The extreme-right are blaming anyone but those who are actually responsible

Imagine the kind of mentality of a person who would look at a disaster like the Grenfell tower fire and immediately set about using it to promote their own anti-EU or anti-immigrant agenda and you've got a glimpse into the mindset of the depraved hacks who work for Britain's gutter press.

"Did EU regulation mean deadly cladding was used on Grenfell Tower" blared the Daily Express in a sick effort to turn the blame away from those responsible for this blatantly avoidable tragedy and onto the EU.

The briefest look at the EU energy efficiency regulation in question reveals that the rules should not override other existing building rules such as accessibility, safety and intended use of the building.

Additionally the law in question (here) doesn't even mention external cladding of buildings, and the flammable cladding in question is outright banned in Germany (an EU state).

Given that the safety consideration is expressly stated in the preamble, and the energy efficiency regulations don't even mention cladding, let alone demand flammable cladding, the only way anyone could ask whether these rules caused the tragedy is if they a. hadn't even bothered to read the regulations they're attacking, or b. were well aware of the fact that the rules aren't to blame at all, but saw the deadly fire as a fantastic opportunity to smear the EU, even though the facts don't even remotely fit their anti-EU narrative.

Either option suggests that the author of the piece is spectacularly unfit to work in journalism.

The Daily Mail also attempted to muddy the waters by falsely trying to blame environmental legislation on their front page, and by callously exposing the poor guy whose fridge went on fire triggering the blaze.

There's absolutely no way the poor guy can be blamed for the fact that the building was so dangerously refurbished that the whole tower could be turned into a deadly inferno by an electrical fault in his apartment.

It's interesting that the Daily Mail didn't bother to root out photos of the chief executive of the privatised housing management company (KCTMO), the boss of the flammable cladding company, the private contractors who fit the cladding, the Tory local council, the Tory MPs who spent the last four years sitting on a tower block fire safety report, whoever was responsible for the decision to fit flammable rather than flame retardant cladding, or members of the law firm that threatened to sue the Grenfell residents for raising concerns about the housing management company).

A quick look through Twitter also reveals a parade of depraved right-wingers blaming the fire on immigrants. Here's one example of outright lies from a rabid extreme-right account with over 50,000 Twitter followers:

So in a desperate attempt to turn blame away from the Tory government, the Tory local council and the parade of private companies responsible for this tragedy, this extreme-right Twitter sicko is spreading lies in order to blame the residents for their own deaths.

The claim that the building was "entirely full of immigrants" is an outright and easily disprovable lie, and there is no actual evidence to prove that the corridors were full of rubbish either.

This kind of depraved victim-blaming is sickeningly reminiscent of the Hillsborough tragedy, where the powerful people who caused the disaster were protected from blame by an absolute barrage of lies and smears about the conduct of the victims.

Conclusion

The extreme-right and the gutter press are desperate to cast the blame onto anyone or anything other than the Tory government and the wealthy and powerful people who are actually responsible. The EU ... energy efficiency laws ... immigrants ... the actual victims of the disaster ... no excuse is too depraved for these scumbags.

The sad thing is that significant numbers of people will be taken in by these extreme-right misdirection tactics, and will mindlessly accept the narrative that the EU, immigrants, environmental legislation and the residents themselves are to blame, because these misdirection tactics chime with the blame the EU/immigrants/environmental legislation/poor people for everything narratives they've been programmed to believe in by the extreme-right and the gutter press.

In the sickeningly warped mindset of the extreme-right and the gutter press hacks, there is literally no tragedy on earth that can't be blamed on some of, or all of their traditional totems of hate (the EU, immigrants, poor people, Muslims, lefties, environmentalists, social liberals, Health and Safety legislation ...) and literally nothing is or ever will be the fault of Tories or profiteering private companies.

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OR

Why did Boris Johnson bury that damning air pollution report?

  
In 2013 the consultancy firm Aether completed a report for the Greater London Authority on the state of air pollution in London and submitted it to Boris Johnson's administration who then sat on it for two and a half years until his successor Sadiq Khan uncovered it shortly after taking office.

The Analysing Air Pollution in London report contained an awful lot of damning information about the state of pollution in London, including the fact that 433 London primary schools were located in areas where levels of the toxic pollutant Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exceeded European Union pollution limits.

