Globalising Green Beans V Globalising People

international | environment | news report

Wednesday May 03, 2006 09:00

by Kathy Sinnott

Are EU environmental concerns about aviation genuine?

Listening to the debate on privatising Aer Lingus, sometimes I wonder. Don't worry this is not going to be a column about Aer Lingus. I think there is one issue that is clear whether you like privatisation or not. Having a privately run Irish Aer Lingus connecting Ireland to the rest of the world is not what we will have 5 or 10 years down the line. We will have a formerly Irish airline bought by a newer and much richer airline for its prime airport piers and landing rights, flying wherever will make the most money.

As I say, I wonder when I hear such a cross-section of Irish experts and politicians wax eloquent about a privatised airline, why we love to hate Ryanair our Irish private airline so much.

I have my own gripe with Ryanair around disability and the limits set on numbers and the experience of some travellers with disabilities but I am also aware that the European Federation of Disabled People has files bulging with complaints for every airline. The difference is that people paid a lot more to have their wheelchair broken or left behind or to be left sitting at the wrong boarding gate until their flight had departed elsewhere. I have also travelled Ryanair enough to observe real kindness.

We have now passed legislation that will hopefully make all the airlines take better care of travellers with special needs, but in the meantime I do not understand why all the "privateers" are not lauding Ryanair. And it's not just an Irish thing, however, there is a continuous attack on "'Low fares airlines in Europe...

At the moment two of the EU committees that I sit on, the Transport and Tourism Committee and the Environment and Public Health Committee, are considering proposals by the European Commission on "Reducing the Impact of Aviation on Climate Change," which if the debates on the proposal are anything to go by, are aimed at eliminating low cost air travel.

While introducing measures to discourage travel by plane, it makes perfect sense to make trains faster and more fuel efficient, train networks more widespread and the tickets more affordable so that we ride instead of fly from Cork to Dublin or Paris to Cologne. Of course as an island we would be hit by the measures to discourage flying. Disincentives are inevitably financial so they would make getting on and off our island home to interact with the rest of the world much more expensive. I have warned the committees that I will at every discussion remind them that Ireland is an Island and shouldn't be punished for that.

There was a time when young people left Ireland for good. The difficulty of sea travel and the high cost of air meant few visits home over a lifetime. Within the last ten years, Ryanair and Aer Lingus have made flying to and from Ireland much more affordable. Not only are people able to visit their family abroad and take far-flung jobs but they can now take their holiday in the sun or explore the planet without significant financial burdens. Commuting no longer refers solely to journeys between the city and its suburbs but also to journeys from one country to another.

We are assured that the particulate pollution of airplane exhaust stays in the air for a year causing clouds and that this is a bad thing. If this is true then we must limit the damage from airplanes.

The EU has proposed to implement measures to encourage cleaner modes of transport which discourage flying by imposing the "real cost of flying" on people. The "real cost of flying" is whatever financial cost the Commission deems equal to the amount air travel is costing the environment.
I would take this even more seriously, if it were not proposed by the same Commission, who through its globalisation policies and those of the WTO it follows, are bringing us to the point where little that we eat, wear and use, is produced locally. The food on our table increasingly comes from thousands of miles away while the food grown locally is sent to a table thousands of miles away from us. All this globalisation uses fuel, fuel to power the planes, ships, trucks and vans to move the products we trade and consume.
On the one hand we are knowingly increasing our fuel consumption and our fuel based pollution by stimulating the globalisation of green beans. On the other we want to reduce fuel consumption and pollution from stopping the globalisation of human beings.

So when the only real solution offered by the debate is to get rid of the low-cost airlines, I again wonder, what is really at stake. When it comes to fuel efficiency and economy per person you can't beat the low fares airlines. A low cost airline does not run a money-loosing route for long. So is it really the low fares airlines or the people travelling that are being targeted. And if it is us, do we really think we are making progress to return to the days when plane tickets are the preserve of the well-heeled, business class?

Instead of grounding people with average and low incomes, the Commission should seek to ensure that Brazilian sugar and beef is sold at its real cost. This should encompass the pollution cost generated by its transportation, the social cost of poorly paid plantation workers, as well as the displacement cost of Irish workers and the clean up cost associated with unused Irish factories. Perhaps then sugar from Ireland would seem a good buy.

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Comments (5 of 5)

Kathy, why are you still in the Independence and Democracy Group

by Ois

Thu May 04, 2006 13:00

The Independence and Democracy group (IDG) is Kathy Sinnott's group in europe.

The 2 largest national groups in the IDG are the racist, nationalist, anti-immigrant, biggoted, reactionary party UKIP (UK Independence Party) and the League of Polish Families, which is a nationalist Catholic fundamentalist party.

The League of Polish Families is particularly disgraceful. It's members, in particular members of its youth wing, the All-Polish Youth, have on a large number of occasions beaten up homosexuals due purely to their sexuality.

At the Equality Parade for gay rights on June 11, 2005 in Warsaw eggs, stones and bottles were thrown at the marchers by young people (nearly all men) from the All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska), with at least two people injured and hospitalized.

