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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Extinction Rebellion has demanded the citizens assembly offered by the British Government be given real authority, the power to override Democratically elected politicians, so Britain can properly address the climate crisis.
It’s Time The Public Had A Say On How We Fight Our Climate Crisis
By failing to act right now, we’re condemning our children to a bleak or even non-existent future. The public has a right to respond to this crisis, writes Extinction Rebellion’s Linda Doyle
30-08-2019 By Linda Doyle…
As an event that challenges established politics and offers new ways of doing things, it is the perfect place to highlight our third manifesto demand: that government “must create and be led by the decisions of a citizens’ assembly on climate and ecological justice”.
In short, what we want to see is something called a citizens’ assembly which will give a representative sample of the UK population the opportunity to debate and decide how we tackle the climate and ecological emergency.
Decades of inadequate political action have led to a climate and ecological emergency that poses an unprecedented threat to humanity and all life on Earth — “politics as usual” will not meet the challenge we face.
In June the Select Committees announced plans for a citizens’ assembly aiming to reduce greenhouse gases to net-zero by 2050, but these plans lack the scale and scope that we desperately need. 2050 is way too late; we have 17 monthsnot 31 years.
The assembly has no teeth, so the select committees are free to ignore their recommendations and the government is free to ignore the select committees.
Parliamentary democracy cannot solve long-term problems. Politicians focus on getting re-elected, so short-term policies are prioritised. A citizens’ assembly is an upgrade to democracy that fixes its flaws. People in citizens’ assemblies can think long-term about what they want for themselves, their families, and their communities. There’s no tactical voting or influential lobbyists behind the scenes.
Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/climate-crisis_uk_5d68d836e4b0488c0d127f74
…
Extinction Rebellion is not the first group to demand a citizens assembly because they are dissatisfied with the representatives voters choose.
President Maduro created a citizens assembly, when Venezuelan elections failed to deliver the elected politicians and policies he wanted.
Venezuela’s President Maduro calls for new constituent body
2 May 2017Amid continuing anti-government protests, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has called for a new constitution.
Speaking at a May Day rally, Mr Maduro said a new constitution was needed “to restore peace” and stop the opposition from carrying out a “coup d’etat”.
He decreed that a citizens’ assembly be convened to write the new document.
Opposition leaders said the move was aimed at neutralising the opposition-led legislature, the National Assembly.
…
National Assembly leader Julio Borges called it “a scam to deceive the Venezuelan people with a mechanism that is nothing more than a tightening of the coup in Venezuela”.
“It is Nicolas Maduro dissolving democracy and dissolving the Republic.”
…
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-39775092
You might think it odd that Britain, the birthplace of modern democracy, would be seriously considering the idea of establishing a Venezuelan style citizens assembly which can dictate to elected politicians what they can and cannot do.
But in my opinion the concept of an undemocratic citizens’ assembly which can override the will of elected politicians fits quite neatly into the political procedural vacuum which will appear when Britain leaves the EU.
For decades elected British politicians have been accused of hiding behind EU rules dictated by the unelected European Commission, when they want to refuse the demands of voters.
If you accept this charge, the creation of a new and powerful unelected citizens climate assembly makes perfect sense. The new assembly, whose claim to legitimacy would be drawn from the perceived urgent need to address the climate “crisis”, which would have the power to dictate policy to elected politicians, would provide ample cover for politicians who want an excuse for not fulfilling voters’ wishes; politicians could use rulings from the new citizens climate assembly as a drop in replacement for the political cover they used to receive from being subject to EU directives.
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“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” ~ Sir Alec Guinness
Trump:
Manhattan real estate people are “babies” compared to political people.
It’s the most deceptive, vicious world. It’s vicious. It’s full of lies, deceit and deception. You make a deal you might as well be making a deal with that table.
