Dirty Business
I have now finished George Monbiot’s How Did We Get Into This Mess?: Politics, Equality, Nature, Verso, 2016, and have run out of superlatives. We are now seeing evidence of grossly exaggerated forms of the kinds of corruption, especially corporate corruption, which he exposed a decade ago.
In ‘Highland Spring’ he discusses land reform and we are reminded that sporting estates are exempt from business rates, “a gift from John Major’s government in 1994.” Cameron then doubled the subsidies for grouse moors and froze the price of shotgun licences. Council tax and farm subsidies favour major property owners – feudalism lives on.
An attempt to address these inequities in Scotland met, of course, with fierce opposition. It is extremely difficult even to find out who owns most of the land – see Guy Shrubsole’s masterful Who Owns England? and The Lie of the Land.
The penultimate chapter, ‘A Telling Silence’ proposes a proper and fair land tax. It concludes:
“The skivers and shirkers sucking the money out of your pockets are not the recipients of social security demonised by the Daily Mail and the Conservative Party, the overwhelming majority of whom are honest claimants. We are being parasitised from above, not below, and the tax system should reflect this.”
And finally ‘The Values of Everything’ ends with this poignant plea:
“We must shed old thinking and stand up for those who believe there is more to life than the bottom line. But there’s a paradox here, which means that we cannot rely on politicians to drive these changes. Those who succeed in politics are, by definition, people who prioritise extrinsic values. Their ambition must supplant peace of mind, family life, friendship – even brotherly love. So we must lead this shift ourselves. People with strong intrinsic values must cease to be embarrassed by them. We should argue for the policies we want not on the grounds of expediency but on the grounds that they are empathetic and kind; and against others on the grounds that they are selfish and cruel. In asserting our values we become the change we want to see.”
I was often reminded of these words whilst watching Dirty Business on Channel 4 yesterday. Through many tears I viewed all three episodes straight through. The death of the eight year old girl from E coli from sewage on a beach displaying a blue flag indicating clean water was utterly heart-breaking. Her father later committed suicide. I have written often about the water companies. It is incredible really that the entire nation is not out on the streets in protest. One moment that has particularly stayed with me is when the character played by David Thewlis realises that the sewage spills are not accidents, they are policy. The cost to wildlife is incalculable.
There was little I and presumably most people didn’t already know but I hadn’t fully realised just how corrupt the revolving door system is – water companies monitoring themselves, Environmental Agency executives taking jobs with them afterwards or even at the same time. Nor just how deeply mired in it all is Keir Starmer who encouraged infrastructure investment from overseas hedge funds (in this case in particular McQuarie) and the like, promising to streamline, to “upgrade the regulatory regime” and to “rip out the bureaucracy that blocks investment”. That is corporate speak for deregulation, a policy trumpeted by Thatcher and Cameron in particular and now our current prime minister. I say “current” carefully. How he has the gall not to have resigned over the Mandelson affair is beyond me.
I think that the entire nation is pleased and relieved that the Andrew formerly known as prince and Mandelson have finally been arrested. There has of course been so much else and who knows what horrors are yet to unfold? Now that we have those two I think our gaze should turn back to Starmer and indeed the king. If it is true as suggested that part of the £12m hush money paid to Virginia Giuffre was lent by Charles, that makes him complicit. The late queen’s reputation is in tatters. Perhaps the abandoned investigations into Charles’ receiving suitcases full of cash should now be reopened while we are at it.
Dirty Business is superb and brilliantly cast. Thewlis is everything you expect from such a fine actor and so is co-star Jason Watkins. Asim Chaudhry also deserves a special mention, as does Charlotte Ritchie as the unacceptable face of corporate spin, whom I remember from Fresh Meat. But it isn’t really fair to single anyone out.
This website has all the latest information on discharges. The table below is from an outlet near me – so many hours in just the last few days.
Sewage Map – Surfers Against Sewage
It turns out not to be true, at all, that the water companies are allowed to discharge untreated sewage after heavy rains – that is a myth they put out which I must admit I believed to be true. It isn’t. Such discharges are illegal, plain and simple.
Deregulation means allowing corporations like these to get away with criminality. And that is all it means.
Meanwhile Charles has released Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision, portraying himself as some sort of environmental guru and saviour. He was ahead of his time for his views on certain issues, for which he was much mocked, but he is also a lifelong advocate of bloodsports and the concomitant wildlife persecution (he is immune from prosecution). These two things are not compatible. As Protect the Wild point out, he is hardly “one of the first public figures to sound the alarm” – I think Rachel Carson and many others were rather ahead of him. He took his sons fox hunting with the Beaufort at an early age. Princess Anne was also a regular and so was Camilla. In 2002 Charles said “If the Labour government ever gets around to banning foxhunting, I might as well leave this country and spend the rest of my life skiing.”
Also from Protect the Wild:
“In 2022, for instance, lawyers for Queen Elizabeth lobbied for the royals’ private interests in Scotland to be exempt from Green Energy legislation. There’s nothing to suggest that Charles, our supposed royal eco-guru, did anything to challenge his mother’s efforts on behalf of the family property.”
Constitutional law lecturer Dr Craig Prescott pointed out: “If you’re campaigning about the environment or conservation, and it turns out that certain laws relating to the environment or conservation – animal welfare at the very least – don’t apply to your private residences, then that doesn’t look good… particularly if you’re the only private residence in the country to which the law doesn’t apply.”
The Chagos Islands
I have been vaguely keeping an eye on this story, increasingly beginning to think I must have missed or misunderstood something. Was this not a colonial relic rightly being handed back (although not even completely) to its rightful owners and inhabitants? Starmer now seems to be back-pedalling in the face of Trump’s latest tantrums.
I have looked into the history a little more deeply. Mauritius was colonised by the Dutch (who named it), the French (when it became known as L’Isle de France) and finally the UK. The 2025 agreement would restore sovereignty over the islands to Mauritius whilst maintaining a lease on the island Diego Garcia which is where the military base is. It is to all intents and purposes and all but name American.
The UK separated the islands off in 1965, three years before Mauritian independence. The indigenous people were forcibly relocated to Mauritus and the Seychelles where many lived in poverty. The UK’s occupation was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice. The treaty would allow Chagossians to resettle – but not on Diego Garcia.
It was the British who, requiring manpower, introduced hundreds of thousands from India under a system of indentured servitude.
So this then is an attempt to right an old and terrible wrong. I have yet to hear an objection that isn’t entirely self-serving.
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