Living the Good Life: Eco House Open Day In Clacton

I had an enjoyable and inspiring afternoon learning about self-sufficiency and Eco DIY at the Eco House Open Day in Clacton today.

In only 9 years, Tendring Green Party member Chris Southall and family have turned a 1930s home and small plot of land into an example of more self-sufficient living. Solar panels generate electricity, while rainwater in recycled and also bathwater via a reed bed. They grow 60% of their own food and the garden is brimming with apple trees, pear trees, vegetable plots and a polytunnel. There are several large vines brimming with grapes and you can find out about beekeeping and buy some of their honey. The very friendly hens roam freely around the garden and produce a good supply of eggs while the large pond is alive with frogs and newts.
We don't all have the time or land to do all of this but if most of us just did some of this we could make a difference.
I also met some people who are staying (and working) at the house as part of the WWOOF UK (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) project (see link below).
http://www.wwoof.org.uk/
Basically you sign up to WWOOF as either a volunteer or a host and then as a volunteer you get to stay with organic food growers and self-sufficiency people and learn new skills, techniques and methods.
Below are some pictures from the open day:


Tendring Eco Group Info

 







The Bee Hives

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book recommendation: "A Citizens' Income" Clive Lord

Given that Clive Lord is running for the leadership of The Green Party, I decided to read his book "A Citizens' Income" and was very impressed. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting an introduction to green political thought. He manages to explain some rather complex ideas in a way that is straightforward and understandable, which is no easy task.
The first part of the book deals with the ecological crisis facing the planet and why we need a complete 'paradigm shift' to have any hope of solving it, meaning a shift in the fundamental world view shared by a significant number of people. Lord explains the exponential principle underlying economic growth and how the main problem humanity faces concerns 'the tragedy of the commons'. Put simply the tragedy of the commons is the tendency of people to make rational decisions which are in their short-term self interest but go completely against our long-term interests and those of the planet. For example a situation where nations recognise the long-term dangers of climate change but each individual one is reluctant to reduce their emissions if it affects their individual nations' economic growth. Lord uses the example of Easter Island as an example of a society that went to pot because of the tragedy of the commons (hence the cover design showing Easter Island statues), where a once thriving community destroyed all of its trees and much of its wildlife and ended up in a state of perpetual war and cannibalism as a result. Lord elaborates on some of the possible future consequences of unfettered growth and environmental destruction in the disturbing chapter, "Racism and the Environmental Crisis".
That is not to say that the book is one long doom laden prophesy of a 'Soylent Green' future, far from it. The second part of the book offers an optimistic possible way out and route to achieving a 'paradigm for sustainability', meaning a cultural attitude shift in the direction of green living. Lord suggests that the establishment of a 'Citizens' Income' is essential to this. A Citizens' Income would be a guaranteed payment to everyone, regardless of whether they are in work or not and free from any means testing or penalties. Lord argues convincingly that this would break the link between providing people with the means to sustain themselves and endless 'job creation' which takes no account of whether the jobs are environmentally beneficial or destructive. Lord argues that a minimum wage does not work because it fails to break this link and also that means tested benefits simply mean that the poor are subsidised by the slightly less poor rather than the wealthy. He devotes several chapters to explaining the economic arguments behind this with much convincing data. Lord ends on a positive note:

"As long as there is uncontrolled expansion of either population or economic activity, the Tragedy of the Commons is in motion.... The escape plan set out here may be improbable, but it is possible. The same logic applied to both the slave trade and child labour. The first to renounce either risked putting themselves at a commercial disadvantage, but an overwhelming consensus nevertheless developed in each case and they did disappear". (Clive Lord "A Citizens' Income" , pub. Jon Carpenter 2003,  page131).

Clive Lord recommends the following books be read as well:

Colin Hines "Localization - A Global Manifesto", Earthscan, London, 2000.

Clive Ponting "A Green History of the World", Sinclair Stevenson, London 1991.

Polluted Lakes and Fines for Non-recyclers

There were two green issue related stories in Friday's Gazette which immediately caught my attention. Both raise important and different questions regarding how best to deal with the issues concerned and to engage public support.

