15 July, 2011

The Rules: Don’t be a Dickhead

It really ought to go without saying, but it seems there are a lot of people out there who need to be reminded.

One of them is Declan Stephenson, a former Liberal staffer who followed and harassed a Greens member who attended a Liberal-organised forum against the carbon tax.  While it’s one thing to expect shouting and jeering within the forum when challenging the majority view in the room, everyone is entitled to feel safe on a public street and you don’t do your cause any good by following someone around after they’ve left the forum. 

But Greens can be dickheads too.  Yesterday, Greenpeace took the unilateral decision to break into a CSIRO experiment and destroy a crop of genetically modified wheat.  Now I have concerns about GM as well (although I also understand that it’s been going on in one form or another since the beginning of agriculture) but you don’t express that concern by destroying science.  Destroying an experiment is as anti-science as any kind of climate-change denial and can only make you wonder if and why Greenpeace is afraid of the results. 

Just as the Liberal party needs to make it clear that they won’t tolerate dickheads, the Greens must also now distance themselves from the dickhead element on their side if they are to be taken seriously.

Honestly people, even the organisers of the Melbourne Zombie Shuffle have a strict policy of “No Dickheads.”  If you can’t show more class than people who like to dress up and pretend to be zombies, then it’s time to get the hell out of the debate, whatever your cause may be.

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