I believe The Green Party are the only party that propose anything close to the drastic steps Britain needs to take if it is to save itself from environmental catastrophe and to take human civilisation forwards into the 21st century. Only Green politics can preserve and unlock the awesome potential of mankind.

My faith in the current economic model has gone (and it has nothing to do with the recession – which is of course just another part of the model). Rather I no longer believe the aims of market consumerism are our aims. We in The West are perfectly placed to conclude that riches do not bring happiness; consumerism only makes for human misery and a poisoned planet.

I still believe we need a small and efficient government. I still believe the third sector needs to be given a larger role in welfare provision. I still believe we need effective armed forces capable (at least for now) of interventionist strategies abroad. I still believe the family unit is the greatest welfare state we have. And I still believe Labour can no longer provide strong leadership.

For these reasons I hope very much that The Conservatives crush Labour at the next general election. I am proud that I have in recent months done at least a little something to assist them in that goal. But I believe the answers The Conservatives can provide are needed only in the short term, to mop up the mess Labour has created and to provide some stability. In the meantime our only hope is that The Green Party, or a party with similar ideals, comes forward to lead Britain into the bright and glorious future it deserves.

Britain has a remarkable history of bringing about unexpected global changes.

This May, The Green Party has a chance to send its first MPs to Westminster. In Norwich and in Brighton they are close to a breakthrough. This is an important first step and I very much hope to help them achieve this goal.

Amongst the torture of prisoners, amongst the Afghan conflict and amongst the far right’s electoral success, the election of the first Green MP could be something we could all be proud of. A glint of light, a hope, that we can do good in this century. That our generation can produce something more substantial than just skiing holidays and hoodies. We’re better than these things.

I want to see quantum computing, augmented reality, regular sub-orbital space flight and missions to mars. I want us to eradicate human disease, produce spare body parts in factories and grow our crops in floating agricultural cities.

But to do all this and other cool stuff we need to survive the next ninety years, and to do that we will need to painfully wean ourselves off consumerism and find a better, less destructive way of living. Voting for a Green government is just one small part of that process, but it’s an important one.

And it’s one that needs to start this May.

I’ve just finished reading Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ and I’m very impressed with it. It’s long been on my ‘must read’ list so It’s good to finally have done it. For those of you that haven’t heard of the book it is a semi-famous publication from 1962 in which the esteemed biologist Rachel Carson set out the horrific environmental and human consequences of using pesticides. It is worth remembering that this was an industry that emerged from the redundant chemical warfare branches of the American Army after the war. So successful was her attempt to highlight their dangers that it quickly became established as a major problem. Her chief bad guy, the chemical dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), was banned in the US in 1972 and banned (almost) worldwide at the 1995 Stockholm Convention. The ban is widely believed to be responsible for the saving of the American Bald Eagle from extinction.

Historians have seen this book to be a key text in the founding of the modern environmental movement.

The book is written in quite a lucid, angry tone which makes it quite enjoyable to read. A surprise for a book that at some points goes into extreme detail over the chemical composition of common pesticides. Reading it you get a taste that she is a forbearer for the likes of Naomi Klein and Eric Schlosser, only less journalist and more scientist, which makes it even better.

Anyway, I’m far from a critic and I merely wanted to post a quick note to myself reminding myself when I’d read it. This is supposed to be one of the first of many books steeped in environmental history folklore that I hope to make myself familiar with. For what purpose is not yet clear, but I’ll keep you posted.

She has also finally convinced me that all our food needs to be grown to organic standards. I’ve been toying with making this a key belief for a while now. The (barely) hidden costs to our own health, not to mention the criminal act of sterilising large swatches of our natural environment, are for too high to be maintained. We need to drastically rework how we supply ourselves with food. The potential benefits are huge.

Throughout Africa, East Asia and Latin America trees are cut down and shrub lands burnt. Acres of land are cleared and coffee plant seeds are sown. Miles and miles of diversity are replaced with rows and rows of a single crop.

The soils are sprayed with fertilisers and as the plants grow they are routinely doused with pesticides. Eventually the beans are picked, sorted, packaged and loaded onto a lorry and driven to the nearest port. Here they are loaded onto a container ship. This ship crosses half the globe and arrives at Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

The beans are unloaded from the ships and put onto freight trains. On which they shunt and shuffle their way to Starbuck’s European roasting facility. Unloaded, cleaned, roasted and prepared they are then sent to a nearby packing facility where millions of beans a day are sealed into foil bags. These are then placed into cardboard boxes and the boxes loaded back onto the trains. They return to the port and are then loaded back onto ships.

