Some Music: Lindisfarne "All Fall Down"

We Must End Neo-Liberalism, Starting with the UK

According to Naomi Klein, Canadian journalist, activist and author of "The Shock Doctrine" and "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate" ( http://thischangeseverything.org/book/) :

“We are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.” 
― Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

THE SCALE OF CLIMATE CHANGE WORLDWIDE

Obviously climate change is a global issue rather than a national one. However it is up to developed nations such as the UK to set precedents and advance the fight back. The current rate of global warming is extremely alarming. Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850. Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss. Glaciers and mountain snows are rapidly melting—for example, Montana's Glacier National Park now has only 27 glaciers, versus 150 in 1910. In the Northern Hemisphere, thaws also come a week earlier in spring and freezes begin a week later. Coral reefs, which are highly sensitive to small changes in water temperature, suffered the worst bleaching, or die-off in response to stress, ever recorded in 1998, with some areas seeing bleach rates of 70 percent. Experts expect these sorts of events to increase in frequency and intensity in the next 50 years as sea temperatures rise.

As Naomi Klein shows in "This Changes Everything", Neoliberalism and free market fundamentalism are preventing initiatives to combat global warming rather than encouraging them.
In 2010, for example, the United States challenged one of China's wind power subsidy programs on the grounds that it contained protectionist supports for local industry. Ironically China filed a similar complaint in 2012 targeting various renewable energy programs in the EU, singling out Italy and Greece. Time after time neo-liberal trade agreements have encouraged more and more air travel, transporting of goods over ridiculous distances and challenged localised production on the grounds that it is protectionist. Secretive trade deals such as TTIP are the inevitable consequence the path we have been on since the late 1970s. As Klein puts it:

"You have been told that the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. Change requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies and reclaiming our democracies".

BEYOND LEFT AND RIGHT : WHY MAGGIE WASN'T GREEN

I get annoyed when green campaigners use the term 'left-wing' to describe themselves. It is exclusive, limiting and associated with the politics of class conflict. Many 'left-wing' regimes have had terrible environmental impacts ( http://markgoachergreen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/book-recommendation-stalins-legacy.html). Yet it is the case that the right has been so comprehensively hijacked by neo-liberalism since the late 1970s that we think in these terms. We need to be moving forward. Which means rejecting both neo-liberalism and the old anti-ecologist left. However eco-socialism is welcome.
Which brings me to Mrs Thatcher.......
For a time in the late 1980s Mrs T actually managed to convince some naive souls that she had 'gone green'. Tutored by Sir Crispin Tickell, British ambassador to the UN in New York, she made several dramatic environment speeches. The first, to the Royal Society on 27 September 1988, galvanised the emerging green debate in Britain by stating:
"For generations, we have assumed that the efforts of mankind would leave the fundamental equilibrium of the world's systems and atmosphere stable. But it is possible that with all these enormous changes (population, agricultural, use of fossil fuels) concentrated into such a short period of time, we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself."
The second, to the UN general assembly, in November 1989 was aimed at the international community. Thatcher had by then understood the environment's political importance in a globalising world and was the first major politician to hold out the prospect of international legislation. But the real motivation was because the Green Party looked dangerous after securing 15% of the UK vote in the European elections only months before. Back when Sara Parkin and David Icke were the principal speakers. I remember this well as I was living in Leicester at the time and recall that anyone who was not going to vote Labour was undecided between Green or Conservative.

Now for the reality.......

Maggie was about as green as I am a freshly squeezed watermelon. Her enthusiasm for green issues soon evaporated. She opened the Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research in 1990 but did not attend the Rio Earth summit, leaving her successor, John Major to formally sign up Britain to forest, climate and other agreements. In retirement she had nothing more to say about the environment until her 2002 memoirs, when she rejected Al Gore and what she called his "doomist" predictions about climate change.
The reason for this is that Mrs Thatcher was one of the chief architects of the rise of neo-liberal fundamentalism along with Sir Keith Joseph and economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. She was not only anti-green to the core but also a bad conservative as well. By a bad conservative I mean that she and her ilk desired to transform not to conserve and to create an economic model which would unleash unfettered destruction of the natural environment and the institutions of civil society.

