An Inspector Calls wrote:Well, instead of mouthing off about the 'disgrace' of bringing environmental reclamation jobs to Teeside
Have I touched a raw nerve of late with you dude?
It's just that whenever I say 'X' you seem somehow honour-bound to say the opposite.
An Inspector Calls wrote:No, on second thoughts, don't bother, you'll only serve up another 1,000 word long dislocated, illogical, grass-hopping diatribe.
Sorry if my explanations offend you; if you find my replies somehow offensive perhaps you should cease asking questions that create offensive answers?
An Inspector Calls wrote:what would you suggest we do with the ships?
Simple;
extended producer liability -- if you make 'em, you break 'em.
If we applied that principle to all goods -- not just warships -- you would rapidly find that product lifetime, serviceability, the reuse and recycling of components and the toxicity/intractability of their design would change very quickly. As a result we'd see a reduction in the mass and toxicity of waste, and due to the longer product life-cycle, and design changes to maximise reuse/recycling, we'd see a reduction in raw materials/energy consumption.
The media have covered this issue as "greenies object to toxic ships", but if you look at the substance of what Greenpeace and others have said that's not the whole case. This is but one example of producer liability, and unfortunately, whilst the academic press has discussed it at length, the general media seems to have problems covering it because it's such a broad issue. The point about general producer liability is that it creates an economic pressure for manufacturers to design and produce goods in ways that facilitate the highest possible efficiency of resource use; and as much of the energy utilised by most/general consumer products is expended during manufacturing, it reduces energy use too. Strict producer liability is a positive step for the ecological footprint of humanity; the reason it's not popular is that the people making the crap can't wash their hands of it by exporting it -- e.g. to India or China, or to coastal African states where 8 year olds can break-up the components by hand and then burn-off the plastics to recover some of the metal content.
And, on the employment issue, are you telling me that you've a bleeding heart for the unemployed of Teeside, more than other areas? There are people just as poor in the USA who equally need these jobs; are our unemployed any worse off than theirs? (arguably theirs are worse off because of the lack of health care and social services). If we bid for work in the globalised market on the basis of how deep we're prepared to wade in the dross of industrialism, then very rapidly this country will become the dustbin of the developed world. Would you like that outcome? -- full employment, but a crap life because of the state of the environment we're forced to live in?
I've done a number of jobs with communities on Teeside, and Tyneside and other similarly "depressed" areas in the North, and they're not so desperate for work that they're prepared to take any crap job that's going. They're not as stupid as the media or the business world take them for -- they know the score. They know how crap their lives are made by companies such as Able UK, and the know that whist outfits like this can buy-off local political/development lobbies they won't see any significant change in their local circumstances soon.
On the other hand, the local wheeler-dealer businessmen of the North East will take any crap they can lay their hands on if it means making money -- and they don't give a damn about the consequences because if the worst comes to the worst they can move to Surrey. This process isn't enabled by the poor who need jobs; it's enabled by the rich who want to exploit the region in order to enlarge their wealth. And attitudes like yours, which put greater emphasis on employment than on the way that employment/occupation fits into the economic and ecological state of the nation, will keep areas like Teeside in perpetual depression -- because it plays into the agenda of the exploiters of areas such as Teeside (note that's not simply an anti-capitalist statement -- I think 'New Labour', and Mandelson especially, are equally responsible for what's happening on Teeside).
So dude, does that answer your point?
You can reduce your world to simple ideas and platitudes, which play upon a past mythology of power and splendour about our nation and its achievements; or you can be a realist and deal with the state we're in now -- as a result of that same mythologised economic and political past -- and deal with it using mechanisms that take us forward and deal with the trends that will unravel in the future. You might pontificate, but I don't see you coming up with any new ideas; you might attack the views of others, but I don't see you taking the trouble to explain precisely what your views are, and how the substance of those views are backed up by evidence/research (sorry, but linking to the Daily Mail, or worse the corporate mouthpiece of the
Press Gazette, constitutes ideology not evidence).
As far as I can see, you're an honourable member of the
'dilettante tendency'; your personal fear about the uncertain future of the world makes you cower back into the seemingly certainty of a past that can no more deal with society's problems than the present Government or their alchemist economists ('alchemist' because they seek to turn crap like warships, or financial trading, into gold). Fundamentally that position isn't rational, it's a moral and political extremism that cowers in the face of inevitable ecological/social change -- but rather than seeking to adapt, because of its irrational nature, it falls into a "grand delusion" (in the best
NWO-paranoid traditions) that seeks to blame everyone else for their own personal unease with existence.
Dude, chill out!
I seriously prescribe a walking holiday in the Highlands, with some lengthy camp-fire meditation enhanced by
magic mushrooms -- if only to
improve your mood! 
So, I make that something like a thousand words -- is that sufficient? 
I wouldn't like to disappoint you.
Plus the fact that I'm between writing jobs and keeping up my 5,000 words a day replying to the like of you keeps me on my toes.
