Anglo-Buddhist Combine

Messenger by Mary Oliver

2012-01-14T10:44:00.001-08:00

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

30 Essays in 30 Days for my 30th?

2011-12-22T04:08:00.000-08:00

I've always loved to to write, and yet I've never managed more than a few chapters of a first novel, and of course a fairly voluminous set of blog posts. The disparity between the former and the latter has led me to the conclusion that, ideally, I'd like to write a collection of essays rather than a novel - at least at this point in my life. There are a few problems with this idea:

- No one publishes essays unless you are a public intellectual, preferably one who uses your initials rather than your first name to show just how intellectual you are.

- No one reads essays unless you are the above.

- It's much much much easier to be a pompous preaching prig while writing essays. In a novel you can just claim that opinions which people don't like are held by your characters, and not the author.

Despite all of this, the idea of trying to set down my thinking on a series of issues which are important to me remains intriguing. SO - in the spirit of being a ludicrous Protestant work ethic influenced type of person and therefore liking milestones, goals and challenges - I'm toying with the idea of writing 30 Essays in 30 Days for my 30th Birthday. Sort of like this guy, except less insane and with less risk of my knees falling off.

It would mostly be for my own good - a kind of stock taking of where I am at 30, so that I can look back in 10 years time and laugh at myself - but my vanity does insist that at least *some* people have a read of them too. So - my question to my dear readers is this - if I took up the challenge of 30 Essays in 30 Days for my 30th (about 1,500 words each day, in August 2012 I reckon, given the gaps in my various courses and committments), would you read them? If you thought they were good, would you bung the link around your networks? Would you help me get an average of at least 30 readers for each one?

If so, I reckon I'll give it a shot. Why not. If there's one thing the world needs more of, it's random opinions on the Internet. :)

Mens sana in corpore sano

2011-12-17T16:02:00.001-08:00

"A healthy mind in a healthy body" - Juvenal

"Run while you have the light of life...run on the path of God's commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love." - St Benedict

Well, it's been over a year! When I last wrote anything on this blog, I was - to be frank - both depressed and aimless. I had not done as well in the General Election as I had hoped, and was uncertain where my life was going. I'm pleased to say that now all that has changed. Of course, all life has peaks and troughs, and I'm sure I'll take some more hits before long - but at the moment, I'm at a peak.

In fact, I'm probably at the highest peak I've ever found - and, strangely, it's extraordinarily difficult to write about. It's socially difficult to write about depression or gloom, but not that hard to vent about it in writing once you've made the decision that you want to. Writing about optimism and a 'state of grace', on the other hand, is almost impossible to do without sounding like a naive sap who needs a good dose of real life.

I might have thought exactly that a year ago - but, in fact, it is the experience of real life that is bringing me such joy. Or rather, the specific experience of a balanced intellectual, physical and spiritual life which my enormous good fortune and privilege is currently affording me. I am of course well aware that most people in the world don't have that good fortune. Intellectually, I am in the middle of the Graduate Diploma in Law - the 'law conversion' - which provides more than enough material to stretch anyone's reasoning and memory skills for a year. To be honest though, intellectual engagement has never been my problem. It is the physical and spiritual sides of my life which seem to have blossomed in the last few months.

Physicality

I was once described, during a P.E. class in my early teens, as 'the most physically inept boy' that the teacher had ever seen. Slightly harsh, but a fairly good indication of my own attitude to any kind of physical effort during my school years. It was only during my gap year - which, given I spent months in the middle of the rainforest hacking at things with a machete, carrying food in on my back and hiking every day, couldn't help but get me fit - that I discovered the glorious feeling that being at one with one's own body can bring. Alas, that didn't last very long when I returned....the first year of university will do that to you.

Over the last few years I've dabbled here and there with some forms of physical exercise - a 5K here, a bit of martial arts there - but it's only over the last few months that I have decided to get properly fit again. Ironically, the extreme demands of the GDL have meant that I don't have much time for procrastination - and have therefore meant that my time at the gym or running on the roads serves as a much needed mental break. More than that, though, I've gotten to that stage where the investment in physical fitness - what Stephen Covey calls 'sharpening the saw' - more than repays itself in increased energy and massively improved mood.

If it just had those physiologically and psychological effects, getting properly fit would be excellent in itself. However, it's more than that, for me. It's fitting into my spiritual practice, as well - awakening me to my potential as a human being after many years of believing that 'athlete' is, by definition, a word used about other people. After reading works by a number of authors, specifically George Leonard and George Sheehan, it's become increasingly clear to me that in fact most people have the potential to get in touch with their bodies through exercise - and that this can be an intensely spiritual practice.

Spirituality

My other release from hours of memorising contract law cases and trying to understand state liability in the EU has been lots and lots of meditation. I've been practicing for a decade, but in a very patchy way, and it's been a while since I've sat regularly. Combined with the greater awareness of physical sensation brought on by exercise, and the improvement in mood which is stabilised by regular, calm, sitting, I'm starting to glimpse a little bit of what some of our great poets and writers have understood about the 'holistic' way of life.

In particular, as always, I'm drawn to Robert Lax - and especially what he wrote about the athletic practice of the acrobats with whom he lived during his time writing Circus of the Sun:

Acrobat's Song

Who is it for whom we now perform,
Cavorting on wire:
For whom does the boy
Climbing the ladder
Balance and whirl -
For whom,
Seen or sunseen
In a shield of light?

Seen or unseen
In a shield of light,
At the tent top
Where the rays stream in
Watching the pin-wheel
Turns of the players
Dancing
In light:

Lady,
We are Thy acrobats;
Jugglers;
Tumblers;
Walking on wire,
Dancing on air,
Swinging on the high trapeze:
We are Thy children,
Flying in the air
Of that smile:
Rejoicing in light.

Lady,
We perform before Thee,
Walking a joyous discipline,
A thin thread of courage,
A slim high wire of dependence
Over abysses.

What do we know
Of the way of our walking?
Only this step,
This movement,
Gone as we name it.
Here
At the thin
Rim of the world
We turn for Our Lady,
Who holds us lightly
We leave the wire,
Leave the line,
Vanish
Into light.

....

Indeed, it was after a really excellent recent workout, during a meditation that I decided to do in order to take advantage of the endorphin rush, that I had one of the more meaningful mystical experiences I've ever had. It takes many things to come together for that to happen...and, frankly, I don't have the words to describe it. It was something like this:

"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our mind or the brutalities of our own will...It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billion points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely….I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere."

- Thomas Merton

Now, don't worry. I've not become a Christian nor a raving lunatic. No more than I was before, in any event. I'm neither going to start putting flowers in what remains of my hair, nor retreat to an ashram. And I still recognise that the world, for the majority of people today, is a difficult, brutal and deeply unfair place. None of that negates the fact, however, that when you get it right - and it's a rare and fleeting event that you do - life can be *wonderful*.

So - more running and meditation for me. And hopefully no irritating people to tears with too much ecstatic burbling....I'm sure my upcoming exams will sort all that out soon enough.

Til I next decide to post something,

All the best. :)

A Ghostly Batsman Plays To The Bowling Of A Ghost...

2010-08-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

It probably didn't take a particularly astute reader to scan my last blog post and sense that I am a little disheartened with politics at the moment. I'm sure that after a little rest and reflection I will throw myself back into activity of one sort of another - but at the moment, the two things that are keeping me vaguely sane are cricket and writing.

So, this is a post about cricket and writing. Imaginative.

Probably the most relaxing day I have had this year, if we ignore anything that involves walking along the beach and listening to the sound of the sea, has been spent at Lords, watching an inconsequential County Championship game. The third day of Middlesex vs Leicestershire, despite featuring Hoggard and Shah (and a fine century from a young batsman named James Taylor, who I reckon will play for England one day) was not exactly a crowd-puller. And yet it was glorious. Its very lack of consequence was its beauty. Being able to sit in a mostly empty Lords, and watch the cycle of overs - drinks, lunch, tea, close of play - and the cycle of wickets and batting milestones within them - I cannot imagine anything more genuinely meditative.

To be honest, if I had my way and could do any job, at any time, I would be hard-pressed to resist being a cricket writer. Not a cricket journalist as of today (though I'd settle for that at a pinch) but a real cricket writer, given the licence and authority to describe the game for people who, before the advent of TV, could only see it by attending themselves. Sure, there would be much more worthy things to do - but trying to capture what it is about cricket that speaks to my soul is not an unworthy task for a life. JM Kilburn certainly didn't think so, whose collected works I am currently reading. And what a writer he was!

Describing Tom Graveney: "Whenever Graveney was out of the England side England cricket was not necessarily weakened but it seemed slightly unrepresentative, as a June garden without roses or a banquet without wine."

Or Walter Hammond's walk to the wicket in 1938, before he had even made a stroke: "Hammond's walk was the most handsome in all cricket, smooth in the evenness of stride, precise in balance. It was a flow of movement linking stillness to stillness."

Today's cricket journalism is full of statistics, gossip, news about the oligarchs who run the ICC and debate about the IPL. What I wouldn't give for just one person to have the licence to follow the England team around and really describe Pietersen's hitting in full flow, or Swann's cunning in tricking batsman out of their wickets. Maybe that era is gone. I hope not.

Meanwhile, any aspiring cricket writers in search of a silky batting technique and flawless bowling action to describe could do worse than turn up to the Hands Off The People Of Iran 2010 fundraising cricket match on Sunday 29th August, Victoria Park, and watch in awe as I attempt to better last year's glorious effort...

P.S.

The title, of course, comes from Francis Thompson's poem "At Lords", written shortly before his death of tuberculosis in 1907.

For the field is full of shades as I near a shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host
As the run stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro:
O my Hornby and my Barlow long ago !

Politics, Life, and Disappointment

2010-08-05T04:43:00.000-07:00

People are often surprised by my affection for America and American people in general. After all, not only am I a raging leftie (and therefore, through groupthink, must hate the Great Satan and all its works), but I'm also "the most English person alive"(TM). This is fair, but only to a point. Because, you see, I am beginning to think that I sympathise with the American 'national character' much more than I had originally thought. True, I'm somewhat more introverted and anti-social than the popular image of America might suggest is appropriate, and I still don't get the appeal of the NFL (seriously, it's rugby with shoulder pads and more ad breaks) - but importantly, I'm goal driven. Over my life, I have enjoyed nothing better than setting an aim, normally a stratospherically high one, and then smashing it. That is a very American trait. It's what got them to the Pacific, to the Moon, and (for better or worse) pretty much all over the globe.

Why this sudden discourse on generalised Americana? Because, over the last few months, I've been trying to deal with the end of a goal - one that, frankly, ended in failure. Like America, it seems I don't do too well with underachievement - and that realisation has led to a whole series of different thoughts.

The most potent train of thought has been depression and disillusionment. It is difficult to commit one's life to something for a year, only to see everything turn out worse than when you began. I'm indulging in hyperbole, of course - after all, we now have an excellent Green MP in Brighton - but the truth is, I had very little to do with that achievement, and a lot to do with halving the Green Party's share of the vote in Hackney North. Where I was personally engaged, the message did not get through.

Or, in my darker moments, perhaps it did get through, and the large majority of people simply did not agree with it. After all, why would people want to listen to someone who, honestly and plainly, is saying that things have to change radically if we are going to have a continued, vaguely sane way of life on this planet? Someone who is openly admitting that our current existence cannot continue, and that it can either end in unplanned collapse or planned transition? These are not palatable truths, even for those who understand why they probably are true.

Those involved in the Dark Mountain Project know better than most that these truths are unpalatable, and that to espouse them is to risk calumny. And yet, I must admit, with each month that goes by, the more I find myself in agreement with a lot of what Paul Kingsnorth and others have to say. Where is our realistic and achievable path towards stopping climate change? Where is our strategy for social change using 21st century 'democracy'? I'm afraid that, to me, it's all looking rather forlorn. And rather than attempting, again and again, to achieve the unachievable - I'm beginning to think that perhaps it is time to acknowledge the truth, stop setting ourselves impossible goals, and start turning our minds to how we are going to salvage what is left after our adolescent, selfish, consumption-fixated society starts falling to bits around us.

That is not to say that we should stop 'trying' or that I advocate a counsel of 'hopelessness'. Rather, it is to use our rational faculties to try to work out what is actually achievable, and focus on that, rather than banging our heads repeatedly against the brick wall of actually existing culture and politics - both of which seem hellbent on plummetting over the Niagra of environmental disaster without even a slight course correction. We should fix our hope on what we can actually do - ameliorating the consequences and building a society for the future within the shell of the old - and focus our 'trying' on projects which are actually going to get us somewhere.

At the moment, I'm not convinced that those projects are situated in attempting to influence existing political and economic structures. Perhaps I'm wrong. I hope so. Right now, as you might be able to tell, I've had one disappointment too many.

Hiatus

2010-05-27T14:45:00.001-07:00

Just a brief note to say that I am taking a brief holiday from blogging while I work out what I am doing next in my life, and what I fink about stuff, innit. :)

Will start writing again sometime soon.

Matt

Moving Forward

2010-05-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

"We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!"

- Citizen Kang, The Simpsons

My previous post on the election results began to lay out the direction which I think the Green Party should be taking in the next couple of years - but I thought it might be good to write a little more about it, in an attempt to avoid the kind of meaningless 'forward, not backward' drivel which we are currently seeing from the amazing Miliband brothers.

In a little over a month, on June 22nd, Gideon Osborne will stand up in Parliament and announce his emergency Budget. It will have been produced using numbers from the new 'Office of Budget Responsibility' - one of the board members of which, it turns out, was also on the board of RBS...that noted pillar of recent fiscal stability and probity.

Aided by his lovely sidekick, the most Orange of Orange Bookers, David Laws, Osborne will be giving the public sector a vigorous and horrific kicking. And this is despite numerous economists coming out very clearly in opposition to such a 'shock doctrine' programme of slashed spending, which runs a very real danger of plunging the economy back into recession.

John Hilary has made the case for sustained public sector investment very well in The Guardian, as has Joseph Stiglitz - a man in whose economic judgement I place rather more trust than that of Osborne and Laws. But then I'd trust my three year old half-sister to make better investment decisions than Osborne, so perhaps it is not a surprise that I choose to go with the Nobel Prize winning economist rather than the Tory ideologue on this one.

In previous political eras, we might have looked to the Labour Party to oppose this agenda, but there are a few problems with that strategy this time. Firstly, they agree with the cuts, just not the timing of some of them. Secondly, they will be so busy deciding which Ed or which Miliband they want to lead them for the next few months, they will be of absolutely use to neither man nor beast. While elements within Labour will doubtless continue fighting the good fight, we are on our own.

And that is a good thing. Because for the first time in many many years, we can organise from the grassroots up. Instead of waiting for someone to 'save us', we can start resisting on our own. And the Green Party, as the only party in England to have fought the election on a platform of rejecting public service cuts, should be right at the forefront of that resistance. Not trying to boss campaigns, or use them as front groups - but genuinely supporting them through our base in councils, in the London Assembly and now in Parliament. We can eschew the top-down organising of the hard left and the hypocritical rhetoric of Labour - and actually get stuck in on the frontlines ourselves. Because that is how you build a party that, as I've said for many years now, must be the "political wing of community campaigns" if it is to be anything at all.

It is crucial that we do not fall into the trap of administering the cuts when they come, or looking at the economic crisis through the prism of "realistic politics". A realistic politics is one that recognises the need of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society, and the impact that massive cuts will have on them. A realistic politics is one that recognises that a free market let rip will decimate our ecological support system and plunge us towards irretrievable climate catastrophe. And a realistic politics is one that understands that the only way to stop these things from happening is to build grassroots power, and to support it wherever it begins to emerge - rather than trying to tweak things here and there from the Council chamber and thinking that, on its own, that will be enough.

In Hackney, we are going to start doing our bit, helping to coordinate the publicity for the June 5thHackney Unites Conference, organised by Hackney TUC - and I'll be speaking in a few of the sessions on the day, too, to make links with groups already working in our borough to resist privatisation and cuts.

What we do in the next year or two is going to define politics for a generation. The Green Party needs to bend all its resources towards making sure that the next decade is one of rising grassroots power and organisation - rather than one in which the public sector is reduced to nothing more than a patch of scorched earth.

P.S. If you want excellent analysis and information on these kinds of topics, you probably should add Aled Fisher's revived blog to your reading list, as well as the consistently interesting collective blog Bright Green Scotland. Both are must-reads.

Seismic Shifts

2010-05-12T09:46:00.001-07:00

Just a few highlights of what we have gotten out of this godawful dogs dinner:

- The Lib Dems have signed up to the unworkable, draconian and xenophobic 'cap on non EU migration' policy. Well done guys.

- We have a promised referendum on Alternative Vote, which is not proportional and (whether won or lost) will probably bury the chances for a truly fair voting system to the Commons for a generation.

- Eric Pickles is in charge of the CLG, which means he is in charge of housing policy. Thousands and thousands of people are going to find it even harder to find a roof over their head which they can afford.

- There are going to be massive, "shock doctrine" style cuts to the public sector, starting almost immediately. The deadline appears to be the emergency budget, which has been declared to be 50 days away. At least £6 billion will go immediately, with a lot more to follow over the next year. That's massive cuts in public sector pay, benefits, public services - and no cuts to Trident, and no withdrawal from the £4 billion murderfest that is our occupation of Afghanistan.

All this will come to pass - if we let it. Because this governent does not represent a majority of the people. Millions of Lib Dem voters thought they were voting against the Tories, not for them. Lets not wait for years to punish these complacent, right-wing 'tighten your belts, we're all in this together' smug hypocrites at the next election. Lets punish them now. Time to organise.

Post-Election Thoughts

2010-05-09T08:24:00.001-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

So, after a couple of days of blessed sleep - broken only by attending the Take Back Parliament demonstration which demanded that the Lib Dems not sell out electoral reform - I thought I would offer a few closing thoughts on this strangest of General Elections.

Clearly, I was disappointed with the Hackney North result. Both the Green Party vote share and the absolute number of votes we received went down, and we lost our deposit for the first time since 1997. In line with the honest approach I have tried to take on my prospects throughout the election, I'm not going to claim that as a triumph! However, I am also not particularly despondent. This is because the result in 2010 will have exposed two big untruths, which I hope the electorate will remember at the next General Election:

1) "The Lib Dems are poised to win Hackney North".

Oh dear. Regular readers will recall that I called several times for a bit of honesty on this from other candidates, to not much avail. Quite a few people who normally vote Green switched to the Lib Dems in this election, because they thought they were close to challenging Diane. And a few switched to Labour, for the same reason! I hope that Diane's 14,000 majority will now make them think about the argument that I was putting forward - that it is possible in Hackney North to vote for the candidate you most agree with, without having to vote tactically in any direction. If that is a Liberal Democrat, grand. But if you vote Green in every other election, there isn't any need to switch your vote in the General next time.

2) "Vote Labour or there will be a hung council/the Tories will get in".

Double oh dear. I heard both of these arguments at different times in the campaign. Labour now have 50 of 57 seats on the Council, and the Tories, as expected, came a poor third. Again. Hackney is made up of two of the safest Labour seats in the country - no one from the right of politics is going to get in. So, to repeat - you can vote for who you believe in. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.

Of course, the vast surge in turnout for Labour for the General Election also made the Clissold ward result rather painful reading for me. In both Clissold and Stoke Newington Central our six council candidates got more votes than any Green Party candidate ever has in Hackney. And we lost. By a lot. Frankly, there was simply nothing else we could have done. We knocked on doors every day for months, put out leaflets that spelled out our vision for the borough, ran stalls, worked with community groups - unfortunately, like almost every other Green councillor in London, the General Election and our resulting lack of media exposure did for us.

We are determined to spend the coming years continuing to organise in our community, continuing to help people with their problems, and joining with anyone else in the borough who will be working against swingeing public sector cuts. Unfortunately, they will be imposed on us by whichever of the three establishment parties gets into Government - unless we fight back, nationally, as a movement of people who refuse to allow the public sector to pay for a private financial crisis.

Thanks to all who have read and commented on this blog, and particularly to the thousands of people who cast a vote for me in the Council and General elections. If Hackney Green Party sees fit to select me again - I'll be back!

Why You Should Vote Green

2010-05-05T04:29:00.001-07:00

So - the election is tomorrow. I've been busy leafletting, doorknocking, husting and every other election related activity one can think of. But now, of course, it is down to you...and every other voter in Hackney North.

Why should you Vote Green tomorrow? Because we are the only party standing out against public sector cuts, and instead arguing openly and honestly for a significant increase in redistributive taxation. Because we are the only party calling for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. Because we are the only party calling for the scrapping of all of our nuclear weapons. Because we are the only party who have a plan that can credibly put us on a path towards dealing with climate change and peak oil, rather than faffing around with the deckhairs on the Titanic as we head towards the iceberg. Because we are the only party who have based our entire campaign on the disastrous inequality that our country is mired in, and the need for a more equal and just society.

Diane Abbott is going to win Hackney North tomorrow. The only question is whether she will win with a growing and dynamic Green Party snapping at her heels, or if people end up voting for one of the three mainstream parties because "I suppose we have to".

You don't have to. If you believe in Green Party policies, and if you think I am a decent candidate - vote Green on May 6th, and help start the process of changing Hackney for the better.

All best wishes,

Matt Sellwood

P.S. If you are still undecided, the Vote For Policies tool might help you to make up your mind. You'll notice that when people vote for the policies that they like the best without knowing which party they are from, the Green Party wins....

Green Party Battlebus

2010-04-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

So, occasionally the campaign powers-that-be allow me to stop doorknocking and go and do visibility raising activities...like joining the Green Party's battlebus in its tour around Hackney!

All powered by recycled chip fat, I'm glad to assure you. :)

Afghanistan - the three party consensus

2010-04-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

The debate between the three establishment party leaders that I have just seen was perhaps one of the most dismal televisual experiences of my life. A debate on global issues which hardly touched on climate change in an international context? A 'debate' on global issues in which all leaders agreed on our insane adventure in Afghanistan, arguing only about how brave they thought British soldiers are?

Regular readers will recall that I have posted about Afghanistan before, and my feelings remain the same. This is a war which has been dragging on for years, has killed many thousands of innocent people, and which has no clear strategy. We are still there not because of any coherent aim, but because it would embarass the Government to leave - and to admit that the near decade of slaughter in that country has been for nothing.

As this excellent article by Johann Hari in the Independent points out, the three establishment parties are in lock step on this issue. Far from promising 'change', the Lib Dems and the Tories have nothing to say about this war. They are happy to propose cuts to public services - but apparently the £4 billion per year price tag on our venture in Aghanistan is sacrosanct.

One of the many lobbying emails I have received in the last few weeks has been a list of questions from the Stop The War Coalition - and I thought, for the avoidance of doubt, that I might end this post by making my responses public. If elected, I will campaign vigorously for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan. It's the only policy that makes any sense.

1. Do you support the immediate withdrawal of British and NATO troops from Afghanistan?

Yes.

2. Did you support the war in Iraq?

No - in fact, I took direct action against it, breaking into RAF Fairford and preventing B52 bombers from taking off.

3. Will you oppose any military attack on Iran by the United States or Israel?

Yes.

4. Do you support the immediate closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison?

Yes.

5. Are you opposed to the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons?

Yes.

6. Do you oppose the attacks on Muslims and the growing Islamophobia in British society?

Yes.

7. Do you agree that the use of anti-terrorist laws to restrict the right of protest is an attack on civil liberties?

Yes - particularly as someone who has been targetted in the past by blanket anti-terrorism laws, including during the DSEI Arms Fair in London.

Two Confusing Labour Leaflets

2010-04-15T15:48:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

In the last few days, I've had a couple of Labour leaflets through my door - both of which had slightly strange elements to them.