THE WIENER THESIS

When Mrs Thatcher was plotting how to transform the economy in the early 1980s, she instructed her patron and close ally Sir Keith Joseph to give every member of her new cabinet a copy of  a 1981 book by Martin Wiener entitled "English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit: 1850–1980". They were ordered in no uncertain terms to read it. Wiener was an American academic whose book had ironically found favour with some of the dinosaurs on the academic Marxist left such as Eric Hobsbawm. This shallow, nasty little book's main contention was that English culture was holding back rampant capitalism and development because of its sympathy with the countryside and nature.It was a concerted attack on the British elite for its indifference to and wariness of industrialism and commercialism. Although the commercial and industrial revolutions originated in England, Wiener blamed a persistent strain in British culture, characterised by wariness of capitalist expansion and yearning for an Arcadian rural society, which had prevented England, and Britain as a whole, from fully exploiting the benefits of what it had created. Constable paintings of rural landscapes, William Blake's art and paintings, William Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites, Wordsworth's nature poetry and so on were all to blame. Wiener believed that any concern over pollution or the human cost of the industrial revolution was some foppish upper-class indulgence. His solution was to forget such 'sentimentalism', forget the countryside and concrete it over. Let loose rampant development!
The poisoned legacy of the Wiener Thesis lives on today in David Cameron and George Osborne. Freeing up the free market must come first. So the planning rules have been reformed to create a presumption in favour of development and remove environmental regulations. When Cameron talked of "dropping the green shit" you could almost see the ghosts of Mrs T and Sir Keith Joseph smiling down on him.

THIS NEO-LIBERAL MADNESS MUST END, STARTING WITH THE UK

Since the UK was at the forefront of the neo-liberal revolution, it should be at the forefront of its demise. Currently free-market fundamentalism dominates the thinking of all the grey parties as well as the governments and functionaries who shape the policy of the EU. It dominates culture in the UK in ways that Wiener would be proud of. The answer lies in a return to protectionism. We must adopt a new approach which I would term the ten heresies.

THE TEN HERESIES:

1) Protect small localised producers from competition from international corporate interests via tariffs and preferential trade agreements.

2) Regulate all economic activity to serve ecological goals.

3) Preferably use our influence to reform the EU away from neo-liberalism and use its institutions to achieve heresies 1 & 2. If this is not possible pull out of  the EU.

4) Raise income tax in order to expand and subsidise renewable energy at the expense of fossil fuels.

5) End all road building schemes, impose high taxes on air travel and reduce airport capacity.

6) Weave ecology into the curricula of all schools. Put as much emphasis on encouraging children to become young naturalists as it put on IT skills.

7) Impose tariffs on imported milk and food to protect small local farmers.

8) Create public works programs, paid for via general taxation and selling government bonds, in conservation, renewable energy such as wind farms, planting new forests and other key areas of the green economy.

9) Ban all development in the countryside

10) Reduce the working week, expand leisure time and set a target of zero unemployment.

Don't Reduce Tuition Fees : ABOLISH THEM

                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Ed Miliband's announcement that a Labour Government would reduce student tuition fees from £9000 per term to £6000 per term is a step in the right direction but is not good enough. It is a classic Labour compromise designed to try and persuade student voters not to vote Green and it won't work.  Natalie Bennett is the only party leader currently talking sense on this issue. The Labour compromise has been roundly condemned by all the usual suspects and vested interests that Ed Miliband is too frightened to fully stand up to. However the bottom line is that the existing fee system is unfair; it punishes the younger generation while leaving the older generations, who enjoyed free higher education, better off financially than the youth of today will be. Higher Education should be free, not made into a commodity to be purchased. Raising fees to £9000 per term was always and purely a cynical political move. It was about imposing a stealth tax on the young because the coalition parties saw believe that the 18-24 age group are less likely to vote than the older generations and that they will only realise the financial implications of debt repayments further down the line. 

Universities should be funded through general taxation, through income tax or a specific graduate tax on all of us who benefited from higher education, regardless of age. The fee system discriminates against young people. Today there have been many university spokespeople railing against Ed Miliband and Labour. Well they should be made to rail even more, rail till the cows come home. They should be thoroughly ashamed of how the universities are using students as cash cows to fund unnecessary refurbishments, huge salary increases and commercial activities. Universities should be independent, state funded centres of learning not commercial business with compromised curricula which play down and cut arts subjects.
It is a bit rich of Labour to want to reduce fees now when they introduced the principle of fees in the first place, shortly after the 1997 election. By doing so they set a precedent and made it easier for the Tories and Lib Dems to increase them later.

Guarantee: I will Never Support Increased House Building on Green Field Sites

I want to make something crystal clear to anyone thinking of voting for me in the upcoming General Election and who may have been alarmed by Green Party leader Natalie Bennett's well publicised pledge to build 500,000 new council houses in five years of a Green Party government. As a Green MP I would only support this plan as long as the homes were built on brownfield sites. Within the party I am currently calling for clarification on this matter as the location of these homes in terms of types of site needs to be made clear to the electorate. However I can promise Colchester voters that there is more chance of me flying to Mars on a spaceship made of chocolate than there is of me ever supporting building large housing estates over the countryside. 

