This is the second part of my interview with Alan Keen, MP for Feltham and Heston. Part One can be viewed here.
This part is much shorter, mainly because we talked about some things that couldn’t be posted on the website, but there’s some interesting stuff in there about the politics of climate change.
Incidentally, at the beginning of Part One I said that the interview took place on December 14, 2006. I said this because that is the date my Dictaphone claims to have recorded it all. However, on reflection, this cannot be correct, because (again in Part One) I talk about the ongoing conflict in Lebanon. Checking my email archives, I find that the actual interview date was July 19, 2006 (big difference, I know). This, together with the numerous ‘inaudible’s’, leads me to one conclusion: buy a better Dictaphone.
Enjoy!
About climate change: George Monbiot, who writes for the Guardian, quotes this statistic that if the current rate of growth in the aviation industry continues, we’ll need another Heathrow every eight years to keep up. So it seems obvious that there will have to be a limit placed somewhere, especially since we’re not meeting our current targets..so just to clarify, is your position no more expansion of Heathrow?
Yes, I think it’s serious. I mean, Heathrow is the biggest international airport, but it’s not the busiest- some U.S. airports are busier, but of course they’re not international airports. But yes, we can’t sustain continually more and more and more growth, we just can’t. Either the technology has to change, or…I mean, people want to travel. Think of all the Chinese – I’ve been to China recently, South Korea and China, and we all know how both India and China are expanding and the amount of pollution that’s causing, and we can’t very well force them to stop polluting when we’re doing the same. I think people are really now beginning to realise and to accept…apart from President Bush…so we have to do a lot of things. But I think we should tax fuel properly -
Carbon tax -
Carbon tax. But if anything stops Heathrow from expanding it’ll be the failure to meet the existing clean air conditions that Europe has imposed already. So it won’t be aeroplanes that’ll do it, it’ll be the ground track in the main, but it adds to it. Now we can..quite a few cars on the road now don’t pollute at all…(inaudible)…most of the cars travelling round London at the moment could technically be powered by electricity. We have to move towards…the big problem is, as we all understand, that we all have a better life created not by politicians but by the private sector…(inaudible)…they provide what we want – it’s much better than democracy. I mean I know…(inaudible)…with Tescos in Hounslow, but at least we can influence Tescos. If we stop buying something they’ll soon react to it, much quicker than politicians (laughs)..Tescos will soon stop manufacturing the product….So, in a way, the market is a pretty accurate democracy except when its exploited, like you mentioned with the press. So government has to regulate, and government has to regulate industry, and they’ve got to do it much more severely than they do it at the moment. Politics come into it..and hopefully Tony Blair’s going to step down soon, and if Gordon Brown – well, Gordon Brown will take over from him, as long as he goes before the election – if Gordon Brown was to say, ‘well, we’re going to double the tax on petrol’..we might as well kiss goodbye to any chance of winning the next election, because most people will say, well, ‘we’re not having that’.
You think?
Yes, well, they would, wouldn’t they?…(inaudible)…I think people’d just – look, you and I are very aware, I mean I’m fanatical with my green box [recycling box] at home, there’s hardly anything that gets out of our house without it going in that green box, unless its impossible. I’m fanatical…I think the council are going to have to – a few councils have started- charge people who put refuse out, except then you’ve got the problem that they’re going to dump it over somebody’s back fence (laugh) rather than pay, I mean people can be pretty selfish. But if you come to me in 25 years time, we’ll have reached the point where the public do understand – actually I was just in a youth and junior school, and those kids understand already about things I didn’t learn ’till I was in my 50s probably, (laughs) so..I would put my house up on the fact that if Gordon Brown doubled fuel tax and petrol went up 75%, even if he said the world is coming to an end, people would say ‘no, it’s not coming to an end, all you’re doing’ – all the press would say, three-quarters of the press would lie and say, ‘this is terrible, this is terrible…there’s not a problem, this is purely Gordon Brown wanting to take my money’. That’s what the Mail would say, and that’s three million people a day who read it, and they want to believe it, because they would like to believe those things. So if the media were honest, it would be different.
