Friday, 10 April 2015

Green Party members prevented from standing for parliament for Basingstoke on a joint, job-share candidacy

A request by Green Party members Sarah Cope and Clare Phipps’ for joint parliamentary candidacy submitted to Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council on Thursday 9th April was rejected today by the Electoral Returning Officer on the grounds of a ban on job-shares for MPs.

Neither Cope nor Phipps would be able to serve as a full-time MP. Cope is the main carer for two young children, and Phipps suffers from a disability which would prevent her from working full-time. 
Allowing job-share MPs has been Green Party policy since 2012. In 2010 Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, used her first speech as Green Party Leader to call for the post of Member of Parliament to be opened up to job-shares to encourage more women MPs and make Westminster politics more accessible to ordinary people.
Cope, 36, is a mother of two. She has been an active member of the Green Party for over a decade and is the chair of Green Party Women, the women's sub-group within the party.
Cope said:
Allowing job-share MPs would open up Parliament to a much more diverse group of people, including more women, those with childcare and other caring responsibilities and those with disabilities.
At a time when people are disenchanted with 'business as usual' politics, it is an idea which could re-engage people. If voters have the chance to vote for people who are more like them, and who can relate to issues within their lives such as living with disabilities, or coping with caring responsibilities, they may be more likely to engage with the democratic process.
Phipps, 26, is researching gender and health as part of a part-time PhD and job-shares a position on the Green Party Executive. Since 2009 she has suffered from a disability known as idiopathic hypersomnia, a chronic condition which means she sleeps for around 12 hours a day.
It is now almost 100 years since women were first able to vote - yet The Electoral Reform Society predicts that on May 8th only 30% of MPs will be women. At this rate of progress, a girl born today will be drawing her pension before she has an equal say in the government of her country.
It's time our government reflected the people it is representing. Allowing job share MPs is just one way we can change politics for the better.
Phipps and Cope argue that preventing their joint candidature contravenes their Convention rights, including the right to respect for their private and family lives and the requirement of respect for rights and freedoms without discrimination on the grounds of disability. Following the formal rejection of their application for candidacy, Phipps and Cope are seeking legal advice and will be continuing their campaign to become job-share MPs.

Greens call for free public transport today to combat expected extreme air pollution





Keith Taylor, Green MEP for South East England, is calling for public transport across South East England to be made free within cities and towns today to combat the very extreme levels of air pollution that is expected across the region. 

This follows Paris’s example where the authorities made public transport free during a smog episode last year.

In previous pollution alerts France also imposed a reduced speed limit for traffic.

Alongside this the Mayor reduced city centre access for vehicles alternating with odd and even registration numbers. Similarly the Mayor is also talking about removing diesel vehicles (which are responsible for particulate emissions and NO2) completely.

Experts have recently suggested that the death toll from air pollution, usually put at around 29,000 a year in the UK, could be substantially higher because of the effect of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), emitted during fossil fuel burning, which up until now has not been taken into account.

Next Thursday 16th April the Government are being taken to court by Environmental group Client Earth over consistently high levels of air pollution that break EU rules.
 
Keith Taylor Green MEP for South East England said:
Measures such as making public transport free for the day should be considered during serious smog episodes in Britain such as the one we’re experiencing today. Previous actions taken in Paris shows they recognise the unrest caused by air pollution and that they are prepared to take action.
The Green Party has been warning everyone for years about the serious health problems that are associated with air pollution. 
 
How many deaths does it have to take before the Government will properly act?

Monday, 6 April 2015

Garden Tax and waste changes start from today


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Brent Council's new waste collection service came into force today which includes the £40 annual green garden waste charge.  Lorraine Skinner, local environmental video artist and activist, has made the above video giving her view on the changes.

Meanwhile a resident on Barn Hill has sent a photograph of the dumping of garden waste near the car park at the top of the hill. She fears that there will be more as a result of people trying to avoid the charge.