So they want to basically double the government and override democracy by imposing another layer that basically compels the one elected to do their special bidding 🙂
If it’s such an issue convince the people to vote for your party and take government. Oh wait these lunatics can’t get enough votes so they want to become dictators. What could possibly go wrong with all this.
100%.
The reason they want to override democracy, is because they can’t win with their delusion at the ballot box.
Any politician can declare a meaningless “climate emergency”. Only a foolhardy one will put up taxes, or penalise the economy, or end public spending on necessary projects.
Extinction rebellion are the anti-democratic wolf huffing and puffing outside the concrete constructed, earthquake hurricane tsunami proof building of democracy.
We actually live under a constitutional republic, not a democracy.
Another layer above the elected Parliament, that can compel the government to do as told……….. that’s the EU.
One should believe everything what the newspapers write. That goes for the whole spectrum from left to right.
But in this case RLu is correct. The EU Commission is the supreme government of all member nations. The Directives that they issue must be taken into national law by all the members. If not the ECJ will take action being that it is the supreme court for all member nations.
God I’m sick of children thinking they know which way is up.
Me too. So sick of dumb kids pretending they are wise.
Your comment set off in my head that Bob Dylan song “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
What could possibly go wrong is that people such as myself rush to join it and vote for nuclear power ,coal and gas.
And who appoints people to these “citizens Assemblies”. Oh yea, that would be the politicians.
So whoever is the current majority appoints an assembly who demands they do what the politicians want but need political cover for.
What could go horribly wrong?
Citizens Assembly is so Marxist.
A Marxist Manifesto, by Joseph Loconte
| September 30, 2016 01:15 AM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/a-marxist-manifesto
“The 1957 Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community (EEC), was a major step in that direction. But Spinelli was unsatisfied: An adviser to federalist leaders such as Alcide De Gasperi, Paul-Henri Spaak, and Jean Monnet, he pushed hard for the creation of a parliamentary assembly, a European constitution, and a common economic policy. Nearly every proposal for European integration bore his fingerprints. ”
Let’s just call the Climate Change scam what it is — a push for full-blown Marxist-Communism on the Western democracies.
BUT !!! sorry, Joel you forgot the messenger CNN ( Chit Not News )
Regards to all
George
You got the spelling of Chit wrong.
CNN = Certainly Not News
Joel – you nailed it when your wrote:
“Let’s just call the Climate Change scam what it is — a push for full-blown Marxist-Communism on the Western democracies.”
The USA dodged a bullet when they elected Trump.
Canada go shot in the brain when they elected Trudeau-fils.
But there is no evidence that anything that mankind has done in the past has had any effect on global climate. Based on the paleoclimate record and the work done with models, the climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So the bottom line is that governments and citizen’s groups should stop wasting time ant money trying to fight climate change and instead work of problems that they have the power to solve. We would all be better off if governments instead concentrated on improving the global economy.
governments and citizen’s groups want power and control over the masses William. The power elite need to wield policy as a way to control the worlds resources, populations, and distribution between the two.
That distribution system is socialism and it has never failed those with the power and control. Those in power will never want for available resources. So they will tell everyone it is for the good of all and the way to be sure it is good is to make it equal. And the failure and sufferings of the past are because distribution of goods and services wasn’t done right in other systems.
But the two sure bets of socialism, wherever and however it is tried, are that: 1) economies never improve and 2) the higher you go on the bureaucratic power and control ladder the less you suffer. And the higher you sit on this Ponzi pyramid scheme life can be very good comrade.
Now if you doubt that everything is equal, people in long black coats wearing sunglasses will come to hear your complaints. These people have gone by different names under different governments down though world history. Iin 21st Century Britain we might call them the “Citizens Assembly.”
What William Haas said.
So why don’t we start ignoring a vanishingly small pack of misguided freaks?
When they stop getting attention, they’ll have to go home and maybe find honest work.
You can’t fix stupid. But you could spray them with slurry…
Albert Einstein quotes ;The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Good one, clive! 🙂
Now the truth is starting to come out.
