Should Traffic Be Reversed in Priory Street?

SEE THE POLL TO THE RIGHT

In what seems like an odd decision to me, Essex County Council roads boss Rodney Bass (Conservative) has put forward plans to reverse the traffic in Priory Street. These plans have been unanimously opposed by the Priory Street Residents Association in a vote conducted in a recent emergency meeting. Currently drivers can only access Priory Street, which runs from Queen Street to East Hill,  from Queen Street. However under the new plans, which are due to come into effect before April 13 without consultation, motorists will only be able to get on to the street from East Hill.
It seems to me that the least Mr Bass could do is to consult with the residents of Priory Street, as well as those who use the schools and religious institutions there, before and decision is finally made. Simply imposing a diktat from on high when the possible increase in traffic will impact on peoples' lives would hardly be inclusive or wise management. There is the real possibility that Priory Street could become a rat-run to the town centre and clog up with traffic in a similar manner to Brook Street, which in 2010 became Colchester's most polluted street.

Green Sci Fi : The Classic Series "Doomwatch"

The 1970s saw the rise of the green movement, and with it came the BBC drama series Doomwatch, created by Dr Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis. A few years earlier this same writing duo had created the Cybermen in the classic Doctor Who story The Tenth Planet. Doomwatch ran between 1970 and 1972. In my view Doomwatch is one of the finest drama series ever made and a DVD release of the surviving episodes is long overdue.
The key figures behind the series were script writers Pedler, Davis and the producer Terence Dudley who later went on to produce another classic green movement related series Survivors. Pedler was a radical ecological thinker whose non-fiction book The Quest for Gaia gave practical advice on creating an ecologically sustainable lifestyle. He had previously collaborated with Davis on scripts for Doctor Who, a programme on which Davis had been the story editor and Pedler the unofficial scientific adviser during the 1960s. Their interest in the problems of science changing and endangering human life had led them to create the Cybermen and it was similar interests that led them to create Doomwatch. Doomwatch ran for three series and by the time of the third one in 1972 there had been behind the scenes rows between Dudley, who felt the scripts should be grounded in realism, and Pedler and Davis who were more prone to veer off into Doctor Who territory.
The basic premise of the series is the idea that mankind's greatest technological discoveries could well have increasingly negative consequences and therefore the time will come when a measure of governmental control will have to be devised to keep a watch on the effects of the various discoveries. Hence the creation of Doomwatch (actual name"Department for the Observation and Measurement of Scientific Work") , a semi-secret scientific government agency led by Dr Spencer Quist (played by John Paul). The job of the Doomwatch team was to investigate and combat ecological and technological dangers.
There are a number of particularly memorable episodes of the series which stick in the mind once seen. The Plastic Eaters features planes falling from the sky due to a man made plastic eating virus, while Tomorrow the Rat is a gruesome episode involving scientifically modified cannibal rats on the loose. At the end of the first series in Survival Code one of the Doomwatch team, Toby Wren played by a young Robert Powell, dies in an explosion while defusing a nuclear device. One of the best episodes Public Enemy involves waste products from a metallurgical factory poisoning local residents.

Doomwatch : the film

In 1972 an excellent feature film was made which added a new character to the team Dr Del Shaw played by Ian Bannen. The story, also by Pedler & Davis, involved a series of mysterious deaths on a remote Scottish island. Shaw is sent by Doomwatch to investigate the effects of a recent oil spill near to the island. The islanders are more than a little unwelcoming and Shaw eventually discovers that they are concealing a horrifying secret which involves toxic waste drums that have been dumped in the sea.

Here is the trailer:

There is an excellent book about Doomwatch entitled Prophets of Doom by Michael Seely which is packed with info on the series and contains a complete synopsis of every episode.