Brownfield Sites Available

The current government estimates that there is capacity for 400,000 new homes on public sector brownfield sites, mainly former industrial sites, in London alone (Gov.uk website). Add to this private sector brownfield sites and the capacity goes above 500,000 just in London alone.
Within Colchester there have been some excellent brownfield site developments in recent years. Within a short distance from my house part of the former Paxman diesel site was recently developed into a new estate which is a vast improvement on what was there before, that being a grotty disused industrial eyesore with a huge brick wall running down Port Lane. There have been some excellent developments down at the Hythe and there is capacity for more. Former factories, warehouse sites and garages can be transformed for the better by residential development.

My Record on this Issue

Preserving the countryside for future generations is one of my most cherished beliefs. I have helped people I know to campaign against a massive housing development imposed on the villages of Barwell and Stapleton in Leicestershire, where I grew up, by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council for five years via letter writing, leaflet distribution, internet campaigning and liaising with sympathetic politicians from other parties.  In the Colchester area I have opposed imposed from on high green field development in Coggeshall and am currently writing letters and publicising the threats to both Salary Brook and Irvine Road Orchard. Back in the 1990s I supported the campaigns against the destructive road building schemes that were the Newbury bypass and Twyford Down projects. Admittedly this was via letter writing rather than Swampy-style direct action however the bottom line is that you can trust me on this issue. It is where my heart lies. Any attempt by any whip or similar 'enforcer' to make me do an about turn would be met with the phrase, "Go take a running jump".

The Green Party Must Not Abandon its Support For the Green Belt 

Unfortunately, at the upcoming Green Party spring conference, a new planning draft paper is being put forward by Tom Chance, a member of Southwark Green Party. This re-writes the policy chapter on planning following an enabling motion at the 2014 spring conference. The re-write contains a highly dangerous and thinly veiled attempt to water down the party's commitment to the green belt. I would urge any Green Party member attending this conference to vote against this draft paper.  The wording in question states:

LP510 Local authorities should review their green belt on a periodic basis where they are failing to achieve sustainable development, for example where they are causing sprawl and commuting beyond their bounds, and where there is scope for more sustainable development on existing green belt sites, for example near transport hubs. Reviews should seek to achieve the policies set out in LP406, ensure no net loss in the quantity and quality of green belt land, and should aim to ‘green the greenbelt’.

On the surface, this clause seems highly green ('green the greenbelt') and about preserving it ('quantity and quality'). But it isn't. Look closer. It suggests that councils should move the greenbelt around to facilitate development on existing green belt land. 'Transport hubs' means building on greenbelt land next to roads or railways. It is similar to Conservative Party proposals to encourage councils to shift the green belt around. Yes the quantity stays the same but it means that an area of land that can be developed on will be freed up for building and replaced with an area that no one would ever want to develop or could be developed such as a high flood risk area. It is about facilitating more building in the countryside.
To adopt this clause would be anti-Green and I will never under any circumstances support it if passed. 

Please Support UNICEF's Campaign To End Violence Against Children

With UNICEF Children's Champion David Wiltcher

UNICEF ( The United Nations Children's Fund) http://www.unicef.org.uk/ has launched a campaign to end violence against children worldwide. 2015 is a critical year as in September the UN Heads of Government are due to meet in New York in order to review a set of goals established in the year 2000 and to set new goals and targets. In that year a target proposal was drawn up which was never adopted in the final set of targets. It was:

16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children.

UNICEF is campaigning to get the 16.2 target adopted this time round in 2015. I shall be writing to Green Party leader Natalie Bennett asking her to champion this cause. I would ask Green Party members to tweet support for the UNICEF campaign, using the hash tag 'End Violence'.

The figures on violence towards children are truly disturbing.
Worldwide UNICEF advises that a child dies every five minutes as a result of violence which is around 100,000 per year. Countless more experience violence in war zones and within the UK there are examples such as trafficking, the Rotherham child abuse scandal, the death of Baby P and many more.
Around 120 million girls under the age of 20 have been subjected to forced sexual acts at some point in their lives. More than 125 million women have been subjected to female genital mutilation/cutting, mostly in childhood or early adolescence. Child prostitution in Thailand involved 800,000 children under the age of sixteen in 2004. According to Unicef there are 40,000 child prostitutes in Sri Lanka and 6.4% of the country's child population gets pregnant.
The charity War Child http://www.warchild.org.uk/estimates that there are 250,000 child soldiers in the world (often forced into fighting) and that 40% of them are girls.
Nigeria has the largest number of young homicide victims, with almost 13,000 deaths in 2012, followed by Brazil with approximately 11,000.

Therefore the UK should ensure the target proposed to "end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children by 2030" (16.2) remains in its current form in the final post-2015 development framework.