Len Snow: A good and gentle man

The Memorial Bench in its setting in Barham Park

Guest blog by Philip Grant
 
There are many good reasons to visit Brent’s parks and open spaces, and last Sunday another reason was added to the list of why you should visit the excellent Barham Park. A group of family, friends, Labour Party supporters and (my own category) local historians gathered in the park for the unveiling of a memorial seat to Len and Joan Snow. They had been married for seventy years when Len died in November 2013, and both had lived ninety active years, more than sixty of them as Wembley residents.
They had been stalwarts of the Labour Party since the Attlee years of the 1940’s, and Len was a local councillor for more than 25 years up to 1990, and Mayor of Brent in 1976/77. It was not surprising, then, that the main speaker at the short ceremony was Paul (now Lord) Boateng, the former MP for Brent South, whose strongest memories of them were for the kindness and love they shared with everyone they met, rather than their political work.
I had known Len and Joan only since 2007, and the conversations we shared were mainly about local history, not politics. One of my best memories of Len was from a talk he gave to Wembley History Society about Japan. As a 22 year-old British officer, he had been in charge of a district in southern Japan as part of the allied army of occupation after the Second World War. Despite the cruelty displayed by the Japanese army in South-East Asia up to 1945, Len soon developed a love and respect for the ordinary people of that country and their culture. A visit to Hiroshima, just months after an atomic bomb had been dropped on the city, left him committed to nuclear disarmament for the rest of his life.
It is fitting that Len and Joan’s memorial seat is in a peaceful and beautiful setting. I would encourage you to visit it. You can find it by entering the park beside the former Barham Park Library, going straight ahead into the walled garden area, through the gateway at the far side between the two lion head fountains from the 1924 British Empire Exhibition (now sadly damaged), then up the path to the right and turn left along a path to the top of a small hill.
A plaque on the seat asks visitors to remember Len’s legacy, a life of service to his community, carried out with kindness, fairness and humanity – that is something that all politicians, both local and national, and not only within the Labour Party, should reflect on, and an example that they would do well to follow.
Philip Grant.

Saturday, 4 April 2015

Red Pepper on 'How red are the Greens?'

The latest Red Pepper, delivered today, has How red are the Greens? as its cover story with additional articles inside. It is edited by Michael Calderbank who is a member of the LRC and a local Brent activist with whom I have campaigned on various local issues.

The cover story by Andrew Dolan is fairly friendly and attributes a drop in Labour support on the left and the support of the young  'in part a consequence of the Green Party's opposition to the austerity politics that Labour has committed itself to. The Green's policies of rail nationalisation, social housing construction, a rise in the minimum wage and free education represent an attractive alternative to a demographic traditionally located on the left and more likely to express dissatisfaction with neoliberalism and austerity than those already entrenched within labour and property markets.'

However he quotes research by James Dennison that on specific economic policy issues those planning on voting Green in fact tend to be less left wing that Labour voters. 'What clearly separates likely Green voters from those of other parties, UKIP aside, is that a far higher proportion express a lack of trust in MPs in particular and UK democracy in general.'

He goes on, 'Accompanying the Green's leftward policy shift has been a new rhetoric comparable to that deployed across Europe. Talk of "the people" , of "us versus them" and even of "revolt" is now commonplace In Green Party publications and speeches and carries some legitimacy when considered in relation to the party's well-publicised support for various grassroots struggles and the involvement of the Scottish Greens in the Radical Independence Campaign'.'

After examining the prospects of the Greens winning more seats and holding on to Brighton Pavilion (according to him not terribly good) he says on tactical voting 'A newly emboldened Green party has little interest in such tactical anti-Tory consideration. Rather its eyes are fixed on the opportunities that may arise should '"politics as usual" and the austerity it entails continue. The party's recent talks with thee SNP and Plaid Cymru, and their stated intention to "unite wherever possible to battle the Westminster parties' "obsession with austerity", hint at the possibility of a changed political landscape: one in which the idea of the "other parties" including the Green Party, transforming growing popularity into power is more than just a pipedream.'

Joseph Healy, billed as a founder member of Green Left and ex GP International committee, writes a pessimistic article suggesting that the Greens chances of not disappointing their supporters if the get into any government are 'not good' based on what happened in Ireland, Czech Republic and France.

