It is too bad that a technology doesn't exist that could allow the climate minister to attend COP digitally. Maybe somebody should create such a thing.
"When a wise man points at the moon the imbecile examines the finger"
meanwhile footballers do ten times the same with a background music of violins
Give this people trying to solve our worse problem more resources, not less resources. Let them try it at least, and don't stand on the way like a cow. Trying to save pennies here is not only miserable, but also suicidal
What's important here is the context, which is the drama around the Rwanda scheme and legislation.
The Rwanda scheme is a plan to send certain groups of asylum seekers who arrive in the UK to Rwanda to be processed and then to live. This has been an attempted policy for over a year now, but after a lot of legal wrangling, was eventually blocked by the courts as being unlawful due to issues with Rwanda's asylum system. In response, the British government have written a new law that attempts to prevent a number of legal avenues for blocking future flights to Rwanda, and declares that Rwanda is to legally be considered a safe country.
This has been a very controversial proposal for a variety of reasons, ranging from people's distaste with the policy itself, to criticisms of the bill's attempt to circumvent the legal system by preventing legal challenges to be heard, and even to groups of MPs who argue it isn't going far enough, and that it should include more ways of preventing European and international courts from intervening. Yesterday, the bill was voted in for the first time in Parliament (the "second reading"), which is normally just a formality for Government bills, which can then get more deeply scrutinised and amended in later stages before being voted on again.
Because of the many competing criticisms of the bill (and particularly because the Government needed to satisfy two groups of their own MPs with conflicting desires), there was some question as to whether the bill would even pass. (This would be a rare event - not unprecedented, but a significant demonstration that the Government now longer can pass legislation and must step down.) As a result, there were a lot of deals being done yesterday, and a lot of people being suddenly called back to Parliament to vote on this, for whom other measures would typically be available.
The vote passed, and the bill will eventually be discussed further, probably amended, and then face further votes down the line. In many ways, this is to be expected for a Government with a 40 seat majority - they should not be losing votes like this in general, especially for flagship policies that they are staking their reputation on. However, the fact that the Government seemed so rattled as to pull MPs back from significant other engagements - and arguably far more important engagements - is a sign of the lack of confidence that they had in this legislation.
In practice, this was a huge waste - not just in terms of carbon emissions, which, as you point out, will be minimal compared to other situations - but also a waste of opportunities of discussion and negotiation at the conference itself. It clearly shows that the British Government's priorities lie with keeping itself in power, rather than using the UK's influence for more useful, long-term effects.
In that sense, pointing at this event is very much pointing at the moon - it demonstrates so much about the current British Government in such a relatively small action.
I find it more disgusting that European and the UK governments havent to date (atleast 20 years of unfettered immigration has occured) stood more firmly for their own national interests (and citizens) and prevented economic migrants from abusing asylum processes at the massively negative consequence and cost to social safety and welfare systems.
1. It’s not “unfettered” and never has been. That’s an extraordinary claim which suggests you have no firsthand knowledge of the requirements imposed on those wishing to migrate to the UK.
2. Consequences of migration on welfare systems is net positive (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/economics/about-department/fiscal-effe...). Obviously as asylum seekers are unable to work, there is a cost (around £4bn/year) of operating the scheme. It is true that likely the tax contributions made by successful applicants for asylum does not fully offset this cost. However the Rwanda plan looks set to be a lot more expensive than the current system.