Pollution in Wivenhoe

The first story concerns levels of pollution in ponds and lakes in Wivenhoe, off Rectory Hill, which run into the River Colne. It seems that long streak of orange gunge has appeared on the water and dozens of dead birds and fish have been found. One of the lakes has been tested for arsenic and has been found to contain 1,320mg per kg when the upper safe limit is 17mg per kg. Additionally high levels of aluminium and manganese have been found. This is a shocking level of pollution and no wonder that that local residents have started to hold meetings to raise awareness of this.
According to the Gazette article there have been suggestions that a local gravel pit may be to blame for this. It is imperative that the Environment Agency get to the bottom of this as soon as possible, however there seems to be a fundamental problem. This being that the Environment Agency is basing its conclusions on water samples rather than sediment tests. This is blatantly inadequate given that heavy rain can dilute and distort water sample readings while the sediment remains full of pollutants.
Clearly they need to get testing the sediment and then get tough with either the quarrying company or whoever else is responsible for this situation.

Bin Fines for Poor Recyclers?

The second story is a rather alarming one about potential fines for people who are poor recyclers. According to the article Colchester's recycling rate has dropped from 46.3%in 2014-15 to 45.2% last year. Not much of a drop but a drop nonetheless. However Cllr Tim Young (Lab) is threatening to get tough with the public and, .."look at (using) the stick..." to get more people recycling. He states:
"If you start fining people, which we can do, then they are not going to like it but that is what it might take".
Well yes, they are not going to like it one bit and that raises a number of problems. We absolutely need to get more people recycling and Cllr Young is quite right to want to achieve this. My concerns however are on the specific approach of dishing out fines and whether this would work. On the one hand it is unclear as to what criteria would be applied when dealing out fines. Would they be for people putting out too many black bags, for putting recyclable items in black bags or what? Are all of our black bags about to be opened and fished through by council snoopers looking for plastic milk bottles or cans? It is right to ask these questions because of my second concern, that being that the council could risk alienating the public and making them hate recycling as an imposition enforced by snoopers and jobsworths. This is the last thing we need.  Moreover as Cllr Young pints out, there has to be cross-party agreement on this for it to work. All it would take is for one of the major parties to campaign against what they would call 'punitive fines' and the plan would probably be sunk.
Therefore I'd try and get away from the fines approach or at least only use them as a very last resort. Surely it is better to reward those people who do recycle in some way. How about a small council tax rebate for those who recycle? This could be funded by a slightly higher charge on those who never use recycling bins/bags or use them less than five times per year.
This would get away from the word fines with all of its criminal justice system implications. Evidence suggests that the 5p plastic bag charge has both worked in reducing the amount of bags used and carried public opinion with it. It can be done however it needs careful thinking and I'm not convinced that outright fines is the best approach.

The Green Party's Future: Ecologist, Lib Dems on Bikes or Labour Lite?

The upcoming Green Party leadership election will, I suspect,  receive little national media attention until the result is announced. However I believe it to be one of the most important moments in the party's history and one which will decide the direction of travel which this party takes for a long time.
Unfortunately the decision by Caroline Lucas to announce her joint candidature with Jonathan Bartley before any other candidates had announced theirs risks creating a done deal, a fait accompli. Caroline is an MP and former leader who has a huge personal appeal and so other candidates will be reluctant to stand against her. This risks denying the party the internal debate which it needs as well as creating a situation where Jonathan Bartley could be elected joint leader not on his own merits but on the coat tails of someone else. This is not undemocratic but it does seem like a manipulation of the rules.
The Green Party stands at a crossroads and there are three main possible directions of travel. In my view only one of them is genuinely green and the dangers lie in the following two directions being taken:

1) Lib Dems on Bikes.

