Apparently a ‘battle of the beaches’ has been sparked between David Cameron and Gordon Brown, both eager to show their thriftiness at a time when many are feeling the pinch of the credit crunch by taking their summer holiday in Britain. While David Cameron is off to Cornwall, Gordon Brown is looking for a bucket-and-spade holiday in East Anglia. As the elected representative for Suffolk Coastal I can commend Gordon for his discerning taste – Southwold in my constituency has been voted Britain’s ‘quintessential seaside town’ and it’s only really rivalled, in my opinion, by Aldeburgh, a bit further south. I wish Gordon well and hope he and his family enjoy the delights of a traditional seaside holiday – building sand castles, eating fish and chips and braving the cold North Sea.
While he’s resting in a deck chair, soaking up some sun and admiring the beautiful coast line he might want to think about the threat that is posed to it by climate change and his Government’s own behaviour. East Anglia has always been vulnerable to the ravages of the North Sea – it is very flat and is gradually tilting further and further into the water. The threat will only grow as climate change leads to rising sea levels and more violent and unpredictable weather.
This makes the news that the Government’s own departments have utterly failed to reduce their carbon emissions by anything like what they need to all the more astounding. They promised that they’d be completely carbon neutral by 2012 but last year they barely managed a four percent reduction. The new report on making government operations more sustainable suggests that government departments need to invest more in microgeneration and find ways of cutting energy usage. This comes as no surprise to those of us involved with the Quality of Life policy group which reported last year the lamentable record of government procurement and called for urgent change.
Ministerial confusion and lack of control should be shocking, but Gordon Brown’s floundering premiership has so far has been characterised by a lack of direction, grubby political deals and reheated policies. If he can’t get his own house in order how can he possibly hope to lead the country to an environmentally sound future? Let’s hope that his holiday gives him a chance to think about the long-term objectives his Government should be focusing on – for our country’s sake. Otherwise us Conservatives will have an even harder job to do when we take over in 2010.
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Brown won’t for one second consider any of these matters. His only concern is power and not the lot of his fellow man. Quite apart from anything else, I can’t really see him sitting in the sand with his cozzie on….