Nitrogen Oxides

Nitrogen Oxides are toxic pollutants that most often come from road pollution, especially from diesel engines. Other sources of Nitrogen Oxides include electricity generation and industry.

Nitrogen Oxides are proven to trigger asthma, coughing, skin irritation, aggravate bronchitis and pneumonia. Repeated exposure can cause permanent damage to the lungs and reduced lung capacity. It is estimated that Nitrogen Oxide pollution causes thousands of premature deaths per year in London alone.

Nitrogen Oxides are also linked with the formation of ozone which occurs when Nitrogen Oxides and volatile organic compounds react in the presence of heat and sunlight. Children, the elderly, people with lung diseases such as asthma, and people who work or exercise outside are at risk for adverse effects from ozone, including reduction in lung function, respiratory illnesses and respiratory-related hospital admissions.

Poverty

Some of the most shocking findings in the report were the disparities in pollution levels between poor areas and wealthy areas. 83% of the schools with illegally high levels of Nitrogen Oxide pollution were classified as "deprived" (40%+ children on free school meals). Meanwhile less than 20% of the schools located in areas below the pollution limit were classified as "deprived".

This means that over 80% of the schools suffering illegal levels of pollution were in poor areas, and over 80% of the schools with acceptable air standards were in rich areas.

The research also showed that over half of the very poorest areas of London suffered illegal levels of pollution, while the illegal pollution rate was just 1% of the very richest areas of London.

Why did it get buried?

Nobody but the most rabidly right-wing sociopath could try to claim that it's perfectly acceptable that tens of thousands of primary school children, mainly from poor and ordinary backgrounds, are being poisoned with health destroying pollutants.

Once the information that this is the case in London would have reached the public domain it would have meant that Boris Johnson would have had to either take the incredibly unpopular stance of doing nothing about the inequality on the grounds that the affected primary school children should have had the good sense to be born into richer families, or actually try to do something about the problem.

Boris Johnson and the Tories clearly didn't want to do anything about the appalling inequality between levels of air pollution in poorer parts of London and richer areas, but neither did they want to be seen to be doing nothing. Hence the logical course of action from a self-serving Tory perspective was to bury the report so that the public had much less evidence on which to base their demands for action.

Cherry-picking the good bits

The decision not to publish the report was clearly a political one because despite deciding to not bother publishing the full report, Boris Johnson's team were happy to cherry-pick and publicise some of the positive conclusions in the report, whilst completely ignoring the bits highlighting the severe inequality in exposure to air pollution.

The director of the company that produced the report Katie King said that "The crux of the report was about understanding the inequalities of air pollution, so they chose not to make public the findings regarding inequality ...The information that they did take from the report was the positive, that exposure was predicted to fall in the future".

There's no way that the decision to cherry-pick the best bits of a scientific report, whilst completely ignoring the negative parts can be seen as anything other than a display of the worst kind of cynical political opportunism.

Conclusion

I really do pity people who are so lacking in political insight that they can't see Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the ruthlessly self-serving political careerist that he so clearly is, rather than the harmless foppish buffoon he pretends to be. In 1951 (13 years before BoJo was even born) Bertrand Russell warned of the dangers of politicians like him when he said "our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them".

Boris Johnson is a man so lacking in principle that he refused to answer the charge that he wrote two completely different versions of his famous Telegraph article, one opposing the EU and one supporting it, then chose the one that he thought would be best for his own political ambitions.

He's so lacking in basic human morality that he buried a report into the toxic environments suffered by tens of thousands of primary school children because to publish it would have negatively impacted his own career, yet had his team cherry-pick good bits out of the report to make him look good.

The reason Boris Johnson failed to publish the damning report into air pollution levels in London schools is obvious. It's that he's one of the worst examples of the ruthlessly self-serving over-privileged Tory careerist type. It's just a damned shame that so many people fall for his foppery act and allow themselves to forget who he actually is, and what he actually represents.
 
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OR

The leaked TTIP documents

In May 2016 Greenpeace Netherlands released copies of the highly secretive negotiation documents on the TTIP so-called "trade deal" between the EU and the US.