From there they cross to Britain and are unloaded before being sent to a central distribution centre. Reloaded from here into yet more lorries they make their way to regional distribution hubs. Unloaded and loaded again they finally arrive at one of the thousands of Starbucks stores around the UK.

Here a ‘partner’ will open the box and throw both the cardboard packaging and foil bag straight into the single bin available – which goes straight to landfill. The beans are loaded into an automated espresso machine that is stuck on an unchangeable default mode of producing two shots of espresso per cycle. Many Starbucks beverages come with either one or three shots. So almost always at least one shot will be wasted. Roughly 40% of the beans in that bag will be grinded into espresso and will then be poured straight down the drain. Those that do make it into an actual drink are usually served in a wax lined paper cup with a plastic lid. Millions are sent to landfill every single day. They will not decompose for thousands of years.

This is the degree environmental destruction and resource wastage Starbucks brings to this planet every single day through tens of thousands of stores around the world. It can do this and still happily make wide margins on every coffee it sells.

Any economic system that allows such a wasteful system to become a profitable endeavour is fundamentally wrong. Either we change it or human civilisation as we know it ends before the century is over.

Anti-BNP Rally, BBC Television Centre, 22nd October 2009

I’m on my way back from the anti-BNP protest outside television centre. I went with two old friends from university and we were there for about 45 minutes before, deciding that honour had been served, we retired to the pub. Only two or three hundred people were in attendance, a hundred of which looked like media. I personally spoke to a guy from some London Student newspaper and my friend was interviewed for Sky News – and we weren’t exactly the life and soul of the party. One guy began burning a copy of his television licence and was soon buried under a scrum of photographers.

The bulk of the protestor’s criticism seemed directed against the BBC itself for allowing the leader of the BNP to appear on Question Time at all. Someone had scrawled “capitalist pigs” under the BBC logo outside the main gate and there were various anti-BBC chants. But I disagree with them. Of course by letting the leader of the BNP sit alongside politicians of established and moderate parties it will give the appearance that he too is legitimate. But the horrifying fact is that he is a legitimate politician. We voted for him – fair and square. The BBC isn’t at fault here, like it or not Nick Griffin earned his place on Question Time.

You could claim that merely by adding to the demonstration I was assisting (albeit minutely) to the hype that contributed to the large-scale publicity of the event. Yet I still feel it was worth it and to be honest I was a little disappointed by the low turn out. A Britain in which fascists win elections is not a Britain I can be proud of. Nor is it one that I cant just sit back and allow to happen.

I know it’s an old argument – but it’s the right one to make: we fought a war against fascism. As wars go the Second World War was pretty ideologically driven. Sure other motivating factors existed but ideology was certainly one of the root causes. The sacrifices made by Britain, her Commonwealth and the United States were staggering (although admittedly almost insignificant compared to those made by the USSR). This cannot have been in vain. To forget the lessons of the Second World War would be a greater crime than the war itself. That a united Europe emerged from this war has to be one of, if not the, greatest political achievement of the 20th century. Nothing should be allowed to threaten that.

In fact our position in the Second World War is perhaps one those rare moments (with just RAF Bomber Command the exception) where Britain can say, “we did good”. To have that reputation, that memory, tarnished by voting for the very same bastards we fought to bring down is a disgrace.

That’s why I went tonight – yes they are entitled to their television slot – but the world needs to know that Britain is deeply ashamed of what it has let happen and that we are committed to putting it right as soon as possible.

Addition: I’ve just watched Question Time on iplayer and I felt it was a magnificent display. It took just three moderately talented British politicians fifty minutes to tear Mr Griffin to shreds. His juvenile racial worldview was left smashed and battered on the field for all to see. The opening statement made by Jack Straw was the most impressive I’ve seen in British politics for a long time. All three representatives of the major parties delivered their arguments with a conviction and an angry raw passion I honestly believed most professional politicians were incapable of.

They did good.

Brief Update:

This has to be brief since I have a pizza in the oven. There’s a lot of things I really want to blog about but I’ve been quite busy and none of these blogable issues have really been compelling enough to justify setting aside the time.