Doomwatch : the future

If ever there was a series that is crying out for a revival it is Doomwatch. Much has changed since the 1970s and the scriptwriters could have a field day with the ecological and technological threats of today; GM foods, global warming, fracking......   Think Torchwood but grounded in reality and dealing with real issues and concerns.
Otherwise at least the BBC could get their act together and release a box set of the original series on DVD.
In the absence of either of these, Doomwatch lives on in the form of the excellent website doomwatch.org and in the form of my own fan fiction stories featuring a whole new Doomwatch team for the 21st century:
http://newdoomwatch.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/new-doomwatch-story-one-price-worth_16.html
http://newdoomwatch.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/new-doomwatch-story-two-nest-of-doom.html

Please Sign the ePetition to Save Salary Brook Valley

The "Salary Brook Valley" (and its wider environs), meanders from the source of the brook’s spring water, near Ardleigh Reservoir, crossing Bromley Rd, through to Longridge / Greenstead, the A133 (Clingoe Hill) near the University, and to where Salary Brook’s spring water exits into the river Colne.
If you value this wonderful natural amenity please follow the link below, read and sign this ePetition:

http://colchester.cmis.uk.com/colchester/ePetitions/tabid/115/ID/1/Save-Salary-Brook-Valley.aspx

Remember once it's gone it's gone forever!!!

Why Vote Green? Part 2 of Answering the Difficult Questions

Since the election campaign started I have been asked a whole range of difficult questions by people I know about Green Party policies. Following on from the first part of my interview with an imaginary difficult questioner (http://markgoachergreen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/why-vote-green-answering-difficult.html ), here is a second helping:

Question 6: I heard that you Greens want to make it legal for people to join terrorist groups like IS and Al Qaeda. Is this right?

No it isn't. Fortunately Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has clarified this two weeks ago by stating:

"Obviously IS and Al-Qaeda are hideous terrorist organisations that advocate and support violence. If you are involved in them, support them in any way, then you are participating in inciting violence.That's a crime, rightly, and should be pursued to the full extent of the law."

Green Party policy states that people should not be punished for what they think. I think the vast majority of people would agree with this and would not want to live in  a country where Orwellian 'thought-crime' was an offence. However when it comes to belonging to terrorist groups such as IS whose entire ethos is about violence, jihad, and a contempt for basic civil liberties then we must draw the line. Obviously we can all list example after example of their human rights abuses from shooting girls for trying to go to school to beheading hostages and burning POWs alive. Add to that the very real threat that their sympathisers pose in Europe, including the UK, and it is obvious that it should be completely illegal for people to belong to such organisations. 

Question 7: What about the economy? You Greens would just drive away investment especially with all your talk about banning fracking and raising the minimum wage. Wouldn't you wreck the economy?

I'd like to challenge the assertion within your question. There is a false premise here that we would just drive away investment. The Green Party aims to initiate a £5 billion investment program in the green economy, meaning renewable energy, conservation work, home improvements and other projects. All would require construction workers, technology workers and entrepreneurs. However we do not accept that creating jobs in environmentally destructive projects is acceptable. Also we do not accept that the only way to create jobs is to drive down the pay and conditions of the workforce in a race to the bottom with other parties. We are clear that the green economy should not be one that is based on the further proliferation of zero hours contracts, a minimum wage below a living wage and illegal 'black economy' labour where even the minimum wage is not paid. Too often such practices are justified with the argument that without them the investment will go elsewhere. This is the politics of fear and the Green Party is quite clear about opposing it. We will invest in creating jobs in the green economy but not at the expense of creating a better society.

Question 8: What about immigration? You lot don't like talking about that do you? Don't you think that there are are too many ruddy foreigners in the country taking our jobs? Aren't we full up?

Firstly I'd like to challenge your view that we don't like talking about immigration. I'm more than happy to do so as it is one of the main issues which voters are concerned about. However it is an emotive subject and we all need to be careful about how we approach it and the language used. You ask if there are too many 'foreigners' in the country 'taking our jobs' and I think that there are may be some false assumptions here. Some people, I am not suggesting you, use the term 'foreigners' in an ethnic sense, yet if someone has lived in Britain long enough to get UK citizenship then they are not foreigners, regardless of ethnicity. Also if you are referring to new migrant workers then it is not the case that they are always 'taking our jobs' as you put it. Many come to the UK to fill labour shortages in jobs in which there aren't enough UK workers to fill them, in the NHS or care homes for example. Others are oversees students who we need to come here to help fund our Higher Education system. We need to have the flexibility to welcome these people. It is also the case that most migrants come here to work not to live off benefits.