Extinction Rebellion are not just another concerned ‘green’ group.
They are a ‘green group’ with a overt political desire for power.
What they are hoping we won’t realise is that there is already a ‘citizen’s assembly’ in place within the UK – it is called ELECTIONS.
This sort of thing is standard ‘Progressive’ play. If they can’t win at the game, change the rules until you get the result you want, then change the rules one more time until no body can do the same to you. This is why such things as Trump and Brexit were ‘clearly’ failures of democracy and clear requirements for re-counts, second referendums and impeachments, but ‘correct’ results are the ‘will of the people’ and must always be respected.
You know what they say – Scratch a Green and wash your hands afterwards… I mean Scratch a Green, discover a totalitarian under the surface.
There’s no tactical voting or influential lobbyists behind the scenes.
took me a while to stop laughing at that
what an utter load of rubbish
XR IS tactical lobbyists to the nth degree
and NOT representing any citizens Id like having a say in govt..anywhere on the planet
The ‘Extinction Rebellion’ crowd are the same upper-middle-class pack that refuse to accept the Brexit 2016 referendum result.
Agreed Chris.
As to”Extinction Rebellion, ‘swarming roadblocks’” I note that the “swarm” in the photograph numbers 12.
And to think that I keep hoping a meteor the size of a 2001 Ford Escape will whack down right in the midst of them…. Oh, that was SO MEAN of me!!!! Well, it happens in cartoons, doesn’t it?
It’s just as well that they are as loud, obnoxious and intrusive in the media as they are. If they were more secretive about what they want, we’d have no warning, would we?
I wonder how they’ll do in a blizzard coming off the Atlantic this winter…?
Christopher Monckton: New Irish study shows greenhouse gas effect cannot cause global warming
b-t
Thanks for the video. I wonder if we will see it reported at WUWT.
Here is another, not sure if this has been mentioned on here.
https://climateauditor.com/
Also, they ‘demand’.
Because of course they do.
Not, ‘we are taking a platform of a citizen’s assembly to the next election, please like share and subscribe’.
Democracy is something that is tolerated as a necessary evil by those on the right, who tend to resent minorities being able to vote on how they should live their lives, and used by those on the left, who believe in ‘free elections’ right up until the moment they get enough power to ‘legally’ declare themselves Committee for Life and outlaw elections forever.
The only people who actually believe in the fair and just nature of voting are the centre.
Once again, someone who has never met a conservative, assumes that all conservatives are racists, because that’s what the media told him to believe.
BTW, by far the most racist people I have ever met, have been those who call themselves leftists.
Mass media, et al, frequently state that the average American is to the right of center (shouldn’t that be the very definition of center?).
So are you really saying the average American is racist? Seriously?
All of those people “on the right” tend to be racist?
What a bigot you appear to be. By your statement above that “The only people who actually believe in the fair and just nature of voting are the centre” shows YOU to be of the CENTRE and therefore of the only CLASS that is of the CORRECT opinions. All other opinions are obviously wrong.
BTW, in the US and most democracies that elect one, those in the center usually decide the outcome of the election of the chief executive so whatever actually comes to pass is largely decided by those in the center. Recently in the US, when they have a choice between a leftist and a centrist, the “center” usually votes for the leftist. Ex. Obama vs Romney. Trump broke that cycle.
Finally, the right believes in constitutional republican democracy in the US. It does not believe that JUDGES should decide that abortion or non heterosexual marriage should be legal in all states. Multiple states had VOTES on these issues, and passed state constitutional amendments prohibiting the same, often by very large margins, but state supreme courts, then the SCOTUS mandated that the votes of the people meant nothing. Leftist judges changed the whole nature of the country. Thus it is easy to understand the leftist outrage over Trumps appointment of conservative originalist judges to all levels of the federal courts. The left knows they cannot get their policies in place nationally through the democratic process so have for a hundred years used the courts as their dictatorship. Remember that the Republicans have not held the 60 votes in the US senate needed to appoint the judges they wanted without democrat approval for well over 60 years. Thanks to Harry Reid’s desire to circumvent the 60 votes to place extremist leftist Obama appointees on the DC and other circuit benches as a last gasp effort to maintain that judicial dictatorship, that threshold has been eliminated. This new battle for the judicial dictatorship started with the nomination of Judge Bork in 1987 and continues to this day.
