Protesting

[noggins]

although protesting against the status quo tends to mean that right wing protestors are protesting against bogeymen rather than policy.

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.

[plodder]

Well, by bogeyman I mean anti vax for example. They're protesting against something that isn't grounded in reality - it's not so much a matter of opinion as a matter of belief.

[Woodchopper]

Well, by bogeyman I mean anti vax for example. They're protesting against something that isn't grounded in reality - it's not so much a matter of opinion as a matter of belief.

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.

[plodder]

Well, by bogeyman I mean anti vax for example. They're protesting against something that isn't grounded in reality - it's not so much a matter of opinion as a matter of belief.

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, true

[sheldrake]

Well, by bogeyman I mean anti vax for example. They're protesting against something that isn't grounded in reality - it's not so much a matter of opinion as a matter of belief.

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.

I’d say that *some* of the former was fact-based

[noggins]

Well, by bogeyman I mean anti vax for example. They're protesting against something that isn't grounded in reality - it's not so much a matter of opinion as a matter of belief.

Fair enough

I think our political vocabulary needs refinement..
Theres “right-wing, but within the rational-liberal-democratic mainstream” and theres “hostile to the status quos - nutters - but not leftwing “

[plodder]

Well, by bogeyman I mean anti vax for example. They're protesting against something that isn't grounded in reality - it's not so much a matter of opinion as a matter of belief.

Fair enough

I think our political vocabulary needs refinement..
Theres “right-wing, but within the rational-liberal-democratic mainstream” and theres “hostile to the status quos - nutters - but not leftwing “

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?”

[noggins]

Ahah!
If you take Reality away from the Left you at least have idealism remaining. Take it away from the Right and there is nothing.

[Bird on a Fire]

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.

Coming back to this post a bit, I think this is another area where the present isn't like the past.

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).

[Woodchopper]

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.

Coming back to this post a bit, I think this is another area where the present isn't like the past.

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).

Yes, indeed.

And the irony is that trying to prevent or limit climate change is essentially conservative. Its an attempt to keep the world as it is to the greatest extent possible, rather than see it change radically as the result of human activity.

Unfortunately that point hasn't been taken up by a lot of people who think of themselves as being conservative.

[Bird on a Fire]

Modern 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.

[plodder]

Modern 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.

yup, there’s nothing measured or cautious about it.

[sheldrake]

I think you’re mostly conflating conservatism and Thatcherism. Has anybody on this board read anything by real conservative thinkers like Scruton ?

[Bird on a Fire]

Another good piece on insulating Britain:

The 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.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... on-heating

Details the government's repeated failures to work out a policy to insulate homes via market mechanisms alone:

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.

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.

The question is, how do ordinary people go up against the construction industry to force a Tory government's hand?

After grabbing attention with stunts, I'm wondering what's next. Hopefully some better-targeted actions.

[Bird on a Fire]

Well 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

[plodder]

Well 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

smart cookies all round

[Bird on a Fire]

Interesting article giving an overview of the research on how more "extreme" form of non-violent protest affect public support for a movement:

I’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:

(I won't quote the summaries of each paper, but they're worth a read.) https://jamesozden.substack.com/p/whats ... t-throwing

This plot is also interesting. Obviously XR timed their actions sensibly, but certainly no strong evidence that they alienate would-be supporters or anything:


Perhaps unsurprising for people familiar with the history of other social movements (abolition, suffragettes, civil rights etc) but nice to see up-to-date research on activism relating to the current emergency, which has obvious differences - most importantly pretty much everybody youngish is f.cked, rather than 'just' certain minority groups.

It's good to see that few members of the public are actually stupid enough to suppress their knowledge and concern about climate change because they got annoyed by some kids. And even better to see that these kinds of actions do indeed seem to increase sympathy for the kids, annoying as they may be.

[Sciolus]

Interesting article giving an overview of the research on how more "extreme" form of non-violent protest affect public support for a movement:

I’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:

(I won't quote the summaries of each paper, but they're worth a read.) https://jamesozden.substack.com/p/whats ... t-throwing

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.

I'm not sure why it seems less successful with progressive policies than reactionary ones. Maybe progressives are more diffident about employing it, or maybe it's something to do with how the entrenched power base pushes back.

[discovolante]

Also good news for cowards like me who want to Do Something but don't want to get ourselves into trouble. I can happily stick to boring stuff like local council divestment motions rather than a white knuckle ride down criminal justice lane.

Also this is just a random tweet rather than actual research but is probably a decent way of framing it as well, although maybe a slightly different angle:

https://twitter.com/electricalWSOP/stat ... m4Ml96W-0g

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.

[bjn]

It’s like the main purpose of 1st class airfares is to make business class seem reasonable.

[EACLucifer]

And 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.

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.

The degree to which your brain appears to shut down when you see the slightest hint of a cause you agree with is concerning.

[EACLucifer]

Well 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

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]

And 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.

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, 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.

[Opti]

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.

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.
Apparently it was a load of football fans and a fight had broken out on the coach, so the driver had pulled up and this guy suddenly legged it across 3 lanes of traffic. He ended up in the central reservation with just cuts and bruises from the stones. I was shaken up for weeks.

I was really pissed off too, I was going to a miners benefit gig with Primal Scream and The Orb. 1992 it was. 2 flat-spotted front tyres and a reasonable bit of bodywork damage to my prized, immaculate Alfa GTV6. Really f.cked up my night good and proper.
OTOH the South Yorkshire police were, for probably the only time in history, very nice to me. Not so nice to the Rotherham fan. I've hated that team ever since.

[Bird on a Fire]

Well 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

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.

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.