Hilary Wainwright in Out of their seats writes 'Caroline Lucas is perhaps currently the one (MP) able to speak most openly and clearly about what is on voters' minds: austerity and is daily consequences, and what is needed is parliamentary terms to end it.'  Quoting Lucas saying that a progressive alliance could do more in the next parliament Wainright goes on: 'Although the 'we' might in parliamentary voting terms be only one MP, in Lucas the Greens have had a real political force in parliament - a force driven not only by her personal capacities, which are immense' but also by a political methodology that could well be adopted by the progressive alliance as a whole. Lucas's effective parliamentary initiatives against fracking and the energy companies, for public ownership of the rail system and for reinstating the NHS have been the result of immersion in extra-parliamentary campaigns and public debates..A bit like Tony Benn, she thereby giver further confidence and strength to the movements in society and their ability to shift public consciousness with a clear and persuasive political message.'

Reviewing Caroline Lucas's recently Published Honourable Friends? Parliament and the Fight for Change, Ian Sinclair having praised the book as 'an absolute joy to read - accessible, fast paced and entertaining - and often funny too'  concludes..'Cogent, rational and humane Honourable Friends? confirms why it is essential all progressives work to make sure Lucas continues as an MP.

How the hell did they get away with it? Michael Rosen explains

I thought this Facebook post by Michael Rosen would be of interest to readers:

How the hell did they get away with it?

Call me naive or stupid but when the financial crash came I will admit here and now that I thought that because, for the first time in my lifetime, that 

a) the workings of capitalism had been laid bare in a way that they had never been before,
b) as people found that their standard of living was being cut and c) as people found that their hard-won and precious public services and welfare was being cut too, people would be outraged in ways that we had never seen before.

I confess I imagined that people would perhaps occupy their places of work, or their public services institutions - hospitals, schools, social services offices in order to defend them. I imagined that people across public and private industries would find that they had common interests in defending their standard of living. After all, I reasoned, as never before, the nakedness of capital (finance) screwing up all on its own, with no excuses that they had been driven into a corner by 'high wage demands' or 'trade unions holding them to ransom' and the like, would make it clear to us all that there is a difference between money and wealth - money being the stuff that rich people play with in order to keep themselves rich and wealth being the stuff that we need and make to keep ourselves safe and warm and productive.

But how wrong could I have been? And why or how has it turned out that I was so wrong?

1. It has been possible for very powerful people - politicians and news media - to repeat over and over again that the 'mess' or the 'crisis' was caused by one political party which happened to be in power at the time of the most severe point in that crisis - namely the Labour Party of GB, even though the crash was (and still is) global and was caused by financiers taking risks that were…er…too risky.

2. It has been possible to keep the illusion going that the 'remedies' put in place to put things back together, are fair and just - even though they are nothing but a simple system of redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. The richest 1000 people increased their wealth last year by over £40 billion while the poorest have seen their income (or standard of living) cut. The proportion of money earned by waged people in relation to money acquired by owners of capital has shifted and is shifting in favour of capital.

3. Interventions like £350 billion of quantitative easing ('printing money') have enriched the rich with hardly a murmur from those with the megaphones whose social duty was to tell us about it.

4. A constant burble over the last five years about the 'deficit' and 'balancing the books' and 'paying our way' has been like a mass education force telling us that
a) the deficit must be reduced or we will all go to hell in a handcart
b) the people in power are dramatically reducing it and this is improving our lives
c) we must re-elect them so that they can go on doing what they've been doing to reduce it further.

It has made very little difference that some people to repeat that a deficit can be productive in any economic system if it is used to invest in producing things we need, that demolishing public services has had a double effect of harming thousands of people's lives whilst handing over what remains of the services to subsidiaries of the super-rich.

It has made very little difference that some people have pointed out that the deficit is at levels we were told at the outset were unsustainable or impossible.

It has made very little difference that some people have pointed out that low income (engineered by the government) has two results:
a) people don't earn enough to pay enough taxes to lower the deficit and
b) people will borrow money to supplement their income…which is part of why the whole thing unravelled last time.

5. The 'economy' will recover.

The nineteenth century bearded chap pointed out that in a recession prices will eventually fall to a level at which the people who own and control capital will think once again that it's a good time to invest and produce and distribute. In the meantime, their cycle of boom and bust involves making the lives of the mass of people worse. This period of worsening standards of living can never be given back. They happen, they endure. The damage is done to people's minds and bodies and to the ways in which we hang together. Rich people - even the few who take a small hit in a recession - don't experience this. They have a bit less than a lot. The poor have less than very little. Even though people know this and feel this, it is possible to keep them from despair and anger by constantly suggesting that

a) it would be even worse if you let back in those terrible people who 'caused it' last time,
b) it's going to be better for you next year…er…when we cut £12 billion from services that you need and rely on…(not!)