The highly secretive nature of the TTIP negotiations and the extremely anti-democratic attitude of the EU institutions towards opponents of the deal have already created a huge rise in opposition to TTIP. In fact almost 3.5 million European citizens have already signed a petition against TTIP and several European governments are threatening to veto the deal if it is presented in its current format.

One of the biggest complaints about the TTIP corporate power grab is the inclusion of Investor State Dispute Settlements, which are designed to allow multinational corporations to completely bypass national democratic and judicial institutions in order to sue nation states in secretive transnational tribunals. These appalling ISDS rules have already been written into countless so-called free trade deals across the world, allowing corporations to sue countries whenever their democratically elected governments introduce policies that might reduce their profits. From the introduction of plain cigarette packaging, through bans on toxic petrol additives to environmental laws to stop the corporate destruction of the natural environment - multinational corporations have been using ISDS rules to sue governments all over the world.

The leaked TTIP documents show that the US are refusing to budge on demands for removal of the ISDS components of the TTIP corporate power grab. This is no surprise whatever given that the highly lucrative and rapidly growing transnational law industry is almost entirely based in the US*, and many of the biggest beneficiaries of ISDS tribunals so far have been US based multinational corporations.

Greenpeace analysis of the leaked documents also reveal that the TTIP negotiations are designed to weaken European laws and regulations, especially in areas like the food industry, pesticides and insecticides, genetically modified organisms and the chemicals industry.

TTIP negotiators have already defined things like energy efficiency labels; fuel efficiency standards for cars; sustainable public procurement policies; regulation of unconventional fossil fuel extraction, including shale gas and tar sands; sustainability standards for bio-energy; and the banning of climate-damaging f-gases in appliances such as refrigerators and freezers as "technical barriers to trade".

It's absolutely clear that TTIP is designed to weaken European standards and create a situation where European governments are powerless to restrain the excesses of multinational corporations, because they will be sued in US dominated secret transnational tribunals every time they try to introduce new laws that multinational corporations object to.

John Hilary of War on Want had this to say about the TTIP leaks:

"We have long warned that TTIP is a danger to democracy, food safety, jobs and public services. Now we see it is even worse than we feared. Today's leak shows the European Commission preparing to sell us down the river, doing deals behind closed doors that will change the face of European society for ever. It is simply unacceptable that a group of unelected officials should be allowed to contemplate such a thing without any public scrutiny."

The fact that the people of Europe are reliant upon secret documents leaked via Greenpeace in order to get a proper idea of what is being negotiated between unelected technocrats behind closed doors is appalling, especially since the establishment class are always willing to trot out the Orwellian mantra of "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" in order to justify the highly intrusive, privacy destroying state surveillance powers they want to award to themselves.

Now that it's absolutely clear that the TTIP corporate power grab will erode European standards and allow multinational corporations to completely bypass democratic and judicial institutions in European states, the deal should be scrapped in its entirety. What is more, the EU should begin an enquiry into how secretive negotiations towards a damaging, anti-democratic corporate power grab were ever allowed to develop so far in the first place.

• If you want to download the leaked TTIP documents and look at them for yourself, here's the link again.

• If you would like to join the 3.4 million+ people who have signed the petition against TTIP, here's that link.

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OR

* If you want to know more about the transnational law industry I highly recommend this German documentary.

The biggest threat to UK sovereignty is the TTIP corporate power grab

UKIP have made a heck of a lot of political capital out of harping on about British sovereignty. So much so that they have the Tory party running scared, looking to ramp up their own anti-immigration anti-Europe rhetoric in order to stop the exodus of voters, political figures and major party donors from their party to UKIP.

Given their professed concerns about British sovereignty it's extremely strange that the UKIP leadership have remained almost completely silent about the secretive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations underway in the EU, which are designed to carve open European markets (including the UK) for the benefit of gigantic US conglomerates, to bypass the UK courts and to undermine British democracy.

Investor State Dispute Settlements

The most concerning aspect of this so called "trade deal" is the inclusion of Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). These new rules would allow corporations to completely bypass the UK legal system and sue the UK government in secretive tribunals.

I don't think it's a radical view to say that if corporations want to do business in the UK, they should abide by the same legal system as the public. They shouldn't just be able to run off to a secretive transnational tribunal to sue our government every time the government does something that the corporations don't like.

Here are a few brief examples of how corporations could use ISDS proceedings to bypass the British legal system and undermine our democracy.

