Im thinking a protest against a bogeyman is just a protest you dont agree with. Or is there an objective difference?
I struck by how the right wing doesn't seem conservative anymore.
Im thinking a protest against a bogeyman is just a protest you dont agree with. Or is there an objective difference?
There are some examples of reality based conservative protests against actual policy - such as the protests against UK legislation banning hunting with dogs, or against the development of onshore wind farms.
yes, trueWoodchopper wrote: ↑Sat Sep 25, 2021 3:05 pmThere are some examples of reality based conservative protests against actual policy - such as the protests against UK legislation banning hunting with dogs, or against the development of onshore wind farms.
When you say anti-vax, do you mean lockdowns and vaccine passports or do you mean 5g conspiracy/depopulation agenda stuff? I wouldnt say the latter is the preserve of the right unless you see David Icke and Piers Corbyn as right wing.
Fair enough
Agreed. The days when someone would think through a manifesto and people would join a party on that basis are rapidly retreating into the rear view mirror. Multiple axes are needed to plot people’s views, one of which is “are they grounded in reality?”
Coming back to this post a bit, I think this is another area where the present isn't like the past.Millennie Al wrote: ↑Thu Sep 23, 2021 1:57 am
When you're young, you learn how the world works and, if you're clever, can think of many ways things could be better. Consequently, you want to change society. As you grow older you find out how people have tried to do this, and maybe directly experience it, and realise just how many ways it can go wrong, so you lose your enthusiasm for change and develop a liking for keeping things the way they are, rather than risking making them worse.
Yes, indeed.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:09 amComing back to this post a bit, I think this is another area where the present isn't like the past.Millennie Al wrote: ↑Thu Sep 23, 2021 1:57 am
When you're young, you learn how the world works and, if you're clever, can think of many ways things could be better. Consequently, you want to change society. As you grow older you find out how people have tried to do this, and maybe directly experience it, and realise just how many ways it can go wrong, so you lose your enthusiasm for change and develop a liking for keeping things the way they are, rather than risking making them worse.
Climate change is a new emergency. Keeping things the way the area means about 2.8°C of warming, which would be utterly horrendous. The annual wildfires and floods etc we're seeing are from just 1.2°C, and will continue worsening until a few decades after transformative change to the economy.
A huge majority of people do actually give a crap about that. Business as usual is unthinkable. There's very little point accumulating wealth in a world that's on fire. The climate is a major source of anxiety for young people.
So climate change can't be thought of as just another social injustice that people will grow out of caring about, because it's going to be almost impossible to accumulate enough capital to be immune to its effects (leaving aside the occasional weirdo who'd be happy enough living in a fortified bunker).
yup, there’s nothing measured or cautious about it.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Sun Sep 26, 2021 11:46 amModern conservatism doesn't seem to have much of a long-term vision - it's all about making a quick buck, even if that's at the expense of long-term growth.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... on-heatingThe UK is a difficult country to keep warm. It has some of the oldest and leakiest housing stock in western Europe, ensuring that heat dissipates through walls, windows and doors quickly after leaving radiators. Nine in 10 households rely on gas boilers, and lots of gas boilers need lots of gas: UK households consume more of it than almost all of their European peers, at around twice the EU average. In 2000, when North Sea gas accounted for 98% of overall supply, households were at little risk of price shocks. But as national production has tumbled by two-thirds in the two decades since, imports have risen from just 2% to 60% of supply to fill the gap.
Gas burned in households now equates to half of all imports – that is why any spike in gas prices immediately translates into higher heating bills. In times like these there is little standing between the average household and the opaque mechanics of a deeply politicised, and profit-driven, global gas market. Using cheap gas to compensate for poor housing stock only works as long as gas is cheap – and as long as you don’t have a climate crisis spinning out of control.
So, there's clearly been some political will to do this in the past, suggesting that Insulate Britain are pushing at a party open, if incompetent, door. It's a specific, actionable goal that just needs the people in power to take it seriously.In 2013 the Tory-led coalition launched the “green deal”. Intended to be cost-free for government, it offered loans – with interest – to householders to install efficiency measures, repayable via the household’s energy bills. Unsurprisingly, the complexity of the scheme combined with its inherent financial uncertainty did not lead to strong takeup. Of a target of 14m insulated households by 2020 just 15,000 had been completed when the programme was binned a couple of years later.
Next, the zero carbon homes standard, which had been due to come into effect in 2016, would have required new homes to generate as much energy on-site from renewable sources as they used – it was a flagship policy genuinely worth the hype. Instead, soon after the surprise 2015 Conservative election win, George Osborne killed the programme at the behest of the construction lobby. It has never been revived.
Then came the green homes grant, announced in one of the first Covid economic stimulus packages last year. This was a simpler scheme, with upfront government grants. And yet, despite very high levels of public interest and applications to the scheme, it reached only 5,800 of its target 600,000 homes – a select committee investigation called its implementation “botched” and its administration “disastrous”. Like the green deal nearly a decade ago, it was cancelled early.