4 more years of Trump with traditional conservative judicial appointments could allow the US to become a Republic again where individual states have different laws regarding marriage, abortion, welfare, medical care, etc. Then people will be able to vote with their feet by moving to states where their views are respected. As it is today, nationwide judicial dictates make all states essentially the same on the major issues of disagreement between the left and the right.
END RANT
A Citzen’s Assembly – shades of the French Revolution?
My first thought was of Robespierre. Somehow folks who espouse lofty ideals think they have a license to kill many many people. We have the terror of the French Revolution and then we have Marxism everywhere it has been tried.
The guillotine is so eco-friendly! And it is only for removing enemies of the People! I have read enough about the Terror for this sort thing to make me distinctly twitchy.
Let us not forget the Russian Revolution. There the “Soviets” were the citizen’s assemblies. We all know how that one turned out.
Britain is in such a political mess right now I don’t think another bunch of idiots would make the slightest bit of difference.
I thought the whole point of Brexit was to get Great Britain out from under the crushing, unelected EU bureaucracy? Why on God’s green earth would the Brits want to immediately replace the smothering stupidity of unelected EU bureaucrats with an unelected citizens committee of ‘extinction rebellion’ idiot bureaucrats?
It was used to be called POLITBURO.
Just so, Antonio!
Isn’t that what the house of commons is? These people talk about democracy all the time, yet don’t seem to understand what it means.
For these lefties democracy is all well and fine until you get a decision you don’t like, then it quickly slides to a totalitarian state.
To a leftist, it’s only democracy when they win.
They have convinced themselves that the people actually support them.
Therefore when they don’t win, it has to be because nefarious powers have interfered with democracy.
Therefore they need all kinds of special rules to make sure that those who disagree with them are prevented from interfering with the “true” democratic process.
These Commies think they can impose their deranged extremism on the silent majority. They’re wrong, and their lawbreaking will be punished with the full force of laws made by lawmakers elected in the time-honoured way.
Brent Hargreaves
By the looks of things, Boris is in no mood to take prisoners, and with his past history of support for the police this mob might just get more than they bargained for.
One would like to think so,Brent, but unfortunately you are too optimistic , in the case of England anyway.
The ER mob seem to have carte blanche to inflict chaos wherever , whenever and to whomever they want.
Having disrupted London for days they have moved to Manchester and blocked a central road for days . The police said publicly that “we will facilitate this demonstration in any way we can” . Appeals to established democratic processes are useless if the streets and cities are being handed over to any undemocratic mob with an agenda.
From time to time readers of this site who are of Germanic origin and of a generation far from that of the Nazi era complain of how that era is so often quoted as being relevant to the ecofascism – as if being German is a sin for evermore. Understandable , but inevitable because the rise of the Nazis and the defeat of democracy is so well documented , not only by the perpetrators and their victims but by foreign observers and writers , that it is a textbook example of how an established democracy can be destroyed . The freedom to cause mayhem being granted to ER by the inactivity of the police and judiciary in England mirrors exactly the way in which , day by day, month by month , year by year the Brownshirts took control of the streets in Germany , and then the parliamentary chambers themselves.
Eric Worrall – You say “an undemocratic citizens’ assembly which can override the will of elected politicians fits quite neatly into the political procedural vacuum which will appear when Britain leaves the EU“. It may fit neatly, but the whole point of Brexit is to replace the autocratic EU bureaucracy with the democratically elected British parliament. When Britons voted for Brexit, they most certainly were not voting to be ruled by a ragtag collection of unelected activists.