The first was Diane Abbott's Freepost leaflet. Most of it was perfectly solid stuff -though I was disappointed to see that she didn't mention the war in Afghanistan, preferring instead to point back to her opposition to the war in Iraq. However, the odd part was her assertion that "I am currently campaigning to make it easier for innocent people to get their name off the DNA database". This is odd because, as a potential constituent pointed out to me about a week ago, this vote on a Tory/Lib Dem amendment was the most recent opportunity for MPs to support the deletion of innocent people's DNA records as soon as they are found not guilty. Umm, Diane voted against it!

I am genuinely wondering if I have gotten the wrong end of the stick here, as it seems strange in the extreme to trumpet a policy stance in a leaflet which goes out to 70,000 voters if it is so easily disproved by one of your most recent votes. Does anyone out there fancy writing to Diane and asking what on earth that vote was all about? I'm certainly intending to ask her about it at our next hustings.

The second Labour leaflet was a capacious four sides of A3 from my opponents in Clissold ward. Again, most of it was fine - though I'm not sure claiming Hackney's recycling rate as an achievement is very wise, given that it is amongst the lowest in London - but the strange bit was the map on the inside cover. Clearly wanting to make it seem as if they had been doing things on every street, the incumbent councillors laid claim to pretty much anything that has ever happened in the ward over the last four years - including the delivery of completely basic services. Working street lights, in this leaflet, qualify as a major victory. Roads without potholes are, it seems, the height of Hackney Labour's ambitions.

I have no particular objection to this. If Labour really want to portray themselves as nothing more than competent bureaucrats, bereft of a wider vision for the borough, I'm happy for them do so! Personally, I prefer our leaflet - the one that sets out a scheme for free insulation throughout the borough, a living wage for all council employees including contract workers, a local job creation strategy, renewable energy for public buildings, disinvestment of the £10 million that the Council has invested in the arms trade, and much much more. I think that local people will respond to a party that can deliver basic services *and* look to shape a progressive future - so long may Labour continue to talk entirely about dog mess!

In other news, the Green Party's General Election manifesto was launched today, and you can find our Hackney manifesto online too. Happy reading!

Digital Economy BIll

2010-04-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Wow. Gordon Brown called the election on the date we all predicted, and suddenly my inbox had hundreds of emails in it! It's been great to hear from so many people in the constituency over the last week - but answering all my correspondence, as well as doing some media work and knocking on doors to chat to people face-to-face has meant that my blogging hasn't been too up to date. Apologies for that.

I have been doing a fair amount of connecting with people on Twitter though (@HackneyMatt for those who are interested in following what I'm up to), and the major political event for that site over the last week has without doubt been the passage of the Digital Economy Bill.

As this speech by Tom Chance - the Green Party's spokesperson on intellectual property - makes clear, this is a deeply flawed and illiberal bill. A survey of just some of its possible effects makes extremely worrying reading - but perhaps even more worrying is the way that it was passed. Despite constant and increasingly urgent warnings from thousands of concerned citizens about the gaping holes in the logic of the legislation, Parliament had a grand total of five minutes to discuss forty-two clauses of the Bill. This was excused by the fact that the law was being passed during the 'wash up' - a time at which debate is curtailed so that non-controversial legislation can be passed before the end of the Parliamentary term. Once again, Members of Parliament have shown contempt for the concerns of ordinary people - and if elected, I will fight for the repeal of the Digital Economy Bill.

I should also add that, in the interests of honesty and transparency, Diane Abbott did the right thing on this and voted against the Bill. Congratulations to her - I'm happy when we agree! Now, if only she can persuade Lord Mandelson to drop the whole thing....

In other news, readers might be interested to read a short interview with me in Red Pepper about the campaign, along with a few thoughts on the medium term prospects for the left in Hackney.

Labour's Hung Council Ploy

2010-04-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

From what voters have been telling me on the doorstep over the last week or so, it seems that Hackney Labour Party (particularly in Clissold ward) have been claiming that a Green vote will lead to a hung council.

This is fairly silly, for two major reasons:

1) Labour have a huge majority. Labour currently hold 45 out of 57 councillors (see the graph below), the Mayoralty, both Parliamentary seats and the London Assembly seat that covers Hackney. Over the last four years, the Tory group has been an utterly ineffectual opposition - this year, they didn't even bother to put an amendment to the budget. In contrast, despite being on her own as a Green councillor, Cllr Mischa Borris put a fully costed amendment to the budget - and would have done more if she had been part of a Green Group. Hackney needs more progressive and effective opposition to Labour, not less!

2) Hackney has an Executive Mayor. One of the main arguments that the Labour Party used when pushing for the centralised system of an Executive Mayor is that it would no longer be problematic if the Council ended up in no overall control - after all, the Mayor gets to pick his own Cabinet however he wants. They can't have it both ways - selling the Mayoral system as an antidote to hung councils, and then spreading scare stories about hung councils once we have a Mayor!

As this graph of the results last time (for parties who are standing in 2010) shows, it couldn't be tighter in Clissold ward. On May 6th, voters will have a choice. Add a few more Labour councillors to a Council already run by them - or take your opportunity to elect a strong, progressive and coherent voice of opposition, who will hold Labour to account for the next four years.

Just to end, I should add that I find Labour's whole emphasis on this issue disappointing. It focuses on the 'horse race' rather than policies. The Greens are pushing Hackney Labour on social justice, sustainability and local democracy - perhaps it is no surprise that Labour councillors don't want to talk about these issues on the doorstep, but instead resort to trying to scare people into voting for the 'same old, same old' once again. I don't think it will work this time.

Mephedrone Idiocy

2010-03-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

This Government seems determined to go to its probable doom still operating with the same kind of politics that have gotten us into such a mess in the first place. Right thing to do, but unpopular? Never going to happen.

And so it was with mephedrone, the latest scare drug of the moment. All the relevant legislation says, very reasonably, that the Government needs to conduct a sober, scientific and comprehensive study of any substance that it wishes to control. After all, by controlling mephedrone, the Government will at a stroke be seriously criminalising many thousands of young people.

However, this is New Labour - so imagine my complete lack of surprise at the rush to push through a ban on mephedrone before the General Election. It seems that, far from heeding scientific advice and carefully considering policy, it just takes a few scare stories in the tabloids to get this Government to jump. As far as I can tell, there has been next to no proof either way about mephedrone as yet - but hey, lets not let that stop us from creating new laws. Who needs proof when you have outrage?

I've always been incredibly proud of Green Party drugs policy, which points out that prohibition generally doesn't work. It's simply not the best way to keep people safe, and just pushes drugs underground into the control of criminal gangs who ensure that the substances used become less pure and more dangerous. In the case of mephedrone, there are scores of drugs, still legal, which give almost the same high - so all this will achieve is to push people towards other alternatives. Alternatives the effects of which, surprise surprise, we will have no idea about. And so the merry-go-round of outrage will begin again.

This is also the view of Professor David Nutt, the man whom the Government sacked for having the temerity to tell the truth on these issues only a few months ago. Like him, I certainly don't believe that mephedrone is harmless. But I do believe that making it a controlled substance is almost certainly going to make things worse, rather than better.

Political expediency 1 - 0 Rational science based politics.

My reaction to the Budget

2010-03-28T10:08:00.001-07:00

Affordable Housing and the Budget

2010-03-24T13:04:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

More on the budget in a few days. For now, one brief bit of thinking on an astonishing ommission - the complete lack of a mention for affordable housing in 2010's Budget. Who needs a strategy for social housing when you can steal a policy on owner-occupying from the Tories, eh?

BUDGET IGNORES AFFORDABLE HOUSING

One of the few major, eye-catching changes in Labour's 2010 Budget was a housing measure. Unfortunately for the almost 5 million people on social housing waiting lists throughout the country, the measure had nothing to do with housing that those most in need can afford.

In providing a holiday on stamp duty for homes under £250,000, Alistair Darling is following the same tired formula of attempting to stimulate the economy through subsidies to owner-occupiers, rather than investment in homes for the millions of people who are in very serious housing need. A subsidy of only a couple of thousand pounds will not make housing ownership accessible to all, and will cost £550 million over two years.

At the same time as this giveaway, the Government is refusing to protect social housing investment from the swingeing cuts which are guaranteed to hit unprotected government departments later in the year. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that non ringfenced departments will suffer cuts of 17.98%. This would mean a drastic reduction in an already inadequate building programme. In 2007, Gordon Brown pledged to build 1 million units of social housing by 2020 - however, according to the National House Builder's Federation only 162,000 of these will have been built by 2011, and if the projected cuts take effect, the remaining 838,000 will not be built until 2029!

The direct effect of this complete neglect of social housing (momentarily ignoring the indirect effects on health, economic equality and prosperity) will be a further 1.25 million people joining the housing waiting lists, and the loss of 278,000 jobs and apprenticeships in the construction industry.

Labour had a chance, with this final Budget, to set out a route back to sane levels of social housing in this country. They have failed this test in epic fashion, and look set to condemn millions to continuing housing misery.

Matt Sellwood is the Green Party's national housing spokesperson, and the Parliamentary Candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington.

Ending Fuel Poverty

2010-03-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

In one of my more recent posts, I highlighted one of the major items of expenditure in Hackney Green Party's budget proposals this year - a scheme designed to kickstart the provision of free insulation for all residents of the borough, prioritising the most vulnerable households.

A similar scheme has already been pioneered by Kirklees Green Party, who secured over £20 million for it, and it has transformed the energy efficiency situation of housing in their area.

Now, I'm aware that insulation isn't the sexiest political issue. But it should be.

It should be because nearly five million households in England cannot afford to heat and power their own homes. They need to spend more than 10% of their income on energy, and so are living in fuel poverty. The annual average household energy bill is now over £1,200 - more than double the average bill just five years ago.

And it should be because, in 2008/2009, there were more than 36,000 excess winter deaths, with many more people becoming seriously ill or going into heavy debt due to fuel poverty.

THIRTY SIX THOUSAND PEOPLE.

Yes, of course, excess deaths aren't just cold related, and not everyone died as a result of poor heating in their homes - but even if we are ludicrously conservative and attribute just 10% of those deaths to insufficient fuel and heating (and I suspect its actually a lot more), we are talking about thousands of preventable deaths. And that was for 2008/9. The winter we've just had was colder.

Of course, the Labour government have been on the case for a decade now, ever since they passed a Parliamentary Bill on the topic of fuel poverty in 2000. I'm sure its fixed.

Oh. Turns out, there are now nearly three times more households in fuel poverty than in 2001, when the government launched its UK Fuel Poverty Strategy. The government has already acknowledged it will miss its 2010 legal target on fuel poverty, and is on course to miss the 2016 target unless there is a radical shift in strategy. As End Fuel poverty have said of the government, "it is reluctant to set a target energy efficiency standard for private sector homes; take regulatory action to drive up standards...and make sure all the necessary funding is provided."

Frankly, this isn't rocket science. We need to stop faffing about at the edges of this problem, stop relying on the market to fix itself, and introduce minimum standards in the private sector as a matter of urgency. As Friends of the Earth point out in a recent briefing: "Strong minimum standards, which are toughened over time, should make it illegal to rent out a property below a certain energy efficiency rating...this should start immediately with properties in Energy Performance Certificate Bands F and G...there is simply no moral, practical or financial argument for allowing a landlord to continue to make money from letting a property which is in bands F or G - a standard of energy efficiency so poor that it is classified as a health hazard - when that property could be improved to Band E for less than a thousand pounds."

Absolutely right. We need the 'stick' of minimum energy standards, and the 'carrot' of easily understood and accessible free insulation. We need it because bringing the homes of the fuel poor up to the energy efficiency standards of homes built today would reduce their fuel bills by an average of 52 per cent, and cut their carbon emissions by 59 per cent. And we need it because people are dying.

Grassroots Legislator?

2010-03-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Those who are keen readers of the Hackney Gazette may have noticed that Diane Abbott has reacted with some irritation after I pointed out her absence from a key climate vote a couple of weeks ago.

While I've been having a bit of fun with her assertion that no-one in Hackney has ever met me (I'm fairly sure I'm not a figment of someone's imagination, though I suppose you never can tell), Diane's response actually brings up an important and interesting point of discussion - the proper balance as an elected representative between engagement in the community you serve, and attendance at the legislative body in which you sit.

In actual fact, Diane and I are not very far apart on this, I suspect. I come from a tradition of politics which believes, strongly, that the role of a politician is not to be elected every five years and then go about their Parliamentary business (a view of the function of elected representatives which has been extremely prevalent in historical British politics), but rather to interact with and dynamically serve the community groups and campaigning organisations which exist within their constituency.

The main wellspring of ideas and 'genius' for change comes from the grassroots, not from one person who happens to have been elected. One of my political heroes is the late Paul Wellstone, and I've found the organisation set up in his memory, Wellstone Action, to be a helpful guide to how an elected representative should spend much of their time empowering constituents to hold them to account. There are already many good examples of this in Hackney - the London Coalition Against Poverty springs to mind - and I would hope to work with many more if elected, either as a councillor or MP.

The only difference between Diane and I is the value that we placed on that particular amendment to that particular bill. For me, when a vote is that tight, and when it is about holding powerful corporations to account on their attempts to water down environmental standards, I'll be in Parliament. That doesn't mean that I won't be an active and energetic community MP as well - because, in the end, building community politics is the most powerful route to social change.

The Cuts Consensus

2010-03-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Yesterday, I was glad to see this article in The Guardian, which makes the case that the Green Party has been arguing for many months. Namely, that it is insanity to submit to a round of swingeing cuts given our economic situation - that public investment and revenue raising are the way to get out of this recession, and that slashing public spending will only hurt the poor and the vulnerable.

Caroline Lucas MEP has been speaking out against job cuts in Brighton, where she is aiming to become one of the first Green Party MPs, and as she puts it:

"The last thing we need to be doing in the current economic climate is making cuts. What is needed is investment in public services, to make sure we get out - and stay out - of recession."

Quite. It's a pity that the three establishment parties don't seem to be on the same page. For a few weeks, it seemed that Brown might be opening up a bit of clear red water between him and CameronClegg - but alas, he soon fell back into line and started competing with the two opposition parties about precisely how tough he could be. Never mind the fact that you hardly save any money in total by sacking public sector workers, because of the fact that you put them straight onto the dole. Or the fact that we could face a double dip recession if we drastically cut our spending now. No, the important thing is to look tough.

I agree entirely with David Blanchflower, who points out in the article above that "the dire state of our public finances is not due to excessive spending growth but the collapse of revenues. So the most effective way to tackle the deficit is to stimulate revenue. Private sector investment has collapsed, so what's needed are government subsidies on investment and job hires. Instead of cuts, we need to be talking about how to get the economy growing again, and how to create jobs."

Absolutely right. We've been doing our bit in Hackney Green Party, to push for one of the key foundations of the Green New Deal - namely, massive improvement and investment in our housing stock.

Over 4,600 families in Hackney currently live in fuel poverty - and in the Green Party's 2010 budget amendment, Cllr Mischa Borris proposed over £600,000 of investment to kickstart a scheme to provide free insulation for every home that needs it. That key funding from the council would help lever in large amounts of additional money from energy utilities, as part of their obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The programme would be prioritised towards vulnerable and low-income households.

The scheme, similar to the successful progamme introduced by the Green Party on Kirklees council, could reduce fuel bills for the poorest by an average of £150 a year per home and would make a significant impact on fuel poverty in the borough. And, crucially, the scheme would also help to create 'green-collar' jobs in the borough, helping to tackle Hackney's high unemployment levels.

How to fund it? Well, Mischa proposed a £16 a year increase in parking charges, for the most polluting cars. As she put it:

"A slight increase in parking charges for the most gas-guzzling cars is a fair way of funding a scheme that will benefit those without cars and living in fuel poverty. Councils should be creating ways of helping the most vulnerable residents. Using money from energy companies and those with polluting cars will benefit thousands of people who are struggling to keep their homes warm."

Makes sense to me. Of course, Hackney Labour rejected the plan and have just spent a bunch of money changing every lamppost banner in the borough into a party political broadcast about their council tax freeze. Public money, well spent...

Housing In The UK

2010-03-03T13:58:00.001-08:00

This is a piece which will be published in a housing journal in the next few weeks - I thought you, dear reader, might also be interested....

Green Party housing policy: fairer and more sustainable

Matt Sellwood, Green Party national spokesperson on housing and parliamentary candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

The Green Party believes that for too long housing has been treated as a speculative market, rather than as a vital human right. We would focus our efforts on reversing the marketising trends of the last thirty years, and in returning to an ethos which gives primacy to affordable, sustainable and well-designed social housing.

Truly affordable housing is clearly a vital component in any equitable and sustainable society. Not only does meaningful participation in a democracy necessitate a basic level of security and prosperity, but our current housing stock too often contributes to problems as widely varied as crime, climate change and ill-health. Any sensible government must invest massively in social housing, as one of the solutions to many other difficult issues.

Despite this, the current situation of social housing is dire, as the example of London amply illustrates. Social housing waiting lists have grown by around 80% over the last decade, while stocks of affordable housing have actually shrunk. 10% of households in our capital city are now waiting for a home that fully suits their needs. This is unacceptable.

Recent changes in government policy have made some small steps towards recognising the problem, but do not go anywhere near far enough in addressing its causes. The Green Party advocates bold action, including:

- The resumption of direct investment in Council and other social housing, at a scale far in excess of the current low levels on offer from the Government. Moves to allow local authorities to use receipts from sales to fund new accommodation must be solidified and accelerated. In particular, we would provide £4bn per annum to local authorities to expand social housing, mainly through conversion and renovation, creating 80,000 jobs.

- A programme of investment to ensure better use of the over 700,000 empty properties in the UK, and an immediate end to discounts and subsidies for empty and second homes.

- Steps to ensure that development is more evenly distributed across the whole of the country, so reducing pressure on housing in London and the South East in particular.

- Support to ensure that social housing tenants experience real democratic consultation, whoever their landlord, and that the cooperative model of management and ownership of housing is encouraged and supported.

- Support for a level playing field between all social housing stakeholders, including an end to the allocation of historic council housing debt to local authorities – whether under the current system, or under the proposed system of reallocation due to HRA reform.

This is what Green MPs would fight for in Parliament, and with party leader Caroline Lucas MEP tipped by bookmakers and pollsters to win the Brighton Pavilion seat in the coming general election, this is an approach we might hope to carry into the House of Commons in the near future. An increase in the Green vote nationwide will send this same message to the establishment parties in what may be a hung parliament.

An Introvert in Politics

2010-02-26T15:01:00.001-08:00

If we weren't somewhat paradoxical and conflicted, we probably wouldn't be human beings. Or perhaps we'd be enlightened human beings. Whatever the state of non-paradox is, anyway, I haven't reached it yet. There are lots of things in my life that don't make much sense when viewed together. One such thing is the fact that I am pretty much an introvert, and also a politician, facilitator of meetings and all-round loudmouth. I've already written about the paradoxes of seeking humility while being caught up with politics and the ego - well, this is another confusing dissonance to explore.

If I'm honest, I like nothing better than to be alone with a book, a fine piece of music, or hiking through nature. My friends tease me about my hermit-like tendencies, and my love of Thomas Merton, Robert Lax, evensong and Buddhist chant. If we lived in medieval times, they say (not inaccurately), I would probably be a monk.

Some people are restored and energised by social situations - I confess that I am the opposite. I only have a certain level of social energy, after which I sometimes need to rejuvenate myself by being on my own to reflect and contemplate. I've always been like this, and for many years it was a source of conflict and dismay. Not wanting to go out when your friends do, or to meet up as often as others, can be seen either as a sign of non-caring, or of snobbishness. Neither is the case - it's just that our social norms seem largely to be built on the outlook of extroversion. Introverts are often seen as strange - typified by the characterisation of 'the loner' as a sinister archetype, often blamed for exotic crimes or viewed as a sufferer of some form of mental illness.

So, it was with interest that I recently picked up a copy of Anneli Rufus' Party of One: A Loner's Manifesto. And there's a lot there that struck a chord with me. She writes with flair about the mischaracterisation of those who wish to be alone as maladjusted, or ill - and includes poignant recollections of her own experiences as a child forced to socialise with which I can sympathise. However, there's also a lot to argue with in Rufus' analysis. For a start, she seems rather to embrace the characterisation of 'loner as misanthrope' - I don't particularly enjoy any book which insists on continually calling other people 'the mob', for example.

Worse, because it is a polemic, the book goes overboard on defending loner tendencies - so far overboard that it ends up defending the ridiculous. It is not, in fact, OK to view other people as inferior to you because they enjoy each others company. Nor is it the case that because you personally don't need as much company as others, society is somehow unimportant or overrated. One can be an introvert, and still value the importance of community, of compassion and of solidarity. My politics, and left-libertarian Green politics generally, being a mix of individual freedoms and social obligations, recognises this better than most. We have obligations to each other - and, yes, one of those obligations is to allow each other to exist in whatever state of sociability we choose, once we have met the basics of solidarity and social cohesion.

Long live a healthy balance between the loner, and the commune....

Diane Abbott and Lib Dems - Absent on Climate

2010-02-25T10:49:00.001-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney.

So, I've gone on record before as saying that Diane Abbott is one of the better Labour MPs. I'm interested in honesty in politics, and there's no point in pretending that she is Geoff Hoon, or Charles Clarke. However, what she does now seem to be is - well - disinterested.

A lot of people whom I've been canvassing have said that they will vote for me because "These days we seen Diane more on the telly than we do on the streets". And, it would seem from news today, more on the telly than in Parliament.

Yesterday was the scene of a rebellion in Parliament, over the crucial issue of Emissions Performance Standards for new coal-fired power stations in the UK. A vital plank of any coherent and logical plan for climate sanity. I quickly checked the list of how MPs voted - and - umm...Diane didn't bother to turn up. Having, apparently, told Friends of the Earth that she would be rebelling.

Now, I know that this is a pretty basic promise - but I can guarantee that when there is a vital, close-fought amendment, on which I have been lobbied and made promises about - I'll turn up to Parliament to vote!

Just to let you know how close it was - the amendment was defeated by 252 votes to 244 - slashing the Government's 57-strong majority to just eight. And Diane didn't bother to attend.

It's worth noting, as well, that she wasn't the only one who didn't turn up. The Lib Dems, great defenders of the environment they, saw 13 of their MPs not bothering to vote either...including Nick Clegg, Chris Huhne and Vince Cable. Inspiring.

Maximum Wage

2010-02-20T11:08:00.001-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Green Party Spring Conference was in Finchley this year, so I could hardly not make an appearance. This weekend I am busy working, leafletting, and trying to have a social life - shock! horror! - but I did manage to attend on the Thursday and Friday.

As always, there was plenty of policy being made (we are one of the few parties left with a truly democratic internal culture - any four members of the party can propose policy and have it debated), discussions being had and campaigning plans being hatched. The most interesting decision of the two days, to my mind, was one that I couldn't actually speak on - I was co-chairing the plenary session where it was discussed!

At long last, after the session on Friday, the Green Party has firm policy in favour of a maximum income differential within UK firms. I have been a fan of the idea of a maximum wage (in one form or another, there are many ways in which it can be done) for years, and it's great to see the Party adopting such a radical proposal, which sets us out way ahead of the establishment political consensus. We have set the differential that we would pursue at ten times - in other words, the highest paid worker in an organisation could not earn more than ten times as much as the lowest paid. Given that, in some big firms in the UK today, that differential is currently well over 100, this is pretty meaty stuff.

