This blog been silent for a while now — a fortnight, I'm amazed you're still reading — partly because I've taken on more responsibilities following the latest corporate shrinkage and partly because I've been gawping boggle-eyed at the latest rounds of churlishness, hypocrisy, cynicism and no little irony surrounding the G8 summit, the EU and the Olympic bid; my perspective further astigmatied by the intersteces of my origins. (Now I really am amazed you're still reading.)
These bickering premiers — where do I begin — suddenly represent nothing that they ever cared about to preserve their legacy. Blair has done nothing to develop sport in the UK; if he wants to restore the East End so badly why not put all the costs for bidding and staging the Olympics into the area regardless and help address London's decrepit transport systems? Chirac, while never a sports fan, at least recognises its importance but for him to criticise the British bid for offering illegal incentives is a case of Parisian pot slagging London kettle. Indeed more seriously, the French are the main force behind the G8 ratifying Kyoto; yet while they will have fewer problems than most meeting targets given how little fossil fuel they are capable of producing, the country derives more than three quarters of its power from nuclear energy and is embarking on a project to build a fusion reactor on a geographical fault line.
On trade meanwhile, Blair accuses Chirac of ripping off Africa by maintaining subsidies for European farmers. This is at best an attempt to tackle an idiosyncracy, at worst a spiteful piece of political egotism. Two years ago when the Common Agricultural Policy was reviewed by the European Union, the British government maintained the status quo. To the extent that it even vetoed a motion to cap subsidies at a quarter of a million pounds. Last month Blair tried to appear a good European by redressing a rebate from the EU to the UK, but could only do so by appearing a tough guy at home and forcing the CAP to be cut. He failed, so now the subsidies for small farmers are nefarious to Africa and should be scrapped; even George W. seems to agree. Except — and leaving to one side the plethora of issues we've had in this country with high yield mass production farming — scrapping subsidies would have minimal beneficial impact on agricultural trade with Africa. The real issue with fair trade is the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) successively imposed in various forms over the past couple of decades by the world's wealthiest governments on everyone else. So, if you want to export tomatoes from a third world country to a wealthy nation, you'll get taxed somewhat. If you want to chop those tomatoes and export them you'll be taxed more. If you want to produce tomato ketchup for export you'll be taxed even more, so much that no distributor would take on your product. The rule is, the more value you can add, the more margin you might make, the more you will be taxed.
Then the media tells us there are no factories in Africa because there are no entrepreneurs. But the wealthy nations only want entrepreneurs who will sell them base produce and better margins. This is what they mean by opening up fair trade and relief of debt: economic liberalisation and exposure to systems where the raw assets of barely harnessed part of the world can swell the coffers of those who are already filthy rich. So all the removal of the CAP would do is to allow mass food producers to take over smaller holdings in Europe to sell to Tesco's to create more turkey twizzlers for our obese children; though admittedly they would feel morally beknighted as a consequence.
I find it staggering, to return to my cross-Channel theme, how one quintessential product of the labour movement can advocate such harmful capitalism while conversely the archetypal conservative economist defends protectionism to the detriment of investment and market exposure. Here we see Blair with his chicanery and charade of action for Africa when he consorts with pop stars on stage at party conference, while lurking outside the main hall is the tenebrous sponsorship of Nestlé, among the foulest perpertrators of fiscal brutality against the African continent. These men are asking themselves not what they can do for Africa, but what Africa can do for them. What legacy would it offer them if they could say they instigated a movement to make poverty history or to move away rom fossil fuels? I would begrudge them neither of these things if I saw any substance to their words. Let us see them offer aid against malaria if they can't stop children starving. Or increase duty on aeroplane fuel, one of the world's biggest pollutors.
Fundamentally, this is a battle for justice, that faculty which allows us to live as a society with mutual respect, guarantees and obligations. Until now, a continent lay folorn outside justice, stricken at its perimeter. The way inside is to accept that we live with these people. We share our earth, our air, our sun and our water with them.
