It is widely expected that there will be a government reshuffle on Monday. It may take a while for the full details and impacts on junior Ministers to be revealed.
Let us hope that this road sign which I saw in London last week is not a sign for the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at Defra.
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Yessss… it’s Saturday 1st. I think I May have missed something here. Story of my lif
Mulling over the reshuffle, I was thinking that as Chancellor we need someone steady, of proven competence, good in a crisis, not flashy and over political.
How about Alastair Darling ?
Roderick – love it!
I worked forGovernment conservation organisations for 34 years and suffered from constant changes of the Minister. The absolute worst was Ridley…an odious and fag-ridden man whose staff apparently liked him! He now turns out to have forced the Poll Tax through which sunk the Tories. Then we get Blair whose brilliant idea was to ask an Irish food millionaire to report on English Nature leading to its’ destruction and the dreadful ‘Natural England’…I had 5 years of it and that was more than enough.
Now we will get someone who thinks ‘growth’ is all that matters.What we really want is less people and thus less houses (not ‘homes’) and to accept this country is not a World Leader and Great Power. We could have such a wonderful country if we stopped all thsi rubbish about High Speed Trains,growth,airports etc.
I cannot afford to take trains. I have no car. And I last went abroad in 1975.
Wake up before it’s too late!
Dick – welcome and thank you for your very interesting perspective.
Dead right Dick,
We need to tackle the root cause of many of our countries problems – limit children per family, limit immigration and limit the number of aircraft in our skies and cars on our roads. This will never happen of course but we can’t just keep building more homes, producing more cars and building more roads. Its just a constant strive to grow the economy and try to be the best at everything, does it really matter? not to me it doesn’t. We just can’t watch the countryside being destroyed like this, will it ever end? not until we’ve built on every inch of land it won’t.
Jason – thank you
It will not matter a jot who gets the post as they are all career politicians, the vast
bulk of them have never had a proper job and have no idea how the world works.
They have no idea how business works never mind how to protect the environment,
this takes brains and vision. The only vision they have is who will bribe them to have
a housing estate etc built on the green belt.
Oliver – welcome and thank you for your comment.
Whatever happens, let’s hope that the third runway at Heathrow issue, which appears to be coming up to boiling point again, will be knocked on the head very smartly. No member of a Government claiming to have ‘Green Credentials’ should be entertaining any thought of going ahead with this. I believe that Chapter 20 of ‘Fighting for Birds’ (dealing with climate change/global warming) should be essential reading for all politicians with any form of influence in green issues. Thanks Mark for spelling out the dilemma facing us and our successors so succinctly. Alastair Darling gets my vote too, though there are some essential preliminaries to be resolved before this could happen – roll-on the day!
Doug – welcome!
My reference to Chapter 20 in ‘Fighting for Birds’ should have read Chapter 10.
Doug – indeed. Fighting for Birds stops, triumphantly, at the end of Chapter 17. Maybe Chapters 18-20 will be written one day…
I agree Dick, well said. I also own no car, use a bicycle and public transport, and try to leave as small an environmental footprint as possible. Now the old chesnut of a third runway at Heathrow or similar rears its ugly head. All in the name of growth, without any concept of sustainability, or working WITH nature. I gave up on politicians years ago. We need more David Attenboroughs!