Having said that, there have been rumblings about this idea for a while in the mainstream press, with this article in The Mirror being only the latest example. NEF guru Andrew Simms, with his usual foresight, was writing about it in the Guardian way back in 2003. And, of course, there are actually operating examples of such schemes across the world - with perhaps the most famous being the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain.

The effects of inequality in our society are obvious, and there hasn't been such a prime opportunity to deal with them for decades. I hope we won't let it pass - and that policies like this will take centre stage at the next General Election.

Hackney North, Lib Dems, and numbers

2010-02-13T15:20:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Through my letterbox, this morning, popped the latest piece of Liberal Democrat literature - complete with lots of graphs and stats, claiming to prove that Keith Angus is poised to sweep to victory over Diane Abbott.

Oh dear.

I haven't met Keith in person yet, but by all accounts he's a nice and personable chap. I think, however, that he's in trouble if he thinks he is convincing anyone that he is about to deliver Hackney North for the Lib Dems.

At the risk of indulging my inner electoral geek, lets take a quick look at some figures.

HACKNEY NORTH & STOKE NEWINGTON - GENERAL ELECTION 2005

Labour Diane Abbott 14,268 (48.6%)
Liberal Democrat James Blanchard 6,841 (23.3%)
Conservative Ertan Hurer 4,218 (14.4%)
Green Mischa Borris 2,907 (9.9%)
Independent (politician) David Vail 602 (2.0%)
Socialist Labour Nusrat Sen 296 (1.0%)
Monster Raving Loony Knight Knapp Barrow 248 (0.8%)

It's already obvious from the figures above that the Lib Dems are way behind Labour in Hackney North. While they achieved a decent swing in 2005, they are still 7500 votes behind Diane Abbott - it would be easier for me to overtake them then it will be for them to defeat Labour this year. And the problem is, of course, that the situation is far worse for the Lib Dems than the above figures indicate. Take a look, for example, at these results, from the local elections a year later.

AGGREGATED LOCAL ELECTION RESULTS 2006 - HACKNEY NORTH & STOKE NEWINGTON

Labour - 38%
Green - 24%
Tory - 20%
Lib Dem - 17%
Others - 1%

Oh dear. The Lib Dems in fourth place. Well, OK, that could be a blip. How about something more recent....perhaps the figures across Hackney in the European elections of last year?

EUROPEAN ELECTION RESULTS - HACKNEY WIDE

Labour - 34%
Greens - 23%
Others - 16%
Tories - 15%
Lib Dems - 12%

Twelve percent? Umm. Hmm. Doesn't quite feed into the 'Lib Dems sweeping to victory' meme that Keith is trying to get out there.

Now, don't get me wrong. People vote differently in different elections, and I'm not claiming that the Euros (with their different turnout, choices, electoral system and so on) are a perfect match for the way that people will vote in 2010's General Election. The Lib Dems are unlikely to come fourth. But they are even more unlikely to win, with only two councillors and an unbroken record in the last four years of getting nowhere in Hackney elections.

The difference between Keith's campaign and mine is that I am being honest. I recognise that, while it can be tempting to claim that you are on the verge of victory, if you aren't it just ends up looking silly.

What I'm committed to doing is clearly setting out my principles, talking about the issues which are important to me and the Green Party, and letting people know that they have the opportunity to vote for a candidate who is radically focused on social justice and the environment.

Diane Abbott is likely to win the forthcoming election - but precisely because she is not threatened by someone to her right, the electorate in Hackney North have an opportunity to give their vote someone who is speaking out loudly and consistently against inequality, injustice, environmental destruction and war - and to make sure that Diane knows she needs to do the same over the next Parliamentary term.

With your vote in 2010, you can ensure that the challengers to Labour in Hackney continue to be a radical and growing Green Party - rather than Nick Clegg's confused, wishy-washy and ultimately ineffective Lib Dems. The choice, of course, is yours...

Depressing Housing News - and a demon sheep...

2010-02-10T08:42:00.001-08:00

While it's great to be able to take a lead on communicating Green Party housing policy, keeping up to date with housing news at the moment is not the cheeriest prospect. As Exhibit A, behold the news that the rate of house building is the lowest since 1923. This dovetails with this article by Cllr Jenny Jones AM on Liberal Conspiracy recently, pointing out the massive shortfall in affordable housing delivery within London over the last decade.

To give them their due, all three establishment parties are grasping small pieces of the puzzle that can help to solve this situation. Labour are finally putting some money into direct council house construction, and are reforming the utterly broken national Housing Revenue Account. The Lib Dems are making proposals on bringing empty homes back into reuse. And the Tories are making decent noises on Community Land Trusts and other grassroots initiatives. The problem is, of course, that none of these measure go far enough, nor are any of the parties fitting them into a coherent whole. It's as if they each have a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, and instead of putting them together into a new national system that will enshrine higher rates of affordable housing along with grassroots participation and democratic control, they have decided to claim that only their bit of the puzzle makes sense. As a result, we get a housing debate that is confused - and a housing situation that is a nightmare.

Luckily, I can always rely on fellow bloggers such as Don Paskini and Erin at Palimpsest to find something that will cheer me up. Below, I give to you what must be the strangest political ad from any mainstream candidate, ever. Behold - the demon sheep:

P.S. This is really an actually existing political advert. Seriously.

Mental Illness - The Unspoken Barrier

2010-02-08T12:23:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Most people in our society still don't understand mental illness. Too often it is seen as a weakness - something that is 'put on' by those who somehow don't want to face reality and 'pull themselves together' - as opposed to a medical condition which can blight lives and which deserves understanding and compassion.

I'm fortunate not to have visited the very outer reaches of such conditions myself - but when I was younger, I suffered deeply from social anxiety and clinical depression. It made life extraordinarily difficult for almost two years, and there are few weeks when I don't thank my lucky stars that I am now in a better and more stable mental place than I was.

Perhaps the worst thing about it all was the feeling of helplessness that not being in control of one's own mood, outlook and social reactions engenders - and the knowledge that many people simply don't understand how a chronic mental condition can affect every aspect of one's being. Someone with depression is not being 'lazy' or malingering - they are sapped of their energy, their drive, and their passions. It's not a good place to be, and when combined with anxiety attacks, it's even worse. Millions of people suffer, in one way or another, from such illnesses - often in silence.

It doesn't have to be this way - and it shouldn't be. That is one of the reasons that I am supporting ReThink's campaign to overturn the blanket ban on anyone receiving treatment for a mental illness being able to serve on a jury in the UK. Rather than being based on the capacity to make sound judgements, the ban applies to anyone receiving treatment - even if their condition is being effectively self managed, or simply monitored by their GP to ensure against a relapse. This is just one example (there are many others, including election to Parliament, in fact) of the stigma that is still attached to mental illness.

Mental illness doesn't have to destroy lives - it can be managed, survived, and worked through. Winston Churchill's 'Black Dog' depressions didn't stop his career, and neither did Abraham Lincoln's frequent bouts of intense melancholy. Marcus Trescothick has bravely spoken out about his own anxiety disorder, and has found happiness back at Somerset, having defied the expectations being laid on his shoulders by others. In contrast, the recent suicide of Robert Enke shows just what can happen when mental illness is viewed as weakness, and when those suffering feel that they can't speak out.

Politicians hardly ever talk about this issue.

They should.

I will.

Recession, Exclusion, and Community Finance

2010-02-03T11:54:00.001-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

The recession continues to bite, and there are few places it is hitting harder than in Hackney. We already suffer from a historically high unemployment rate, and many people in the borough don't have the backing of strong community links or a financial safety net to fall back on.

From my own experience, I can attest to the impact of the recession on provision for the homeless, particularly in Hackney, as a result of the redeployment of significant council grant funding. The most vulnerable people in the borough are being hit hardest, and have the least ability to survive extended periods of financial difficulty. A recent report showed, for example, the impact on those who turned to Christmas loan sharks to buy presents for their family or travel to be with their loved ones over the festive season.

According to the Financial Inclusion Centre, over 5 million vulnerable households in the UK are seriously affected in some way by financial exclusion, and it is estimated that vulnerable consumers could be paying between £800-£1,000 a year in higher costs because they are excluded from mainstream financial services. Rejected by big banks, and unable to get decent loans, they are too often thrust into the hands of criminal gangs or predatory lenders - where in other places and times they might have had the support of strong family networks, community centres, cooperatives and mutual societies to rely on. Not to mention, of course, the welfare state - now increasingly set at such a level as to make it extremely difficult to live without employment.

There are efforts being made to reinvigorate and enhance those community networks of finance, however. The Hackney Credit Union continues to do good work in this area, and various TimeBank and LETs schemes in London are attempting to value people's time, rather than their earning power. FairFinance is operating in Dalston, trying to offer loans more reasonable than those from predatory lenders, to people whom the mainstream banks often won't touch. And reports such as Towards a Royal Bank of Sustainability remind us of the importance of a national approach to all of this, now that so many of our major banking players are propped up by the public purse.

Green MPs would make it a priority to diversify and mutualise much of our system of finance. It makes no sense for the majority of our money to be tied up with increasingly complex and unrealistic derivatives trading, when there are real, sustainable, socially and communally cohesive projects just waiting to be invested in throughout the country. While they might not make the return of a South Sea Bubble, they also stand much less chance of bursting. Our system of finance needs to be based on the needs of real people, and of the planet - not on the needs of the richest few.

Housing and Equality

2010-01-30T11:13:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Given my previous posts on the disastrous effects of wealth and income gaps on our society, I can hardly let the publication of the latest major report on inequality go by without a mention. Its headline finding is that the top 10% of wealth-owners in the UK are 100 times richer than the bottom 10%. While this is perhaps unsurprising, it should not be anything less than shocking. A society with such levels of inequality cannot avoid dysfunction. That is why I have become one of the first Parliamentary candidates to sign the Equality Pledge, the opening initiative by OneSociety and the Equality Trust to influence the forthcoming General Election. I hope many more sign in the coming days and weeks!

One of the major inequalities in our society is, of course, in the housing sector. With some people owning copious and expensive amounts of property, and most others unable to get anywhere near a secure tenancy in an affordable home, the playing field is painfully skewed. It's an area that I've always felt strongly about - and for that reason, I'm glad to be able to announce that I have recently been named as the Green Party's new national spokesperson on housing.

Those who are interested in lots of detail can always look at the full list of Green Party Housing Policies - but for those who want some reasons why we desperately need new and progressive thinking in this area, perhaps a few facts might help.

- There are still 2.5 million Council tenants throughout the UK.

- However, there are around 5 million people currently on council housing waiting lists.

- There are still almost 100,000 people in temporary accomodation, which is often totally unsuitable for their needs.

- 485,000 social homes have been sold over the past 10 years through Right To Buy.

- £141 million is being spent on new council housing this year. Sounds good - but it equates to only 2,000 homes.

- There are approximately 750,000 empty properties in the UK.

The Green Party is already doing a lot of work on housing issues - both in terms of ensuring that new and retrofitted properties meet stringent energy efficiency and fuel poverty standards, and in ensuring that ordinary people can afford to live in excellent properties in the first place. As this report on London's affordable housing crisis from the office of Jenny Jones AM illustrates, there is a very very long way to go on these issues. As the report explains, referring particularly to London but applying more generally to the country as a whole:

1. There has been a massive loss of social rented homes. Right to buy sales have far outstripped the building of new social rented homes, despite growing demand and a slightly improved delivery of social homes in recent years. This has led to the waiting list in London almost doubling within a decade.

2. The cost of buying a home has risen twice as fast as incomes. It now costs eleven times the average income to buy a home in London, putting home ownership far beyond the means of most households.

3. New housing delivery hasn’t met housing needs. House building has completely failed to slow the rising affordability gap in housing. In 2009 London only managed to build a little over half of the housing we needed.

I would say that with the financial crisis and recession, the delivery mechanism for affordable housing (building private sector housing for sale at market rates and subsidising social housing with the profits) has broken down. I would say that, except it is difficult for something that didn't work in the first place to break down. 'Affordable' housing has rarely been anything of the sort over the last decade. It is crucial that, in the next ten years, we ensure a great deal more housing that is affordable, well-built, and democratically controlled.

More on this subject anon. For now, if you are interested in getting involved, you could do a lot worse than to check out the Defend Council Housing website, or the London Coalition Against Poverty.

You Can't Incentivise Love

2010-01-22T13:47:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney.

Admittedly there is always stiff competition, but a strong contender for 'idiotic policy of the month' has got to be the Tory plan for tax breaks for married couples.

Now clearly this is actually just an attempt to get a few 'family values' headlines and appease the social reactionary right - it can't be anything else, because it is so patently and transparently not going to have any positive real world effect. It will reduce tax income somewhat (brilliant plan in a financial crisis, that), and it might lead to a few more people who don't care about each other getting married for convenience - but that is about it.

And the reason is - you can't incentivise love. You can't reduce a committed and caring relationship, or family values, or community, or anything else that matters in this world, to a financial transaction. Nor should the state be judging what love is between consenting adults, or when it is acceptable and when it is not. How is it possibly right to extend tax breaks to married heterosexual couples, but not to LGBT people, or those in a long term relationship who do not feel that they want to marry? In Cameronland, is it really the case that there are no unhappy, problematic and destructive marriages....and no healthy, committed and positive relationships outside of the bonds of wedlock?

I'm glad to see that, in this at least, there is still a difference between the Conservatives and the other two largest parties. To their credit, Labour and the Lib Dems have both come out against these ridiculous plans, which would penalise anyone who chooses to relate to their partner in a way other than heterosexual marriage. I am deadset against any such policy, and will campaign against it in any way I can.

Faith in Action

2010-01-17T12:31:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Religion, and faith, have gotten a bad rap over the last few years. Too often, the popular understanding of religion has become synonymous with fundamentalism - the inability to see another point of view. Whether it is the popular media boiling the immense richness and diversity of the Islamic tradition down into 'mad mullahs', or Richard Dawkins continuing his reductionist and single-minded quest to insist that the worst aspects of some religious factions are intrinsic parts of all faith, we have been exposed to many reasons for thinking that religious belief is nothing but an irrational and destructive artifact of the past.

As a person of faith myself, I've never viewed religion through that lens - but if I needed reminders of the immense good that can and is being done by faith communities, I got two over the last week.

For a number of years, the Hackney Winter Night Shelter has been organised by a coalition of Christian churches in Hackney, all of them giving over their community spaces and organising volunteers for one night a week during the winter, to ensure that those who would otherwise be sleeping on the streets have a safe and warm place to stay. Some of my acquaintances might scoff at this - after all, they would assert, ameliorating current injustices doesn't change the system that causes them - but having done my first 2010 overnight shift this week, I couldn't disagree more. Not only are the churches doing incredibly valuable work in providing comfort and solace to some of the most vulnerable people in our society (in the particular case that I experienced, the church in question is St Paul's on Evering Road, under the wonderful direction of Rev Niall Weir) - but they are providing the foundational structures that any community needs to survive. The kind of mutual aid and voluntary compassion, unmediated by money or desire for profit, in which lie the seeds of a new world. I certainly look forward to doing more shifts over the coming months, and would encourage anyone living in Hackney to think about volunteering too.

Of course, there is never enough being done in this area - and while the Winter Night Shelter does great work, North London Action For The Homeless has seen its advice funding from the Council completely cut for the forthcoming financial year. Over £11,000 for advising homeless and vulnerably housed people has gone - putting at risk one of the very few, and vitally important, independent advice services for the people whom NLAH serves. I volunteer with NLAH on Monday lunchtimes and am part of the Management Committee, and have seen first hand the good work that they do - also hosted by the St Paul's Church Community Hall, without which the provision of good meals, compassionate company and independent advice would be so much more difficult. As I understand it, NLAH was originally founded on the initiative of the Jewish community in Hackney - another idea catalysed by religious faith.

And then, this Saturday, I was lucky enough to attend the induction of Andy Pakula as the new Minister of the Newington Green Unitarian Church, one of the oldest 'dissenting' churches in London, with a 300 year old tradition of feminism, anti-slavery, advocacy for economic justice and concern for ecological sustainability. The service was wonderful, and left me with an abiding sense of what a liberal, non-judgemental, all-embracing and life affirming religious belief can look like. It didn't hurt that I also found out that Andy and the congregation have refused to carry out any weddings at the Church until LGBT people have exactly the same rights as heterosexual couples in this country!

Religious faith can be an enormously powerful catalyst and foundation for social change. It can bring people together across boundaries, helping to create the kind of communities of compassion and voluntary service that we so desperately need. Yes, it can also create intolerance and rigidity and fundamentalism - but it doesn't have to. People of progressive beliefs, whether religious or secular in their origin, must work together to bring on a world where "Justice will flow like a river - and righteousness like a never failing stream."

Society and Centralisation

2010-01-12T11:43:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Catchy title, eh?

The reason for it is all of this snow, which you may have noticed about the place over the last week or two. You see, there's nothing like a bit of extreme weather to reveal just how rickety and shaky our systems of transportation, energy and food production really are. Honest, I was going to post something positive and upbeat this time - but there's been evidence all around that our society really can't deal with anything that disrupts business as usual. Given the increasing reality of climate change (bringing with it more extreme weather events), peak oil and the financial crisis, it wouldn't be responsible to just gloss over the inability of our economic and logistical systems to cope.

Which, of course, is what most politicians have been busy doing. According to Labour, everything is fine, rosy, and will be back to normal soon. Meanwhile, the Tories and Lib Dems criticise Labour for not responding quickly enough or ordering enough grit - failing to see that the collapse of our transport network, not to mention the panic buying of basic supplies, reveal a far deeper issue with our logistical systems than just a failure of Government competence.

Centralised systems, particularly ones that rely on large-scale and complex distribution networks (such as supermarkets, or fossil fuel energy, or even salt and grit laying), don't tend to cope well with shocks or sudden disruption. Because everyone is reliant on only one or two methods of distribution, there is little redundancy or back-up to call on. Shops which are reliant on a relatively predictable pattern of purchasing and supply, on uninterrupted energy for refrigeration, and so on, can't meet crises with any kind of Plan B.

In contrast, of course, communities which rely on a diverse range of different food sources, which generate at least some of their energy locally and from renewable sources, and which have a sense of solidarity and togetherness, tend to do much better in such situations. It's the old triumph of variety over monoculture, and shouldn't be surprising. What should alarm us is how far we have allowed many crucial aspects of our lives and communities fall under the sway of gigantic near monopoly businesses, rather than controlling them locally.

Greens have recognised the importance of relocalisation for many years, and more recently a spate of community based initiatives have begun to emerge, making much the same point and attempting to relocalise control of vital services. Transition Town Stoke Newington is just one of many of these kinds of initiatives across the borough - their work couldn't be more important. Greens on Hackney Council, and in Parliament, will be striving to give them all the policy support and back-up that is required for such a wide-scale programme of community reinvigoration.

Milestones...

2010-01-08T14:00:00.001-08:00

200th post!

I shall celebrate by inflicting some more of my poetry on you, dear reader.

SITTING

Merton thought that
Everything is on fire,
And I think that
He was right. It
Is on fire, It's all
Burning all the
Time, and all we
Do is try to
Put it out.

Be on fire too.
Be on fire for
Everything that is
Worth living for,
For every man and
Woman who loves
This life, imperfect
Imperfect
Imperfect
Though it is.

It is made to be
Imperfect,
Made to be
Flawed, that is
The point, of
Course it is the
Absolute point
Of our existence
At this time and
In this place.

We are here,
We are now,
Here
Now
And the
Absolute point
Is to be on fire
For life,
For life,
For life.

UTOPIA

When I look towards
Utopia, sometimes
I think I can see
My children there,
Unborn
Unnamed
Children.

Dancing, they are
Dancing with joy,
Free of the
Burden that we
Carry, and which
We make for
Ourselves.

New Years Resolutions

2010-01-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

Yes - because I am a bold fighter against convention, a rebel with a cause, an iconoclastic firebrand...I'm...umm...going to start 2010's blogging with a New Years Resolutions post. Behold my innovation.

Well, as I've explained before, I'm also quite conservative (small c!) in a lot of ways, and making New Years Resolutions is no exception. I've always found it a useful way of stopping for a moment, assessing where life is at, and working out where I want to get to. So, without further ado....

One. Learn to cook properly. It's official, I am a bad Green. Despite knowing the benefits for my health, the planet, general sanity and just being able to 'behave like a grown up', I cannot cook worth a damn. The wonderful Growing Communities provide our house with organic vegetables every week, which then get cooked by my housemates or eaten by me without much preparation (if they are tomatoes, carrots, and other things for which that isn't risking serious indigestion). I have decided that this must finally end. So, by the end of 2010, I'm going to be a competent basic cook. I'm not expecting ever to be a gourmet chef....but come around for NYE 2010, I'll make something nice!

Two. Meditate everyday. Simple one, this, you'd think. Turns out that it is the easiest thing in the world to let a busy schedule bump important but non 'crucial' things out of your day - like taking half an hour to sit and clear the mind. This year I am going to be much better at not allowing this to become a non-priority - particularly as it has such a positive impact on everything else I do. Zazen everyday!

Three. Write a first draft of 'the novel'. OK - this isn't so simple. And yet it is equally important, I think. I've been wanting to write for years, and except for some poetry and a few short stories, I've never had the time. Similar to meditation practice, I've never had the time because I've not made it. I've allowed other, more pressurised tasks take over my life. Well - not this year. This year I'm going to write 2,000 words a week, and I'm going to have my first draft by the time 2011 rolls around. Watch this space....

Dark Mountain Project

2009-12-22T09:03:00.000-08:00

“A social system has crumbled....Nay, it has been revealed to you that beneath Ordered Life itself was stretched the merest film with, beneath it, the abysses of Chaos. One had come from the frail shelters of the Line to a world that was more frail than any canvas hut.”

- Ford Maddox Ford, It was the Nightingale

Regular readers of this blog might remember that, some time ago now, I wrote a few pieces on immigration and the environment, and particularly engaged in a debate with Paul Kingsnorth on that topic. Paul is always an interesting read, and I've been meaning to post my thoughts on his latest undertaking - the Dark Mountain Project - for a while now.

There have been a number of reviews of the Dark Mountain Manifesto swirling about the place over the last few months, but as far as I can see, most of them miss the point. The prevailing criticism falls into two camps. Firstly, Paul and co-conspirators are accused of not offering solutions to the ecological crisis. Well, quite plainly, that isn't what they are trying to do. They say as much in the Manifesto. Their aim, as I understand it, is to bring people face-to-face with the reality of our future (the 'Dark Mountain') through the medium of various cultural interventions. They are explicitly not suggesting another solution to 'the problem', but rather a way for humans to deal with the reality of our existential situation. So, I don't think that criticism is particularly apposite.

Secondly, they are accused of 'giving into despair' - but again, the Manifesto purposefully addresses this - and in an interesting way, I think. While acknowledging that hope is a powerful motivator, Kingsnorth and co argue that false hope is in fact unhelpful, and further, identify it as the prevailing emotion of the environmental movement over the last decade. I can certainly sympathise with this. I've lost count of the number of times I have forced myself to give an up-beat, positive, hopeful speech on climate change, when really I've wanted to acknowledge my innermost feelings - that we are very near the edge - and that we might already be over it. Certainly, I've had to battle with the temptation as a Green politician to claim that everything is going to continue as normal and all we are going to do is fix 'the problem'. This clearly isn't true. Society is going to be different as a result of climate change, ecological overshoot, and peak oil - and there is no guarantee that it is going to be different in a good way. Acknowledging that, and attempting to influence the stories we tell each other and the way in which we view the world to encompass it, is surely a worthwhile pursuit.