However there are legitimate concerns about the effects of immigration that need to be addressed. I'm not one of those politicians who dismiss anyone who raises these concerns as a 'bigot' and I never will be. Immigration should not be used by employers as a means to drive down wages and working conditions. Opening up the unskilled labour market to increasing competition has been pushed by business people as a means to acquire cheap labour. In addition there is a large illegal economy in the uk where migrants, many from outside the EU, are trafficked, exploited and paid next to nothing. Think of the Chinese cockle pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay in 2004 as an example. Therefore I would support the raising of the minimum wage for all workers, support every effort to ban employers from importing workers purely to undercut UK workers and support the cracking down on exploitation. Also we need more investment in training in order to get the unemployed back into work rather than just leaving them to sink.

You used the term 'full up' in your question. While there is no such thing as 'full up', there is a question here about population level, which is broader than just being about immigration. An increasing population means more demand on housing and other infrastructure, yet there has not been the investment in infrastructure to meet the rising demand. Also we cannot keep building housing over the countryside ad infinitum to accommodate a massively increasing population. UK governments need to get away from their obsession with economic growth and with trying to increase growth at a rate which necessitates increasing the population. Otherwise more and more of our countryside will disappear under concrete.  

Question 9: But we all know that this election is a two-horse race between Labour and the Tories. If I waste my vote on you I'll just be helping the Tories to get in surely?

Again I'd challenge the premise in your question. Several actually. Firstly I do not accept that a Green vote is a wasted vote. Even if I don't win the seat, every Green vote is a vote taken away from the other parties. And that makes them sit up and take notice. It is the only power that you have over the politicians. If you keep voting for the main two parties they will keep taking you for granted. There is absolutely no point whatsoever about complaining about the policies of these parties or moaning that 'they are all the same' or 'all in it for themselves' if you continue to dutifully vote for one of them out of fear of the other one. The more votes that they lose to the Green Party, the more that Green Party policies will start to influence theirs. You can see this effect happening with the rise of UKIP and Mr Cameron suddenly adopting the idea of an EU referendum in order to stop the hemorrhaging of the Tory vote.

The second premise that I would challenge is your view that voting Green would be 'helping the Tories get in'. As a Green Party candidate I am not seeking to win over just former Labour voters but former Lib Dems, angry at their party's performance in office, and former Conservative voters as well. Many Conservative voters are angry at their party's unwillingness to stop over development in the countryside and the watering down of planning regulations. 

Question 10: Well I'm a first time voter and I'm probably not going to vote for any of you. I don't know that much about politics and you're all a bunch of liars so why should I bother? None of you care about young people.

I think you are wrong and that you should bother. That said I get why you are angry given that, for example, the Lib Dem leadership clearly pledged to vote against raising tuition fees before the 2010 election and then ditched this pledge within days of that election. Younger voters were indeed deceived. However it is precisely because the 18-24 age group are the age group least likely to vote that politicians frame policy to protect older voters financially at your expense. The reason they put up tuition fees for your generation but did not go for the alternative of a graduate tax which my generation, who got our university education free, would have had to pay is that we vote in higher proportions to you. And the over 60s vote even more, which is why they kept their bus passes but young people under 25 face housing benefit cuts. Put simply, if you give up on politics then the politicians will give up on you.

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My Challenge To David Cameron Regarding Obesity & Benefits.....

I'd like to know from Mr Cameron whether or not he thinks that his colleague Eric Pickles should have to go on a diet or lose the right to part of his MPs expenses.

For anyone who isn't aware of the background to this question, Mr Cameron announced earlier today that people who cannot work because they are obese should either seek medical treatment and diet or have their benefits cut. Mr Cameron describes this move as a "moral crusade" and has further stated:

"People have problems with their weight that could be addressed, but instead a life on benefits rather than work becomes the choice. It is not fair to ask hardworking taxpayers to fund the benefits of people who refuse to accept support and treatment".