Issues range from how I feel I’ve changed over the summer, the other was to talk about what St Albans was like and the other was to simply share this link. I may have mentioned Robert Llewellyn’s video blog/interview program before. But it’s excellent, especially because it allows him to explore his interests in renewable technologies and electric cars – he has had quite a few notable ‘movers and shakers’ on his show. Well worth a watch.

But just a brief update on me: I’m now living in St Albans and working back at Starbucks. I’m desperate to find something else and to that end I’ve put a lot of long balls in the air and I’m making a real nuisance of myself. St Albans is quite nice, I’ve started French classes again and have been active with the local Greens already. My flatmates are really quite cool and I got lucky on that front.

I’m off to Cambodia in May, if I can muster the money I might leave a few weeks early to scout out places in East Asia and make a real go at it. I’m also hoping I can throw in whatever job I have towards the beginning of next year and pursue some voluntary work with various organisations that I’m currently ‘grooming’.

Anyway. Must dash.

Redefinition 09/09

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. I think I’ve actually undergone a rather significant personal change. Only weeks ago I was feeling unhappy with my lot, only days ago I was cursing my new job and my new life, things that haven’t even begun yet.

But I’ve very quickly redefined the way I see myself within the world. A sceptical mind (such as mine) might point at this and say, rather smugly, that all I’m doing is changing the rules of the game because I’m losing.

Yet I hope the merits of my new approach will overcome this criticism. With any luck I’ll end up achieving goals from my previous paradigm almost as a side effect of achieving the goals with the new.

Integral to this approach is a need to stop comparing myself to others. I need to learn that while I could draw up a list of pros and cons it isn’t going to do me any good whatsoever. It’s going to make me sound bitter, it’s going to drive away friends and it will make me feel even worse about myself. So I’m going to stop. Right now.

My process of redefinition began about two weeks ago while discussing, over some tasty tapas, why economic growth was a virtue. My passionate and more nimble opponent in this debate cut me to pieces. I couldn’t help but smile. I love losing a well fought argument.

This triggered a little bit of soul searching, which led to my previous ‘lefty’ blog post. Last night I began reading a fascinating new report by Joseph Stiglitz about finding a better method for measuring national progress rather than GDP. An idea that fits in perfectly with my new worldview.

Yet this fundamental change in my political outlook is so powerful that it also requires significant changes in my personal outlook. If GDP isn’t the most important thing for a nation, than why should it be the most important thing for the individual? It shouldn’t be, and so I’ve begun to change the way I think. Along the way I’ve been helped by a book my flatmate gave me. It was all about cheese.

While my ‘goals’ have remained static the way I approach them has changed and, as already mentioned, I’ve stopped comparing myself to others. This has been an extremely liberating experience. My heart rate has slowed, my mood has improved and I’m walking more easily than I used to.

Perhaps I’ve been a little sentimental because I’m currently packing up my room in Edinburgh, a place I’ve called home for two years. So many memories; love, loss, loneliness, despair, achievement, triumph and euphoria have all existed within these four walls. I’ve learned a heck of a lot in the last three years. Infinitely more than in my three years at Essex.

Perhaps most importantly I’ve come to realise that everything that has happened to me, and everything that will ever happen to me has been, and will be, a gift for me to do with as I please. I’ve not always reacted as well as I could have and it’s immensely beneficial now to look back and realise that. When times were good I took them for granted and when times were bad I couldn’t see any way out. From the time I realised this at the beginning of the year I’ve since experienced both good and bad times but I was able to appreciate them both for what they were. I dealt with both better. Highs and lows are an integral part of life’s richness. This is the most important lesson I will take away from here. And ‘rich’ is also an excellent word to describe my Edinburgh years, I’ve been very lucky here.

And while I feel sad as my flags come down from the wall and my bookshelf is emptied, I know it is the perfect time to move on from Edinburgh. Things will never be the same, but still I am awfully glad I came. It has done so much for me and I’ll forever be grateful. My sorrow in leaving is offset greatly by my newfound perspective.

I feel far more complete than I was in the September of ’06.

And I’m looking forward to the highs and lows of the future.

The Electric Car

This isn’t a blog post. This is a glorified link to this story. It is one of the most exciting articles I’ve read in a long time. I believe it, and its topic, deserve a far wider readership. If this link boosts that number by merely one or two than I have done a good deed.