6. Another useful way to distract people from the core fact that money is being transferred from the poor to the rich in the name of 'balancing the books' is to encourage or allow a story to be told over and over again about 'immigrants'. The truth of the matter is that the great cycles of boom and bust are not caused by a few hundred thousand people swapping countries. More often than not, it's a symptom and not a cause. If politicians were honest, helpful people they would spend a great deal of time explaining to us the benefits and drawbacks of the system they believe in - capitalism.

They love gassing on about all the benefits of innovation, competition and the like but hardly ever explain what 'bust' is all about. An honest advocate of capitalism might spend time explaining to us that, yes, it's a system that does demand that at times the poorest have to be poorer so that capitalists can go on making profits, because that's how the system works. Hello, they would say, we compete with each other, we try to cut costs, even as we have to invest loads of dosh in order to stay modern.

But no, instead, they allow or encourage all sorts of half-truths and lies to circulate in order to 'explain' why times are tough for millions of people. So, in one bust you'll see the bust explained by the fact that the workers have all been greedy and lazy, their pay too high, their holidays too long, their pensions too big. Another time, this story will be modified by saying that the hospitals, schools, social services cost too much. And another time the story is that the problem is what's going on abroad somewhere so the only solution is to go and bomb and kill hundreds of thousands of 'foreigners'. And another time, it's because 'we' are being 'swamped' by 'foreigners'.

These are all very potent lies to cover up for the fact that what makes people poor is employers paying working people less. And if they were honest, they would say that, yes, that IS what they do, and it's what they need to do in order for them to stay rich (i.e. make profits). But they don't.

7. So, in some ways, a time of reflection. As I write this, I suppose there is every chance that the Tories will win a few more seats than Labour. This may well mean that there will be another coalition - though it might be one that does not have a full majority. This means that there are certain kinds of legislation that could be defeated by the rest - unless Labour do that classic thing of saying that they are being 'statesmanlike' and supporting legislation which they don't agree with and which damage the majority of the people's standards of living. This will happen if, in the case of a Labour defeat, Miliband is replaced by someone from the Blairite rump.

Friday, 3 April 2015

Majority of responding candidates condemn illegal Israeli settlements

From the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. The views of Brent Central, Brent North and Hampstead and Kilburn candidates can be found HERE and will be updated when more responses are received. The Palestine issue along with other topics relating to conflicts will be discussed at a hustiongs on Monday April 13th at the Pakistan Centre, Marley Walk, Station Road at 7.30pm on Monday April 13th. DETAILS

General Election candidates who responded to an email survey co-ordinated by Palestine Solidarity Campaign have overwhelmingly condemned Israeli settlements as illegal under international law.

The vast majority also said they agreed that the next UK government should uphold the principles of equality, human rights and international law in all its relations and dealings with Israel.

Declared candidates in England, Wales and Scotland were sent more than 30,000 emails, using a PSC e-tool, by supporters of justice for Palestinians. The emails asked a series of questions designed to ascertain each candidate’s stance on Palestine and Israel.

The views of nearly 600 candidates were obtained and have now been made available on PSC’s website.

The candidates were asked: Do you consider the construction of Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be illegal and unjustifiable?

Of the 470 candidates who responded to this question, 93% said yes. Many expanded on their answer, and, across all parties, were unequivocal in their condemnation of Israel’s settlements.

Candidates were also asked: Do you urge the UK government to uphold the principles of equality, human rights and international law in all its relations and dealings with Israel?

Of the 377 candidates who replied to this question, 97% said yes.

Sarah Colborne, Director of PSC, said:
These figures show clear support among Parliamentary candidates for international law to be applied to Israel, especially over its continued settlement building in the West Bank and Jerusalem. The settlements have been unequivocally condemned by the majority of candidates polled as illegal and unjustifiable.

We would like to see these candidates, if elected, carry this support into Parliament and translate their words into positive action that will see the end of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, and justice, freedom and self-determination for the Palestinian people.

UK voters can find out where their candidates stand on the issue of justice for Palestinians by going to the ‘Candidates’ Views’ section on PSC’s website and entering their postcode. New candidates are being added regularly, as more responses are received.