KS will reply

by M Cotton

Thu May 04, 2006 16:00

I've forwarded your questions to Kathy Sinnott who I know will want to reply as soon as she can. When I last discussed this issue with her she had had a pretty serious falling out with the Polish group and was considering joining another. Where that has got to I dont know but it is not something that can happen overnight as all the members of the group have to be consulted and they in turn have to consult their parties in whatever country they come from. Anyway, they are good questions and deserve an answer. I have asked for this discussion to be relocated to another thread where the same concerns were previously raised. Our discussion here is completely off topic, as Im sure you will realise. Your comment will still be 'live' on the current 'comments' page if it is moved.

by pat c

Thu May 04, 2006 16:13

I raised this with KS previously, I know that she raised the issues within the Euro group. this is the last email i got from her regarding it.

kasper
by pat c Wed Dec 21, 2005 18:27
i got this email from kathy sinnott. i'll pass on the other information in your post.

*********************
Dear Pat,

I am back from China now. We took the information that you sent and gave it to the group for investigation. It seems to have set a real ball
rolling. Three Polish members including the leader who are associated with the Polish youth movement have left (asked to leave) the group and are now non-aligned. The rest of the Poles seem to have split internally. This is a work in progress...

Thank you for sending the information.

Happy Christmas

Kathy

The Stodgy Party

by Ivan

Sun May 07, 2006 08:58

Having just watched our elections this week I have to think Ois is living in a different reality. UKIP should be called stodgy but nothing exciting like racist or fascist. Perhaps the tank stunt on Cameron's lawn confused him, or maybe it's just that he believes Cameron's election slogans.

Not Racist?

by Ois - WSM

Wed Jun 07, 2006 17:48

UKIP should be called stodgy but nothing exciting like racist or fascist.

I never said they were fascist. But they are racist. If you want to know more about them I advise reading the document at the below link.

A brief selection from the pamphlet:

Dr Alan Sked, UKIP’s founder leader, 1993-97 has said: “They [UKIP] are racist
and have been infected by the far right”2
Robert Kilroy-Silk (UKIP MEP since 2004) wrote in the Daily Express: “They
[Muslims] are backward and evil and if it is racist to say so… then racist I must be –
and happy and proud, to be so”.3
In December 2003, he discussed what he called “bleating blacks and Asians” in
Britain, asking “Why don’t they stop whining and get a life?”4
In the unrest following the Iraq war, Kilroy-Silk also went on record saying that
“the orgy of thieving in Iraq has more to do with the character of the people than
the absence of restraining troops. And to think that good, decent, law-abiding
young British and American men and women laid down their lives to liberate this
thieving mob”.5
He believes that “Moslems everywhere behave with equal savagery”.6 And he also
referred to Ireland as “a country peopled by peasants, priests and pixies”.7 Robert
Kilroy-Silk later apologised for this remark.
Discussing Britain’s rise in HIV infections, he wrote “The indigenous population is
not responsible... It is the foreigners that we have to focus on”.8
Nigel Farage (UKIP MEP since 1999, leader of the UKIP group of MEPs in the
European Parliament since 2004; former UKIP Chairman, 1998-2000 and cofounder,
UKIP) told former UKIP leader Dr Alan Sked “We will never win the
nigger vote. The nig-nogs will never vote for us”, according to Dr Sked.9
Dr Richard North (UKIP’s former Research Director in the European Parliament,
Brussels from 1999-2003) described our Spanish neighbours as “rag-arsed dagos” in
a BBC TV documentary video, The Enemy Within , which UKIP has described as “a
perfect tool for converting the sceptical… and showing at branch meetings”.10
Peter Watson (Chairman, UKIP North Dorset branch) distributed anti-Semitic
messages via e-mail, including one remark that read “Jewish merchant bankers
[are] responsible for the ills of England”.11 The party refused to take any action
when Labour MEP Gary Titley brought it to their attention.12
Frank Maloney (UKIP’s candidate in the 2004 London mayoral election), visited
Whitechapel in May 2004 and subsequently complained: “Barely anyone speaks
English and to look around you would think you are in a different country”.13 (It
was this remark that led Mayor Ken Livingstone to conclude, “UKIP are the British
National Party in suits”.)
Reigate Grammar School banned a planned political meeting on its premises after
it judged UKIP’s website to be “racist and offensive”.14 A UKIP leaflet circulated in
South Derbyshire during the 2004 European elections expressed the view that the
rest of Europe is ruled by “barbarians”.15

2 The People, 6 June 2004.
3 Daily Express, 25 February 1991.
4 Sunday Express, 7 December 2003.
5 Sunday Express, 4 May 2003.
6 Daily Express, 15 January 1995.
7 Daily Express, 9 November 1992.
8 Sunday Express, 1 December 2002.
9 The Mail on Sunday, 6 June 2004.
10 London Evening Standard, 16 August 2000 and The Independent, 22 August 2000.
11 Jewish Telegraph, 26 March 2004.
12 Bury Times, 1 April 2004.
13 Press release from Frank Maloney, 1 June 2004.
14 Surrey Mirror, 6 April 2004.
15 The Independent on Sunday, 9 May 2004.

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Globalising Green Beans V Globalising People

Comments (5 of 5)