Kmflett's Blog

A wildfire burns near Cestas in Gironde province in south-west France. Photograph: Julien Soulard/EPA Guardian

The opening line of Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto noted that a spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism (hobgoblin in Helen Macfarlane’s 1850 translation for the Chartist Red Republican paper)

The spectre of wild fires in France and Spain (with lesser but significant wild fires in Scotland, Wales,Suffolk, the New Forest & the West Midlands) is also people driven. Climate Change is seeing a heating planet due to human activity and as with the Communist Manifesto its also human activity that can kerb it.

Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are firmly in the profit before people lobby. Andy Burnham might not be, but only if pressure from without, that is outside Parliament is organised. His plan to discourage disposable barbecues is really not addressing the scale of the crisis. Refusing to act, reportedly, on union demands to implement a maximum workplace temperature suggest a lack of will that needs to be addressed. Unite bus drivers in North East London strike on Friday over unbearably hot working conditions in their cabs. Action on the impact of climate change is needed now, not just possible future policies