The sum total of this is not pretty. Between 2012 and 2019 the number of home insulation installations actually dropped by 95%. The charity National Energy Action has noted that at that rate it would take nearly a century to properly insulate all of the current fuel-poor homes in the country. In 2021, millions still live in fuel poverty, and many more will likely join them this winter, while domestic gas boilers account for one in seven tonnes of carbon the UK emits each year, accelerating the climate crisis.
smart cookies all roundBird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed Sep 29, 2021 12:58 pmWell Starmer's just committed to a £6bn home insulation program at the conference, so the idea is getting somewhere.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... f3005a64c7
(I won't quote the summaries of each paper, but they're worth a read.) https://jamesozden.substack.com/p/whats ... t-throwingI’ll be drawing upon a literature review we just completed at the Social Change Lab, where we examined the academic literature relating to why some protest movements are more successful than others. Unsurprisingly, the radical flank effect is a crucial part of this question. To sum it up in one sentence, our conclusion was: A nonviolent radical flank is likely to help, not hinder, a social movement. Specifically, we think there’s good evidence it can increase support for more moderate groups and increase the salience of an issue without harming support for the overall movement’s policy goals. To back up this claim, we can look at some of the relevant literature:
Isn't that a standard, tried-and-tested psychological technique? Ask for something outrageously extreme, and when people balk, ask for something only slightly extreme, and you come across as reasonable and moderate. (And if you get the original outrageous demand, so much the better.) See the right-wing ratchet of the last umpteen years of government; also, Overton window.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 3:54 pmInteresting article giving an overview of the research on how more "extreme" form of non-violent protest affect public support for a movement:
(I won't quote the summaries of each paper, but they're worth a read.) https://jamesozden.substack.com/p/whats ... t-throwingI’ll be drawing upon a literature review we just completed at the Social Change Lab, where we examined the academic literature relating to why some protest movements are more successful than others. Unsurprisingly, the radical flank effect is a crucial part of this question. To sum it up in one sentence, our conclusion was: A nonviolent radical flank is likely to help, not hinder, a social movement. Specifically, we think there’s good evidence it can increase support for more moderate groups and increase the salience of an issue without harming support for the overall movement’s policy goals. To back up this claim, we can look at some of the relevant literature:
People who don't accept the tactic are hung up on the fact that it won't change any minds. So what, nothing does. Nobody changes anybody else's mind, ever. That's not a thing. People change their minds on their own. All anybody else can do is be right about something and say so.
The thought that you might be about to hit someone through no fault of your own, that you whatever you do it might not be quite enough to stop it, and the added fact that you are having to emergency brake and the person behind you might be slightly slower to brake and go into the back of you is, in fact, pretty terrifying.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 1:14 pmAnd I'm sure it was more"terrifying" for the activists than the drivers - can't be the first time they've had to brake suddenly on the M25.
And this of course came because some almost universally socially privileged morons in a group founded by someone unable to separate his spectacularly dodgy fantasies from politics decided to stop people visiting their dying relatives, block green transport options in one of the poorest parts of London, and so on, rather than because it's absolute no-brainer for reducing carbon emissions and in line with Labour's view of the role of the state.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed Sep 29, 2021 12:58 pmWell Starmer's just committed to a £6bn home insulation program at the conference, so the idea is getting somewhere.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... f3005a64c7
Of course it is, and I didn't say otherwise. But it's obviously far scarier to be in that situation without a vehicle, standing in front of oncoming traffic. Riskier, too.EACLucifer wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:25 pmThe thought that you might be about to hit someone through no fault of your own, that you whatever you do it might not be quite enough to stop it, and the added fact that you are having to emergency brake and the person behind you might be slightly slower to brake and go into the back of you is, in fact, pretty terrifying.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Tue Sep 21, 2021 1:14 pmAnd I'm sure it was more"terrifying" for the activists than the drivers - can't be the first time they've had to brake suddenly on the M25.
Yep. I once hit a Rotherham supporter on the M1 near Sheffield who ran out from a coach pulled up on the hard shoulder. I was doing about 20 mph by the time I impacted him after braking from about 80. It ended up having more impact on me than him.EACLucifer wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:25 pm
The thought that you might be about to hit someone through no fault of your own, that you whatever you do it might not be quite enough to stop it, and the added fact that you are having to emergency brake and the person behind you might be slightly slower to brake and go into the back of you is, in fact, pretty terrifying.
Of course it is. Climate policy has nothing to do with what's sensible, which is why what we have is so woefully inadequate. It's to do with perceived public acceptability. Without pressure groups, including XR, keeping the issue in public discourse politicians would focus on other areas.EACLucifer wrote: ↑Sun Oct 16, 2022 6:33 pmAnd this of course came because some almost universally socially privileged morons in a group founded by someone unable to separate his spectacularly dodgy fantasies from politics decided to stop people visiting their dying relatives, block green transport options in one of the poorest parts of London, and so on, rather than because it's absolute no-brainer for reducing carbon emissions and in line with Labour's view of the role of the state.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed Sep 29, 2021 12:58 pmWell Starmer's just committed to a £6bn home insulation program at the conference, so the idea is getting somewhere.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/li ... f3005a64c7