Ruth Kelly - "good riddance to bad rubbish" or "bring on James Purnell"

You may have noticed that contributions to this blog have wained of late, which is for a number of good reasons, and most bloggers will know that a dearth of new posts means a decline in visitors. So when I checked the sitemeter this afternoon and saw that we had so far had 35 visitors, I knew something was up. A quick flit through the results brought up lots of people searching for one name - Ruth Kelly.

Yes, Ruth Kelly decided to resign today, and since we have mentioned her once or twice as well as photoshopped her fizzog, we attracted some attention. It seems that whilst it's quite likely that she engaged in corporeal mortification, the sheer torture of life in the Cabinet was more than she could take. Either that or she wants to spend more time with her family. We'll leave the debate to the political anoraks.

As far as we're concerned, look at her record: supporting a third runway for Heathrow & doing nothing to re-nationalise privatised Rail network seem the most stand out failures. But locally, she has presided over the utter farce that is the Longdendale Bypass Public Inquiry and done fuck all about National Grid's Plans for the Woodhead Tunnel, effectively pulling the pud of the Save the Woodhead Tunnel group (whom, it has to be said, seem content to have their pud pulled). Disastrous.

Wouldn't it be ironic - and completely delicious - if Gordon Brown were to choose to fill Kelly's place that yuppie drip James Purnell in his pending Cabinet reshuffle. Then battle would well and truly be joined. Bring it on Gordon.

Ruth Kelly is number crunching

Better Transport has news (on their 1st February blog) that Ruth Kelly and the Department for Transport are spending a lot of time pouring over the relative costs of various road schemes around the country. 'Cost Escalation' is now an issue, so here's a quote:

"Over the next couple of months I will be taking a firm view of what roads are being prioritised. It's absolutely the case there are tough choices to be made. We will have to look right across the roads programme to see what is desirable. What we need to do is have a rigorous look at the figures and be clear about what we can afford and what we cannot afford… I hope to be in a position in the next few months to make a definitive statement about where we are on cost and which roads we are committed to seeing delivered"

So it's not really a surprise when our spies report that Roy Oldham stated at the last full Council meeting of TMBC that he was seeking an urgent meeting with Kelly. Remember the news the other week that he was also seeking a meeting with Tom Harris? There's clearly going to be a lot of lobbying going on from TMBC and Purnell & Co to keep this scheme on track.

In the meantime, we'd like to point Oldham, Flynn etc towards our little device in the top left-hand corner of this blog that is tracking the 'cost escalation'. 25p per second Roy...

Does Ruth Kelly wear a hair shirt?

Perhaps more than any other in recent times, this government's attempts to resolve the inherent contradictions of capitalism through spin - if not concrete reality - are becoming less and less credible. Last week* saw the release of a discussion paper by the Department for Transport that is a perfect illustration of a new and what will prove to be intractable conundrum - how to expand road, rail and air networks whilst seeking to curb CO2 emissions.

The paper signals a disdain for the rail alternatives and sees a future where 'decarbonised' automobiles will need to be accommodated on an ever widening and expanding motorway and road network. Furthermore, they are seeking to fund this expansion through private investment - a logical conclusion to the 'Design Build Finance Operate' initiatives of the 1990s. It's perhaps not so coincidental that two of the largest private road building firms have been courting each other in recent weeks and now look like they will merge shortly: Carillion (contractors for the Longdendale Bypass) & McAlpine (whose 'Green' claim-to-fame is that they built the Eden Project).

Let's be clear: even if all motor vehicles became carbon neutral first thing tomorrow, we'd still be against the expansion of the road network. The motor industry has been a key staple of capitalism since the end of World War 2. Automobiles are the pre-eminent product in this economic system, and the motor industry itself is a key locus for the expansion of capital and the accumulation of surplus value (the primary preoccupation of capitalism). Nothing can stand in it's way, whether it is carbon emitting or carbon neutral, and it could quite conceivably be the latter within the foreseeable future.

The freedom that the car offers is an individual freedom only, and one that can only exist without taking away the freedoms of everyone else. In this way, the State makes a bargain that in return for the ability to go anywhere at any time you choose, unspoilt communal spaces will be increasingly tarmacked over. But now it seems the bargain is going to be even more bizarre than that - the State will guarantee both the freedom to travel and the freedom from anxiety that one will not be polluting the environment. As long as one closes one's eyes to the fact that the landscape around us is being destroyed, it will be possible to have a clean conscience about levels of CO2.

In this case, the empress who has no clothes is Ruth Kelly. In the recent past, she has had the gall to say she receives 'spiritual support' from an organisation that provided both spiritual & political support for the formerly Fascist governments of Spain and Chile. This presumably makes her well qualified to promote the cause of irrationality in the style of the Cosa Nostra, a hallmark of this government's authoritarian approach to almost any issue.

After all, if she has a pang of conscience, she'll no doubt just pull the cilice ever tighter.

*on no more a conspicuous date than All Hallows Eve!