• NHS: If the NHS is made subject to ISDS tribunals, it would become impossible for any government to reverse the ongoing Tory privatisation of NHS services without compensating private health companies for their projected profits. 84% of the UK public want to see the NHS run as a not-for-profit public service, yet TTIP would prevent any UK government from doing what the public wants, without these secretive transnational tribunals fining our country countless £billions for trying to do what the electorate want them to.

• Renationalisation: 66% of the UK public want to see the rail network renationalised and 68% want the energy companies renationalised too. The ISDS components of TTIP would make it impossible for the UK government to ever deliver the renationalisations the electorate wants, without paying vast fines amounting to the projected future profits of the private profiteers. The $50 million case brought by Bechetel against Bolivia after the water system was renationalised is perhaps the most famous example of a corporation using the ISDS components of existing free-trade agreements in order to sue a government for renationalising infrastructure.

• Energy policy: The inability to renationalise vital energy infrastructure without triggering transnational tribunals and vast fines is not the only way government energy policy would be impacted. A Swedish company has used the ISDS components of another free-trade agreement to sue Germany for their decision to transition away from nuclear technology. The ISDS components of TTIP could provide more avenues for energy comanies to sue national governments. If a future UK government set a new target to transition away from reliance upon imported coal, they could be sued. If they set a new target to transition away from oil, they could be sued. Under TTIP control of national energy policy would essentially be completely abandoned to the private sector. 

• UK Standards: ISDS tribunals could be used to prevent the UK government from bringing in new standards. If the UK government introduced new safety standards on any kind of product, the product manufacturers could launch ISDS proceedings in order to sue the UK government for their lost profits.

• Public health: The Tobacco company Philip Morris has already used ISDS regulations in other free-trade agreements to sue countries (including Uruguay and Australia) for attempting to introduce plain cigarette packaging. TTIP would allow multinational corporations to undermine all kinds of legislation designed to promote public health.

• Environmental issues: Corporations have been using the ISDS components of existing free-trade agreements in order to sue governments and attempt to undermine environmental legislation all over the world (Canada, Peru, El Salvador, Australia, Ecuador). If any future UK government were to introduce new environmental legislation to protect our natural environment, or reduce pollution in our cities, the ISDS components of TTIP could make them liable to pay compensation to the companies they prevent from damaging the environment.

• Tax: Another important area in which ISDS proceedings could be used to undermine national sovereignty is the tax system. If any future UK government were to introduce new taxes (pollution tax, financial transaction taxes, Pigouvian taxes, wealth taxes) they would be opening themselves up to be sued by all manner of corporations.

Mode 4 cross-border trade (immigration)

The EU has a policy of including Mode 4 concessions in all of it's trade negotiations. This allows companies to transfer workers across borders. To simplify somewhat - Mode 4 cross-border trade is similar to outsourcing, but instead of moving the factory to a low-wage economy, workers are moved from the low-wage economy to the factory. Anyone with a job should be worried at the prospect of multinational companies driving down the aggregate value of labour in the UK by shipping in workers from low-wage economies.

This article gives a much more comprehensive description of what Mode 4 cross border trade is all about.

One would have thought, given their near constant use of anti-immigration rhetoric, the proposal to allow businesses to import foreign labour into the UK would have UKIP up in arms. Given that they now have 24 MEPs in Europe, surely one of them must have realised by now that ratification of TTIP could remove their power to "close the borders" should they ever actually get into power?
 

The Opposition

The silence from the UKIP leadership on the subject of this undeniable attack on UK sovereignty is telling. If they're not prepared to speak out forcefully against TTIP (especially the inclusion of ISDS tribunals and mode 4 cross-border trade) suggests that they don't really care that much about our sovereignty at all. It suggests that they're so wedded to Thatcherite ideology that they can't even see the importance of maintaining the sovereignty of our legal system, and the decisions of our democratically elected governments. They don't seem to mind about attacks on our sovereignty, as long as the beneficiaries are corporations.

The void left by UKIP's hypocritical silence on the issue has been filled by two other players on the political scene.

The campaign group 38 Degrees has coordinated activists and organised public information campaigns to educate people about what the mainstream media seems so desperately reluctant to talk about in critical terms.