The danger of putting too much emphasis on a 'professional' media image and talking from a script approach is that the party ends up with a vaguely left of centre liberal ethos which amounts to little more than wishy washy rhetoric about 'fairness' and 'internationalism' and a policy approach similar to the Lib Dems when led by Charles Kennedy.  There is of course also a danger that a kind of Green Blairism takes hold with a slick, centrist careerism and a centre-right approach however I believe that the former scenario is more likely. There is an element within the party who are very Lib Demmy in their approach: vaguely interested in social justice, very pro-EU, liberal on social issues and refugees but hostile to the idea of serious redistribution of wealth, trade unions  and the Labour left as personified by Jeremy Corbyn.
While I accept that many of this grouping have genuine environmental concerns, this seems to be confined to a light green approach of wishing to promote cycling, cleaner air, growing your own food, eco-friendly consumerism and so on. There is no sense of any desire for a serious and radical change in the direction of the UK or the world or for seriously challenging the assumptions behind endless economic growth and the destruction of the countryside. Many seem to believe that the planet can be saved if individuals just make the right choices in the marketplace and buy Ecover washing up liquid instead of Fairy Liquid.
I also accept that this is coupled with genuine concerns about social justice however this is seldom coupled with any radical critique of the neo-liberal economic system which creates inequality and erodes working-class living standards. It seems more about a rather namby pamby sense of niceness involving doing a lot for charity and worthy causes but remaining averse to paying more taxes or supporting trade unions when they stand up for the pay and conditions of their members.

2) Labour Lite

On the other hand there is also the danger that the Green Party could ends up as little more than a left-wing offshoot of the Labour Party which attempts to 'out-Corbyn ' Corbyn. Much of the Green surge of 2015 was due to younger people looking for a left-wing alternative to New Labour and a feeling that so-called 'Red Ed' was both uninspiring and not very red at all. This approach, which can be found on the Bright Green website and is personified by members such as Adam Ramsay, tends to combine a thinly-veiled contempt for ecological Greens with a radical left-wing social agenda involving redistribution of wealth, equality for 'Liberation Groups', anti-austerity and an obsession with bureaucracy and taking over the party structures.
However this is a new left devoid of the sort of class-war rhetoric or support for trade unionism found within the SWP or old Labour . It is Socialism-lite for the Facebook generation which shuns anything rooted in the history of the labour movement, Marxism, syndicalism or anything that smells of the organised working class. It has more in common with the new-left of the late 1960s and early 1970s although lacking that era's utopian visions, radical edge or cultural backdrop.

THE DANGERS

The Green Party is a broad church and there is room for people who share both of the above approaches . The dangers lie in either of the two above groupings gaining ground and becoming the dominant force within it. That is because the end result could well be a Green Party in name only.

The 'Lib Dems on Bikes' approach may well win us a few more seats however it would alienate many people who joined the Green Party for a radical alternative to the grey parties. The left of the party would clearly be alienated but also this approach would replace a genuine ecologist or green ethos with something barely distinguishable from the Lib Dems. Any centrist politician can be vaguely pro-green so why would anyone bother supporting a Green Party that has no radical ecologist agenda when this is no different from other parties? I didn't join the Green Party because I want people to see me as 'nice', I joined the Green Party because it is the only political party which has ecological concerns at the core of its origins and ethos as well as a radical approach to social justice.

The 'Labour-lite' approach would narrow our appeal, prevent us winning seats and change the party into a left-wing talking shop. There are many areas of policy where the ecologists and much of the Labour left disagree such as their commitment to economic growth and their desire to build, build build over our countryside. Even a basic knowledge of socialist history in Europe shows that while there are those on the left that have been strong on green issues, there are many more who have not. The Soviet Union was an ecological disaster.
Clearly it is possible to be an eco-socialist and to fight for a radical green agenda and socialism at the same time. However the Green Party can never win elections just by poaching voters from the Labour Party. It will never be able to take enough as many Labour voters will still stay with Labour, no matter how right-wing it goes, as they did under Blair. To win, the Green Party needs to be broad enough in its appeal and rhetoric to take voters from all the other parties, including even the Conservatives and UKIP. An overly leftist image might perform well in a university campus context but not in wider society.

THE FUTURE MUST BE ECOLOGISM

The Green Party cannot just be a single issue party and where I do agree with the Bright Green grouping is that we can't just talk about the environment and nothing else. We have to have a range of policies including those that promote equality and stand up for public services and the socially disadvantaged and excluded. Also this should mean something in real terms and in our policies, rather than just being a vague, namby pamby, bleeding-heart,  Lib Dem sense of civic niceness which doesn't amount to much in reality.
However if we downplay our commitment to environmental issues we will lose our soul and lose our purpose. We need to re-assert our ecologism.
The Green Party was founded in 1973 as PEOPLE (later renamed The Ecology Party in 1975) with ecological concerns at its heart. Its founders were inspired by The Limits to Growth, a 1972 book about the computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth with finite resource supplies. Ecologism is not a centrist approach, rather it challenges all of the assumptions of neo-liberal politics; the need for economic growth, centralised decision making, increasing consumption and global inequality.
Green issues can win us support from across the political spectrum. Many voters are worried about the countryside being concreted over with huge housing estates. They are fed up with seeing their towns grow without a corresponding investment in infrastructure. Issues such as climate change, world population and pollution are concerns for everyone regardless of political background.

