People should not be afraid of a fed up government
In September Friends of the Earth is asking all volunteers to get out and meet their MP face to face. They say that they recognise MPs can be daunting to meet.
It's a shame they say that. It's not Friends of the Earth's fault. The fault lies with the MPs themselves.
For why should we feel daunted by meeting the one person who is employed to represent us nationally? If you'd hired a PR agent, would you be scared to meet them? No. If you were, you'd sack them.
There is, and should be, a complex interplay of respect between us and our MP. We should approach our MP knowing that they are paid to listen to us. That is their job. And it is us, as a group, who hired them for that job, and who pay them with our taxes. If you've never thought of MPs as being your employee, and yourself as a manager in this respect, then now is the time. We should respect any work they do on our behalf, and in return they should respect us and deliberately create the conditions to remove any perception of their being daunting.
The same is true, of course, with your local council and its councillors. And they, perhaps, are even more attuned and responsive to what you want to say. Which brings me to a potentially untapped method of getting the Climate Change Bill into effect.
In Germany and the United States of North America the governments work on a federal model. Individual states are free to adopt their own laws. A groundswell of policy in individual states can ultimately create national, federal policy.
If we look to the USNA now, we know that states such as California and cities such as New York are pressing ahead with climate change programmes. We also know that their Environmental Protection Agency is being challenged in court to prove that CO2 is not a pollutant when released in vehicle exhausts, and so being challenged to prove that its emission does not need regulation. A successful outcome from a climate change perspective would classify CO2 as a pollutant for vehicle emissions. And from there, the rest would fall into place.
Apart from talking with our MPs to bring about a change in national policy - that is, to adopt the 3% year on year reduction target for carbon emissions - we also need to be targetting our Councillors.
Each local authority in this country should be lobbied to adopt the 3% target as a policy framework. I don't think it would prove very difficult.
The public sector is subject to what's called the "Gershon Efficiency Agenda". This says that the public sector needs to find 2% savings each year, either as a direct cash saving or by improving productivity. Public bodies are measured on this, each year.
Sound familiar?
By writing to our Councillors, asking for a 3% year on year carbon reduction policy, and deliberately linking this to the Gershon Efficiency Agenda, we talk in their language. We present a solution to a pressure put on them by national government.
And importantly, we send a powerful message to government: that society is ready for such a framework, and that we are already on the path to implementing it.
When we lobby our Councillors, we should be letting our MPs know, too.
As an encouragement, at least one London Borough is already considering adopting the 3% target as a carbon reduction policy. If you're fed up with lack of progress with your MP, then don't let that energy go to waste. Re-direct it at your council. You might end up achieving more.
It's a shame they say that. It's not Friends of the Earth's fault. The fault lies with the MPs themselves.
For why should we feel daunted by meeting the one person who is employed to represent us nationally? If you'd hired a PR agent, would you be scared to meet them? No. If you were, you'd sack them.
There is, and should be, a complex interplay of respect between us and our MP. We should approach our MP knowing that they are paid to listen to us. That is their job. And it is us, as a group, who hired them for that job, and who pay them with our taxes. If you've never thought of MPs as being your employee, and yourself as a manager in this respect, then now is the time. We should respect any work they do on our behalf, and in return they should respect us and deliberately create the conditions to remove any perception of their being daunting.
The same is true, of course, with your local council and its councillors. And they, perhaps, are even more attuned and responsive to what you want to say. Which brings me to a potentially untapped method of getting the Climate Change Bill into effect.
In Germany and the United States of North America the governments work on a federal model. Individual states are free to adopt their own laws. A groundswell of policy in individual states can ultimately create national, federal policy.
If we look to the USNA now, we know that states such as California and cities such as New York are pressing ahead with climate change programmes. We also know that their Environmental Protection Agency is being challenged in court to prove that CO2 is not a pollutant when released in vehicle exhausts, and so being challenged to prove that its emission does not need regulation. A successful outcome from a climate change perspective would classify CO2 as a pollutant for vehicle emissions. And from there, the rest would fall into place.
Apart from talking with our MPs to bring about a change in national policy - that is, to adopt the 3% year on year reduction target for carbon emissions - we also need to be targetting our Councillors.
Each local authority in this country should be lobbied to adopt the 3% target as a policy framework. I don't think it would prove very difficult.
The public sector is subject to what's called the "Gershon Efficiency Agenda". This says that the public sector needs to find 2% savings each year, either as a direct cash saving or by improving productivity. Public bodies are measured on this, each year.
Sound familiar?
By writing to our Councillors, asking for a 3% year on year carbon reduction policy, and deliberately linking this to the Gershon Efficiency Agenda, we talk in their language. We present a solution to a pressure put on them by national government.
And importantly, we send a powerful message to government: that society is ready for such a framework, and that we are already on the path to implementing it.
When we lobby our Councillors, we should be letting our MPs know, too.
As an encouragement, at least one London Borough is already considering adopting the 3% target as a carbon reduction policy. If you're fed up with lack of progress with your MP, then don't let that energy go to waste. Re-direct it at your council. You might end up achieving more.
posted by The London Letters on Climate Change at 14:46
4 Comments:
FoE still doesn't seem to get it - yes ok meetings with MPs seem daunting (for some people a formal meeting with anybody they don't know could be daunting), it's actually fixing up the bloody meetings, chasing and chasing when you're at work full time, furtively trying to make a phone call when your boss pops out for lunch - to find that the MP's PA is also on lunch...you can't leave a number for them to call back on..and you have another ten things that you could be doing at any one moment of your day... that's what's daunting! (See earlier posting on the nature of volunteering..). And then, when you finally get a meeting, they f***ing don't turn up! And your precious time has been wasted. But at least they have lost a few votes.
I think you over-analyse the reasons why meeting one's MP could be daunting. Seeing a doctor or a solicitor can be daunting, in fact more so, but generally necessity overcomes fear. People will meet their MPs if they are convinced of the collective necessity of doing so.
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