Please take the time to read, learn and enjoy

p.s. If you want to follow it up with an easy piece of research then watch this.

Cambodia: A brief and incomplete history, dotted with inaccuracies.

For reasons that I shall keep to myself for the time being I have recently become extremely interested in Cambodian history. I knew absolutely nothing about it, but what I have discovered is remarkable. Practically everything that could have gone wrong to this small nation has gone wrong. External wars, civil wars and then a self-administered genocide so thorough that by 1979 only 300 people, from a population of over eight million, with a higher than secondary level education remained in the country. Brutal, bloody, catastrophic – are all words that could be used to describe Cambodia on a good day. On bad days even hell would appear a better option. That it was once a regional powerhouse responsible for cultural and economic marvels points to a heart breaking tragedy of a story.

Here is what I’ve learnt so far:

The civilisation of Angkor. A mighty empire that ruled the ‘Indochina’ peninsula. Lavish in wealth, its rulers built huge temples of gold in honour of their divine status, culminating in the magnificent temples at Angkor Wat (as pictured). Its strategic location between India and China meant its culture was a rich mix of Indian and Chinese influences. It benefited from scholarship from both civilisations and enjoyed products and technology from both continents. Then, in the 1400s, the civilisation collapsed. Almost mysteriously this once great empire fell at the gentlest of pushes from a smaller local rival. But why?

Opinion is divided. Some say that the black plague visited the peninsula at around the same time, causing havoc with the population. Others point to the remains of extensive irrigation schemes throughout the area – to feed its expanding population forests were cleared and turned into rice paddies. Without the forests rain run off increased and washed away the fertile soils, leading to a catastrophic food crisis. Ecocide. This may explain why many of Angkor’s great cities, such as Angkor Wat, were completely abandoned, stumbled upon three hundred years later by Portuguese explorers hacking their way through the jungle.

The next few hundred years were characterised by sporadic fighting against local Vietnamese and Thai nations. This state of affairs persisted until 1863 when the King of Cambodia (or rather King of the Khmer people – the Khmer are the dominant ethnic grouping in modern Cambodia), a man called King Norodom, turned to the French for support against invading Thais. The French happily obliged and made Cambodia a protectorate. It remained a French protectorate until 1953 (with a brief interlude of Japanese rule during the Second World War).

It was here however that Cambodia encountered its first bit of bad luck in the modern era. Despite effectively being a colony of France it failed to benefit from any of the traditional benefits of imperial rule, and was subject only the negatives. The French imported their own officials to run the country and didn’t invest in the Cambodian people or their infrastructure. Unlike India, Cambodia did not have a legal system, education system and railway network to speed its progress upon gaining independence.

Indeed what Cambodia did inherit was a King, initially hand picked by the French, for being easy to control. They were wrong, King Sihanouk proved himself more than able to manipulate both internal and external political factors to secure the country its independence. Helped a great deal by the failing French efforts in neighbouring Vietnam to repel a Communist uprising. Unable to deal with both Vietnamese Communists and a nationalist Cambodian uprising they gave Sihanouk what he wanted. By virtue of Sihanouk’s uncanny ability to play people off against one another and violently suppress opposition figures he remained ruler of Cambodia until 1970. During this period he had cleverly fired himself from the head of state in order to lead as prime minister, putting his dad in place instead. When his dad died in 1960 Sihanouk made himself King as well – I get the impression that Putin might respect this man…

However Sihanouk’s good fortune had to end sometime. As the French pulled out of Vietnam and the Americans became increasingly more involved the power struggle in Cambodia’s neighbourhood encroached closer and closer. Under pressure to join either one side of the other Sihanouk made a critical error. He decided to cut off all relations with the United States, who had up until then been his greatest source of income. Technically he had simply announced Cambodia’s neutrality in the conflict but in reality he had sided with the neighbouring communist forces – and their sponsors. Russian and Chinese forces were allowed to use Cambodian ports to deliver arms for the North Vietnamese. This situation empowered Cambodia’s own Communists (who would soon take the name of the Khmer Rouge) and marginalized Sihanouk’s authority within his own country. Soon the Vietnamese were building bases deep within Cambodian territory and using it’s roads and valleys to ferry men and supplies directly to the South of Vietnam.