We need to end the watering-down of the Green Party's ecologism and to re-assert The Limits to Growth in our party's philosophy.

THE NEXT GREEN PARTY LEADER

Whoever is elected as the new Green Party leader or leaders needs to be rooted in ecologism. Yes the party is a broad church and can have within it watermelons, centrists, people here for the social events and so on. However the leader should be someone rooted in the core ethos of the movement, someone to take us in the right direction. Yes they also need to be media savvy but not to the extent of being someone who is presentable precisely because they don't believe in the party's values like Tony Blair was in relation to Labour.
It would also be a mistake to elect a watermelon leader whose aim is to slowly peel off their outer skin until all that remains is the red.

The next leader needs to be Green rather than Lib Dem or Corbyn lite. Otherwise the Green Party could well be on the road to nowhere.

Colchester Borough Council, Glyphosates and Monsanto

I keep hearing that Colchester Borough Council are still spraying Monsanto produced glyphosates all over our pavements and also in Castle Park where children play. It is time that they came clean on this and issued an official statement as to whether they are or are not doing this and if so explaining the extent of the usage.
Glyphosates are herbicides and part of a wider family of chemicals called organophosphates, which were developed as a result of nerve gas experiments carried out in the Second World War. The group is very toxic to fish, earthworms and bees. Glyphosates are used as a weed killer and were brought to the market in 1974 by Monsanto under the trade name Roundup .  Roundup, the commercial name of Glyphosate based herbicides, contains many other chemicals which, when mixed together are 1,000 times more toxic than Glyphosate on its own.
The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), concluded ‘Glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans’. The newly recognised dangers of Glyphosate come against a background of increased use in the UK. Glyphosate is used in public parks and other urban areas to kill weeds, and in the last year for which government figures are available, nearly a third of UK cereals, wheat and barley, were sprayed with Glyphosate – a total of just over one million hectares.

The Soil Association is calling for a UK ban on the use of Glyphosates sprayed on UK wheat as a pre-harvest weedkiller and its use to kill the crop to ripen it faster. New figures analysed by the Soil Association from government data were released at a scientific briefing in London on 15 July 2015. This revealed Glyphosate use in UK farming has increased by 400% in the last 20 years and it’s one of the three pesticides regularly found in routine testing of British bread - appearing in up to 30% of samples tested by the Defra committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF).
Professor Christopher Portier, one of the co-authors of the Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) recent report which determined Glyphosate’s status as World Health a probable carcinogen, reiterated the IARC’s conclusions, and said: “Glyphosate is definitely genotoxic. There is no doubt in my mind.”

In the light of this, I think we all have a right to know whether or not and if so why Colchester Borough Council is using these deadly poisons in our public places.

Nature Notes 3: Wildflowers For Your Garden

"Weeds are flowers too once you get to know them".
A. A Milne

Making a wildflower garden is very easy; just dig and rake over some soil or put some compost in pots and leave it to see what appears. However you may wish to manage things a bit more carefully if you want to avoid just the most common of plants. You can obtain a surprising number of wildflower seeds on ebay, however here are two easy to grow plants that I have tried growing:

RAGGED ROBIN

Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) is a perennial with ragged, deeply-lobed pink petals in the family Caryophyllaceae. It is a widespread though locally declining plant of marshes, damp meadows and wet woodland clearings. Carried on tall stems above clumps of dark green, strapped-shaped leaves, the lacy flowers appear to hang in the air like a mist.
Unfortunately Ragged Robin is in decline in Britain due to modern agricultural practices. Wet meadows, rush-pastures and fens have been drained for agriculture so that marsh plants have become much less frequent than before World War Two. Ragged Robins bloom from May to August, occasionally later, and  attract both butterflies and bees which feed on the nectar.
Ragged Robin is easy to grow, however it doesn't like to fight too hard with other plants for space. I grow it in pots and it needs to be kept damp so I grow mine in pots with no holes in the bottom. Clumps can be lifted and divided in autumn or sow fresh seed in late summer and leave outside to germinate the following spring. The seeds are very easy to collect as they sit in a cup-shaped flower head which can just be tipped over a jar.

