A Place to Stand

  Spiked is an estimable online journal whose articles are almost always far more thought provoking than anything you will get on the MSM. The theory being that what they print would be spiked by dead tree editors. The theory seems proven, though I have yet to see them willing to do an article about radiation hormesis. At their heart are technophiles, who used to be socialists but left when the socialist movement had no space for progressives. In a previous incarnation, as LM (Living Marxism) magazine they were sued, successfully by ITN for saying that ITN had faked the Bosnian war "Concentration Camp" video - the court deciding that ITN had indeed faked it but that LM hadn't gone sufficiently out of the way to point out the possibility that, when ITN faked it they were doing so entirely accidentally. Actually that, while it remains ITN's position, doesn't enhance their credibility in any way since while, if it were intentional, it would only discredit ITN reporting  when they had an obvious agenda, if it was accidental there are absolutely no circumstances under which ITN can say that any other story or film they produce isn't equally accidentally fraudulent.

   Anyway this is a letter of mine that they published

The elephant in the room, unmentioned by politicians on both sides of the debate about ‘austerity”’ or growth is that while the EU countries wallow in recession the rest of the world’s economies are growing at a staggering average of six per cent, with places like China managing 10 per cent or better.

Clearly if such growth is taking place, such growth is possible.

All that is necessary is for the politicians to stop getting in the way. What the fastest growing economies have in common is that they don’t have politicians spending 50 per cent, or more, of the national economy; they don’t have endless rules and regulations which, in our case, destroy 50 per cent of the possible economy (for example, house prices have risen four-fold compared to the RPI over recent generations simply because the political classes prevent more houses from being built); most importantly they don’t increase electricity prices and restrict supply with the Luddite promotion of windmillery and opposition to nuclear.

The close connection between electricity use and GNP is so clear that nobody denies it, but the European politicians choose to ignore it and these other factors. Thus professional politicians on both sides are actually promoting neither austerity or growth. Suddenly voting for professional comedians looks more sensible doesn’t it?

  In response to this article "Posturing Against Austerity"  which makes a number of good points about the "leftist" politicians who say they are in favour of "growth" when they actually mean printing and borrowing to give the illusion. It is a good article but doesn't go far enough.

  Spiked also has a new article by Professor Colin McInnes whose enthusiasm in spreading his vision of ptogress and contempt for ecofascists makes me look restrained.

the dead Earth itself achieved consciousness - not as the mythical Gaia suggested by greens, but as thinking, self-aware humans...

If the potent self-organising enterprise that is humanity eventually escapes from the Earth, then we have the resources and opportunity to fill a dead and apparently empty cosmos.

Or, we could simply stay put, cocooned and culturally ossifying in a sustainable society, waiting to be scoured from the Earth when the next big rock slams into us. Save the planet and bring self-organising life to the cosmos? Yes, it’s a big ask, so let’s not screw it up through lack of ambition.