The Three Leaders

The three maestro's stood on their podiums and proceeded to answer questions in turn a bit like automatons. In the game that followed where each waited for the other to make some dreadful mistake, the public were treated to 90 minutes of unimaginative boredom.

Fighting to occupy the centre of british politics as a strategic and tactical manovere Clegg, Cameron and Brown were all performing. .

Clegg played the Romeo and Juliet game...a "plague on both your houses" ..the public can only trust the liberals.

Cameron kept up the pressure of being the "agent of change", whilst keeping his hand concealled...............the real cost of his proposed program of cuts, privatisation and decimating public services.

Ceasar GB tried to appear imperious and in control...the man that gets things done (which indeed he does)

Not one of the 3 approached Tony Blairs abilities to communicate. But in all of this "politics" is the victim reducing issues to media bites and truncating political debate ultimately  debases the political system and ensures really contentious and serious issues like Iran and Housing remain unplumbed. perhaps the attempt to turn the Elections into cheap reality TV should be abandoned. This is not Big Brother where we vote who should leave the house but a decison that has fundemental consequences for us all over the next 5 years.

MGM's problems cancel Bond

The news that the 23rd Movie in the Bond franchise is cancelled indefinitely is really bad news for the british film industry. MGM,s future is in great doubt because it owes billions and has no immediate buyer. The business investors that speculated on MGM burnt their fingers in the recession and asset stripped MGM is a shell of what it was.

The Bond franchise is one that has sustained the British film business for 50 years ensuring continuing business to studios and a plethora of british companies. The downstream employment is massive with big productions like this. And there will be concerns about the knock on effect for british productions.

Bond is inextricably part of the british way of life ..so I for one hope the MGM problems can be quickly resolved

The Fuel Crisis

This is Michael Meacher attending a FOE election hustings. Cameron wishes the Tories to be seen as being green and extremely cuddly. But underneath the propaganda are the Tories in it together or merely supporting the interests of powerful global conglomerates?

Fuel makes everything we see use or work with work.The post war has been defined and shaped by one thing...very cheap oil.

Agriculture is defined by oil. Without oil to fuel planes,trains and trucks regional, national and global sourcing of food would be impossible. The drive for cheap food to meet increasing consumer demand has been driven by big business and successfully decoupled the public from how food is produced, seasonality and moral choices. Beef production is heavy oil dependant oil to ship in massive amounts of animal feed, oil to ship beef to abattoir's and then more oil to ship the butchered products around the globe. Clearly this is insane

The coming storm will face us with hard choices on fuel, As we have seen it is a suppliers market and as India and China enter the market to feed industrialisation fuel security is a major issue. The case for swapping from hydro carbons to renewables is a no brainer.

And the UK has the largest potential supply of renewables such as windpower and wave energy in Europe. But in a quick fix many advocate nuclear power. Technically nuclear power can be classed as green...BUT there still remain major safety issues and questions about the true cost of power when decommissioning costs are added in.

Globally powerful companies and politics is a very difficult mix indeed. The Tories have to chat up big business to support their political ambition but this then undermines their ability to address climate change.

Unfettered laissez faire capitalism and progress on environmental issues do not go hand in hand at all. As Michael has pointed the collapse of neo classical economics raises an issue of what sort of system do we want to allocate scarce resources within our society?

Addressing globalisation and radically changing our economic system will be needed to address climate change. The Tories have a long way to go and other parties will be forced to make some really hard choices.

The post oil world is with us and yet we still hold on to redundant technology where we pass on a legacy of ever increasing future costs for us taking too much time in changing the ways we live. Oil profits today will be major costs that will be shackled to our grandchildren.

Unfortunately this does not make good listening to a public weary from war, recession and relentless social change. It is intresting to watch how politicians will shape public and governmental opinion to address the elephant in the living room. We need to act now