The largest political party to take a strong stance against TTIP is the Green Party, who recognise this "trade deal" for what it is: A massive corporate power grab, and a grave threat to our national sovereignty. The three Green MEPs are part of the Green-European Free Alliance, which is the largest EU parliamentary group to strongly oppose TTIP.
   

What can we do about it?

Take direct action: The campaign group 38 Degrees has been coordinating public protests against TTIP. If you feel strongly about protecting British sovereignty it is not difficult to sign up. You don't have to be any kind of "radical" or "leftie" to participate. I'm absolutely sure that if you've never really got into politics before, or if you're a right-wing libertarian (who should surely be appalled at this kind of crony capitalism) you'd be gladly welcomed into your local campaign against TTIP. The more people on the streets speaking out against it and providing public education, the better.

Write to your politicians: We live in a democracy where the politicians would prefer that we keep our noses out of it, and limit ourselves to drawing a cross on a piece of paper every few years. One of the only semblances of participatory democracy in UK politics is the fact that we can write to our political representatives and expect a reply from them. If you're not an experienced letter writer, feel free to copy and paste excerpts from my work (I don't care about copyright). Your local MP has a statutory obligation to reply to you if you include your full name and postal address in your letter. It is also worth contacting your local MEPs too, since TTIP is being negotiated within the European Union. Contact your local representatives here.

Sign the European petition: In September 2014 the European Union blocked the launch of a Citizens' Initiative against TTIP. Apparently they are extremely frightened that if they allow the people of Europe to have a say, they'll say something inconvenient like "we don't want TTIP". The organisers of the Citizens' Initiative decided to go ahead and self-organise the petition against TTIP anyway. The self-organised Citizens' Initiative against TTIP could be the most important petition you sign this year.

Spread awareness: You don't have to join 38 Degrees campaigners on the streets to spread awareness. Many elderly people, people with disabilities, people who work long hours and people with young children often find public protest difficult or intimidating. You can spread awareness by sharing this article or any of my other TTIP related articles and pictures. You can share this concise document from the Green - European Free Alliance, or if you suspect your friends or family might be hungry for more detail, you could share this booklet. If people don't know about TTIP, they can't oppose it.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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TTIP and the EU's contempt for democracy

Probably the most dangerous thing about Nigel Farage and UKIP is that they are essentially right about one thing, that the EU is an anti-democratic organisation. The fact that they are right about the anti-democratic nature of the EU allows them to hide a load of extreme-right "Thatcherism on steroids" policies behind their stated opposition to the EU. It is worth noting that UKIP certainly don't oppose the £millions in EU salaries and expenses they claim, despite having the worst attendance and voting record of any party in the entire EU. So even if you're not disinclined to mistrust their extreme-right policies or their rogue's gallery of ex-Tory party donors and failed Tory politicians, their complete hypocrisy in riding the EU gravy train should be enough to make you mistrust them.

There have been countless demonstrations that UKIP are right, and that the EU has no respect for democracy, especially their absurd decision to make Ireland go back and hold their referendum on the Lisbon Treaty again, until they got the right result.

The latest display of outright contempt for democracy by the EU is their decision to block a Citizen's Initiative against the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) because they do not want to allow the citizens of Europe any kind of avenue to prevent this massive corporate power grab from going ahead.

What is TTIP?

I'm not going to go into a huge amount of detail about why the TTIP is so bad because there's far more criticism than could possibly be covered in a single blog post.

Some of the worst things about this proposed TTIP deal between the EU and the US include:

• Lowering of standards:  If TTIP is signed, it will mean that legislation will be harmonised by lowering standards. Where Europe may have higher environmental standards, they will be lowered to weaker US standards. Where the US may have higher food safety standards, they will be lowered to weaker European levels. Standards won't be harmonised by bringing them up to the higher level, they will be harmonised by bringing them down to the lowest common denominator.

• Job losses:  TTIP could end up costing tens of thousands of jobs, just like countless other so-called free-trade deals before it. If the impact is anything like the impact of the NAFTA free-trade deal, it could even cost hundreds of thousands of jobs over the course of decades. Before these deals are signed, positive projections of the economic benefits are touted about by supporters of the deal, but in retrospect, the projections have often been proven to be wildly over-optimistic, and the economic downsides much worse than predicted (if they were even mentioned by supporters of the deal at all).

