I listened to much of the Chilcot inquiry today - and twittered like a tweeting fool as I got angrier and angrier. And not just because the questions I wanted asked (see previous blog) were not being asked. But to recap the day…

It took no time at all for Blair to start reinventing history - even recent history. The Fern Britton interview was dismissed as if he had simply been careless with his choice of words, even with all his great experience of the media. And the panel failed to press him on this as they failed to press on so many other lines of inquiry - one can only hope that their inscrutability is masking a stinging report when it finally gets published, however many months away that is.

Then he was off, running the show virtually, making mischief with 9/11 when one thing we do all know is that prior to the invasion there was no link between Saddam and global terrorism. And once again he was allowed to get away with it.

The dossier and its presentation was raised - but Tony swatted this away as an irrelevance - and he quoted some totally spurious statistics on how little this had been raised in parliamentary questions - as if that was a sensible measure of anything! And again they didn’t question this at all.

The excuses kept coming: he complained that many were pushing him to move more quickly to war - yes, we know who those people were, and they were mostly in Washington. In the afternoon when it got onto the reasons why the aftermath was such a disaster, it wasn’t that the planning was cavalier (or non-existent)it was apparently because they had not anticipated the role that Iran and Al Qa’ida would take. And it was not our troops that were responsible for the thousands of civilian deaths each month, three or four years after the invasion - no, that was all down to the insurgents. (At this point in the proceedings I have to admit my tweets were becoming rather colourful). Read the rest of this entry.

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth E. Boulding
Economist and co-founder of General Systems Theory

So, this week’s big news is that we are finally “out of recession” - even if it is by the smallest of error-prone margins. But is it perhaps a timely reminder that whilst GDP growth may still be a valid measure of our economic well-being, it is by no means the only one, and there are many economists who question its continued relevance, and some are brave enough to point out the bleedin’ obvious - that continued growth is neither sustainable nor desirable.

I’d like to share with you the latest report from the New Economics Foundation (nef) which puts forward the case for a new macro economic model “that allows the human population as a whole to thrive without having to relying on ultimately impossible, endless increases in consumption.” Read the rest of this entry. .

What a load of rubbish!

Seriously, the waste strategy that Hertfordshire is preparing to adopt is fundamentally flawed, and this is an issue that affects us all - it’s not just NIMBY objections to waste facilities in electorally inconvenient spots.

What is happening across the country, and indeed across the rest of the world, is that mass burn incineration is on its way out. It is yesterday’s technology, and is a dangerous addiction, relatively easy to take up, but very difficult to get rid of. The world of waste treatment is a rapidly changing one, and there are many new ways being found to reduce our past reliance on landfill. But not, it seems, in Hertfordshire. Read the rest of this entry.

I have just added my tuppenceworth to the suggestions for questions to be asked of our former PM when he appears before the Chilcott Inquiry.

Although there are many I would like answered,  the one I hear least concerns the impact of the US and the UK taking what amounted to pre-emptive military action, without the support of the UN, or even NATO. The question I have suggested to the Inquiry is therefore:

How do you justify the damage your decision to take Britain to war has done to the process of international diplomacy, and Britain’s reputation? What weight did you put on this consideration before you decided to mislead parliament in order to win the vote on 18th March 2003? As John Denham said on that day the decision to take pre-emptive action, without the support of our international partners “…will turn many parts of the world against us, undermine friendly Governments, fuel terrorism and those who will join it in the future, and make it more difficult to sustain international action against common problems.” Do you not agree that his points have been shown to be very prescient?

I would urge everyone to use the 38 Degrees website  to put their own question, and to encourage the inquiry team not to let our former PM off the hook