So, I don't really have any problem with the Dark Mountain Project, per se. Indeed, I think taking a long, hard look at the state of the world and our reactions to it is healthy. It's particularly refreshing for me to look into a project which seems informed by the thinking of deep ecology advocates, the philosophy which first drew me into the radical environmental movement. Admittedly, I later transferred much of my sympathy to Bookchinite social ecology, but I never bought into Bookchin's scathing attacks on deep ecology, and remain convinced of the need for a spiritual, cultural and elemental understanding of the value of nature in itself.

However, I don't think I'm necessarily being unkind to Paul when I say that some of those misinformed criticisms might have come about because of the - frankly - occasionally caustic way in which some of the Dark Mountain philosophy has been put across. I've seen a few contributions from Paul in the last few months, not least this debate between him and George Monbiot, in which the Dark Mountain Project sometimes seems like an excuse for having given up on any change being possible at all. As Paul commented on my suggested grassroots solutions to the Copenhagen fiasco, "sounds nice, but what would these groups do?".

A fair enough question, but it is perhaps somewhat simpler to sit back, accept our doom and knock down any suggested solutions, than it is to propose constructive action. I accept, of course, three things that are central to Paul's project - that we should look our future squarely in the face, that we should respond to it in all ways including within the vital sphere of culture, and that we shouldn't fool ourselves into working on solutions that are, in fact, nothing of the kind. However, that shouldn't mean that we just give up. It should mean that we work harder towards solutions that might lead to stronger, more resilient communities, which are based on solidarity between people and recognise the difficulties that lie ahead. Whether we have time to build the grassroots cooperation and democratic polity that we need to make our transition a positive rather than negative one, I don't know - but we have to try.

Whether we are talking about the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the grassroots community movements in London, or anything in between, we need to keep fighting for the ability to sustain ourselves in the possible 'dark times' that approach. I hope Paul, and others in the Dark Mountain Project, are still doing that - as well as doing the valuable work of keeping environmentalists honest.

Copenhagen Failure

2009-12-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

I really really really didn't want to write a blog that had 'Copenhagen' and 'failure' in the title. I've not written a word about it so far, in the hope that my cynicism might be proven unfounded - that the world's governments might, for once, throw off the shackles of an insane economic system and actually listen to the scientific evidence that is being screamed into their ears.

It seems it was not to be. Below, I append the first eleven days of summary analysis from Greenpeace UK, along with my own thoughts on Day 12 - today....

Day 1: South Africa joins India, China, Mexico, Brazil and Indonesia in tabling commitments as the big developing world countries call the bluff of the rich nations.

Day 2: After years of negotiating a UN agreement a plan by Denmark to introduce an alternative, greenwash text is leaked to the media. The Danes, it seems just want a deal that says Copenhagen at the top. They don’t care whether or not it will save the climate.

Day 3: Despite Tuvalu having met all the requirements for their proposals for a legally binding deal to be discussed their request is refused. Tuvalu and their supporters in the developing world bring the main negotiations to a halt until everyone agrees to play by the rules.

Day 4: Tuvalu asks for a group to be set up to discuss amendments to the Kyoto protocol. Again they’re turned down by those who fear a binding deal and another portion of the negotiations is halted.

Day 5: Negotiations resume on all fronts as rich nations realise they can’t steamroller the poor countries.

Day 6: As the negotiators take a rest day the global day of action sweeps around the world. 100 000 people take to the streets of Copenhagen and millions join events around the world – piling pressure onto the talks.

Day 7: Round 1 to Tuvalu! A legally binding deal is back on the table as it appears the Danes have given up on their alternative text when a promised update fails to appear. Battle lines have been clearly drawn, on one side the nations who know that only a binding deal will deliver results, and on the other side, everyone else.

Day 8: Do they never learn? Again the Danes try to sideline discussions on Kyoto. This time it is the Africans who walk out. The EU, Australia and Japan retaliate by refusing to discuss their own commitments. More lost hours.

In the forest sessions it becomes clear that everyone except the Americans and Columbians want a deal that won’t end up subsidizing forest destruction. Worryingly the amount of forest nations are talking about saving is being talked down.

Day 9: As the world’s environment Ministers arrive the summit goes into ‘high level’ mode. Unfortunately the efforts by the Danes and others to avoid discussion of the Kyoto protocol means there is a huge amount of work to be done.

Day 10: With heads of state due to arrive everything is up in the air. There hasn’t been enough progress and the heads of state are going to have to earn their money.

Day 11: Finally some movement. Hilary Clinton proposes a fund worth $100 billion a year to support developing countries. It’s a number, but there’s no detail on where the money will come from. China responds by signaling that it is now prepared to talk about how its own commitments would be monitored – possibly removing a major block to a deal. The USA is still refusing to talk about a binding deal.As the heads of state prepare for their state dinner President’s Lula of Brazil and Sarkozy of France request that an evening meeting is convened to make progress.

Day 12: Today. Obama speaks. Possibly the worst speech I have ever heard from a non-denier head of state on climate change - not something I expected to be writing. At least Barack normally gives it some rhetorical welly. This was just inflexible, myopic tosh. And now it looks, as I write, that we are going to end up with a deal that will put us way, way, way, WAY over 2 degrees celsius of warming. Well into the region of tipping points. Well into the region where entire nations are going to be underwater in the coming decades, and in which millions upon millions of people will be forced from their homes.

This is insanity. THIS is the point at which we could have done something - and the people who run our governments - all of them, with a very few honourable exceptions -have completely failed.

Now, I have an analysis of why that is. It isn't because they want a world with more climate catastrophe, nor that they hate the poor (though a lot of them don't particularly care either way, of course). It's because the world economy needs to make a profit - and all the forces of profit are lined up against meaningful action. Sure, they will exploit loopholes and occupy market niches and do everything they can to make a quick buck out of climate change action. But when it comes down to it -business as usual is still the easiest way to turn a short-term bit of money. And we have failed to stand up in enough numbers, and to say "Ya Basta!" - "Enough Is Enough!"

Enough of warmed over words. Enough of platitudes. Enough of sitting by while the world burns. We have to do something, and we have to do it right now. And the answer isn't going to come entirely through the ballot box - though I think voting for the right candidates will help. It's going to come through ordinary people taking action in their own communities, linking up together, and showing governments that if they are incapable of doing something, then we will do it ourselves. I'll do my best to build a strong electoral challenge to this current shower of failures and charlatans - but I'll do my best to support community action while I'm doing it. Because only all of us, acting together, right now, can do what needs to be done. Lets get started.

P.S. If you want to see what our current 'leaders' think of people who try to point out the insanity of the current system, then check out this video. Several Hackney Greens were on this demonstration - beaten up for trying to assemble and speak out, nonviolently. It's a disgrace - just like the rest of the Copenhagen summit.

Good News, Bad News

2009-12-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

As is often the way with campaigning, some bad news follows hot on the heels of success...

GOOD NEWS

Regular readers will remember that I have previously posted about my involvement in the Hackney Keep Our NHS Public group, and particularly their campaign over the possibility of two new GP-led health centres being taken over by multinational corporations.

Well, the outcome of the bidding process for the GP-led health centre at Oldhill has been announced - and it has been won by a group of local GPs in the Lawson clinic! A real relief, at least for now.

The campaign has thrown up a number of crucial issues - not least among them the enormous cost to local GPs of making such bids (some £40,000+), and the huge amount of time-consuming effort that has to go into drawing up a bid (which requires complex financial modelling, which is not one of the skills GPs are trained in - they are trained to look after patients) and the cost to the PCT of going through the bidding process - some £3million.

Big commercial healthcare companies, of course, have these resources on tap. This is money that would be far better spent on improving existing GP surgeries and encouraging them to network to provide the extra services the GP-led health centres are supposed to provide. The government is rolling out 150 of these GP-led health centres across the UK - so the cost to PCTs extrapolates to £450 million. Just think what could be done with that amount of cash in the health service!

Also, despite the eventual outcome, the very real issue of the PCT's lack of consultation remains - along with the fact that our local Health Scrutiny Committee was not prepared to do anything about it.

Still, celebration is in order - and the campaign's Xmas party on 15 December at the Marie Lloyd pub (7.30-10 pm) will be a good opportunity....!

BAD NEWS

And now, the bad news. The proposed eviction of the Kings Crescent Community Housing Project has gone ahead, although all the squatters were gone by Tuesday morning, when the police turned up with riot gear and battering rams. The reason they were gone? According to reports from the scene, contractors broke up the water pipes above the squatted properties, flooding them! This not only drove out the community housing project, but one presumes also did serious damage to the flats.

So, now the majority of flats in that block, and many all over the estate, are unoccupied once more. The ones that were squatted are boarded up, and the Council has done its job - not the job of providing housing, which is supposed to be a human right - but of crushing any sort of alternative provision, quickly and with overwhelming force. And, in this case, quite possibly illegally - the appeal against the closure order against which the squatters never got to defend themselves remains lodged with the courts.

The mastermind behind all of this? Who else but Banksy's arch-enemy, Cllr Alan Laing:

He commented: "These squatters spoilt the quality of life for tenants who were paying to live in this block. They selfishly wrecked the structure of the building and now, due to this premises closure order, they are finally out of the block where they caused so much damage."

Unlike Cllr Laing, I actually bothered to meet the squatters. They struck me, at all times, as being pleasant, community-minded and constructive - and included at least one family with a week old child, just looking for somewhere to spend the winter. Interestingly, and tellingly, they have never been presented with the exact accusations of their alleged anti-social behaviour, nor have they seen any evidence, nor have they had a chance to defend themselves.

Welcome to Kafka's Hackney - if you try to house yourself in flats that have been kept empty, even if you say that you will leave as soon as they are needed, keep a look out for:

Want to be on the telly?

2009-12-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

Well, submit a decent question to CNN and you might be. I just received the information below. Not only was it from a former volunteer at the Green Party, but it also calls me an 'influential blogger'. Frankly, its not any more difficult than that to get me to publish things....

***************************************************************************

As part of CNN International's ongoing coverage of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 15), on 15th December CNN and YouTube will host a live debate in Copenhagen, the 'CNN/YouTube Debate on Climate Change', which will be streamed live on CNN.com and YouTube at 1300 GMT. This will be broadcast on CNN International on 16th December at 2100 GMT; 17th December at 1000 GMT and 20th December at 0200 and 1000 GMT.

This is an interactive initiative, presented by CNN correspondent Becky Anderson, where leaders and activists at the conference will come together to answer questions submitted via a dedicated YouTube channel.

We're asking the most influential bloggers to get involved and have their community's most pertinent questions put directly to leaders and activists at COP 15. We think YOU might be interested in submitting your own question. We also believe that it would be great if you could also post a comment on your blog, so that all your followers can participate and get their questions answered.

For more information, you can visit this page. Please be aware that the last day for submissions is 14th December 2009.

The Wave

2009-12-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I think it's fair to say that I have been on my share of climate change marches over the last decade - but the one on Saturday was definitely the biggest I have seen. It's always uplifting to see thousands of people on the streets, calling for exactly the kinds of policies which form the Green Party platform, and on which I am standing for election. However - it has to be much deeper and wider than just a march. We're only going to get real change if those people go back to their communities and (as many are already doing) get stuck into the everyday work of community building and persuasion on this issue. It doesn't have to be electoral - though I think that is a vital component of any movement - but it does have to involve speaking to the non-converted. That will be the major test of the climate movement over the next five years.

For now, here's a brief video of me at the start of the rally (in which YouTube has picked the grumpiest moment possible of me as the freezeframe, thanks guys!) and a photo, in which I am slightly cheerier. :)

Kings Crescent Housing Video

2009-12-04T14:43:00.000-08:00

Some more from the Kings Crescent Housing Project, in their own words.

Kings Crescent Community Housing

2009-12-01T13:56:00.000-08:00

Over the last week, I have spoken to and visited a number of people involved in the Kings Crescent Community Housing project - a squatted community just next to Clissold Park, a few hundred metres outside the boundaries of Clissold ward, where I am standing to be a councillor.

Kings Crescent Estate has been scheduled for large scale demolition and renovation for years, but the project has dragged on and on - and with the recession, seems to be going nowhere fast. Seeing that hundreds of perfectly sound flats remained unoccupied, the Kings Crescent Community Housing project moved in, and began to house a significant number of people who were rough sleeping or 'hidden homeless'. This included a young family who are currently being denied housing - to whom a baby was born just three days ago.

Hackney Council, of course, doesn't like this sort of thing. Far better for flats to stand idle and useless while people freeze on the streets than for the council to be embarassed by constructive squatting. So they have used legislation designed to close crack houses in an attempt to evict this constructive community - whose only 'anti social behaviour' appears to be the teaching of English and hosting CV writing workshops for the unemployed.

The closure order which Hackney Council has secured appears to be illegal - since they did not serve it properly and gave no opportunity for the squatters to defend themselves in court. Of course, they don't particularly care about that, because any appeal will be heard well after Thursday, when they are planning to evict everyone and (if past form is anything to go by) to smash up the flats so that no one can possibly live in them. They will then let them sit there, empty, probably for another few years....and certainly over the winter months.

Genius.

I will be there on Thursday, doing what I can to try to ensure that these people are allowed to stay in the otherwise empty flats which they have made into a community. I'll keep you updated as to what happens.

Meanwhile, in their own words, the call-out from the squatters for help and assistance:

"I am involved in a squat in Stoke Newington that is currently housing about 20 -25 people. Some were sleeping rough before our squat opened, many have been unemployed since the recession, we have some students unable to access student loans and a family who had a baby on Friday whom the council won't assist with housing. We have quickly become a vibrant community offering free workshops (including English lessons as the majority of the people who live here have English as a second language).

***WE ARE BEING UNLAWFULLY EVICTED***

We were not advised of the court hearing and therefore could not attend or respond - this is unlawful.

They have used a different piece of legislation (The Anti Social Behaviour Act) which makes it a criminal (not a civil) matter and means they have stripped us of our rights to have notice etc

They only advised us on Monday that we are to be evicted at noon on Thursday. We have lodged an appeal to attempt to postpone the eviction but since we have deliberately been given such a short amount of notice it is unlikely this will be read by a magistrate prior to our Thursday deadline.

*** CAN YOU HELP US TO RESIST THIS UNLAWFUL EVICTION?!?!?!***

We need as many people as possible to assist

If you have concerns about being arrested there is still a role for you as most of the squatters will occupy the actual flats. Please come and surround the outside of the estate making it more difficult for police to come through or come and just take a video or photos of any inappropriate police behaviour

***DETAILS***

Address: Flats 32-39 Lemsford Court, Green Lanes, Stoke Newington N4 2XN (opposite Clissold Park gate)

Planning meeting 7p.m. Weds 2nd (and welcome to stay overnight - they could strike early)

Official resistance to be ready from 10a.m - eviction due at 12

***FINAL IMPORTANT INFORMATION***

Please forward this to as many friends, mailing lists, associations who will be supportive

Thank you for any way in which you are able to assist whether you can attend or spread the word!"

The Vision Thing

2009-11-26T12:24:00.000-08:00

A piece of mine, on the importance of vision and idealism in political life, has been published on the widely read blog Liberal Conspiracy today. Check it out!

Guilty Pleasures

2009-11-20T11:40:00.000-08:00

Apologies for the lack of posts recently - I have had a virus all week. This has led to much sitting around and doing nothing, since when I tried to do something on Thursday I fainted. Well, actually, I felt dizzy and lay down on the kitchen floor for fifteen minutes. Sort of a controlled faint. After that, doing nothing some more seemed like a sterling plan.

This, of course, has allowed me to indulge in a few of my guilty pleasures. Everyone has them. I wonder what yours are? For me, they have been threefold this week.

1. War movies

For a Buddhist, perhaps I have a teensy too much of an attachment to war dramas and documentaries. This week I rewatched a little bit of Ken Burns' epic "American Civil War", a few episodes of Spielberg and Hanks' "Band of Brothers", remembered how good Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" are, and - umm - watched "Gettysburg".

Yes, yes, yes, I know its a ridiculously bloated, overlong hamfisted Ted Turner egotrip. And yes, I know that Tom Berenger's beard looks like someone has planted a live badger on his chin. And, oh god, Martin Sheen as Robert E Lee is like someone casting me to play John MacClean in Die Hard V.

But I nonetheless find it touching. I don't think anyone with any knowledge of the American Civil War could watch the scene after Pickett's Charge and not feel a little bit teary...even if you hate, as I do, everything which the Confederacy stood for. It's those sheer emotions, the heightened feeling which is generated by the subject of war, which appeal to me when I'm couchbound. That, of course, and the salutory effect of "well, I might be ill, but at least I'm not at Gettysburg...."

2. Top Gear

Yeah, this is much more guilty. I quite like Top Gear.

There, I said it. I said it and I'm not taking it back! I know, of course, that Jeremy Clarkson is an overweening, climate denying, right wing, misogynist berk of the highest order. And that Richard Hammond is looking increasingly like an ageing member of a B-grade boy band. But...they can really be quite funny. Their trip across Alabama was funny. Clarkson trying to produce a drivetime radio show was funny. And "OLIVVVVERRR!" was funny. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you are a more virtuous eco-warrior than I.

Also, I like to watch their studio audience and wonder what on earth is going through their heads. "Hmmm, yes, lets go and stand in a freezing cold warehouse for a day and watch Clarkson tell the same joke in sixty-eight takes, while watching pre-filmed pieces which we could just wait a couple of months for and watch on TV anyway." Weird.

3. ICCCCEEEE CREEEAAAAMMMMMM!

Yummmmm. Nuff said.

Hackney Council and the Arms Trade

2009-11-14T08:07:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Did you know that the London Borough of Hackney has £9.5 million invested in arms companies at the moment, including £5.5 million in BAE Systems? Well, you do now - and if, like me, you think a company with this record of corporate crime shouldn't be allowed within a million miles of public funds, you can sign our online petition about the issue today.

Hackney Labour claim that, because of laws that commit them to thinking only about "the best financial return" when investing funds, they can't disinvest from the arms trade. Hackney Greens counter that it is perfectly possible to make a decent return without investing in death. The arms trade does not make up 3% of the UK economy - but it does now make up over 3% of Hackney Council's pension fund investments. We should disinvest now, and put that money into sectors that are guaranteed to grow and provide a return over the medium and long-term - for example, companies which provide green jobs.

Hackney Labour should take a courageous decision, and make a stand against the arms trade. They won't, of course - one of their most prominent councillors is a PR man for the arms trade - but that is just another reason why no one with a progressive point of view should be voting for them.

Freedom of Information request on Hackney's arms trade investments

The total amount (in £) of London Borough of Hackney's pension funds' shareholdings in the following companies for the years of 2007, 2008 and, if available, 2009

1. Lockheed Martin

250,792.31
253,308.85
243,887.64

2. Boeing

0.00
0.00
0.00

3. Northrop Grumman

0.00
0.00
0.00

4. BAE Systems

5,889,334.00
7,925,995.86
5,553,840.31

5. Raytheon

225,476.27
18,204.59
0.00

6. General Dynamics

51,807.18
0.00
241,992.85

7. EADS

0.00
0.00
22,963.50

8. L3 Communications

0.00
72,068.18
170,979.80

9. Thales

17,697.55
107,895.37
111,032.70

10. Halliburton

0.00
0.00
0.00

11. Finmeccanica

164,460.49
0.00
123,402.68

12. Rolls-Royce

682,645.51
594,989.37
433,345.88

13. QinetiQ

84,322.42
485,290.78
332,537.34

14. VT

370,787.60
68,590.80
75,817.36

15. Cobham

2,196,190.50
2,113,900.00
1,813,726.20

16. Meggitt

356,740.61
141,004.76
366,514.13

17. Ultra Electronics

50,073.90
52,004.46
43,839.80

TOTALS

10,340,328.34
11,833,253.02
9,533,880.19

Total Market Value of Pension Fund
481,178,080.01
458,971,805.98
315,341,441.84

Totals as a % of all LBH pension funds
2.15%
2.58%
3.02%

Carbon Trading - Bad, Bad Idea

2009-11-10T07:22:00.000-08:00

Friends of the Earth have come up with a new paper, showing, once again, that carbon trading is a bad plan. I await the Government's U-turn with baited breath.

Here is a video of my former UNITE comrade and current FOE Climate Campaigner, Sarah-Jayne Clifton, explaining more about the issue.

A Weekend In The Life....

2009-11-08T12:08:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Every so often, people ask me what exactly being an electoral candidate consists of. The answer is, of course, that it changes pretty much every day, depending on what issue you are focusing on, what person you are talking to, and when in the electoral cycle you happen to be. I thought it might be interesting to give you a snapshot of my weekend though....as a small illustration of the kind of thing I've been getting up to.

Friday afternoon

Doorknocking on a council estate in Stoke Newington. Some really shocking conditions, including a bathroom floor that was absolutely full of damp and mould - but also some really good conversations with people who clearly want to improve their local environment. The usual rigmarole of spending ages trying to find someone willing to let me into the block, but then no one is hostile...it's very rare to find anyone who is actively rude to a Green Party canvasser, unlike those from the main parties. Passed the casework issues onto Mischa Borris, our existing Green Party councillor for Clissold, who starts working on getting people's issues dealt with.

Friday evening

Fireworks Night party at Hawksley Court Estate. I always feel a bit funny about turning up to things like this in my role as a candidate - you never like to impose. However, Hawksley Court is actually opposite my house, so this is my local fireworks display! It's good fun, particularly since we brought loads of sparklers, and we get to meet loads of people. Such an impressive event, complete with food and drink in the Community Hall, and loads of happy kids having a good time. Great to see the local community getting together.

Saturday afternoon

Behold, more doorknocking. This time on a residential street, complete with lots and lots of HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation), with dreaded entryphones. I never like them, because its so hard to tell who lives where, and to get an answer. Despite this, I have a number of good conversations, and pick up some more casework for the ever-hard-working Mischa.

Saturday evening

Attend a meeting at the Day-Mer Community Centre on Howard Road, which is dedicated to providing opportunity and community to the Turkish/Kurdish community in Stoke Newington and further afield. The meeting is hosted by Day-Mer Youth, catalysed by the recent tragic shootings on Howard Road, and discusses the problems of youth unemployment, community disintegration and crime. Hackney Solidarity Network are there too, and talk about the need for different communities in Hackney to forge links together and recognise that their common problems have common solutions. I totally agree!

Sunday morning

Leafletting - I never like to doorknock on a Sunday morning, it doesn't go down well for perfectly understandable reasons. So I go out and leaflet instead, with our latest newsletter, complete with story about our opposition to NHS privatisation. You never know how many people read them, but its a major way of getting the message out there....and we put thousands out in each ward, every few months. Not to mention personal letters, leaflets about specific events, and all sorts of other stuff.

Sunday afternoon

I went along to the excellent Butterfield Green Community Orchard, to take part in their monthly gardening event. Good to get a different kind of exercise than walking up and down towerblock stairs, and really good to help out with such an inspiring example of urban regeneration. Lots of weeds were pulled, cups of tea drunk, and conversations had. I'd strongly recommend going along next time, if you're local!

Sunday evening

I'm here at home...updating my blog, checking my email...and watching (I have to admit it) Die Hard 4.0 at the same time. Who can resist a film featuring the line "Dude, you just killed a helicopter with a car!".

Growing Communities

2009-11-08T08:25:00.000-08:00

This was the article I mentioned a little while ago, published in Red Pepper - about the excellent 'Growing Communities' food scheme in Hackney.

Feeding the city

Matt Sellwood profiles a Hackney organisation that is trying to change the way the London borough gets and eats its food

Some 15 years ago, a small-scale box scheme started up in Hackney, feeding around 30 families. In 1997, that initiative started to develop into Growing Communities, an organisation that now feeds 1,000 people a week through its box scheme, hosts the only weekly organic farmers’ market in the UK, grows food on sites across Hackney and trains people in vital agricultural and food preparation skills.