• Destruction of public services: One of the objectives of TTIP is to open up European public services for privatisation. The French have successfully exempted "cultural industries" (such as the French film industry) from TTIP, but the UK government has flatly refused to seek a similar exemption for the National Health Service, an understandable decision by the Tories, given their desire to see the NHS carved up and given away to the private sector as rapidly as possible.

• Undermining democracy and the rule of law: One of the most controversial parts of TTIP is the inclusion of Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). These ISDS provisions are designed to make corporate activities immune to democracy and the rule of law by introducing a new level of secretive tribunal where corporations can completely bypass the legal system in order to sue governments for daring to introduce new laws that may affect their profit margins. Thus the profits of corporations become elevated above the democratic process, and above the rule of law.

• Secretive and non-transparent negotiations: Even before the EU decided to block the Citizens Initiative against TTIP, negotiations were being carried out in a highly secretive and non-transparent manner. Despite claims from the EU that TTIP is being negotiated in a transparent manner, the chief EU negotiator on the deal has already stated in a letter to his US counterpart that public access to all documents relating to the negotiation and implementation of TTIP will be blocked for up to 30 years.

If you would like more details on TTIP please follow this link to check out John Hilary's comprehensive critique.

What is a Citizen's Initiative?

European Citizen's Initiatives are probably the only decent bit of participatory democracy in the whole EU political system. If one million people (from several different EU states), support a Citizen's Initiative, a legislative proposal can be tabled in the European Parliament. Ongoing European Citizen's Initiatives include movements in support of Universal Basic Income, the human right to water and the introduction of traffic calming measures in European towns and cities. 
               

The Citizens Initiative against TTIP

Through the summer of 2014 a number of organisations and individuals opposed to TTIP (and another similar deal between the EU and Canada called CETA) begun the process of starting a European Citizen's Initiative, with the planned launch in September 2014.

After the organisers had gathered the support of over 230 organisations across Europe, and the backing of the Green/EFA group in the European Parliament, the EU simply turned down the initiative before it could even get started.

The French Green MEP Yannick Jadot described the EU decision to block the Citizen's Initiative against TTIP as "above all a political decision" and a demonstration of "contempt" for the tens of thousands of people to have spoken out against TTIP already.

The mainstream media response

The mainstream media in the UK completely failed to cover the EU decision to block the Citizen's Initiative against TTIP. The only articles about the decision to appear were on independent blogs like my own, small independent websites, activist sites, Green party webpages and a single article on politics.co.uk.

This mainstream news blackout might seem surprising given that the majority of the right-wing dominated UK media peddle a staunchly Eurosceptic line. A decision to block a Citizen's Initiative would seem like the perfect kind of ammunition for journalists who generally describe the EU in terms of being an anti-democratic monstrosity.

One would have thought that this decision to obstruct participatory democracy would have made great ammunition for UKIP too, but as has always been the case, the UKIP leadership has remained absolutely silent about their position on TTIP.

Probably the most likely explanation for this blanket refusal to criticise this obstruction of democracy by the EU, is that UKIP and the right-wing media are all in favour of a gigantic corporate power grab designed to make the pursuit of corporate profits supersede democracy and the rule of law.

When it comes to the minority of traditionally centre-left newspapers (like the Guardian and the Independent) perhaps the explanation for their lack of coverage is that the EU decision to torpedo the Citizen's Initiative against TTIP came on a Friday, and that they're so short staffed that they couldn't find anyone to write even a few short paragraphs about it over the weekend?

If this is the case, perhaps they'll get around to informing the public sometime next week?

Conclusion

In my view, the EU decision to block the Citizen's Initiative against TTIP, is not only a display of outright contempt the concept of participatory democracy and for the citizens of Europe, it is a demonstration that they are desperately afraid of democracy, and of allowing the people of Europe to participate in politics.

They are afraid that if they allow the people of Europe to participate in the political process, it may prevent them from doing whatever the hell they want to do.

The EU will continue with their secretive non-transparent TTIP negotiations, but the fight against TTIP will not be stopped just because the EU decided to obstruct the Citizen's Initiative against TTIP.

