from office after being filmed “kissing” a colleague during lockdown. His hands in the picture showed he was doing a little more than “kissing”. This is now front page news, it occupies a sport on the news bulletins.
People know more about some B list singer than they do about why there are so many desperate people trying to reach the relative safety of the UK shores. The media paint these refugees as scum, vermin, rats. The word migrant is spat from our television screens. Shame the media don’t report on the closure of the vast majority of legal channels to apply to reach the UK, they don’t report on the Rwanda agreement to take 120 people only. The rhetoric is divisive, it poisons the airwaves and social media as well as much of written media. People in the main turn a blind eye to it all. Don’t worry it will soon be Christmas and we can buy the children presents with money we don’t have, extend credit to unsustainable levels, be unable to pay utility bills…
Another rant. I apologise.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just seen this as I was going out. I will reply in detail a little later. But a huge ‘thank you’!
LikeLike
That is no rant, it is too close to the truth and you are a very brave person to take the time and trouble to write this long response. I agree with the essence of what you say, and Jean, my wife, also agrees with you. One can only hope that as we get close to the edge, both literally and metaphorically, the people will wake up and realise the situation. But who knows? Who really knows? I think, as I said in my piece, is that we do not have long to wait to find out; maybe two or three years. What on earth happened to common sense?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I am putting my trust in….I guess survival.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Survival: That’s such a rich word in the sense that it means so many different things to different people. Can’t add anything more than that at present!
LikeLiked by 1 person