Growing Communities is much more than the sum of those parts, however. Explicitly opposed to the current food production and distribution system, it sees itself as ‘growing the new society in the shell of the old’ and helping to model what a grass-roots, community-led, not-for-profit food production system might look like in the future. Through its 12-point ‘Manifesto for Feeding the City’ (see box, next page), the organisation lays out the principles that those involved believe are necessary for a fair and ecologically sound food system in the UK, and particularly for large urban areas such as London.

The organisation sources its food both through existing organic producers and through the development of its own patchwork of urban agriculture sites within the borough of Hackney. With around 25 producers hosting regular stalls at the farmers’ market, which has a customer base of an average 1,500 local residents each week, Growing Communities provides a much needed revenue stream for those small UK farms still competing with multinational supermarkets and agri-business. Meanwhile, its box scheme sources salad from Hackney-based ‘microsites’, as well as food from further afield. It generates nearly £10,000 from sales of Hackney-grown produce, from a total land area of only half an acre.

Constituted as a not-for-profit company, Growing Communities is run by a volunteer management committee elected from its membership. The membership is comprised of all subscribers to the box scheme, as well as those who donate to the organisation. In contrast to some other grass-roots food schemes across the country, it believes that members should have control of its operations through the management committee, as opposed to control by workers. As a result, while its structure is flatter than many commercial box schemes, it is not a workers’ cooperative but runs with a mainly traditional staff structure. It employs nearly 20 people, all of whom work on a part-time basis, as well as a number of volunteers.

Urban food strategy

Rather than simply attempt to grow as much food as locally as possible without analysis or strategy, Growing Communities has drawn on its years of experience in urban local food production to produce an achievable ideal of what food distribution might look like in the future. This ‘food zone strategy’ (see diagram, next page) informs the areas on which Growing Communities concentrates, and provides a way to measure the success of its efforts.

While the organisation currently enjoys success in sourcing food both from the urban and ‘rural hinterland’ zones, ‘peri-urban’ land remains a significant challenge. Despite the availability of urban fringe land within the M25, very little agricultural activity remains within this area of London. As a result, Growing Communities is currently looking into the possibility of kick-starting food production within the peri-urban belt, specifically for distribution within Hackney.

As well as expanding its own operations, Growing Communities is also looking into replication of the initiative across London. Having originally started as a small vegetable box scheme, the organisation is in a good position to advise other groups across the capital about the pitfalls and opportunities that await anyone attempting to repeat its success. Instead of leaving provision of local food to profit-orientated companies, Growing Communities hopes to catalyse more community-led, not-for-profit schemes in boroughs across the capital – having shown already that it can be done.

Part of the movement

Well aware of its wider connection to the environmental and social justice movements, Growing Communities attempts where possible to link its food production and distribution to a wider political agenda. Not only does its weekly box scheme newsletter often focus on critiques of the existing food system, but the organisation goes out of its way to make itself more accessible to lower-income residents of the borough. In June of this year, both the farmers’ market and the box scheme began accepting Healthy Start vouchers, the government scheme for low income families with young children.

In addition to this, the organisation seeks to create employment opportunities through its apprentice growers scheme, which teaches the skills necessary for urban agriculture and then allows hands-on experience on the Hackney based microsites. And the organisation is very activist-friendly – Climate Camp received a few boxes of Hackney-grown salad last year as a small token of Growing Communities’ awareness of its links to the wider movement.

Of course, there have been numerous challenges for Growing Communities, and many of these continue to exist. Any initiative that is seeking to challenge and subvert the power of institutions as large and as powerful as supermarkets will always encounter difficulties, particularly as it begins to grow large enough to make it onto their radar.

Even an organisation the size of Growing Communities, however, seems to have been largely overlooked by regional and national government, and has often been seen only as a concern of Hackney Council’s parks department, rather than as a wider exemplar of local economic health, environmental sustainability and social inclusion. Only many such organisations, networked and learning from each other, will be able to significantly challenge the status quo of food production in the UK.

As Kerry Rankine, who works at Growing Communities, says, ‘The most important lesson that the organisation can teach is that members of a community, working together, can achieve a real shift in people’s priorities and thinking. From a small start, the organisation now provides employment for scores of people, food for thousands, and hopefully inspiration for many more.’

Matt Sellwood is the Green Party candidate for Hackney North

Growing Communities’ 12-point manifesto

The food involved should:

Be farmed and produced ecologically
Be as local as practicable
Be seasonal
Be mainly plant-based
Be fresh or involve minimal processing
Be from small-scale operations
Support fair trade
Involve environmentally friendly and low-carbon resource use
Promote knowledge
Foster community
Strive to be economically viable and independent
Be produced honestly, transparently and promote trust throughout the food chain

Far From Mastery

2009-11-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

There's no denying it - this blog has been pretty skewed towards the political (and the electoral) of late. I guess it was inevitable...the content of a blog is largely generated by the interests and everyday experiences of its author - and it's fair to say that politics is a big part of my life at the moment!

However, Dennis Healey's famous musing that "all politicians need a hinterland" is well-known for a reason - it is clearly true. In Gordon Brown, we can see what you get for becoming too obsessive, too monomaniacal. And it has been a source of some sadness for me recently that, currently, the only thing I really seem to have serious discipline for is politics and the pursuit of social change.

In my occasional fantasies, I fool myself into thinking that I would like to become really "expert" at something - at chess, or a martial art, or a musical instrument. The problem is, of course, that as numerous studies have shown, in order to become truly expert at something, you have to dedicate thousands of hours of concerted practice towards it. Very few people can simply pick something up immediately - for true virtuosity, years of discipline are required. Unfortunately, as my brief spates of practice with kung fu, aikido, chess, and other pursuits have shown, my focus is on politics at the moment...and it is difficult to dedicate the time to anything else in any great significance.

I suppose I wouldn't have it any other way, really. After all, there are few more important things in this kind of unjust and visibly maladjusted society than political engagement. And hey, I seem to be quite good at it, as these things go. And there's nothing wrong with being a generalist - indeed, despite the prevalence of the ideal of academic specialisation in our culture, having a wide range of knowledge is a valuable thing.

It's just that sometimes, I'd like to be able to do this:

Give me fifty years.....

Gun Crime - No Easy Answers

2009-11-02T13:06:00.000-08:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I've written and rewritten this piece several times now - hence the delay in posting anything for a few days, for which I apologise.

I've rewritten it so much because it's hard to comment on the violent death of a 15 year old with anything other than tired platitudes. It's particularly difficult to do so when that person died not five minutes walk away from where you live. It's even harder still when you are certain that his death won't be the last of its kind in the area.

I am, of course, referring to the shootings on Howard Road last Monday - shootings which seem to have involved one group of local teenage boys trying to kill another group of local boys - and in one case, succeeding.

There's one school of thought which argues that, in cases like these, politicians shouldn't say anything at all. I can understand that - after all, so many political proclamations are nothing but thinly veiled pleas for electoral support...insincere and counterproductive pledges to 'get tough', or equally vague references to 'Broken Britain'. Despite this, I think that it is a duty for politicians to try to understand situations like this...because they are, without a doubt, political.

Yes, there will always be murders, and yes - young boys will always act out their aggression in some form or another - but the form which that aggression is taking in our communities today is a result of the society we live in...the society that has been fashioned for us.

In some previous posts, I've talked about the impact that inequality has in the UK, and pointed to the shocking rates of poverty in Hackney. In the hope that a picture is worth a thousand words, perhaps this map of deprivation and gang activity in London (thank you to The Communard for pointing me to this) might make my point on this topic, too.

These young people, these children (because that is, usually, what they are), are not inherently evil. They are not born sociopaths. They are reacting to a society which tells them that they are worth nothing, which fails to support their development and growth, which destroys their communities and tramples on their dreams - and they are reacting by forming for themselves the only communities which they know - communities of violence, of tightly knit bonds between peers for whom status competition is everything, because they know nothing else will get them anywhere.

No politician can give an easy answer on the topic of gangs, violent crime and youth disaffection. There are no easy answers, and indeed politicians can only do a limited amount. This is a political problem, not an electoral one - and it will only really be solved in the way that inequality will really be solved - by ordinary people organising in their own communities, from the grassroots up, and by society as a whole providing a future for these young men that is worth living.

I'm going to try to support initiatives that recreate solidarity, cohesion and power in our communities - but support is all I can do. It's up to all of us to do this - and if we wait for MPs, or the Council to wave a magic wand, we're going to be waiting a long time. Lets take this Howard Road wake-up call, and resolve, today, to start modelling in our own lives and neighbourhoods the way things could be...the way they should be. And at the same time, lets keep fighting for an end to the economic system that is keeping so many people of all ages in the kind of despair that breeds this violence.

Economic democracy

2009-10-31T14:47:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at The Daily (Maybe)

“In the factory there exists a dead mechanism, independent of the workers, which incorporates them like living cogs” - Marx

Now, I'm not an orthodox Marxist – but on this one, Karl had a point. Ever since I can remember, I've found it bizarre that so many people fight so hard for democracy in the political sphere, and yet seem content or even approving of the fact that most people are governed by a tyranny in the economic sphere. Few people seem seriously to question the idea that, at work, a rigid, army-like hierarchy is the way to organise ourselves. Many progressive organisations still take this view – let alone the rest of society.

It hasn't always been this way. Even in America, supposedly a country in which free enterprise and private ownership is imbued within ones DNA, there is a rich tradition of rebellion against the complete lack of democratic control which characterises our relationship with work. No less a figure than Abraham Lincoln regarded 'wage slavery' as an evil almost parallel to chattel slavery, although that aspect of his politics is not taught prominently in the classroom. Similarly, John Dewey, one of America's leading philosophers, called for the elimination of:

“business for private profit through private control of banking, land, industry, reinforced by command of the press...[industry must be changed] from a feudalistic to a democratic social order...[and unless these goals are attained] politics will remain the shadow cast on society by big business. The attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”

A similar tradition exists in the UK, although our current workers organisations are sadly wedded to a model which accepts management's right to rule, and labour's right to win concessions from them. Very rarely are the preconceptions on which this model is based challenged – and yet surely they must be, if ordinary people are to gain the confidence, skills and economic awareness which are so vital to playing a full part in political life.

Lenin might have glorified the educative potential of the factory in teaching the proletariat 'discipline and organisation' - but my understanding of history tends far closer towards the perspective of Rosa Luxemburg – hierarchical work organisation leads simply to 'the regulated docility of an oppressed class'. I also tend to agree with Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, that the existence of a 'coordinator class', trained and empowered to manage the work of others, actively undercuts the possibility for social change even in countries which are ostensibly socialist.

Luckily, all of this is one of those areas in which the Green Party, in principle, is streets ahead of a lot of the traditional UK left. This, from the Manifesto For A Sustainable Society, serves as just one example:

WR600 A Green economy must be a more mutual economy, in which industries and enterprises which are run by and for those who depend on them and are affected by them play a significant role in the economy. We believe that the international co-operative principles provide the benchmark for such businesses. This means that the Green Party must enable both the creation of new mutuals and the greater involvement of stakeholders other than investors in existing businesses.

The trick, of course, is in the implementation. The Green New Deal, for example, the flagship £44 billion economic policy of the Green Party of England and Wales, has little to say about the cooperative economy, and essentially accepts the premises of Keynesian economics. It does not, at its root, challenge the way in which work is organised in our economy, or the experience of people at work. It accepts, largely, the concept of hierarchical work for wages as 'a good thing', despite the wellspring of far more radical ideas in existing Green Party policy.

What can we do about it? I'd suggest a far more coherent and concerted push for support and development of cooperatives across the UK. Every council should have a Cooperative Development Agency, complete with start-up funding, low-interest loan stock and advice. Business that are 'too big to fail' should, where possible, be split up, mutualised and made into cooperatives – and businesses that clearly have a social use, such as Vestas, should be reopened along cooperative lines to manufacture items that fulfil a social good. And, right now, individuals should start taking a lead, by investing money into schemes like Rootstock, which provides capital for radical cooperatives which challenge the economic status quo.

Of course, it is also incumbent on us to recognise that cooperatives can, very easily, end up managing their own exploitation by capitalism. Cooperatives in mixed economy societies do tend to produce better results for their workers, but not always for society as a whole – driven as they are by overall market forces. As Joseph Kay put it in a recent contribution to the anarchist newspaper, Freedom:

“Self-managed exploitation is not just a neat turn of phrase, it is a recognition of how capital rules social life. It does this both vertically through the person of the boss, and horizontally, through market forces. Many anarchists focus mainly on the vertical rule of workplace hierarchy, and so see workers’ control as a stepping stone towards libertarian communism. However, it’s not a stepping stone, but a cul-de-sac.”

Personally, I wouldn't go that far. While it is certainly true that market forces have a way of suborning even the best of intentions and institutions, cooperative working is a good in itself. Even if it only teaches the workers involved about a new mode of relating to their workmates, it is a good thing. And, often, it does much more than that – instilling a new sense of pride, community ownership, and solidarity throughout the society in which it is based. At its most capitalist (cf the Cooperative Group in the UK), the cooperative movement is still streets ahead of normal, hierarchically organised firms.

For me, the words of Revd Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, President of the UN General Assembly, encapsulate the world I am fighting for:

"The anti-values of greed, individualism, and exclusion should be replaced by solidarity, common good and inclusion. The objective of our economic and social activity should not be the limitless, endless, mindless accumulation of wealth in a profit centered economy but rather a people centered economy that guarantees human needs, human rights, and human security, as well as conserves life on earth. These should be universal values that underpin our ethical and moral responsibility for the stewardship of the Earth for all living things, ourselves, our children and grandchildren and all future generations."

If we want to succeed - lets not exclude the places in which we work and produce from that vision.

Freedom Music

2009-10-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

Enjoy.

Supporting the CWU

2009-10-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Hackney Green Party has pledged its full support for a universal postal service and is backing the postal workers in their dispute with Royal Mail management.

Royal Mail management are trying to force through cuts to postal workers' earnings, often using threats and intimidation and wrecking their conditions of service.

The Green Party supports the postal workers because Royal Mail is not complying with a 2007 agreement pledging there would be consultation and negotiation on a new phase of modernisation, together with maintaining reasonable levels of pay.

"It is vital that we defend the jobs, pay and conditions of the postal workers and continue the fight against privatisation of the Royal Mail. Competition and introduction of market forces leads to reduced levels of service, poorer pay and conditions and job cuts, in order to protect the profits of the private companies," commented Matt Sellwood, the Green Party's Parliamentary Candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington.

"Not only is depriving people of vital community resources bad for health and wellbeing, it is also bad for the environment - carbon emissions are increased when people have to travel further for services which were once available locally. As more Royal Mail contracts are sold off to privateers such as TNT, there are potentially more vans from different companies delivering to the same addresses - increasing emissions, pollution and traffic.

"Privatisation has failed. Public services which have been privatised have not improved. The actions of the Royal Mail management and the Labour gvernment in trying to bully the CWU in this dispute have been shameful, but we know the Tories would be at least just as ruthless in their treatment of the postal workers. We fully support the right of the CWU members to strike, and we urge the public to support them in their struggle."

Meanwhile Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, has promised to "lobby at every level" in order to support striking postal workers and accused the Government of effectively "dismantling" Royal Mail with its ongoing programme of privatisation.

In a strongly worded letter to the Communication Workers Union, Lucas accused the Government of "ill-serving" workers and the UK public alike and criticised the Government for its "shameful privatisation of public services" which has led to "increased marginalisation and inequalities in terms of public access to services".

In the letter to CWU Secretary Bill Hayes, Caroline Lucas says: "In our view, Royal Mail workers and management have been on a collision course since the private sector has been forced on the service. By removing profitable parts of the business for the benefit of speculators and investors, the Government has created an environment in which the interests of the population of the UK as a whole have been ill-served, none more so than your members. It is shameful that a Labour Government should have played such a role in the privatisation of public services, and in a way which has increased marginalisation and inequalities in terms of access to services."

"It is especially concerning that this Labour Government is not content with overseeing the dismantling of this vital service, but now appears to be colluding with Royal Mail management to undermine the rights of the Union and its representatives, and condoning the side-lining of the CWU in working towards the completion of the agreement from the last period of industrial action."

The Green Party leader offered the CWU the Green's full support in the coming days, stating that "...we hope that any action is swift and positive in its results. As we did two years ago, we will lobby at every level to support the CWU cause."

The BNP, New Labour, and the Climate

2009-10-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

A very hectic week so far, and thus not much time to blog. Normal service will be resumed shortly, especially as there is so much to write about at the moment!

However, I wanted to cover a few things briefly.

On Nick Griffin, the BBC and Question Time, I will just refer you to this excellent article by Gary Younge. New Labour have created the conditions for fascism - and now they are reaping the whirlwind. My own personal position remains that of 'no platform', which I will likely discuss at another time.

Secondly, there's my continuing Diane Abbott watch - holding Diane to account and monitoring how she votes in Parliament. I've already blogged about her opposition to a transparent Iraq war inquiry and other such veerings towards New Labour orthodoxy - and yesterday provided another one. The Liberal Democrats, to their credit, put down a motion calling upon Parliament to support the 10:10 climate campaign (the campaign to reduce carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010, which Hackney Council made a big hoopla of supporting). Given the Council's stance, and Diane's reputation, you'd expect her to have supported the motion. Umm, no, as it turns out. As you can see from the vote tally, Diane voted WITH the government and against the 10:10 target - unlike other, more reliable rebels such as Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. But then, given that I also recently discovered her steadfast support for nuclear power, I'm not entirely surprised at this latest example of shaky green credentials...

Lastly - I've just come back from a public meeting in Clapton about Afghanistan. I'd urge everyone who can to go along to the demonstration on Saturday (meeting at Hyde Park at noon). The familiar litany of Labour's crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq never fails to make my blood boil - and I can do no better at expressing it than Pablo Neruda's poem about the Spanish Civil War. I leave you with it for now...

I'm Explaining A Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

Supporting Rootstock

2009-10-19T05:43:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking of blogging about RootStock for quite some time now. After all, I've been whingeing on and on about the Government's complete inability to see beyond the neoliberal paradigm - bail out the banks then return them to private ownership so the whole disaster can begin again - but not writing much about what we can begin to do to redress the balance.

Investing in Rootstock, the capital fund for Radical Routes secondary co-op, is a very good start. I'll let Beth Ash, the new Chair of Rootstock, explain. While she addresses this appeal specifically to Green Party members, it is of equal relevance to anyone who is interested in supporting challenges to the existing economic system. Invest away - I have!

****************************************************************

As I was looking to write this article I realised how little I actually know about the Green Party. I work with many Green Party members, live in one of our Radical Routes houses (which Rootstock has helped to support getting going) which includes a Green Party candidate, and have had local group meetings in my house. Yet I still knew next to nothing about your aims, or objectives aside from a vague set of environmental connotations linked to the word ‘green.’

The first thing that struck me, as I read through the Philosophical Basis, was how radical it sounded – something that I perhaps should have guessed from the individuals I know who are involved. And yet I had fallen into the trap of assuming that anything within a mainstream framework could not really be that radical. I should have been forewarned.

When I first became involved in Rootstock the word ‘investment’ invoked excitement and relief from some of my more respectable family members, and looks of complete disinterest from my more political friends. How could investment be environmental? You might as well ask how economics can be political.

Mainstream politics is slowly coming to terms with the fact that there are major problems with the current capitalist system and that some-where and at some-time, if we are to avert major disaster, things need to change. At a grass-roots level this has been understood for decades - in fact, all over the world there are established examples of small-scale economic alternatives that not only work, but that are more effective than capitalist dinosaurs.

Take co-operatives for example. Fair-trade labels are already espousing co-ops as one of the best ways to allow producers in the global south to gain a fair wage and workers rights (as any-one who has been reading the orange juice cartons over breakfast will know). But you don’t need to go abroad to find co-ops proving that grass-roots democracy, environmental sustainability and anti-capitalism can be combined with financial competence and business viability.

21 years ago the Radical Routes network was formed in Birmingham. In that time it has grown to comprise of 35 housing co-ops, workers' co-ops and social centres, with hundreds of members, collectively owning millions of pounds worth of property. Radical Routes uses a legal framework that gives housing co-ops collective ownership and control, but forbids individual members making a financial gain. If, for example, a housing co-op sells a house, then none of the money generated can be taken by any one individual. It has to go to similar co-operative projects.

In the recent banking crises, the loans with the highest bad-debt rates were made by capitalists in pursuit of greed. Whereas the loans with the lowest bad-debt rates were secured loans to social enterprises, with the lowest of all- zero - belonging to Radical Routes, which is financially supported by Rootstock.

Radical Routes developed Rootstock 11 years ago as a method for the radically-minded to put their money into Radical Routes. By investing in Rootstock, which puts money into Radical Routes, anti-capitalist investors enable Radical Routes to provide top-up loans to co-operatives trying to buy property, or standard loans for other projects such as building.

And these are big projects: Talamh Housing Co-op and the Talamh Life Centre just south of Glasgowwith its 50 acre site for sustainable growing and educational projects. There's Mary Ann Johnson, who recently defied the scorn of many and managed to buy a house in Haringey - giving a secure, affordable, and collective base for radical activism. Or Footprint worker’s co-op in Leeds, printing environmentally sustainable and radical political literature.

As the new chair of Rootstock, I feel I am facing a mammoth task. There has been an upsurge of interest in Radical Routes from new groups and new people – students in Nottingham, activists from Brighton to Manchester – if all these people are going to set up permanent autonomous bases they will need money. If we are going to help it happen then we need money, and so further investment in Rootstock is vital. Radical Routes hasn't had any debts in 21 years. With the support of Rootstock, it has provided secure affordable housing for hundreds of low-income or no-income full-time activists. It's a record to be proud of - and one that hasn't needed a penny of government bail-out money.

Beth Ash

Letter From A Postman

2009-10-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

A Royal Mail worker describes the background to the 2009 national strike vote, including details of how managers have been manipulating the figures to justify cuts.

Old people still write letters the old-fashioned way: by hand, with a biro, folding up the letter into an envelope, writing the address on the front before adding the stamp. Mostly they don’t have email, and while they often have a mobile phone – bought by the family ‘just in case’ – they usually have no idea how to send a text. So Peter Mandelson wasn’t referring to them when he went on TV in May to press for the part-privatisation of the Royal Mail, saying that figures were down due to competition from emails and texts.

I spluttered into my tea when I heard him say that. ‘Figures are down.’ We hear that sentence almost every day at work when management are trying to implement some new initiative which involves postal workers like me working longer hours for no extra pay, carrying more weight, having more duties.

It’s the joke at the delivery office. ‘Figures are down,’ we say, and laugh as we pile the fifth or sixth bag of mail onto the scales and write down the weight in the log-book. It’s our daily exercise in fiction-writing. We’re only supposed to carry a maximum of 16 kilos per bag, on a reducing scale: 16 kilos the first bag, 13 kilos the last. If we did that we’d be taking out ten bags a day and wouldn’t be finished till three in the afternoon.

‘Figures are down,’ we chortle mirthlessly, as we load the third batch of door-to-door catalogues onto our frames, adding yet more weight to our bags, and more minutes of unpaid overtime to our clock. We get paid 1.67 pence per item of unaddressed mail, an amount that hasn’t changed in ten years. It is paid separately from our wages, and we can’t claim overtime if we run past our normal hours because of these items. We also can’t refuse to deliver them. This junk mail is one of the Royal Mail’s most profitable sidelines and my personal contribution to global warming: straight through the letterbox and into the bin.

‘Figures are down,’ we say again, but more wearily now, as we pile yet more packages into our panniers, before setting off on our rounds.