And BTW, I don’t think there will be a political “vacuum” after Brexit. Some EU rules will be explicitly replaced with new rules (possibly in some cases the same rules) and other rules will simply disappear, leaving the populace freer to work and play as they wish. The British people will emphatically not need any new layers of rulers.
Mike, I don’t think replacing one anti-democratic political prop with another anti-democratic political prop is a good thing, except for the politicians who profit from such subterfuge. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
The dictatorial movement should make an improved version of “An Inconvenient Truth”, maybe a modern version of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film “Triumph des Willes”/”Triumph of the Will”, which to date is considered one of the greatest propaganda films of all times. This film worked well for the National Socialists back then, so a similar one would most likely also work well for the Green Socialists today.
Why do we forget history so easily?
An almost equally disgusting bit of propaganda was Hollywood’s “The Birth of a Nation”, a particularly nasty bit of revisionist history extolling the Ku Klux Klan as the Saviors of Civilization in the South. A bit of agitprop as well done as “Gone With the Wind”, and less subtle in distorting the history of Reconstruction. Those movies were total Southern Agrarian political advertisements, as much as Riefenstahl was pitching for the Ariosophy of the NSDAP.
Oh thank goodness. Finally a proposal on Climate Change hysteria that guarantees nothing will happen. ER and cohorts will be so busy eating their young and bickering, that the rest of us can get on with life as normal. The danger of any politician handing over anything resembling power is so remote as to resemble zero.
I remember reading a post on this site about somebody hacking ER’s computers, and that George soros name came up in the “funds” department…. If george soros is giving ER money, then its save to say that ER does not care about the environment, and its just a case of mass economic upset, same as the ipcc. Imagine is the whole of the uk stopped using fossil fuels and all coal/nuclear power planets were closed?! England would shut down in a few days and people would either starve/freeze to death or leave on the first boat/plane out of the country..
“….. Imagine is the whole of the uk stopped using fossil fuels and all coal/nuclear power planets were closed?! England would shut down in a few days and people would either starve/freeze to death or leave on the first boat/plane out of the country……”
Under those circumstances it would be very hard to operate any boats or planes in the country, and anyone fleeing it would be doing so by sail, on foot or by horse….
The computers weren’t hacked. The documents were placed on an open page that anyone could read.
I am sure Oswald Mosley would agree with this
When is someone in authority in the elected government going to stand up and say enough is enough. Stop these people from causing havoc and re-educate them on the real state of the planet. There is plenty of info out there that says they have it all wrong. Most of the info has been swamped, just drain the swamp.
Extinction Rebellion is a terrorist organization, and should be treated as the terrorists they are. Along with every politician that has kow-towed to them and their demands.
Will England, again, be liberated by Scottish soldiers?
“……You might think it odd that Britain, the birthplace of modern democracy, would be seriously considering the idea of establishing a Venezuelan style citizens assembly ……..”
I think it odd that a serious blog like WUWT is giving any consideration to the ravings of some mindless protest group. Britain certainly isn’t….
The British Government appears to have conceded Extinction Rebellion’s demand for a people’s assembly, a say in climate policy. Extinction Rebellion wants more authority than they have been offered. Their ravings might end up on the British statute books.
Two words of advice for Maduro.
Nicolae Ceaușescu
Benito Mussolini
Extinction Rebellion used a diesel generator at an event, They said that solar was too expensive, and they would have needed diesel back up anyway. Hmmm, that all sounds familiar.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2019/09/01/climate-change-protesters-admit-using-a-diesel-generator-to-power-their-stage/
I was scrolling down to find if anyone had said that before I did!
I am not about to take lessons in democracy or what I should believe from a bunch of hypocrites and liars. Which these days means virtually any organisation campaigning for anything to do with environment.
My long experience of enviro-activists is that they hanker for the 17th century — for everyone but themselves — and that they could have given Mendacity Lessons to Nixon!