What Mr Cameron is doing here is pandering to the view that obesity is somehow an ethical issue, that being overweight is a symptom of laziness, fecklessness or even greed. Aside from the obvious offensiveness of such assumptions, they take no account of the fact that there may be underlying health issues surrounding the obesity which no amount of treatment will easily sort out. Moreover it is the politics of the schoolyard bully equating obesity with notions of 'lazy scroungers' who 'stuff their faces with burgers at our expense' and so forth. It reminds me of a recent article by the Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn, who described Deidre Kelly ('White Dee') who featured in the TV show 'Benefits Street' as: "a hideous obese slattern". Clearly these prejudices are very embedded in certain quarters and boil down to the essential view that obese people are lazy gluttons and people on benefits are feckless.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this issue is the ongoing problem of sizeist bullying in our schools. According to research by http://www.youngminds.org.uk/ around 1 million children still experience bullying everyday in our schools and one of the most pernicious forms of it is obesity related. I'm not suggesting that Mr Cameron is advocating the bullying of overweight children, however politicians have to be very careful in terms of the language that they use and the attitudes which they pander to. Suggesting that obesity is somehow a moral issue or linked to fecklessness is not only ignorant but gives out all the wrong signals in terms of social attitudes.

Of course what Mr Cameron is really doing is trying to put forward a 'populist' excuse for further benefits cuts. However he needs to be very careful what he says, given that there are a number of Conservative MPs who are themselves on the large side and who no doubt receive taxpayer-funded expenses assistance. Therefore my challenge to Mr Cameron is.......

Given that you see the reduction of obesity as an ethical issue in which the tax and benefits system has a role, do you Mr Cameron think that your colleague Eric Pickles should lose access to MPs expenses should he refuse treatment?

Michael Moore's film "SICKO"

If you haven't seen this film then you really should. Seriously, you really really should. I guarantee that you will be cured (excuse the pun) of any temptation to believe that the US system of private insurance based healthcare is in any way preferable to the NHS. Unfortunately the UK media bombards us with stories about NHS failures or problems and yet we hear very little about the failings of alternative healthcare systems such as that of the USA.
As Moore's film makes clear, over five million Americans have no access to healthcare at all due to not being able to afford to pay the insurance premiums. So we get scenes of young men stitching up their gaping wounds with a needle and thread. However the film is mainly about those who do have health insurance and how the big healthcare companies screw them over by, for example,  invoking obscure clauses in the contract so as not to pay out. We find out about just how much these companies donate to US politicians in order to buy their support. We also get to see rescue workers from 9 -11 who have become ill due to breathing toxic fumes and who cannot get healthcare. In one bizarre scene they even try to get into Guantanamo Bay, where healthcare is free.
This is a brilliant film. See the trailer below:

Colchester's Crime Rate and How to Deal With It

Readers of this blog may well have seen the article in the Gazette on Monday January 26th about the shocking crime rates that Colchester and Tendring now have. The figures in the article come from the official police.uk website and have recently been released for the period October 2013 - September 2014. They reveal that Colchester has a higher crime rate per person than inner city Birmingham and Liverpool. More than seven violent or sex crimes are committed in Colchester every day. Colchester has 16.57 incidents per 1000 people compared to the Essex average of 13.39. In addition Tendring has one of the highest rates of violent and sexual crime in the country at 19.04 per 1000 people.

What these figures do is explode the myth that is often trotted out by politicians that peoples' perception of crime or fear of it is greater than the reality. They show that violent and sexual crime in Colchester is indeed rising and that there is a real and definite problem which needs to be addressed. Going into denial about the problem is completely unacceptable.

The Green Party And Crime

As far as the Green Party is concerned, we have an image problem as far as the crime issue is concerned and this must be addressed by us. Unfortunately we are perceived by some people as being soft on crime or more precisely as being a bunch of tree-hugging lefty hippies who feel sorry for the burglar who is ransacking your house and whose only solution is to ask him politely to consider mending his ways.This is a completely false perception and it is up to us to make this clear.The Green Party does not advocate patting chummy on the back and letting him carry on his criminal activities, indeed we have a comprehensive set of policies designed to both prevent crime in the first place and to ensure that criminals are caught and then do not repeat their offending.

