Gentle people
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/miliband-issues-climate-change-warning-000130602.html
Isn’t it typical that before the disease-laden waters have receded you’re all already bickering and snapping at each other’s heels over whether or not what Miliband said is political Smartie point gathering? In this, I see the prelude to all of you, whose homes have not been affected by the tragedies that have struck ordinary people, gearing up to waste the next five years – no matter who takes office in 2015 – blathering on about whether or not climate change is real. Do ordinary people a real favour: put Lawson back in his broom cupboard and give him back his teddy bear, and then get on with what your own eyes have told you. Assuming, that is, that you actually paid any attention to what you were seeing on the ground in Somerset and the Thames Valley.
After 2007 and now, after the immense publicity that the present flooding has received, people are going to expect and demand – quite reasonably – far more from you than a Parliamentary term of what will amount to hot air and water polo. Flooding costs LIVES, gentlemen. Not as many as the DWP has, but it still leaves widows and orphans, and the time for having a cosy chat about it in committees is over. Taxes have been paid; the government has failed to deliver the expected level of safety in return. It is time for that to change, or where will we see the next tragedies occuring? Cumbria? Sheffield? Gloucester? All of those places with the word “again” as a suffix?
The first thing you need to do is educate. Not the people – we’ve seen, and many of us have now experienced, what comes of neglecting the issue of climate change. No, the education needs to begin within your own ranks, as it has become very obvious that the people in charge of defending against the weather’s more extreme behaviour are not the right people for the job. You need to get them out, and replace them with people who understand and accept that what the country is facing is a real threat, and preventing the kind of gross negligence that led – within the term of this government – to a reduction in spending on the defences that are required. Nature has given you a severe wake-up call, to and for which Parliament and the government has been woefully slow to respond and obviously completely unprepared. This need not have been the case had common sense prevailed in the relevant Department.
Not only flooding, but the appearance of sink-holes, is giving you another message. Coincidence? I don’t think so, and nor do many others. Nature has shown you what water can do once it gets underground and goes beyond humankind’s control. Think about this extremely carefully as you continue to push for fracking, because I honestly believe that you are going to come a serious cropper over that business. In the matter of the injection of liquids into the planet’s crust, you need to be not only listening to what the experts tell you, but acting upon that information in a safe and responsible manner. As things stand, there is no sign of that being the case. Propaganda is all very well when it has its feet firmly rooted in hard fact, but when it is based instead upon a fantasy view of how the world should be because that’s how you require it to be, then it becomes incredibly dangerous. Nature has just proved that, in spite of what your egos might be telling you, you are most definitely NOT gods and she does not answer to you or anyone else. If you fail to heed her warnings, you are not just foolish; you could be reasonably accused of criminal negligence.
At the moment, the country is seeing a housing-led recovery that is still incredibly fragile. If water is not removed from the list of dangers to life and, more significantly at the moment, property, then this latest bubble will not burst; it will be mercilessly drowned out of existence and set the path for the next recession. Nature is not cruel, gentlemen; Nature simply does not care. Already, the tiny amount of recovery is under threat because so many local businesses have been adversely affected by out of control water. The nation’s GDP is never going to increase as required if politicians remain too blindly arrogant to listen to those who seek to advise them in matters of safety in this regard. And I don’t mean those who are in command of the fracking operations either. There now needs to be a balance presented to those who are overseeing the fracking project, and it needs to backed up with good, solid geololgical science, not just the words of greedy Corpers who just want a fast buck and to hell with the consequences for communities across the land.
This government and its predecessor have been all about pandering to the whims of the corporations, with senior politicians scrambling to secure their own post-Parliamentary futures. People now want to see real change, gentlemen, not bickering over the Despatch Box during the circus that is PMQ’s. I, for one, until I see that change being made a reality, am committed entirely to placing my X in the box of the Independent candidate for Basingstoke in May 2015 or, if there isn’t an Indie available, my ballot paper will be marked in big black letters “None Of The Above.” I’m only one of millions of people you have to convince that you are worth voting for, and you won’t do it by coming knocking on my door six months before Election Day with a mouthful of false promises – you will only do it by working visibly and demonstrably for the betterment of the lot of the ordinary man and woman in the street.
It’s up to you.
Sincerely,
Darren Lynch