This drastic realignment upset many of Sihanouk’s supporters so, bizarely confident that the world community would support them, they ousted Sihanouk while he was away in France 1970. Sihanouk went into exile for the next twenty years. The new regime, led by Prime Minister Lon Nol, secretly gave the go-ahead for the USA to begin heavy bombing of Vietnamese targets within Cambodia. By the wars end more American munitions would have been dropped on Cambodia than fell on Japan during the entirety of the Second World War.

America reluctantly began funnelling funds to the Lon Nol government which had suddenly found itself embroiled in a  civil war against its own internal communist group, the Khmer Rouge, backed by the North Vietnamese, who it must be remembered, were already operating deep inside Cambodia. The Lon Nol government in carrying out its coup managed to sow choas in the Cambodian government and the state practically dissolved before the eyes of foreign journalists. Their last hope, that America would step up their support was extremely misguided. Nixon was desperately looking for a way out of the whole conflict and the prospect of devoting yet more American resources and men in an enlarged conflict was never appealing.In desperation the new government first declared itself a Republic and then secondly took on the one group of Vietnamese it was confident it could defeat – the Vietnamese community within Cambodia itself. A mini-genocide took place and hundreds of thousands were either killed or forced to flee. That the Vietnamese community comprised of some of the most skilled and educated workers in Cambodia didn’t help matters either. Although in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge finally took the capital Phnom Penh, the pogroms of the Lon Nol government would look like childs play.

What happened next was indescribable. But if one was to try than saying something like ‘the most horrendous act of mass murder the world has ever seen’ would be a good start. Pol Pot, head of the Khmer Rouge, began a forced migration out of the cities, effectively purging them of all their residents – pushing them out into agricultural communes. Meanwhile death squads roamed the countryside and forced rural dwellers into the newly abandoned cities. Supporters of the former regime, ethnic minorities, professionals (or to be more accurate, anyone that happened to wear glasses) were all rounded up and killed. Between 1975 and 1978 over one million people were murdered. In their number went the entire intellectual and skills base of the nation, ensuring that Cambodia would be economically retarded for decades to come. Forced relocation shredded the social fabric of the nation, rural farmers moved into the empty cities and millions of families lost fathers and sons. The female to male ratio in Cambodia is still horrendously out of sync and has led to mass prostitution and young girls are still one of Cambodia’s largest exports. Millions live with untreated physiological problems and ‘legacy’ mines and bombs have maimed tens of thousands.

But the Khmer Rouge’s rule came to end three years later. In 1978 the communist regime in Vietnam turned on their like-minded communist Khmer Rouge neighbours, the first instance of a communist regime turning on another. The Vietnamese tore through the Khmer Rouge who in fairness had effectively already decapitated their own people and were in no fit state to resist.

So to recap so far:

Imperialism left Cambodia unprepared for the modern world, American interventionism encouraged Cambodia to get embroiled in the Cold War and fall victim to the worst of Communist ideology before Nationalism threw them straight into another war. Cambodia has never done very well out of ideologies.

The victorious Vietnamese installed a puppet government and then withdrew. Remnants of the Khmer Rouge fought on for over a decade until 1992. With the fall of the Soviet Union the Vietnamese government hit difficulties and so in turn did their puppet regime in Cambodia.

At this point the international community, to their credit, stepped in. It wasn’t simply going to sit back and watch Cambodia fall back into civil war and disarray. The country was a hostile mix of Khmer Rouge, pro-western Royalist supporters and the now vulnerable Vietnamese backed communist government fighting it out over a shattered and desperate population. The UN moved in with twenty thousand of troops, engineers, health workers and administrators. A whole nation building task force.

Under their watchful eyes nationwide elections were held in 1993 with a high turnout (although boycotted by the Khmer Rouge). The Royalist, pro-western party won by a huge margin and the former King and Prime Minister of Cambodia, Sihanouk, once again became head of state. Content with this success the UN pulled out. Almost instantly the remains of the former Vietnamese backed communist regime turned to the Royalists and simply said ‘Nah.’, and forced them to share power under the new constitutional monarchy.