People don’t send so many letters any more, it’s true. But, then again, the average person never did send all that many letters. They sent Christmas cards and birthday cards and postcards. They still do. And bills and bank statements and official letters from the council or the Inland Revenue still arrive by post; plus there’s all the new traffic generated by the internet: books and CDs from Amazon, packages from eBay, DVDs and games from LoveFilm, clothes and gifts and other items purchased at any one of the countless online stores which clutter the internet, bought at any time of the day or night, on a whim, with a credit card.

According to Royal Mail figures published in May, mail volume declined by 5.5 per cent over the preceding 12 months, and is predicted to fall by a further 10 per cent this year ‘due to the recession and the continuing growth of electronic communications such as email’. Every postman knows these figures are false. If the figures are down, how come I can’t get my round done in under four hours any more? How come I can work up to five hours at a stretch without time for a sit-down or a tea break? How come my knees nearly give way with the weight I have to carry? How come something snapped in my back as I was climbing out of the shower, so that I fell to the floor and had to take a week off work?

So who’s right? Are the figures down or aren’t they? The Royal Mail couldn’t lie, could it? Well no, maybe not. But it can manipulate the figures. And it can avoid telling the whole truth.

One thing you probably don’t know, for instance, is that the Royal Mail is already part-privatised. It goes under the euphemism of ‘deregulation’. Deregulation is the result of an EU directive that was meant to be implemented over an extended period to give mail companies time to adjust, but which this government embraced with almost obscene relish, deregulating the UK mail service long before any of its rivals in Europe. It means that any private mail company – or, indeed, any of the state-owned, subsidised European mail companies – is able to bid for Royal Mail contracts.

Take a look at your letters next time you pick them up from the doormat. Look at the right-hand corner, the place where the Queen’s head used to be. You’ll see a variety of different franks, representing a number of different mail companies. There’s TNT, UK Mail, Citypost and a number of others. What these companies do is to bid for the profitable bulk mail and city-to-city trade of large corporations, undercutting the Royal Mail, and then have the Royal Mail deliver it for them. TNT has the very lucrative BT contract, for instance. TNT picks up all BT’s mail from its main offices, sorts it into individual walks according to information supplied by the Royal Mail, scoots it to the mail centres in bulk, where it is then sorted again and handed over to us to deliver. Royal Mail does the work. TNT takes the profit.

None of these companies has a universal delivery obligation, unlike the Royal Mail. In fact they have no delivery obligation at all. They aren’t rival mail companies in a free market, as the propaganda would have you believe. None of them delivers any mail. All they do is ride on the back of the system created and developed by the Royal Mail, and extract profit from it. The process is called ‘downstream access’. Downstream access means that private mail companies have access to any point in the Royal Mail delivery network which will yield a profit, after which they will leave the poor old postman to carry the mail to your door.

So if ‘figures are down’ that doesn’t mean that volume is down. Volume, at least over that last few miles from the office to your door, is decidedly up. But even assuming that Mandelson was telling the truth, that volume really is down by 10 per cent, the fact is that staff levels are down even more, by 30 per cent. That still means each postman is doing a whole lot more work.

There are more part-time staff now. No one is taken on on a full-time basis any more. There are two grades of part-time workers: those working six-hour shifts and those working four hours. The six-hour staff prepare their own frame – their workstation, divided into roads and then numbers, with a slot for each address – but they don’t do any ‘internal sorting’ (this is the initial sorting done when the mail comes into the office). The four-hour part-timers come in and – in theory at least – pick up their pre-packed bags and go straight out. They are hardly in the office at all. This means that the full-timers have to pick up the slack. They are supposed to prepare the frames, sort out the redirections, bundle up the mail and put it into the sacks for the part-timers to take out, as well as doing all the internal sorting, and preparing their own frames: all in the three hours or so before they go out on their rounds.

When I first started working at the Royal Mail every postman prepared his own round. These days maybe a third of the staff are part-time. It’s the full-timers who are on the old-fashioned, water-tight contracts, with full pension entitlement, the ones whose pension fund is such a nightmare for the Royal Mail’s finances. As well as being invariably part-time, new staff are on flexible contracts without pension rights.

The pension fund deficit was £5.9 billion last year and is predicted to rise to £8 or £9 billion next year. The deficit is the main reason various people in positions of authority within the government and the Royal Mail were suggesting the partial sell-off earlier in the year. These people included Adam Crozier, the chief executive, and Jane Newell, the chair of the pension fund trustees, as well as the business secretary, Peter Mandelson. But a partial sale of the Royal Mail wouldn’t get rid of the pension deficit. No private investor would take it on. Which means that, whether the Royal Mail remains in public hands or is partly or fully privatised in the future, the pension deficit will always remain the tax-payer’s obligation.

Meanwhile there is increasing tension in Royal Mail offices up and down the country. There was a strike in 2007, and a national agreement on ‘pay and modernisation’, but this year has seen management constantly implementing new practices, putting more and more pressure on the steadily dwindling ranks of full-timers. The latest innovation being forced on an unwilling workforce is the collapsing of frames.

Let me explain what this means. Each frame represents a round or a walk. Letters are sorted on the frame, and then bundled up to take out onto the walk. But mail delivery is a seasonal business. Traffic varies throughout the year. Around Christmas it is at its highest. In the summer months, when the kids are out of school, the volume drops. This is known as ‘the summer lull’. So a national agreement was reached between the union and the management to reduce the number of man-hours in each office during the summer months. And the way this was done was to collapse one of the frames. One frame in the office would no longer have a specific postman assigned to it, but would be taken out by all the postmen in the office on a rotating basis. This meant an average of ten or 15 minutes extra work every day for every postman in the office. This agreement was meant to apply to only one frame and for the summer period only.

Now this has changed. There is increasing pressure to collapse more and more frames – that is, to get the same number of postmen to do larger amounts of work – and not just in the summer months but over the whole year. Management are becoming noticeably more belligerent. For some weeks now the managers have been bullying and cajoling everyone in our office, saying that a second frame would have to be collapsed – ‘figures are down’ – and that the workforce would have to decide which frame that would be. Everyone refused. Collapsing a frame would mean that one person would have to move frames, while another person on a ‘flexible’ contract would lose his job altogether. No one wanted to be responsible for making that kind of decision. No one wanted to shaft their workmates. And then last week it was announced, on the heaviest day of the week, and without notice, that a second frame was going to be collapsed anyway, regardless of our opinion. When the shop steward put in a written objection it was ignored.

Such was the resentment and the chaos in the office that a lot of mail didn’t get delivered that day, and what was delivered was late. If a postman fails to deliver a letter, it is called ‘deliberate withholding of mail’ and is a sackable offence. When management are responsible, it is considered merely expedient. There’s a feeling that we are being provoked, and that this isn’t coming from the managers in our office – who aren’t all that bright, and who don’t have all that much power – but from somewhere higher up. Everyone is gearing up for a strike.

The truth is that the figures aren’t down at all. We have proof of this. The Royal Mail have been fiddling the figures. This is how it is being done.

Mail is delivered to the offices in grey boxes. These are a standard size, big enough to carry a few hundred letters. The mail is sorted from these boxes, put into pigeon-holes representing the separate walks, and from there carried over to the frames. This is what is called ‘internal sorting’ and it is the job of the full-timers, who come into work early to do it. In the past, the volume of mail was estimated by weighing the boxes. These days it is done by averages. There is an estimate for the number of letters that each box contains, decided on by national agreement between the management and the union. That number is 208. This is how the volume of mail passing through each office is worked out: 208 letters per box times the number of boxes. However, within the last year Royal Mail has arbitrarily, and without consultation, reduced the estimate for the number of letters in each box. It was 208: now they say it is 150. This arbitrary reduction more than accounts for the 10 per cent reduction that the Royal Mail claims is happening nationwide.

Doubting the accuracy of these numbers, the union ordered a random manual count to be undertaken over a two-week period in a number of offices across the region. Our office was one of them. On average, those boxes which the Royal Mail claims contain only 150 letters, actually carry 267 items of mail. This, then, explains how the Royal Mail can say that the figures are down, although every postman knows that volume is up. The figures are down all right, but only because they have been manipulated.

Like many businesses, the Royal Mail has a pet name for its customers. The name is ‘Granny Smith’. It’s a deeply affectionate term. Granny Smith is everyone, but particularly every old lady who lives alone and for whom the mail service is a lifeline. When an old lady gives me a Christmas card with a fiver slipped in with it and writes, ‘Thank you for thinking of me every day,’ she means it. I might be the only person in the world who thinks about her every day, even if it’s only for long enough to read her name on an envelope and then put it through her letterbox. There is a tension between the Royal Mail as a profit-making business and the Royal Mail as a public service. For most of the Royal Mail management – who rarely, if ever, come across the public – it is the first. To the delivery officer – to me, and people like me, the postmen who bring the mail to your door – it is more than likely the second.

We had a meeting a while back at which all the proposed changes to the business were laid out. Changes in our hours and working practices. Changes to our priorities. Changes that have led to the current chaos. We were told that the emphasis these days should be on the corporate customer. It was what the corporations wanted that mattered. We were effectively being told that quality of service to the average customer was less important than satisfying the requirements of the big businesses.

Someone piped up in the middle of it. ‘What about Granny Smith?’ he said. He’s an old-fashioned sort of postman, the kind who cares about these things.

‘Granny Smith is not important,’ was the reply. ‘Granny Smith doesn’t matter any more.’

So now you know.

Roy Mayall, a pseudonym (obviously), has worked as a postman for the last five years. This article originally appeared as a letter in the London Review of Books, 8 October 2009.

London Mayoralty - It Matters

2009-10-18T12:24:00.001-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I went to Mayor's Question Time on Monday - I thoroughly recommend it if you are looking for some political kickabout and a decent comedy show. Not necessarily convinced if you are looking for an effective instrument to be used to hold the Mayor of London to account. The two Green Party AMs were excellent (I would say that, wouldn't I - but it's true), including Darren Johnson who had to chair the whole thing. The other parties were...mixed. Val Shawcross for Labour was impressively forensic in her questioning, I thought, while John Biggs just came off as hectoring and pointlessly rude - as did Len Duvall. The Lib Dems seemed fairly nonexistent...and then...the Tories. Oh dear.

Some of my friends in the Labour Party (yes, I have some) often criticise me for seeming to lay into them more than the Conservatives. This is hardly surprising, I answer - after all, Labour run Hackney Council, have both MPs in Hackney, and run the country. However, there is no denying that the Tories remain an appallingly reactionary lot underneath the Cameronite gloss. First to speak up was Brian Coleman AM - yes, he of Brian Coleman Must Go fame - a man who has never seen an expense claim he didn't think fair and just. His question was, god help us, about the 'fact' that there were far too many diversity officers employed by the GLA. He was followed by a non-entity asking about why Traveller sites needed to be provided in the London Plan (he actually said 'Gypsy' in a particularly vitriolic fashion, but then realised his error and backtracked). And so on.

I left City Hall feeling less than charitable about London Conservatives - not helped by Boris' seemingly complete inability to answer a question in any detail. As I found out the next day, however, he was apparently saving the detail for his attempt to explain the significant fare rises he feels are necessary for London.

As BorisWatch and other blogs have explained, his plans have a disproportionately heavy effect on low earners - precisely the people, frankly, that Boris Johnson doesn't give a stuff about. The problem is that people do still see him as a joker, a buffoon, a bit of a card. Well, this buffoon is running our city, and he's doing it badly.

As Jenny Jones AM put it, very succinctly:

“The mayor is pricing people off public transport, whilst favouring motorists by going ahead with plans to cancel the western extension of the congestion charge. Part of his fares increase will pay for the gap left by losing around £55m of congestion charge income. The Mayor has today highlighted the pollution caused by old buses, but he was the one who dropped the £25 congestion charge on gas guzzling cars, which would have generated around £30m in its first year. Everything the mayor does shows a bias in favour of the motorist and against public transport users. Even the long delayed increase in raising the congestion charge will be after bus and tube passengers have already started paying their extra fares”.

Boris - favouring motorists over users of public transport, and favouring rich users of public transport over poor users of public transport. Welcome to Tory London.

Keep Our NHS Public Rally

2009-10-14T14:07:00.001-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney.

So, this evening I was on the steps of Hackney Town Hall, with the local branch of Keep Our NHS Public. We were drawing attention to a meeting of the Council's Health Scrutiny Committee, which was discussing the PCT's decision to put GP services out to tender for possible privatisation.

I've covered this issue in previous posts, so I won't write too much about it in detail now - but I should say that one thing which saddened me was the sight of several Labour councillors passing by, unwilling to say anything to the demonstrators. Shame, perhaps? Or just contempt for grassroots campaigners with whom their party would once have stood, who knows.

To her credit, Diane Abbott released a statement yesterday indicating her concern over the move. Nothing at all from the Lib Dems or Tories, as far as I can tell - and I was the only candidate for any elected office at the rally itself.

I filmed a very brief video at the rally, laying out in simple terms my opposition to these plans.

Demo to stop Iraqi deportations

2009-10-13T03:13:00.000-07:00

If you can make it to this (5 pm, Wednesday, Communications House) please do. Alas, I'm already at the Hackney Keep Our NHS Public rally (advertised on this blog previously)...but please get to one or the other if you possibly can!

******************************************************************************

URGENT: Stop the first mass deportation flight to Baghdad

First demonstration at Communications House, London, on Wednesday 14th October, 5pm.

The Stop Deportation network and other groups and organisations are demanding that the first mass deportation flight to southern Iraq, expected to leave on Wednesday, is suspended and the detainees threatened with forcible removal are released immediately. Over the last week, detainees in various immigration detention centres have been given 'removal directions' clearly stating they will be removed to Iraq, rather than the Kurdistan Regional Government-controlled region, which was stated in previous removals.

Deporting people to a war zone like Iraq would put the lives of many deportees at risk. As recently as the 11th October, three car bombs exploded in the western Iraqi city of Ramadi, killing at least 19 people. Violence and bloodshed continue throughout the country, which saw 1,891 civilian deaths in the first six months of this year alone. There are also widespread food shortages, lack of access to clean drinking water and other grave humanitarian crises in many areas.

The British government, through its participation in the war on and occupation of Iraq since 2003, is responsible for these crises and the consequent displacement of millions of Iraqis. Instead of helping accommodate refugees fleeing war and violence, it is now is planning to send them back en masse to face their possible death.

Deportation charter flights limit refugees' access to due legal process. The UK Border Agency states that "charter flights may be subject to different arrangements where it is considered appropriate because of the complexities, practicalities and costs of arranging an operation." Charter flight deportees are told that "removal will not necessarily be deferred in the event that a Judicial Review is lodged." The emphasis, thus, is on filling the flight rather than ensuring the appropriate legal avenues have been exhausted. Detainees have also lost the right to know the date and time of their removal, making it more difficult for their legal representatives to act properly and leaving deportees in fear and uncertainty for days or weeks.

Iraqi refugees have been forcibly deported to Iraqi Kurdistan (northern Iraq) since November 2005. Mass deportation flights to Kurdistan have been removing 50-60 men almost once a month since June 2008, with the Home Office arguing that, unlike the rest of the country, the Kurdistan area is 'safe'. The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees estimate 1,000 people have been deported to Kurdistan from the UK since 2005. Despite these claims of safety, however, several people have died or disappeared following their forcible return, including Hussein Ali who killed himself two days after his arrival in 2008. Many others have been forced into hiding.

The Stop Deportation network calls upon all groups, organisations and individuals opposed to this brutal action by the UK government to stand with us in calling for all deportations to Iraq to be stopped. Join us on the first public demonstration against mass deportations to Iraq this Wednesday, at 5pm, at the local immigration reporting centre, where many deportees are first arrested without prior warning whilst signing on (Communications House, Old Street, London, EC1).

If you would like to add your or your organisation's name to this statement, or for any further information, please email stopdeportation[at]riseup.net.

Other things you can do to help stop this flight:

Contact your local MP and ask them to put pressure on the UK Border Agency to cancel the deportation. You can find your local MP at http://findyourmp.parliament.uk

Contact the UKBA directly to demand the deportation be cancelled:
Privateoffice.external@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk
UKBApublicenquiries@UKBA.gsi.gov.uk
CITTO@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

Contact the minister for borders and immigration Phil Woolas:
House of Commons phone number: 020 7219 1149
House of Commons fax number: 020 7219 0992
Constituency phone number: 0161 624 4248
Constituency fax number: 0161 626 8572

Gordon Brown - He Loves That Privatisation

2009-10-12T14:38:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I thought I would give myself a day before blogging about the recently announced £16 billion sell-off of public assets, which is the Government's latest economic wheeze. I thought it might make it seem more like common sense.

Didn't work.

So, you're facing an annual £175 billion deficit. Frankly, unless you start selling off the entire state, asset sales aren't going to make much of a dent. They particularly aren't going to make much of a dent if you are selling off some services (British Waterways is on the list, for example) which, one presumes, you are then going to have to lease back in various forms, or at least pay to use.

Whichever way I look at it, frankly it seems like a bit of a firesale to private companies - the kind of companies who have already benefited massively from Gordon Brown's reign under PFI contracts, PPP and various other dodgy financial instruments which have been used to channel public money into private pockets. The Lib Dems at least have pointed out that, if you think the sell-off is a good idea (which all three establishment parties seem to) you at least should try to get good value for the assets - i.e. not sell them off at the bottom of the market when you don't actually need to.

All in all, very strange...and another example of the way in which the UK's response to the financial crisis seems to be more and more mirroring Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" analysis - the idea that global capitalism now takes advantage of crises - whether financial, social or natural - to privatise everything in sight. Spare a thought in particular for the workers at the Dartford Crossing. Not only did they put in a large amount of work towards a failed attempt at employee ownership earlier in the decade (exactly the kind of thing that any Government supported by the Co-operative Party should be supporting, of course), now even the asset they are working with has been shipped off into private hands.

We have to stop this wave of privatisations - and stop them now. The answer to this crisis lies in public investment and support for greater economic democracy - not cuts and privatisation.

P.S. I haven't even covered the sell-off of the student loan book here - mostly because I am still trying to wrap my head around what that means, what dodgy ways whoever buys it is going to make profit out of it, and how exactly it is going to hurt people like me who still have lots of outstanding student loans....

Support Dave Osler and Blog Freedom

2009-10-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to flag up the fact that fellow Hackney North blogger (albeit for 'the other side') Dave Osler is in court at the moment, because of this lawsuit.

Essentially, he is being sued for something that someone said in the comments section of his blog. Something that, frankly, wasn't even that offensive. Because he's not massively rich, he's having to spend months of his own time preparing his own defence case, which he will present in court on his own, if it comes to that.

For obvious reasons, I'm not going to say what I think of this case, and I'd ask commenters not to do so either (until Dave wins, of course, in which case hopefully free comment on blogs will have some legal precedent in this country). However, I'm sure Dave would appreciate you leaving some good wishes in his comments section - I already have.

Aslum Seekers - Another Consensus

2009-10-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I could probably spend the rest of the time from now until the General Election pointing to every way in which the establishment political consensus is dehumanising, immoral and just plain wrong.

Since I'd probably run out of time before I finished, here's just one more example - the continuing attempts to make poverty and deprivation obligatory for asylum seekers. Hot on the heels of the Government's despicable decision to cut asylum seeker benefits to just £5 a day, Rowenna Davis has written this piece on the experiences of one asylum seeker, contrasting it with the view at Conservative Party Conference.

I doubt anyone in the Cabinet, or Shadow Cabinet, has any idea how they would live on £5 a day - but they are happy to prescribe it for others. Disgraceful.

Supporting My Parliamentary Campaign

2009-10-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's here. The inevitable plea to you, my dear and faithful readers, to consider donating to my Parliamentary campaign.

I won't bore you with a million and one reasons why you should consider it. You can look through the many posts on this site to know everything you could ever want to (and probably more) about my interests, passions, beliefs and philosophy. Just put it this way - if you want a passionate, committed, energetic socialist Green in Parliament - you could do worse....

You can donate to Hackney Green Party here - to all those who already have, it is very much appreciated.

Mainstream Benefits Consensus Is Sickening

2009-10-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Apparently, the Tories are going to create jobs and opportunity by cutting benefits for disabled people.

Yes, I don't quite see how that one is going to work, either. It seems to me that further reducing the spending power of vulnerable people, dumping them on the JSA, and then forcing them to compete with millions of other unemployed people for dead-end jobs is probably not the solution to our economic ills. Economic ills which, lest we forget, have been brought about in large part by the kind of unregulated, cut throat, free market economics that the Tories have championed for so long.

Not that you'll hear Labour criticising the plans too loudly. Why? Well, because, as this piece by the BBC's Nick Robinson makes plain, there is a cosy consensus when it comes to benefits policy between Labour and the Tories. Neither are interested in supporting vulnerable people or maintaining a strong safety net for those who need society's help, but rather scapegoating easy targets for a quick headline. Little wonder then that Sir David Freud (who famously wrote New Labour's benefits policy in only three weeks, having never been on benefit himself and apparently not bothering to speak to anyone who had been) has so easily jumped from the sinking Labour ship and onto the Tory platform. I guess that is what rats do.

The Green Party's economics spokesperson, Molly Scott-Cato, explains the sheer idiocy of the Tory approach better than I can, while the excellent and still inexplicably Labour Don Paskini gives a short version of the Conservative policy on his blog.

The long and the short of it is - under either Tories or Labour, people on benefits will be treated as electoral punchbags for middle England. By the Greens, they will be treated as human beings who have a valuable contribution to make towards society. If I'm elected as an MP, I'll be campaigning to raise JSA, not lower Incapacity Benefit.

More campaign endorsements

2009-10-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

I'm very pleased that London's Green MEP, and the Chair of the London Assembly, have both taken time out to endorse my campaign!

Hackney Keep Our NHS Public

2009-10-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

LOBBY OF HACKNEY'S HEALTH SCRUTINY COMMITTEE

STOP THE SELL-OFF OF GP SURGERIES TO PRIVATE COMPANIES!

CONSULT THE PEOPLE OF HACKNEY!

WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER - 6 PM TO 7 PM - HACKNEY TOWN HALL

I am going to be at this lobby in 10 days time. I hope you will be too. As I've made clear before, I think that the creeping privatisation of the NHS is an ongoing disgrace. Lets make sure it is stopped in its tracks.

Two articles published - exciting!

2009-10-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

So - I can actually call myself a proper journalist now, what with having some articles published. Check out the latest issue of Red Pepper for an article by me on Hackney's own Growing Communities organic food scheme - and last month's issue of New Internationalist for my map of UK anti-poverty campaigns.

I'll also have something (cross fingers) in next month's NI.

Oh, and by the way - if any of my faithful readers think that I write well, and have any contacts in the media...do drop me a line. I'm always looking for interesting work!

Market Morality?

2009-09-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

So, some people liked Gordon Brown's conference speech today. Others didn't. No one seems to have come to the same conclusion that I have, which is that he should resign as a result of it.

Allow me to explain.

You see, Gordon Brown spent quite a long time talking today about the failure of the free-market idea. About the fact that deregulation was a massive disaster, that laissez-faire economic philosophy got us into this mess and that market-driven capitalism cannot be allowed free reign. I agree with him. The only problem? Well, he's spent the last decade implementing exactly the policies he repudiated today. We aren't where we are simply because of the Tories - we are where we are because Brown and Blair decided to agree with the Tories rather than fundamentally challenging their ideas.

Here's just one example, from a speech he gave upon becoming Prime Minister to the City of London. It's one example of thousands over the last twelve years:

“Over the ten years that I have had the privilege of addressing you as Chancellor, I have been able year by year to record how the City of London has risen by your efforts, ingenuity and creativity to become a new world leader…. Now today over 40 per cent of the world's foreign equities are traded here, more than New York… 80 per cent of our business is international….