From some of the stuff you have been saying I get the impression that the government – not the whole of government, but the part of government that really makes the decisions – they represent industry more than -
..(inaudible)..I wouldn’t…it’s history to you, but it’s part of my life (laughs), but politics used to be polarised completely and it took too long for the Left to realise that you needed industry and commerce and you needed to be efficient in order to improve the quality of our standard of life. So it remained polarised for a long time. Now Labour’s come together and…(inaudible)…but anyway, I’m getting off the subject, so I shouldn’t be talking so much and should answer the question (laughs). Nice to meet you by the way. I’m really impressed by your website and your deep interest in..and this is the problem we’ve got: if everyone was as deeply interested as perhaps you are…(inaudible)…I’m not saying you’re not biased in some ways…(inaudible)…but if everyone understood things properly and thought about them properly it would be a better world.
I think most people, as soon as things start affecting them, then they start paying attention. So through taxes, and so on…
It’s a shame, it’s a shame.
End of Part Two.
Filed under: Interviews, News and politics, UK | 4 Comments
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Bizarre. This sounds like an American right-winger:
we all have a better life created not by politicians but by the private sector…(inaudible)…they provide what we want – it’s much better than democracy. I mean I know…(inaudible)…with Tescos in Hounslow, but at least we can influence Tescos. If we stop buying something they’ll soon react to it, much quicker than politicians (laughs)..
And then he goes on about how he is “fanatical” about green issues on a scale where it makes zero difference but absolutely refuses to do anything on the scale where he was elected to act? And notice how his reason for not acting utterly contradicts his reasoning when he says Tescos is “quicker to react”. So which is it?
Seriously this guy talks about the world coming to an end if something isn’t done — which is no exageration — and then refuses to do his goddam fucking job. And makes a joke about how “fanatical” he is over his green box. This is the guy who was going on about being the global police force and he blithely ignores global warming which if we are really lucky will do nothing more than kill a few hundred million people in resource wars — but being “lucky” depends on this exact sort of person completely changing who they are.
He lives on a fucking island and he can’t take rising sea levels seriously?? Oh god no let’s go on about “muslim extremism” instead. Let’s bomb someone. This kind of person can’t take any issue seriously unless it involves bombing people. What a shame we can’t bomb the ice caps into re-freezing.
You just feel like smacking them in the face don’t you? Shaking them and screaming IT”S ON YOUR WATCH YOU SON OF A BITCH. YOUR WATCH. WILL YOU DO NOTHING?
Maybe he’s waiting for Tescos to take the lead?
Perhaps.
I think with the whole ‘free-market democracy’ thing he was referring at least partly to what we had previously discussed (in part one) about the failing democratic system. He does mention that the market can be ‘exploited’ and that there is a need for ‘regulation’, but still…it does seem awfully naive. Take, for example, the envrionment: the whole point is that the market externalises the cost of damage to the environment. This, combined with a legal obligation to make as much money for shareholders as possible, inevitably leads to a conflict between what is in the interests of big business and what is in the interests of people in general. In that conflict there has been, so far, a clear winner.
And yes – he, like all Labour politicians, is complicit in our government’s refusal to do anything substantial on climate change. He recognises that there is a need for “proper” carbon tax and also the potentially catastrophic consequences of a failure to reduce emissions, but yet remains part of a government that doesn’t enforce this policy. That’s not even mentioning the more radical steps that are needed, for example carbon rationing…
On the other hand, he does talk about the lack of political will for the radical solutions that are needed. I’ve seen polls that show people are willing to make sacrifices, but I’m not sure there is the political will among the general public yet to make the kind of sacrifices needed to prevent dangerous climate change (a 90% cut in emissions by 2030, according to George Monbiot).
Ah well. He’s a nice guy, but like I say, I think I’ll be voting either Green or Respect next election…
I agree with your both of your criticisms of the guy – it’s worrying that this inconsistent bumbler gets to vote in parliament – but I’m mainly impressed with the idea of interviewing your MP. Was it hard to get an interview or did you just write to him and ask? I might try my hand …
No, it wasn’t hard at all. Every citizen has a right to meet with their MP. You can find out who your MP is and see all their contact details here, then you simply write to them and arrange a date.
I’d recommend giving it a try. As an MP, it is their responsibility to represent your interests. Obviously, they can do that better if they know what you think your interests are.