Former Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband is the darling of the eco-kids.
So it was careless of him to send his letter to the Parliamentary Labour Party by hard copy only. Ed Balls and Andy Burnham sent theirs by email only.
It is a tiny thing, but telling.
The epistolary juices of the older Miliband and the two far-left candidates are yet to flow.
You can read Ed Miliband’s speech to the Fabians here.
To be honest I find this rather petty – and yes I am an Ed supporter before anybody brings that up. It seems a very cheap shot, the kind I’d hope would be avoided during this campaign and already I see it re-tweeted by non-Ed supporters. The subject is one thing, firstly, how do we know what sort of paper was used? You can now buy several types of sustainable/ethical paper. Just a point but even if it wasn’t I don’t think one letter is worth a comment. MP’s have to send hundreds of letters to constituents and such every week. The election campaigns use up ever more paper in masses of letters and leaflets. I’m sure Ed uses no more paper than the other candidates or any other politician, no matter how green their credentials. If he’d set fire to a rainforest I could understand but this is just faux outrage. What I also disagree with is the tone of the comment “Former Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband is the darling of the eco-kids.” It’s a very negative and patronising way to start a comment. It’s negative towards Ed and his supporters, let’s not forget we’re in the same party fighting for the same values and ideals. This is just point-scoring for the sake of it and I hoped as a party we could be above such things. This isn’t part of a real debate.
I don’t care for the catty tone of this post – I think anyone who cares about the environment knows that while a lot of correspondence can (and should) be confined to e-mail and telephone, physical letters are still an important part of communication, and carry added weight for many people. I wouldn’t judge any of the candidates for wanting to write letters instead of e-mails – the leadership contest is a big deal, as is asking your colleagues for support in such a contest. I certainly don’t think that this in any way devalues what Ed Miliband achieved in his time with DECC – he is the darling of “eco-kids” (nice bit of condescension there) for very good reasons.
I also note, with interest, the “far-left” remark.
Why do we need to behave this way? We have a really great set of leadership candidates – we should be scrutinising and questioning their ideas, not taking cheap shots.
As both an ‘eco-kid’ and tentative supported of one of them ‘far-left’ leader candidate types, just want to add my *sigh* to this post. Is it trying to be satire? Seems to get confused at the moment the ‘tiny thing’ becomes ‘telling’.
I’d like to point out that I’m a bit of an “eco-kid” and I’m going to look at this logically. 250 sheets of paper isn’t going to end the world, I also wouldn’t be suprised if Ed Miliband used paper from sustainable sources. Emails have a tendency to be overlooked in a way which letters don’t and seeing as how it is one letter and quite an important one at that I don’t think it’s that big a deal. Ed Miliband acheived far more as Energy Secretary than Balls did at Schools and Burnham did at either Health or Culture. Also Balls and Burnham have had very little to say about the environment when it’s arguably the most pressing issue we face as a nation and a global community, not to mention the one of the areas we should be most proud of as a party with our achievements over the past decade.
I’m not an Ed supporter, but I’m not impressed with this piece. It’s like one of those nasty little non-stories that crop up on the websites of Tory newspapers with depressing regularity. Everything I’ve read on your site to date gave me the impression that you were much much better than this. Get a grip…..