rodshaw
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Should have said – I’ll be happy to draft a letter, though I think it should be sent by the Party. I sent something similar via email to wildlife photographer and presenter Charlie Hamilton James a few years back (last post in this thread: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/charlie-hamilton-james-and-the-peruvian-rainforest/). Never got a reply, of course.
There are other possible candidates for an open letter, such as Chris Packham and the other Winterwatch/Autumnwatch/Springwatch presenters, who more or less cover the same ground as Attenborough, know that the climate/land exploitation problem is urgent but convey the same limited messages and can’t see the wood for the trees. At least as far as we know.
Even Jeremy Clarkson is apparently now convinced that climate change is happening…but I think a letter to him is likely to go straight in the bin (or maybe now the recycling box).
Meanwhile, wildlife presenters like Attenborough continue to miss the point. In his latest series, ‘Seven Worlds, One Planet’, he has raised climate change in each episode, almost like a sermon, hand in hand with the devastation caused by over-exploitation of land. While laudably raising the issue (and being allowed to), he claims that it’s ‘humans’ who are responsible. By compensation he usually, rather forlornly, mentions some positive point, e.g. a local group who are succeeding in preserving a particular species from extinction. He obviously realises that such efforts go nowhere near to solving the problem.
In his next series, what a change it would be if he said that capitalism is the problem, not humans per se, and that to ‘do our bit’, the best we could do is to campaign to put an end to the system. But even if he thought that, I doubt he’d be allowed to say it.
Should we write him an open letter?
‘Life’s a piece o’ shit when you look at it’ according to the Monty Python film. Knowing what needs to be done to clean it up when you’re in a tiny minority is very frustrating but just keep asking yourself ‘what’s the alternative?’
Yes, Brian and Alanj, of course I was being sarcastic in my post above about Parliament. Incidentally I got my October SS today and the article on Parliament puts things nicely into perspective.
Interesting about the Supreme Court ruling on prorogation though – a unanimous decision and one in the eye for Johnson, from eleven staunch upholders of the legal system, hence the capitalist class as a whole.
Meanwhile, Parliament is back…no, that is, it never went away…anyway, there can now be a full and frank discussion about Brexit once again. Just what we all want.
‘…what are the odds that within the current system of capitalist brainwashing/propaganda working class will arrive at socialist conclusions in sufficient numbers to actually bring about the socialist revolution?’
The odds as a percentage? 99.99%. Or 0.001%. Every day it could be round the corner, or it could be hundreds or even thousands of years away. All we can do is to try and make it more likely.
One of my daughters recently told me that she agrees with it so that’s a step forward.
Some scientists think the existence of multiple parallel universes highly likely. So in at least one of them, socialism has already been achieved. Or maybe always existed. Which is no comfort at all.
Was the letter sent to The Times or did it just appear in the SS? Though I don’t suppose he would have answered either way.
Meanwhile, Springwatch is on air again. Never an episode goes by without an impassioned plea for us all to do something about the impending loss of one endangered species or another. Surveys are launched. Wildlife activity is monitored. We can like them on Facebook and engage with them on Twitter. The point is made over and over again that ‘we’ are spoiling the planet. These are very learned, well-meaning and enthusiastic people who can’t be faulted for effort. Do any of them even have the vaguest idea that it’s capitalism that’s the problem, not ‘us’? Even if they did, would they be allowed to say so on the BBC?
Living in Northampton I narrowly missed out on being able to vote for my own party too.
I used the sticker from a few years ago with the Eugene Debs quote – better to vote for what you want and not get it, etc. Don’t seem to be able to paste it into this screen.
Meanwhile, we have programme after programme on TV about endangered wildlife and how something must be done. The presenters are all sincere, well-meaning people but can’t see past the ‘do your bit’ mentality. Attenborough included. I feel like screaming at them.
Though I daresay any attempt to point to the real cause of the problems, and the real solution, if it occurred to them at all, would be quickly edited out of the script.
Just standing back a bit from this whole rigmarole…in a way I’m amazed at all the political contortions over the last couple of years. I’d have thought, in my simplistic way, that the big players in the ruling class, i.e. the manufacturers, industrialists and other capitalists who wanted to stay in the EU, would immediately after the referendum have strong-armed the government into ensuring as soft a Brexit as possible.
Why didn’t this happen? Did they not have that much clout after all?
