Greens and Reds

On Sunday I went to a couple of events in the Global Economy strand. First off were Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation and Graham Turner of the Guardian. Simms spoke well but had apparently swallowed a green/red random buzzword generating machine. It rapidly became obvious that Simms is a high heid yin in the global warming cult. He mentioned a debate he'd had with an opponent from what was inevitably described as a "right wing" think tank. But these greens rarely describe themselves as "left wing", do they? Simms decried the idea that information can save us from the perceived over-use of stuff. But it's brainpower and imagination that are the key economic resources, not mere information, and certainly not stuff.

Turner told us that he was the preferred economist of the Socialist Workers Party. Some of what he had to say was interesting, for example his belief that the monetary expansion in the west was created deliberately to make workers feel happy with their house prices going up at a time when their real wages were facing downward pressure from China and India. What was depressing was the impression I got that most of this Anglo-Scottish audience had no alternative answers to the challenge from the green and red juggernaut.