Yes, yes, we all know what Bismark said about watching the law being made. Even so, it can come as something of a shock to hear those who would extol such a system. Complaining that politicians cannot do what he would like them to do about climate change Jonathan Porritt suggests the following:

So it was good to see the latest publication from the Green Alliance on The New Politics of Climate Change. The basic thrust of it is that individual action by the "converted" is never going to be sufficient, and that we now need to mobilise the whole of the so-called Third Sector (voluntary organisations, local community groups, trade unions and co-ops, NGOs beyond the environment world, faith communities and so on) to enable a collective shift in both attitudes and actions. Without this, we will never generate a sufficient momentum to encourage/compel our politicians to do what they know they should be doing but still feel they can’t get away with.

That would be the Jonathan Porritt who used to run Friends of the Earth. That FoE whose offshoot, FoE Europe, gets 50 % or so of its funding from the European Union? Those unions that get great gobs of money from the taxpayer? Those NGOs that, when you examine their accounts, all seem to be sucking at the same taxpayers' teat? Indeed, that Third Sector which in recent years has all but given up any pretence at all of being independent and allowed themselves to be coopted by the promises of government cheques?

So, to explain in more detail. Government taxes us using their monopoly of legitimate violence. They then hand some portion of this money to the less talented parts of the upper middle classes who then use it to persuade us of the merits of what the government wanted to do all along?

Unrelated here is a claim that the European Union spends more on its propaganda budget than Coca Cola does on its global advertising.

For those who would prefer something more pleasant, here is a film of sausages being made.