Their leader Hun Sen then engineered a coup in 1997 to push out the last of the Royalist government ministers and to solidify his rule. They kept the powerless King Sihanouk in place and he, never committed to anything other than maintaining his own position, stayed on until 2004 when he stepped down. In fairness new elections were called in 1998 in which Hun Sen somehow managed to maintain power, despite leading the coup. Elections in recent years have taken place and been more or less fair – and Hun Sen still keeps winning. Perhaps the Cambodians are living by the rule ‘better the devil you know’.

Hun Sen still rules as Prime Minister to this day. The government has not done particularly well for the people of Cambodia. While its neighbours became East Asian Tigers and underwent an export driven economic transformation Cambodia largely missed out. Hun Sen and his followers have feathered their own nests and Cambodia remains one of the poorest nations on earth with over 75% of the population involved in subsistence farming.

Current Affairs:

Landmines still claiming hundreds of lives each year but the fatalities are beginning to fall.

Logging of rainforests have virtually destroyed Cambodia’s once extensive jungles. The government handed over the rights to the forests to multi-nationals for large sums of money.

The Prime Minister Hun Sen is in the habit of taking large sums of money from multi-national companies in exchange for gifting mining rights in the north of the country. Six of the countries 23 protected wildlife areas have been damaged as a result. The money paid for the rights mysteriously doesn’t appear in the national budget and it is almost certainly being channelled straight into the pocket of Hun Sen and his supporters.

Half of the government’s budget is comprised of international aid – and yet still the government has been stalling on pledges to cut corruption. In March of 2008 the UN proposed that Cambodia put its oil and mineral revenues in to an independent international fund. Hun Sen and his government agreed in principle to the scheme, but decided to make the decision ‘non-binding’ while criticising the behaviour of NGOs in his country. He has a powerful friend in China who are more than willing to allow Hun Sen to do what he likes with his oil revenue – so long as he keeps sending mineral rights their way…

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WIND SHIFT
The term applied to a change in wind direction of 45 degrees or more, which takes place in less than 15 minutes.

There has been a rapid transformation in my political outlook.

I’ve spent far too long trying to write a coherent argument in favour my new mindset but no matter what I do I just can’t seem to get the words out in any coherent manner (nothing new there I suppose).

So I shall attempt to put it very simply.

In recent days, and for no particular reason, I have come to strongly believe in the following:

a) Market capitalism and the consumer economy are always going to be unsustainable.

b) Economic growth for its own sake is not worth pursuing, as beyond providing the basics of life it does nothing to improve our quality of life.

c) The employment market is skewed into rewarding those that serve capitalism the most, not those that serve humanity the most. The two are very different.

While this all sounds pretty obvious and straightforward they are not arguments I’ve ever really taken to their logical conclusion. You see, I used to think that while we needed to take some serious steps, market forces would mostly solve the environmental problems they had caused without any assistance. Now I don’t. I used to believe that ‘tweaks’ to the system would be enough. Now I don’t. What good is it to ‘tweak’ a system that is heading in the wrong direction?

At the risk of resorting to sixth form politics it appears to me to be a little like this:

a) Capitalism is unparalleled at producing consumer items. Many of these items are essential. Housing, food, clothing etc. Things like education, health care and (probably) even transport and communications are pretty basic requirements for a good quality of life. It is the best system we have ever devised at delivering these essentials – and lots more besides.

b) The first problem we encountered with capitalism was that it was rubbish at distributing the wealth it produced. Fortunately the welfare state came to its rescue, cushioning the impact it had on the many multitudes of losers produced by the system.

c) We have only recently become widely aware of the second, potentially more devastating problem with capitalism: It doesn’t take into account environmental costs. We have tacked a man-made system on top of an organically evolved eco-system. The two don’t work together. It is this great market failure that has led to the environmental pickle we face today.

d) We therefore need government to step up once again to save capitalism from itself. This time it needs to radically adjust market prices to accurately reflect true environmental costs.

I am proposing a government that will hike the cost of luxury items, controlling economic growth towards a sustainable equilibrium and bring about a culture change away from consumption. In doing so it will free us from chasing riches and allow us to divert resources towards industries and pursuits that truly help foster quality of life.

We need to think big and we need to think radical. The two main parties have reacted to the economic crisis by demanding an immediate restoration of growth and a return to business as usual. In doing so they have, in my eyes, failed to demonstrate the leadership required to get us out of this mess.

I believe that economic growth is an extremely dangerous way in which to measure success. We need to find a new way.

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