Crime Prevention and Catching Criminals

The key to reducing crime rates is clearly crime prevention. Other political parties can bang on as much as they like about 'tougher sentencing', 'short sharp shocks' and so on but ultimately this amounts to shutting the stable door when the horse has bolted. It is evidence of failure and reactive politics, meaning that the problem has been allowed to get worse in the first place rather than being nipped in the bud. The Green approach to crime prevention includes the following:

1) End cuts to police numbers and police funding. The police are the mechanism by which the law is upheld. Providing that the police build good community relations, they are essential to the prevention of crime. Cutting police numbers, undermining police morale by attacking their pension provision and cutting police resources are going to make it harder for the force to do its job. In a context of rising crime rates, such austerity measures are dangerous. It is ironic that those political parties who are most vociferous in adopting a hang 'em and flog 'em approach to crime are also the least willing to invest in our police or in prisons. They promise to lock up more criminals and end up imposing swinging cuts.

2) Put more resources and greater effort into reducing social pressures which are conducive to crime. Essentially we must ensure that people are not driven into criminal activity by poverty. The introduction of a guaranteed Citizens' Income would be a major step in doing this. We must also end the current fashion for cutting benefits. The simple reality is that if you don't have enough to live on then your options are food banks, charity, begging, prostitution or property crime. Ensuring that people don't end up in this situation is not being 'wet' or 'soft'. Its about enlightened self-interest. It is fine for politicians to spout gung-ho soundbites about slashing benefits, 'clamping down on scroungers' and so forth however there is always a social cost to such actions. The bottom line is that it is not in anyone's interests to have people driven into crime by poverty , least of all the people who are made victims of crime as a result.
In addition we must end the liberalisation of gambling which leads to debt, desperation and sometimes crime.

3) End over development without a corresponding increase in police resources. Colchester has grown massively in the last 20 years and yet investment in the police has not matched this growth. The Green Party believes that over development is not just bad for the environment but also has negative consequences socially when it is not matched with investment in infrastructure.

4) Education. Around 50% of the prison population of the UK cannot read or write. Many are products of the care system and have lacked the parental support which helps others to emerge from the education system with qualifications. We cannot let this continue. Its hardly surprising that someone goes off the rails if they feel rejected all through their childhood then can't get a job because they are illiterate. The natural reactions are anger and desperation. Therefore far more resources need to be put into schemes which target young people vulnerable to ending up in this situation, particularly those in care.

5) Adopt a grown-up policy on drugs. Statistics show that up to 40% of burglaries are drugs related. People stealing to fund a hard drugs habit, heroin, crack and so on. Clearly we need to catch and lock up those who peddle and deal in hard drugs and the big drugs barons who reap in the profits from destroyed lives. However we must focus drugs policy on hammering the pushers and dealers, not on criminalising the addicts. The latter is pointless. What we need to do is invest far more resources into getting the addicts off drugs. There is no point in just locking them up and letting them continue their habits surreptitiously when inside. Drugs policy must target these finite resources on what is most important, namely catching and locking up the dealers/drugs barons and getting the users clean. We must prioritise resources so that we can really go for the criminal gangs behind hard drugs and break them. It is a complete waste of taxpayers money and police time to land some student a criminal record just for smoking a bit of cannabis while listening to his Pink Floyd albums. Therefore the Green Party would decriminalise such minor offences while concentrating resources on addressing the key issues.

Restorative Justice

A key aspect of Green Party policy on crime is restorative justice. Far too many people locked up in prison then go on to reoffend after release. In 2013 more than one in four criminals reoffended within a year, according to Ministry of Justice figures, committing 500,000 offences between them. This equates to a reoffending rate of 26.8 per cent. This is a massive failure rate which must be tackled. Therefore Green Party policy states:

CJ114 We will introduce the principle of "restorative justice", which while denouncing the crime, deals constructively with both the victim and the offender. The primary aim will be to restore and, if necessary, improve the position of the victim and the community; the offender will be required to make amends.

Prisoners need to be given more help in terms of learning to read and write, learning a trade or getting off drugs. Moreover since some prisons can be 'universities of crime' we must try and avoid sending young people to them in particular. There should be more emphasis on making convicted criminals do work in the community and work for their victim. Again this is not about being soft on crime but about preventing further crime and thus enlightened self-interest. There will be many criminals who would rather go to prison and sit in a cell all day than meet their victim face to face or do months and months of work for the community.