So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London….

And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created….

Britain…. a world leader in stability….

So let me say as I begin my new job, I want to continue to work with you in helping you do yours, listening to what you say, always recognising your international success is critical to that of Britain's overall and considering together the things that we must do - and, just as important, things we should not do - to maintain our competitiveness… enhancing a risk based regulatory approach, as we did in resisting pressure for a British Sarbanes-Oxley after Enron and Worldcom….”

To those who want a translation of that last bit, it roughly reads "to maintain our competiveness, I agree that we shouldn't regulate financial transactions heavily, but instead rely on the common sense of bankers and the market to regulate themselves".

The sheer, nauseating hypocrisy of watching a man who has been a driving force in the continuing liberalisation of the world financial system (prefaced, yesterday, by Peter Mandelson, one of the most neoliberal EU Trade Commissioners in history) stand up and talk about the need for 'moral markets' (as if there were such a thing, markets are allocation systems, not moral agents) was almost overwhelming. It would have been so even if Brown wasn't still forcing bank liberalisation on the developing world.

The truth is, deregulation, destruction of capital controls and a globalised free market have led to this mess. As Robin Hahnel's anaylsis of the earlier 1998 crisis makes clear, the warning signs have been there for well over a decade. These problems have been caused by the deregulation championed by Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, and the Labour Government as a whole.

If he doesn't believe what he said today, Brown should resign because he is a liar. If he does believe what he said, he should resign because it proves that his entire tenure has been an abject, utter and complete failure from beginning to end.

As the Beijing Declaration and many other statements from the movement for 'globalisation from below' have shown, there are alternatives to the sickening spectacle of our leaders turning their policy on its head and yet still failing to challenge the root causes of the problem. Z Magazine's reflections on the US economy are largely applicable to the UK as well - while the recession may come to an end, the continuing problems faced by ordinary people will not - without more radical social, economic and political change. Capitalism is based on the primacy of profit, and unending growth is its inevitable consequence. After we have stabilised the current system, preferably through the methods recommended by the Beijing Declaration and similar statements, we must begin building an entirely new economic system - not a reformed version of this one.

It has to be said that until this point, the left has not stepped up to the challenge. Mired in sectarian squabbles from the last century, we have allowed the centre-right and right to regain some of the initiative. It is up to movements such as the EcoSocialist International Network to highlight the hypocrisy of our current politicians, to forge a movement of ordinary people determined to challenge the status quo, and to champion policies that will safeguard both the planet, and the people who live on it. We certainly can't rely on a man as dishonest (or terribly confused) as Gordon Brown to do it for us.

P.S. I haven't even started on the sheer, terrible awfulness of the policy he announced, which seems to advocate forcing 16-17 year old parents into a network of state hostels. At least temporarily, words fail me.

Caroline Lucas Reacts To Calais Clearances

2009-09-23T02:32:00.001-07:00

My outrage at headlines like 1.this has been tempered slightly by the knowledge that at least one political party in this country is standing up for basic human rights and decency. Caroline Lucas, as ever, said it eloquently:

- British and French governments’ plot to deport ‘Jungle’ asylum seekers breaks EU human rights law, says Green Party leader

Green MEP for the South East, Caroline Lucas, today responded angrily to news that French police have raided the ‘Jungle’ camps in Calais, reportedly detaining 278 people – 132 children of whom are said to be children.

Police have swooped on a squalid tented area known as ‘The Jungle’ outside Calais, home to hundreds of refugees and migrants from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. Around a fifth of them are thought to be children, living in desperate and dangerous conditions, sleeping rough, with little access to sanitation or resources.

Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP said:

“Today’s mass clearance and destruction of the ‘Jungle’ camps by the French authorities, involving the detention of hundreds of refugees, is simply unacceptable – and must be condemned by the international community.

“Rather than fulfilling their responsibilities to seekers of asylum under both EU and international law, the French and British governments are turning a blind eye to the suffering taking place on their own doorsteps. Home Secretary Alan Johnson‘s glee in the wake of this aggressive police raid is particularly disturbing.

“The plan for mass deportations of these refugees rides roughshod over the European Convention on Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Geneva Convention. And given that so many facing expulsion are children, the plans may also breach the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"This short term ‘solution’ is not only inhumane – it will not work. The French are not playing their part in allowing people to claim asylum in Calais, and must commit to making the official procedures for seeking asylum more accessible to those in need. Equally, other EU Member states must recognise their duty to share the responsibility.”

The majority of refugees in the ‘Jungle’ have had no contact with official authorities since entering the EU. Many face a risk of deportation before they have even been interviewed in order to determine whether they are seeking asylum and are, therefore, protected by EU asylum law. They are also often at the mercy of ruthless people traffickers within the camps.

Caroline Lucas MEP concluded:

“Many migrants into France and the UK are fleeing in part from the dire consequences of the West’s foreign policy mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given this reality, you would hope that these governments would take their responsibilities to the international community more seriously.

“It is disgusting that vulnerable people from some of the world’s most troubled countries are treated so inhumanely on European soil. Many residents in the camps are genuine asylum-seekers and not illegal immigrants. It is crucial that those people fleeing persecution and war have free access to the correct information so that they know they can make a genuine claim for asylum.”

In a letter to the European Commission back in July, the UK’s Green MEPs called for an immediate suspension of plans to deport around 1,800 individuals from the ‘Jungle’, warning that the planned action – being taken jointly by the French and British authorities under the Evian Agreement – would be in direct breach of EU and international law on human rights and refugees.

Standing Up To The Government For Hackney

2009-09-22T03:27:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I've already written a little about the excellent work of Hackney's Green Party representatives - Jean Lambert in the European Parliament, and our two London Assembly Members at City Hall. I have been remiss, however, in not yet pointing to the excellent work being done by Hackney's existing Green Party borough councillor - Mischa Borris. Alone, she provides a progressive voice of opposition to Hackney Labour in the council chamber and committee room...and I very much hope that we can build on her good work in May, electing a strong Green Group to keep up the pressure she has created!

One good example of her work came last week, during the latest Council meeting. Hackney Labour put the following motion, knowing that with their massive majority it would inevitably be passed, and would allow some good opportunities for self congratulatory back-patting:

This Council

- Welcomes the £167m investment in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme from the Labour Government which has meant that 3 Hackney schools are currently being refurbished, with a further 3 secondary and 4 special schools being either rebuilt or refurbished.

- Endorses the Labour Government's commitment to invest £21.9billion of capital in schools from 2008-11 which means that every single primary, secondary, academy and special school will benefit from improvements.

- Is alarmed at reports that the Conservative Party would cut £4.5 billion from the BSF programme, which would mean that one in seven future rebuilding projects - a total of 360 schools - could not go ahead.

- Notes that the first phase of the refurbishments under the BSF programme have just finished resulting in state-of-the-art facilities, including an additional 9 classrooms at Stoke Newington School and 4 new classrooms and a refurbished dining block at Clapton Girls School.

- Further notes that, on completion, the BSF works will enable both Stoke Newington School and Clapton Girls School to increase their capacity – resulting in an extra 470 places, including for sixth formers.

- Welcomes Hackney Council's commitment to continue to invest in Hackney schools so that every young person being educated in the borough benefits from schools with excellent facilities - including new classrooms, laboratories, kitchens, IT facilities and sport areas.

- Is alarmed at reports that the Conservative Party would cut £4.5 billion from the BSF programme, which would mean that one in seven future rebuilding projects - a total of 360 schools - could not go ahead.

- Notes that the first phase of the refurbishments under the BSF programme have just finished resulting in state-of-the-art facilities, including an additional 9 classrooms at Stoke Newington School and 4 new classrooms and a refurbished dining block at Clapton Girls School.

- Further notes that, on completion, the BSF works will enable both Stoke Newington School and Clapton Girls School to increase their capacity – resulting in an extra 470 places, including for sixth formers.

- Welcomes Hackney Council's commitment to continue to invest in Hackney schools so that every young person being educated in the borough benefits from schools with excellent facilities - including new classrooms, laboratories, kitchens, IT facilities and sport areas.

Firstly, I think Mischa deserves congratulations just for being able to sit through all of this time-wasting spin. Particularly as the Tory group had all walked out of the chamber by this point, meaning that the entire opposition to Labour consisted of Mischa and two Lib Dem councillors. She could have stayed quiet and not 'rocked the boat' - but we Greens are about speaking truth to power, so here is what she said:

Hackney needs investment in state schooling, and the Green Party advocates public investment in Hackney schools as a key priority. To that extent, I do not disagree with parts of this motion. Of course it's a good thing that schools, including in my ward, are finally being refurbished and improved, after years of neglect. Clearly the improved exam results we have heard about tonight are a testament to that, as well as to good teaching and the hard work of the students.

But this is a bizarre motion. Motions are usually about a change in policy or they make a commitment to do something.

This motion does not commit Hackney Council to doing anything at all. It will not bring in a single penny more of investment into Hackney schools. It does nothing - other than take a swipe at the Tories! So what exactly is it's point? Why are we having to waste Council time on something that is pure political posturing by the administration?

The motion refers to the Academies programme. That Tories and Labour agree on academies should perhaps be no surprise. The slow and steady take-over of public services by private money, influence and control is the legacy of this Labour government, just as it is the promise of the future Tory government.

High quality local schooling which is publicly funded and, crucially, publicly controlled and run, and democratically accountable at local authority level - this is the kind of schooling Hackney's children need. Rather than raising a critical voice with national government over these issues, Labour simply offers pointless praise.

Doubtless I will shortly be reading on a Labour blog how the Green Councillor didn't vote for investment in schools. You can spin it how you like but I am not going to support a purely self-serving Labour motion which will do nothing for students in Hackney.

Absolutely right. And, just as Mischa predicted, a few days later a prominent Labour blog commented:

"The Greens and the Lib Dems dismissed the motion as 'pointless' - and they chose not to support it rather than joining the Labour group in standing up for raising the aspirations and achievements of Hackney pupils."

No. Actually, Mischa chose not to support the motion because it was nothing but empty spin and hot air from an administration grown so complacent that it can think of nothing better to do with its time than tell an empty council chamber how great the Labour Government is.

I truly hope that May 2010 sees a new wave of Green councillors in the council chamber, to keep challenging this kind of self-congratulatory nonsense.

Greens In Cut Shocker!

2009-09-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

So, this is the week in politics when the 'big three' parties showed their political colours and started calling for cuts - or 'savage cuts' in the case of the Liberal Democrats, who seem to be making their semi-annual attempt to look like serious players. Ed Balls, the Education Secretary, has started revealing ideas for reduced spending in his area of responsibility, and we can assume that this sort of thing will be replicated across government. Nick Clegg, meanwhile has hinted that the Lib Dems will soon be dropping the abolition of tuition fees as a policy - despite it being one of the few areas in which they have been distinctive from the other main parties over the last decade.

Of course, the revelation that has sparked all of this frenzy for cutting budgets is the fact that the UK is now borrowing over £16 billion a month due to a combination of the recession and mindboggling economic mismanagement from the Government (the two are, of course, intertwined). For their mistakes, public servants and the most vulnerable in our society are now expected to pay - and we don't even have proper control over the bailed-out banks as a result, due to the doctine of neoliberals such as Lord Mandelson. How their advice cannot be utterly discredited at this point, I don't understand.

Still, we are where we are - and luckily, the Green Party has had its own 'cuts agenda' for years. The difference is, we would cut harmful things and increase equality, rather than cutting pay for public servants, decimating public services and erecting more barriers to education, health and social services. Examples of ways in which we would plug the borrowing gap? Well:

- Trident and the two new aircraft carriers need to go. A saving of at least £130 billion over the lifespan of those projects.

- Tax evasion needs to be cracked down on properly, and tax loopholes closed. According to the TUC, a saving of £25 billion a year.

- Abolition of the £5 billion ID cards scheme.

- Increased taxes for those who earn well above the national average income, with new, higher tax brackets as people get richer.

- Complete withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and a significant reduction in the armed forces (both people and equipment purchasing) with retraining provided.

- A complete reorientation of the current ridiculous roads budget - for example, did you know that the widening of the M1 alone is costing over £5 billion?

And so on. The fact is, that there is a great deal of scope for the Government to raise money, and a great deal of scope for it to stop spending money on killing people and destroying the environment. You won't hear that at any of the three party conferences coming up - but you will continue to hear it from Green Party politicians up and down the country. It's their crisis - let's use it to build a better society for everyone, through public investment in the areas that matter to ordinary people.

Climate Change - Action Now!

2009-09-16T06:18:00.001-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

A few people have recently commented that my lack of posts on climate change so far is strange, given my professional background in campaigning on the subject - and the fact that I believe it to be one of the most pressing issues facing modern society.

To be honest, not talking about the climate for a bit was a deliberate decision - I wanted to avoid going on about it precisely because that is what everyone expects from 'the Green'. My politics are based on the foundations of social justice, peace and democracy - and I wouldn't want those important issues to be submerged by constant discussion of environmental sustainability, important though it is to me. Of course, climate change is a social justice issue - one of the social justice issues of our time - but I wanted to leave a little time before exploring that concept fully.

However, there can be no doubt whatsoever that climate change is the greatest challenge facing anyone standing for elected office in the coming decades - and voters should be demanding answers from all of their candidates about what they are going to do to agitate for progress on the issue, and how qualified they are to do so.

What are my qualifications? Well, not only have I been campaigning on the issue for a decade (my first major bit of activism years ago at University was to co-found 'Oxford University Switch to Green', which got the Uni to start buying renewable energy, becoming the 7th largest purchaser of green electricity in Europe) but my professional life has also been dedicated to climate activism. My first full-time job was with the Climate Outreach Information Network, and then I moved onto Friends of the Earth. Amongst my other campaigning and journalism work, I now do self-employed event organisation for a social enterprise called Talk Action - putting on training courses about effectively communicating the issue of climate change.

Even if I didn't have that background in climate activism, simply by being a Green party candidate and sticking to party policy, I'd be head and shoulders above any candidate from any major political party. The latest scientific predictions suggest that an industrialized country, such as the UK, needs to reduce emissions by 90% by 2030, or approximately 10% per year from now on. Only the Greens are proposing any credible plan for doing this, while using the power of government to increase community cohesion and allow for a 'soft transition' to a green future.

Here in Hackney, that soft transition isn't being helped by our current Council administration. In Oxford, one of my major achievements was to push forward the adoption of the council's Climate Change Action Plan, and I became a founding member of the cross-party working group on climate change. In Hackney, believe it or not, the council is still working on releasing its Action Plan for climate change - let alone actually pushing forward with the scale of tangible projects that we need. Indeed, they seem in many ways to be going backwards. Recently, they have cancelled the 100% renewable energy purchasing policy that was introduced with great fanfare a few years ago, and have gone back to dirty energy instead. Genius. While Jules Pipe and others talk a good game on the climate (see their much heralded signing up to the 10:10 initiative recently), when it comes to action, they are woefully behind the curve.

I know that it can sometimes feel like a hopeless task to take action on climate change. There is no doubt that, without massive collective organisation, the problem is insoluble. While that is daunting, it is also a massive opportunity for the kind of grassroots, cooperative, social justice-based politics of which the Green Party is the electoral outlet. We are never going to get anywhere with this problem unless its solution holds out a vision for a better future - equal, fair, democratic and green.

P.S. If you'd like to read the best book on climate change, denial, and how to take meaningful action that I have so far read, you should check out Carbon Detox by my old boss, George Marshall.

Indefinite Strike at Tower Hamlets College

2009-09-15T06:31:00.000-07:00

So, I have been quite busy over the last week or two - hence the lack of posts. Something about climate change (oh, blog of good cheer!) to follow soon, but for now, I have been remiss in not mentioning the indefinite strike at Tower Hamlets College yet. Details can be found here.

Support it anyway you can!

Some Poems

2009-09-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

ALLEGRI'S MISERE

The point of the music
Is the counterpoint.
The counterpoint is
The entire point,
The point is the
Counterpoint.

Without the counterpoint
There would just be a
Single note, a
Single note,
Without
Context.

Without context or
Support, the
Single note is
Just a
Single note
Alone.

.
.
.
.
.
.

Alone
A single note
Is unchanging
Unchanging and
Lacking life's
Animating fire.

In context,
In context,
With counterpoint,
The single note is
Harmony, dancing
With all things.

Dancing with
Creation, the
Single note and
Its counterpoint
Its counterpoint
Looking towards

God.

TALL TREE

I want my life
To be like my
Poetry, and my
Poetry to be
Like my
Life.

A
Tall
Tree.

Both,
Tall
Trees,
Reaching
Upwards
To
The
Sky.

Equality Is A Must

2009-09-08T16:30:00.003-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney.

If you read one political book this year, it should be The Spirit Level. A masterly survey that summarises decades of research on the effects of inequality on society, it proves that all of the most important areas of our lives are worsened by extreme gaps between rich and poor.

Of course, this is exactly the case that Greens have been making for decades - that while absolute poverty is clearly something that must be tackled (everyone should have the basics of life, a principle that is contained within the UN Declaration of Human Rights), the ever widening inequality in our society is also at the root of many of the problems that we face. Someone can be above 'the breadline', and still feel insecure, stressed and anxious about their place in society, their power over their own life, and their ability to have any influence over their community.

As Marshall Sahlins has put it: "Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status...it has grown...as an invidious distinction between classes."

The Equality Trust, which is the project started by the authors of the book, provides a lot of the evidence base for the effects of inequality on the issues that trouble the UK today - and many of them couldn't be more relevant to Hackney, one of the most unequal boroughs in the country. The correlation between violence and inequality, for example, is striking - and instructive, given the latest in a string of shootings on Amhurst Road just this weekend. Similarly, the relationship between education and inequality is plain to see - and so on, from obesity to depression to drug use.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about the book, however, is the way in which the authors reveal the obvious truth - that living in an unjust, unequal and dysfunctional society is bad for all of us - not just those in the bottom quartile or half. We all feel the effects of inequality. To quote from the Equality Trust website:

"One of the most striking and important features of these relationships is that the differences in the prevalence of the various social problems are so large. Some are two or three times as common in more unequal societies, but others are as much as ten times as common. The evidence suggests that this is partly because inequality affects the vast majority of the population - not just the poorest.

Finally, it tends to be the same societies which do well on each of the different outcomes just as it is the same ones which do badly. Because inequality affects so many different outcomes, if you know that a society does badly - for instance - on health, it is likely that it also does badly on a wide range of social problems: it probably has high levels of violence, high teen birth rates, a high prison population, lower levels of trust, more obesity, and a bigger drug problem. Put simply, it looks as if societies with large income inequalities become socially dysfunctional."

I pledge today that if I am elected to Parliament, the issue of poverty and inequality will be at the very top of my agenda. The Green Party is committed to higher rates of tax for the rich and better provision for the most vulnerable - and if you elect me as your MP, I'll do my utmost to make sure that Parliament starts striving to reduce the gap between rich and poor, not widen it.

As the Green Party's outgoing Policy Co-ordinator said at our Hove Conference only last week - "Peter Mandelson famously said that Labour are 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich'. Well, we Greens are 'intensely relaxed about the filthy rich getting a bit poorer'." Too right. Lets toss the Thatcherite consensus overboard, and get working to recreate some solidarity in the UK - and where better to start than Hackney?

Those who are interested in hearing more about the Equality Trust can check out this YouTube video:

Street Art or Sanitisation?

2009-09-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I am currently at Green Party Conference in Hove - of which more soon - but news of this act of vandalism has caused me to briefly break my blogging silence.

Honestly...this is idiocy on a truly staggering scale. Hackney Labour, you have outdone yourselves. Invading private property to wipe out a piece of art that enhanced the streetscape and of which the community is very fond, in a misguided attempt to sanitise and cleanse Stoke Newington of anything which might make it different, notable, or unique.

Labour make a big deal of their 'I Heart Hackney' campaign - and have accused those who disagree with their technocratic vision for the borough of wanting to Keep Hackney Crap. Well, I don't think Hackney is crap. And I don't think that a living, vibrant piece of street art should be covered up by a council determined to make Hackney identical to every other urban area in a commodified, sanitised and personality-free New Labour cultural desert.

Sure, some graffiti isn't any good. But we can make those decisions on a case by case basis. Eliminating a Banksy because you simply can't stand anything out of the norm? Wake up Hackney Labour, before you wash away everything that gives the borough its soul.

Teddy Goldsmith RIP

2009-09-01T05:35:00.000-07:00

The introduction below is from my friend, former boss and fellow campaigner, George Marshall. It explains the reason for this post better than I can!

*********************************************************************************

I am on many campaign lists and I am amazed that not one of them has mentioned the death of Edward (Teddy) Goldsmith who is without question one of the most important figures in the history of the radical green movement.

This omission is partly due to Teddy's complex and sometimes problematic politics which reflected his failure to reconcile his radical anti-establishment views with his own privilege and high Tory background (see the Guardian obit below). I must say that the portrayal of him as a racist-right fellow traveller seems ludicrous to me, but he certainly made major mistakes in some of his alliances.

But I think the lack of attention also reveals a consistent failure of the green movement to understand and respect its own history. Whereas the left has always recognised the importance of individuals in building movements, and constantly writes its own history, the green movement continues to pretend that its campaigns and ideas somehow appear spontaneously without recognising or respecting the role of their creators. Because it does not understand its own history, the green movement cannot learn from it, and risks repeating the same mistakes, including those made by Teddy.

I cannot find any issue that I have worked on in the past 20 years and not find that Teddy had been there long long before. Just look through the obituaries below and see the extraordinary range of current environmental issues that he championed.

* one of the founders of the Green Party, I believe the first person
to stand as an environment candidate,
* a passionate campaigner for the rights of indigenous people and
hugely important in making the connection between indigenous
rights and environmental protection
* a campaigner against rainforest destruction, dams, agribusiness,
globalisation and world trade.
* an early critic of economic growth and a theorist for a steady
state localised economy
* founder and publisher of The Ecologist, the most influential
environmental magazine
* one of the first and most aggressive critics of the World Bank and
international development institutions
* and at all times a supporter of direct action, grassroots protest
and opponent of corporations and market solutions.

Up until his death he was also one of the few (and certainly one of the largest) personal funders of radical grassroots campaigning. Among other things he personally provided tens of thousands of his own money or money from his brother James for the beginning of Earth First! in the UK which in turn played a major role in kick starting the anti-roads movement and much that followed.

Finally on a personal note- when I was a new campaigner, inexperienced, finding my way but wanting to work outside the career path of green NGOs, Teddy was extremely supportive and generous to me. Many others can tell similar stories. He was a very kind man and I do not want his passing to go unmarked.

So, whatever we think of him (admirers and critics alike) Teddy Goldsmith was one of the key theorists of our movement. Let us understand where our ideas come from and remember the people who give rise to them.

George Marshall

********************************

THE GUARDIAN

Edward Goldsmith, who has died aged 80, was an influential environmental scholar, polemicist and campaigner who founded and edited the Ecologist. A special issue in 1972, Blueprint for Survival, proposing the formation of a movement for sustainability, was published as a book, sold 750,000 copies in 17 languages and led to the foundation of the People party, later the Ecology party, which eventually became the Green party

Blueprint for Survival was a call for a new world order founded not on economic growth but on stable populations of small, self-sufficient communities, similar to those that Goldsmith had seen in his early travels. "I began to see that the survival of primitive people and of the environment were inseparable," he wrote at the time. "Primitive people were disappearing. So was wildlife. I realised that the root problem was economic development. So I decided to start a paper to
explore these issues."

However, Goldsmith's extremist, conservative philosophy, opposed to economic development and globalisation in favour of local self-sufficiency, later marginalised him in the green movement, whose politics were moving leftwards. While greens welcomed the Channel tunnel as investment in public transport, he damned it as "designed to further increase our economic activity, exacerbating our rapidly deteriorating environment".

