Mary Honeyball v A Green Lobby

I suppose that I qualify as a long-time antagonist of Mrs Mary Honeyball. She doesn't like religion, and I am a happy Catholic. She is committed to a sort of statist feminist orthodoxy I am not keen on. She is a London Member of the European Parliament, and was appointed to that body from a list in accordance with the electoral system, and I don't agree with it.

One thing about her which I have noticed, however, is that she is honest--honourable, even, though that term is hackneyed. She does slog away at the European Parliament's somewhat pointless rituals, does attend the hearings at a ludicrous body that meets in Strasbourg and Brussels and very occasionally Luxembourg, and does seem to declare all her expenses. These are very few; they mostly consist of a use of continental transport and the occasional use of a car park when taking a flight from the London City Airport.

A 'green organisation' is currently having a go at her. They have a website here, in which they accuse her of ignoring them, though they seem to have no comment facility, nor a right of response. They have launched into her about a very small use of parking places at London City Airport as an elected representative.

The Fight the Flights Organisation styles itself a local, anti airport expansion initiative. It has a very real case that airflights are complicating the lives of citizens near London airport very severely, and that expansion of the city airport would be a problem.

I think that the FFO has a perfect right to do what it is doing. Democracy in the west, however debased it is, is these days more about lobbies than parties. This seems especially true of the Green movement. I'd hate to live under or near London city airport too. Though I'm on the Heathrow flight path, and can sometimes read the words on the fuselage of aeroplanes above, I can rarely hear them, due to some trick of the Putney acoustics.

So far, so good. However, the FFO is funded, as it declares, by the Manuka Club. This is, in turn, funded by a Goldsmith foundation, mostly a group of ecologist Etonians. They give out money from an office in Queen Anne Street, Westminster, via a network of political organisers who know each other and who are committed to policies that I think would bring about the reduction of living standards, and to the unproven case for carbon-related global warming reduction. The Manuka club is, in any analysis, a lobby, advancing an agenda as political as that of any American tort lawyer or lobbyist, though not usually party-political, through small grants.

Can you imagine what Greens would do if they found any evidence at all that people who genuinely question the dodgy science behind their assumptions accepted money from corporate--not charitable--networks of oil and gas companies? How is the Manuka club different? A 'Manuka Club Limited' is registered at Companies House under No.04692608

The Fight the Flights Organisation seem to share Green politics; their links page is full of links to organisations such as the Greenwich Green Party, Plane Stupid, and Greenpeace. They are above board about it, and don't make any effort to hide it.

I don't like Mary's politics, but I think that she knocks herself out for what she believes, and is open about those beliefs, to the point of irritating people like me. I don't like the way that she claims democratic accountability, because I think the electoral system is a boondoggle dreamt up by parties that doesn't hold individuals accountable. So, of course, are networks of centrally-funded local campaigns.

I don't like seeing someone--even someone I've made fun of--accused of dishonesty like Mary has been over some silly car park privilege that comes with a job. I also don't like Greenery, I'm open about that. If you don't like London airport, you should support another airport with more capacity, or a lower standard of living, or airships; and of course you have a right to do that.

But be completely open about your politics, your aims, and your money, that's all. Mary's out there campaigning for her pointless seat and trying, much as I wish she wasn't--why should a Green front attempt to gain the moral advantage in this fight?

This blog is moderated and I will exercise my discretion with comments, Nothing personal, libellous, or unfounded, please. I also work for a living, so if you send comments, don't expect them to go up immediately. I will also correct any errors if you can show them to be such.

UPDATE:

By the way, the Fight the Flights blog is well worth reading. The asthma and noise associated with London City Airport alone by some ought to make you think about a new set of runways somewhere else, and about the case for very large-scale investment in trains, powered by new power stations, right away. I somehow suspect that those dots aren't joined by some in the campaign, but you live and learn and I have been shown up as wrong before....

UPDATE TWO

In that inevitable way of this blog, whenever Mrs Mary Honeyball is mentioned I end up falling over myself like a vaudeville character, but growing a bit in the process. I'm sure she's some sort of secret zen Fu-Manchu puppet master like Peter Sellers in Being There. Anyway, the upshot is that I re-read this post and I think that I'm in the wrong and the Fight the Flights campaign is probably in the right, and also that I have no real word for what they are--lobby, network, organisation, or whatever. They've posted below and I responded, and I wish them well. London needs a new airport and good trains--not kids with asthma and people stuck under flightpaths in urban areas.