In my view, one of the most important things about the fight against TTIP is the provision of information. By continually treating TTIP as if it were just some kind of benign "trade deal" rather than an outrageous corporate power grab, the majority of the mainstream media have already shown that they are failing in their duty to keep the public informed. The complete mainstream media blackout on the EU decision to block the Citizen's Initiative against TTIP just goes to show how unfit for purpose they are. This mainstream news blackout should be a sign to anyone keen to keep themselves abreast of what is going on in the world, that they really must look beyond what the mainstream press is prepared to tell them if they want anything resembling a complete picture.

If people are going to be mobilised in sufficient numbers against TTIP, the most important thing is that as many people as possible in Europe actually know what TTIP is, and it is absolutely clear that the mainstream media is completely unfit for purpose in this regard. That means it's down to people like me and you to spread the word.
 
IMPORTANT UPDATE: The organisers of the Citizens' Initiative against TTIP didn't just give up at this obstructionism from the EU, they've self-organised a Citizens' Initiative against TTIP. You can sign that here.


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The Somerset floods and the ideological austerity agenda

I've revisited the subject of austerity driven cuts to flood prevention schemes on several occasions before the Somerset levels flooded in the winter of 2013-14.

The main point I have raised each time is that cutting flood defence spending is about the most blatant false economy possible. For every £1 spent on flood prevention schemes, the economy saves £8 in avoided economic damage. It seems paradoxical, but if the Tory led government was actually interested in saving money, they would have increased the amount of money they spent on flood prevention rather than slashing it, as they did from 2011-12 onwards. Spending on flood prevention is one of the strongest fiscal multipliers going, yet in their ideological zeal to cut spending, the Tories simply assumed that it was "waste" and slashed away at it.

The Environment Agency estimated that the 2012 floods cost the UK economy somewhere in the region of £600 million, now the insurance industry estimates that they will have to pay out some £500 million for the Somerset floods. These costs will be passed onto the public via increased insurance premiums, damage to uninsured property and through lost trade in the flooded areas.

The fact that the Tories have now pledged to spend an additional £130 million on flood defences is just rubbing salt into the wounds of those who have been affected by the numerous floods since the Tory cuts to flood prevention spending took hold. That £130 million represents just part of the money the Tories cut from the flood prevention budget, and it's now being pledged as a purely political gesture.

Another indicator that the Tories are intent on playing politics over the floods is the steady flow of misleading claims that they have supposedly increased spending on flood defences. These claims rely on the tricks of not adjusting the figures for inflation, and including the 2010-11 flood prevention spending they inherited from the Labour government in their own figures. If the figures are adjusted for inflation, or the spending they inherited from Labour is excluded, there is no argument that they severely cut the flood prevention budget. That they insist on tinkering around with the figures in order to create the fiction that they didn't cut flood prevention spending, rather than actually focusing on the disaster at hand illustrates exactly where their priorities lie.

Aside from their statistical chicanery, the other unedifying element to the Tory reaction is their desperation to blame everyone apart from themselves, they've trotted out the ever predictable "Blame Labour" narratives, as well as blaming the Environment Agency (whose funding they cut), the EU and environmentalists.

One of the big ironies is that of the nine MPs that represent constituencies in the County of Somerset, all of them (5 Lib Dems and 4 Tories) are part of the Coalition government that slashed flood defence spending as part of their ideological austerity experiment. Given the tribalistic nature of politics in the UK it seems extraordinarily unlikely that the voters of Somerset will attempt to punish their MPs at the ballot box. It will be extremely surprising if even one of these nine constituencies returns an MP from Labour/Green/UKIP/other alternative/independent at the next election. The voters of Somerset will undoubtedly flock to the ballot boxes in order to vote for the people that ruthlessly cut flood prevention spending and then sat on their hands for weeks as the disaster unfolded.

The Somerset floods are one of the most visible demonstrations that the Tory Lib-Dem austerity experiment is a purely ideological thing. They knew that things like this would happen if they slashed flood defence spending, but they went ahead and slashed it anyway because they had to make savings on paper. New that the true costs of these "savings" are beginning to become apparent, they believe they can get away with it by blaming everyone else but themselves. The really sad thing is, that there are plenty of political tribalists that will believe their extraordinarily dodgy statistics and their "not our fault guv" narratives and wade through the floodwater to vote for them.

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