 

Its Time To Ban MPs From Being Bought By Business

By now you will most likely be aware of the latest cash for access scandal. Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, both former foreign secretaries, caught in a sting operation by Channel 4 and the Daily Telegraph. Both of them were caught on secret camera offering to sell their 'services' for cash to what they thought was a Chinese firm. Sir Malcolm suggested that he would be willing to write to ministers on behalf of the company without declaring the name of the firm. Mr Straw boasted that he operated "under the radar" in order to use his influence to change European Union rules on behalf of a commodity firm which pays him £60,000 a year. Straw also claimed to have used "charm and menace" to convince the Ukrainian Prime Minister to change laws on behalf of the same firm.
The implication is clear. MPs are currently accepting payments from business interests in return for using their connections to get policy changes both at home and abroad. 
None of this is illegal or is actually breaking the rules. That is the real issue here. It damn well should be. Not only is it venal and corrupt but also it means that whenever a government minister or MP gives his opinion on an issue which directly affects you, such as pensions, fuel bills, welfare, development, foreign policy and whether to go to war, you cannot be certain whether they are giving their own opinion or an opinion that has been bought by a powerful business interest.

What seems to have caused even more controversy is the sheer arrogance of Mr Straw and Mr Rifkind, as expressed in interviews yesterday. Neither has apologised because neither believes that their behaviour is in any way wrong. Mr Rifkind has resigned, I suspect because he was offered a metaphorical gun & glass of whisky and told to do the decent thing. He claimed that he is "self-employed" and "doesn't get a salary", despite his £67,000 salary as an MP. He claimed to have lots of free time and to spend it reading. Last year he registered £69,610 in 'outside earnings'. Mr Straw beat him though, raking in  £112,777 from his business interests.
HOW MANY OTHERS ARE AT IT? 
It is time to end this kind of thing once and for all. Whichever party or parties win the election, it should be made a sacking offence for MPs to accept large payments from business interests for 'services rendered' or, to call a spade a spade, political prostitution. This does not have to include running a small family business or writing a book and so on. It should not be too difficult to work out a set of rules which are flexible enough to allow small scale activity while banning the big payments from outside businesses.
It may be necessary to increase MPs salaries and this would be very difficult to sell to the public. However I am going to be honest and say that this would be better than having MPs being 'up for sale' to whichever business wants to buy them.

What about me?

Well as a parliamentary candidate I would be more than happy with £67,000 a year. It is a massive increase on what I currently earn. That Mr Rifkind and Mr Straw seem to regard it as derisory shows them to be somewhat out of touch with the public to say the least. No wonder they find it difficult to empathise with cash strapped families.
If elected as Colchester's MP I guarantee that I will not take payments from business interests. If I did so I would expect to be driven out of the job.

How Do We Pay For 500,000 New Council Houses?

Following several media reports regarding the Green Party's housing policy and an interview earlier today with Natalie Bennett on the issue, I have been asked a number of questions about how I would cost the policy of building 500,000 council homes. Firstly, I will make it clear that such homes should be built on existing brownfield sites and not over green fields. We are not about concreting over the countryside. Secondly, it seems to me that the policy is not only affordable but would save money in the long run. Here is how:

Why Will Building Them Save Money?

The aim is for 500,000 social housing units to be built over 5 years. That is 100,000 units a year. Let's say they cost only £100,000 each because they are on brownfield sites, often on land belonging to Local Authorities, can be converted from empty properties using Empty Property Use Orders, and built of new highly insulated and inexpensive materials such as Structural Insulated Panels.
 So the programme will cost £10bn a year for 5 years. £50 bn in all.
 If each house lasts 100 years the programme provides 50 million HRYs. HRYstands for Household Roof Years. One HRY provides 1 household with living space for 1 year. So each HRY costs £1,000 in this house-building programme.
Now the current way for us to provide for these families is in Temporary Accommodation (TA). In 1996, the cost of putting 1 family in TA was £10,000 a year. In 1996 it was a conservative estimate, and I imagine that the costs have gone up a bit over the last 19 years, but let us stick with the £10,000 figure for the sake of being conservative.
 For each £1billion spent on social housing, the country saves £9 billion over the coming century.
 Therefore the full  £50 billion will bring savings of £450 billion overall, over the century.
£4.5bn of savings a year. We get an 11 year payback, and a total profit of £400bn on an outlay of £50bn.

So Where Does The Money Come From To Build Them?

The answer is that there are several options. Of course the money can be found.
We could of course borrow it from the banks, the same banks that we bailed out with £375 billion worth of Quantitative Easing (QE), but they would charge us interest, and why should we pay them interest?
 It would be far better to pay for it with a £50 billion of QE.
 Alternatively we could get some of it from a tax on private landlords, and also cancel Trident replacement which would bring in £15 billion over the 5 year term.
 In addition we could have a partnership with private investment.
 A combination of all of the above would find the money.