RED CAMPION

Red Campion ( Silene dioica ) is a biennial or short-lived perennial which, like Ragged Robin, is in the family Caryophyllaceae. It grows in woodland, shady lanes, hedgerows and on mountain ledges and coastal cliffs. The bright rose-pink flowers of Red Campion brighten up roadsides throughout the summer. Just as the Bluebells finish flowering in our woodlands, Red Campion starts to come into bloom. If they grow side-by-side for a few weeks, they can turn a woodland floor into an amazing sea of pink and blue.
Red Campion prefers to grow in shady parts of the garden and does not tolerate marshy soil as well as Ragged Robin, so it needs pots with holes in the bottom. It is prone to blackfly. The seeds are easy to collect, just shake the seed heads over a jar.

FURTHER READING

"The Encyclopedia of British Wild Flowers" John Akeroyd

"Weeds" Richard Mabey

So Close, But We Live To Fight Another Day

I finally made it home from the local election count on Friday morning at 5.30 am and managed about an hour and a half of sleep before getting up for work. I'm getting too old for this, yet I'm surprised how much I still managed to function on Friday, especially given that this was the most tense, frustrating and intensely disappointing election count that I've been to so far since I returned to being politically active in 2012.  Yet Colchester Green Party did achieve its best ever local election result. Overall we achieved over 9% across Colchester, however in Castle Ward I came within 21 votes of gaining a seat on Colchester Borough Council. As you can see below, with 21 more votes I would have beaten both Bill Frame and Daniel Ellis and taken the third place seat, it was that close at the top.

CASTLE - Conservative/Liberal Democrat

NICK Barlow (Lib Dem) 881
DARIUS Laws (Con) 854
DANIEL Ellis (Con) 801
BILL Frame (Lib Dem) 792
BARRY Gilheany (Lab) 452
MARK Goacher (Green) 781
CHARLES Ham (Green) 451
JO Hayes (Lib Dem) 769
AMANDA Kirke (Green) 511
KATE Martin (Con) 759
ISOBEL Merry (Lab) 484
JORDAN Newell (Lab) 427

I wish to thank everyone who voted for me and for all the Green Party candidates on Thursday. Especially I want to thank all those people out there who voted primarily for other parties, but gave us their third vote because they wanted to see a fresh voice on the council. I'm very sorry that you didn't get that fresh voice however we came close and will keep campaigning on the issues which we highlighted in the campaign. Colchester will now need a Green voice more than ever in the years ahead. We will keep pressing for more investment in our town centre, for better air quality, for more infrastructure investment and for the protection of our countryside and green spaces.

What the election result highlights more than anything is the futility of tactical voting. I was told on the doorstep by a number of people that they were reluctant to vote for me even though they preferred the Green Party message because I was less likely to win than the Lib Dems. Well I beat one of the Lib Dem candidates, came within 12 votes of beating another and I also beat one of the Conservatives and came within 21 votes of beating another. Therefore if I'd just had 21 of those tactical votes I would have won the seat. Greens can win in Castle Ward, its as simple as that.

I was surprised and disappointed on election night that the defeated Lib Dem candidates chose to make a series of rude comments to one of my fellow candidates, accusing us of causing their defeat. I understand that Bill Frame went on BBC Essex on Friday morning to spout the same line. I found this highly ungracious and it just reveals them to be bad losers. It is a flawed analysis, given that I won a significant number of third votes from Conservative voters, not just Lib Dem and Labour voters. Furthermore the Lib Dem candidates lost due to their own failings, because they failed to inspire, because they supported the wrong policies, such as the ridiculous "garden settlements" debacle and above all because they let us all down so badly in 2010. We don't have to take the accusation that we "let in Tories" from a party that enthusiastically joined a Conservative government for five years and backed every policy. They should take a good hard look at themselves before blaming others.

The Green Party will continue to campaign hard for a better Colchester  and for cleaner and greener policies.