Goldsmith was influenced by the sociological writings of Karl Polanyi, which emphasised the way economies are embedded in society and culture. His travels with his millionaire college friend John Aspinall introduced him to tribal communities on which his later thinking was based. The Ecologist, founded in 1969 and edited by Goldsmith from 1970 to 1989 and 1997-98, was partly financed by his younger brother, James, the billionaire financier.

For all his gloomy prognostication and his passionate commitment to protest, Goldsmith was a gregarious and exuberant bon vivant, a gifted raconteur who hosted parties in his homes in rural Cornwall, London, Paris and the south of France. His sociability, energy and charismatic charm won over even his most bitter critics. He liked to recall that, after attempting a business career in Paris, and failing, he gave his share of the family inheritance to his brother, an investment that laid
the foundation for James's fortune and, indirectly, his own prosperity.

Goldsmith's passion for anti-science and his love of good company and good living combined in his foundation, with Denis de Rougement, Gerard Morgan-Grenville and others, of Ecoropa, a travelling debating society of scientists and writers which met convivially in pleasant parts of France, Italy and Spain and Germany.

His extreme social conservatism led Goldsmith at one stage to give support to an extreme rightwing, racist group in France. That, in part, led to Nicholas Hildyard's departure in 1997 from the Ecologist, which was then edited for 10 years by Goldsmith's nephew, James's son Zac.

Zac Goldsmith, environmental adviser to the Conservative party and prospective parliamentary candidate in Richmond Park, said his uncle "was responsible more than anyone else for waking us from our collective slumber. Radical ideas are no longer so radical -- the credit crunch has made that obvious. If we pull through the environmental crisis, we all owe Teddy Goldsmith a debt of gratitude. He never regarded his work and status as ends in themselves, just a means to an end, an approach that today's politicians would do well to emulate."

The environmentalist Jonathon Porritt said: "Teddy was the first person who articulated the essence of sustainability in a complete and uncompromising way. He never worried about realistic possibilities. His mission was to have it all. Not always the most accommodating, but he was at his best applying scientific rigour to a problem."

Goldsmith was the son of Frank Goldsmith, Conservative MP for Stowmarket, Suffolk, from 1910 until 1918 who later ran luxury hotels in France. He was educated at Millfield school and Queen's College, Nassau. At Magdalen College, Oxford, he got a third-class degree in politics, philosophy and economics.

He began campaigning, in flamboyant style, in the February 1974 general election when he stood as the People party candidate at Eye, Suffolk. In protests against intensive farming which degraded the soil, he and his supporters paraded with a camel borrowed from Aspinall's private zoo, bearing the slogan "No Deserts in Suffolk. Vote Goldsmith." Few people did, he lost his deposit and retreated to a Cornish village from where he edited the Ecologist until 1989.

Goldsmith soon returned to egregious protest when the Central Electricity Board tried to test-dig for a nuclear power station five miles from his home. As the diggers arrived, he blocked the entrance to the site by installing his desk and sat in his chair dictating letters to a secretary. The police declined to intervene and the project was eventually abandoned. In 1979 he contested Cornwall and Plymouth in the European parliamentary election for the Ecology party.

In the 1980s he directed some of his fiercest attacks towards the World Bank, which he saw as financing illusory progress by forcing developing countries to export food while destroying their natural ability to grow it. In an open letter to Tom Clausen, the bank's president, he told him to "stop financing the destruction of the tropical world, the devastation of its remaining forests, the extermination of its wildlife,
and the impoverishment and starvation of its human inhabitants".

Another of Goldsmith's targets was big dams, which he saw as spreading poverty by flooding the lands of the poor for the benefit of wealthy industrialists and exporters. Goldsmith and Hildyard published a three-volume study: The Social and Environmental Effects of Large Dams (1984-92), which was later quoted in protests against dams in other countries.

Yet another consistent target was the UN's food and agricultural organisation, which Goldsmith claimed was controlled by multinational agro-industrial companies. He wrote: "Development may be designed to combat poverty, but it is in fact creating poverty. The main cause of poverty today is environmental degradation caused by economic development. Most people who live in the world's great slums are development refugees."

To combat what he saw as destructive economic development, Goldsmith elaborated his own spiritual philosophy. In his 1992 book The Way, he sought to expand Fritz Schumacher's notion of "Buddhist economics" based on "right livelihood" and "the middle way". Arguing that evolution was "purposeful, not for humans but for the planet", he set forth 66 precepts for "right living," warning against being "blinded by science which is itself a faith and has become an enemy. Ecology is also a faith
-- in the wisdom of those forces which created us with extraordinary benefits -- and in our ability to develop cultural patterns that will enable us to maintain the integrity and wisdom of the natural world."

He saw scientists in their white coats as having "all the attributes of religion -- faith, dogma and priesthood". Questioning the notion of objective knowledge, he pointed out that "man is a participant, not an objective observer". Few anthropologists would agree with Goldsmith that traditional societies do not change, but there is perhaps more sympathy for his central thesis that the natural world has wisdom greater than human.

Goldsmith, who was bilingual, launched a French edition of the Ecologist and co-edited a volume in French, La Médicine à la Question (1981). He also created versions of the Ecologist in Spain, Brazil, India and New Zealand. Other books included Can Britain Survive? (1971), The Earth Report (1988, co-edited with Hildyard), 5,000 Days to Save the Planet (1990, with Hildyard and others) and The Case Against the Global Economy (1996, edited with Jerry Mander). He received the Right Livelihood award and was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur for his services to France.

Goldsmith is survived by the son and two daughters from his first marriage, to Gillian Pretty, and by his second wife, Katherine James, and their two sons.

- Edward René David Goldsmith, environmentalist, writer and editor, born
8 November 1928; died 21 August 2009

Introductory Video

2009-08-28T03:55:00.001-07:00

Jamaica, Homophobia, and Hackney

2009-08-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

Orginally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I thought readers might be interested to see this intriguing article, by Diane Abbott MP in the Jamaica Observer.

In particular, the following passage slightly surprised me:

In any case, it is not difficult to imagine how a campaign on the subject of gay rights by the High Commission would be received by the Jamaican populace. Parliament is on its summer recess at the moment. But when I next see the foreign office minister appearing concerned, I will suggest that he meets with Jamaica nationals here in Britain to get a more nuanced view of attitudes to gay men and women in Jamaica. This is a delicate issue on which public opinion in Jamaica and Britain take widely differing views. There definitely needs to be more dialogue.

Of course, no one could object to dialogue over such an issue - that is how progress is made. And, certainly, an aggressive and condescending campaign on LGBT rights from the British state would not go down well in Jamaica - for many understandable reasons. We have a long history of preaching at other countries, often the ones we formerly colonised and oppressed.

However - 'this is a delicate issue on which public opinion in Jamaica and Britain take widely differing views'. Indeed, it is an issue on which people everywhere take widely differing views - some people are homophobes, and others are not. As my friend Peter Tatchell has pointed out, we can't turn a blind eye to prejudice and discrimination anywhere - because it is still prejudice and discrimination. By all means, lets be smart, strategic and enter into much needed dialogue and discussion - but lets not avoid difficult truths because they might be uncomfortable. Homophobia is unacceptable, wherever it occurs.

YESSSSSSSS!

2009-08-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

Andrew Strauss. Legend.

Citizens Income (or, Lib Dems and the truth #1)

2009-08-22T13:41:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

ADDENDUM: Please treat the first bits of this post (before the links and primer) as a polemic. Fellow bloggers have pointed out that I made the mistake of accepting some of the Lib Dem assumptions on the cost of Citizens Income, whereas their figures are actually way out in both directions! The policy links and CI primer are still entirely accurate. The original Lib Dem extract that prompted this post was: "the Green Party are calling for central government payments to everyone - including millionaires - at a cost to the taxpayer of a whopping £188 billion a year."

Anyone who has been involved in UK politics for any length of time knows that the Liberal Democrats have a reputation for - how shall I put this - bending the truth. They rarely lie outright (well, only when they get desperate) - but instead rely on a subtle blend of insinuation and omission of salient facts to do the job. For example, the Lib Dem leaflet I experienced while a councillor in Oxford, which claimed that I 'VOTED AGAINST RENEWABLE ENERGY'. Yes, I did. I voted against a small amount of money for renewable energy which was in the Lib Dem budget, and for a very large amount of money for renewable energy which was in the Green budget...

So, imagine my lack of surprise when the Lib Dem pseudo-newspaper 'Hackney News' dropped through my letterbox today, complete with misleading attacks about Green Party policy (as well as the obligatory Lib Dem graph, which I will deal with in a later post, for those electoral geeks amongst you, dear readers). Apparently, we want to spend £188 billion on central government payouts to benefit millionaires.

Lets unpackage that for a moment, shall we?

The policy being referred to is the Citizens Income (which, by the by, was Lib Dem policy until their shift to the right in the mid 90s). This would guarantee every UK citizen a basic income, as of right - currently pegged at around £60 per week, to match Job Seeker's Allowance, with more for the elderly, those with special needs, lone parents, and so on. It would replace our current, insanely complex and confusing benefits system, and ensure a safety net for every member of our society.

It would indeed cost around £188 billion. Our current benefits system, which would be replaced, costs £186 billion. I am tempted to write a leaflet with the headline:

"LIB DEMS ADVOCATE COMPLEX BENEFITS SYSTEM WHICH WOULD COST THE UK £186 BILLION EVERY YEAR!"

But that would be dishonest confusion-mongering of the worst sort, obviously.

And yes, the Citizens Income would be universal - that's the point. So, like current child benefit, some money would go to those in high tax brackets. But since the Green Party would at the same time be raising the highest tax brackets (particularly for those earning over £100,000 a year), the incomes of the rich would go down. And the incomes of the poor would go up. Voila, a sensible, radical and easily understandable policy.

Keith Angus, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington, doesn't agree with a Citizens Income. That is totally fine. I'd love to have a debate with him about it, which is what a General Election campaign is all about. But please, please, please....lets not get into the game of misrepresenting each others positions. Lets try to talk like adults, and treat the voters like adults too? After all, its the only way a democracy can really work.

For those who are interested, here is the Green Party's Policy Pointer on a Citizens Income, as well as two pamphlets from the Citizens Income Trust. Alternatively, you could read the primer below...

PRIMER ON CITIZEN'S INCOME

What is Citizens’ Income?

Citizens’ Income (CI), also known as Basic Income, forms the main plank of the Green Party’s social security policy. Under this system, all UK citizens would receive a Citizens’ Income of around £60 a week, which would replace most existing benefits. CI would be a universal benefit, paid to everyone regardless of their income, or whether they are actively seeking work, or whether they live with a partner. It would work in the same way as child benefit, which is currently paid in respect of all children, not just those in needy families.

What’s wrong with the current system?

The current social security system is incredibly complicated, consisting of a huge raft of benefits (Jobseekers Allowance, Income Support, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit, Incapacity Benefit, Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance, State Pension, Pension Credit, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Child Benefit, to name but a few).

Each of these benefits has its own eligibility rules. Depending on which benefit you claim, you might have to show that you are unemployed but actively looking for work, or working more (or less) than a certain number of hours, or unable to work; or that you are above (or below) a certain age, or single, or a lone parent, or have income below a certain threshold, or savings below a certain threshold, or that you pay a certain amount for childcare.

Because the system is so complicated, it’s very expensive to administer. There are substantial costs associated with processing application forms, working out the correct benefit rates to pay, and snooping on claimants to check that they have told the truth on their forms. CPAG estimates the administration costs of child benefit as around 1% of total costs, compared with 3% for means-tested tax creditsi. Earlier estimates put the cost of Income Support as high as 11.8%.

Because it’s so complicated, most people don’t understand the system properly, and because the forms are so daunting, many people don’t claim the benefits to which they are entitled. The government’s own figures put the uptake of council tax benefit at under 70%, and the uptake of jobseekers allowance at under 60%.

Again because the system is so complicated, mistakes are often made in assessing people’s benefit entitlement. Not only do these errors cost money (at least £2 billion in the case of tax credits), they can also have catastrophic effects on people’s lives.

Because so many benefits are means-tested or work-tested, the current system reduces people’s incentives to work. Unemployment benefits which are withdrawn if people start working mean that people’s incentives to get a job are reduced (the unemployment trap); income-support benefits which are tapered off as earnings rise mean that people have less incentive to increase their earnings (the poverty trap). Tax credits, which are in-work benefits with generous tapers, have reduced the scale of both these problems – but not completely, and at great expense and with massive complexity.

What’s good about Citizens Income?

CI is simple. It’s cheap to administer. It ensures an almost universal uptake – everyone will get the benefits they’re entitled to. It completely eliminates the poverty and unemployment traps and improves people’s incentives to work, particularly the incentives of people on low incomes. Because it’s payable to everyone, it’s almost fraud-proof, and it encourages people to tell the truth about their circumstances. And it gives people the security of knowing that their basic needs will be provided for, even if they fall on hard times.

CI will replace most, but not all benefits. Which other benefits will remain?

Housing Benefit will remain. Some form of disability benefit will be retained indefinitely, to compensate disabled people for the extra costs they face. And a supplement will be paid to lone parents.

How much would we pay?
About £60 a week for adults, and £130 a week for pensioners (these rates are about the same as current rates of Income Support). £25 a week would be paid in respect of children.

Wouldn’t everyone just stop working, and the country grind to a halt?

A few people might possibly give up their jobs in return for £60 a week, but there are good reasons to believe there will not be a mass exodus from work. In the UK in 2008, average weekly earnings for full-time workers were £479. Even people on minimum wages earn about £240 for a 40-hour week. It’s inconceivable that most of these people would opt for a massive drop in their incomes just because they could get £60 a week for doing nothing.

Remember, too, that it already is possible to get about £60 a week for doing nothing. The current system requires claimants to be actively seeking work, but if a person is determined not to work, the system will usually (and quite rightly) continue paying some benefits rather than allowing people to starve. The fact that we don’t currently see many people doing this means it’s unlikely that many people will make this choice under CI.

Even if only a few people decide not to work, is that fair? Isn’t CI a scroungers’ charter?

We have a choice. We can either pretend (as the current government does) that if people don’t want a job we will let them die of starvation. And we can spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money snooping on claimants to try and catch out the few people who try and defraud the system.

Alternatively, we can acknowledge that the hallmark of a civilised society is that we do not allow our citizens to starve. We can introduce a cost-effective, fraud-proof system which guarantees a very basic livelihood to everyone, unconditionally – and which provides proper incentives to work for the vast majority of people who do want to.

How can it be right to pay a benefit to everyone, even people who don’t need it?

Restricting a benefit to poor people creates more problems than it solves. It creates a system where benefits are stigmatised, where the poverty and unemployment traps are inevitable, and where the government has to spend money to check that people aren’t defrauding the system. The rich will be paying much more under our progressive taxation system anyway - £60 a week will not offset their additional contribution to society.

How would we pay for CI?

We would abolish the tax-free income tax band: people would pay tax on all their earnings, not just earnings above a certain amount. We would also increase rates of income tax rates – modest increases for most people, and more substantial increases for those earning over £150,000.

Who will lose and who will gain?

People with no income from employment will be about as well off as they are now (but they will be able to work without losing any benefits, so can easily become better off). People with modest earnings will be better off, people on average incomes will be about as well off as they are now, and people on the highest incomes will be worse off. Couples (particularly couples where one partner does not have a job) will gain more under these reforms than single people.

It's Official...

2009-08-21T17:14:00.001-07:00

I'm the UK's twelfth favourite Green Party blogger. Behold my writing prowess! etc etc. This is according to the recent TotalPolitics poll. Who am I to disagree?

If you want to see what a really good blog looks like, though, you could do much worse than a visit to the superb In A Dark Time...The Eye Begins To See, a recent addition to my blogroll, and an archive of wonderful poetry along with intriguing analysis and literary criticism.

Afghanistan

2009-08-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

So - today Afghans go to the polls. Or, rather, those who are able to do so go to the polls. Some of them, probably not a majority, may even be uncoerced. Few of them will be voting for candidates who are untainted by monstrous war crimes, human rights abuses, and misogyny on a scale that boggles the mind.

Sometimes, it's easy for those of us who live in Britain to forget the ongoing nightmare that is the war in Afghanistan. It's not so easy for those who live there, and for those British troops who are charged with completing an impossible mission, devised by politicians who are driven by ego, greed, and the desire not to lose face. The disaster has been going on for so long, sometimes it almost fades from view for UK civilians. The first bit of political activism I did at University, eight years ago, was founding Oxford University Stop The War to organise demonstrations against the initial bombing. And it's still going on.

As this article, by the incredibly brave female Afghan MP Malalai Joya, points out, Afghan democracy is nothing but a myth - a collection of brutal warlords trading influence with each other, and spending aid money on anything but the people of the country.

After all, as Human Rights Watch recently pointed out, "President Karzai has made an unthinkable deal to sell Afghan women out in return for the support of fundamentalists in the August 20 election". Anyone who watched Douglas Alexander's pitiful squirming on Newsnight yesterday evening will be well aware that the British government intends to do nothing whatsoever about the new law that allows Afghan men to rape and starve their wives at will, nor about Karzai's alliances with bona fide war criminals. All that matters is preserving face - after all, "we are winning".

For these reasons, and many more, I am honoured to have been asked to speak at Hackney Stop the War Coalition's Naming of the Dead ceremony on Saturday. The conflict has now claimed 204 British dead - and no one even seems to be counting the thousands of innocent civilians who have died. And for what?

I was proud to have proposed one of the motions that committed the Green Party to withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan. We cannot solve terrorism by force, and this Labour government still hasn't learnt - despite thousands upon thousands of deaths. Shame on them.

Massacre In The Amazon - Meeting

2009-08-20T06:55:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to publicise this event to my tens of readers...and thus, it is so!

Massacre in the Amazon: The Garcia Government vs Peru’s Indigenous

Thursday, August 27, 2009, 6:30pm - 8:00pm
The Exmouth Arms, Starcross Street (3 minutes from Euston)

On June 5, World Environment Day, Amazon Indians in Peru were massacred by the government of Alan Garcia in the latest chapter of a long war to take over common lands -- a war unleashed by the signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Peru and the United States.

Come and hear about the latest developments in Peru and what we in Britain can do to help Peru’s indigenous people and the wider social and environmental struggles taking place in the country.

“The Amazon struggle must continue, demanding respect for the rain forest. The Amazonian natives know that what is at stake is their own survival. We hope that the world population becomes aware that they are fighting in defence of all humankind, the Amazon jungle is the lung of the planet.”

-- Hugo Blanco (Peruvian social activist and director of ‘Lucha Indigena’ ('Indigenous Struggle')

Speakers:

- Oscar Blanco (Son of Peruvian political figure Hugo Blanco)
- Derek Wall (Former Green Party Principal Speaker)

Free entry

More info: www.alborada.net / info@alborada.net

William Carlos Williams

2009-08-17T16:19:00.000-07:00

Too much politics on this blog these days!

In order to counter such pragmatism and whingery, I present to you Mr William Carlos Williams. In Nick Hornby list style, I name him my seventh favourite poet.

IN CHAINS

When blackguards and murderers
under cover of their offices
accuse the world of those villainies
which they themselves invent to
torture us-we have no choice
but to bend to their designs,
buck them or be trampled while
our thoughts gnaw, snap and bite
within us helplessly-unless
we learn from that to avoid
being as they are, how love
will rise out of its ashes if
we water it, tie up the slender
stem and keep the image of its
lively flower chiseled upon our minds.

Another Letter to the Gazette

2009-08-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Well, thus far, the Hackney Gazette don't seem to want to acknowledge my existence. Hopefully that might change in the next few weeks! They are, however, still giving a regular column to Diane Abbott. This would be fine, if she (or whoever writes it) didn't have a tendency to use turns of phrase that really grate.

This week, she decided to spend her column praising the achievements of 'her government' in early years education. This, I'm afraid, touches on a raw nerve for me. It's fine if Diane wants to stake out her territory as a 'rebel', and fight an election that way. It's fine, also, if she wants to move to the centre, and fight as a relative loyalist. What isn't fine, in my view, is to take all the credit for anything good that the Labour government has done, while completely disowning anything negative that has occured. Hence - the letter below. Perhaps a little cross, but I'm sure you get my point!

Dear Sir,

In Diane Abbott's latest column, she proudly refers to 'my government' when discussing the provision of early years education in Hackney. This is the same Diane Abbott who hastily denies any involvement with the Labour Government when it comes to the recession, the war, privatisation of our health service, refusal to nationalise the railways, and racist crackdowns on vulnerable asylum seekers, along with many other issues.

It can't be 'her government' when there are successes, and suddenly cease to have anything to do with her when discussion comes around to its disastrous overall record. Surely it would be better for Hackney North to have an MP who is less confused about what party they are in?

Yours sincerely,

Matt Sellwood
Green Party Parliamentary Candidate
Hackney North & Stoke Newington

Diane Abbott and Gary McKinnon

2009-08-08T09:05:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

As I've written about before, one of the major challenges of standing as a non-Labour candidate in Hackney North is that Diane Abbott has a strong reputation as a radical MP. In some ways, that is deserved - she is certainly not a generic Blairite or Brownite, that's for sure. However, much of her reputation seems to be based on her politics in the late 80s and early 90s - and the more research I do, the more examples I turn up of her voting in ways that one would never have expected, given her history.

I've already covered her recent, surprising vote against a transparent Iraq inquiry - and now there is this article in the Guardian, which points out her vote against the campaign towards a fair trial for Gary McKinnon. It's made worse because she has spoken out about the unfairness of the US-UK Extradition Treaty before, and yet when it comes to doing something about this test case, she votes with the government. Very odd.

Of course, I'm not saying that just because Gary McKinnon is clearly a confused person his actions should not be investigated. Just that they should be investigated in a court that is unbiased, and with proceedings that will not destroy his life, whether he is proven guilty or innocent.

So, I seem to be building up a list of things I would have done differently from Diane if I had been the MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington over the last couple of months. I would have voted for a transparent inquiry into Iraq, not against one. I would have voted for an immediate inquiry into the workings of the US-UK Extradition Treaty, not against one. I would have spoken out actively and strongly in support of the Vestas occupation. And your MP would have been campaigning in the borough against further privatisation of the NHS over the last couple of weeks - not being a member of the Party doing the privatising.

I suspect this list will get longer and longer over the next few months!

Save Vestas campaign

2009-08-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at Matt Sellwood For Hackney

Just a quick post, to make sure that people are aware of the absolutely crucial Save Vestas campaign, and the fact that the occupation of the Vestas wind turbine factory is due to be ended by bailiffs any day now - unless the eviction is stopped by people power.

I cannot think of a more potent symbol of the utter bankruptcy of Labour in the face of corporate power than the only wind turbine factory in the UK closing. Economically, environmentally, and politically, such a closure would be a disaster. The fact that workers are having to fight for their livelihoods in this case is a direct indictment of the utter failure of the Government to put in place a radical, comprehensive and well-funded strategy for dealing with climate change while creating jobs and supporting local economies. Billions can be found for the banks - and nothing for workers who are desperately trying to save a constructive, 21st century industry.

I've sent my own message of solidarity to the Vestas occupiers, emails of protest to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and a donation to those campaigning against closure. Not to be too party political about it, but as far as I can tell, Diane Abbott hasn't said a word....

Dalston Short Stories - Genius

2009-08-05T05:00:00.000-07:00

Has anyone else been noticing the increasing prevalence of tired 'Dalston is so edgy' tropes in the Guardian, Independent and so on? The people behind the hilarious Bad Dalston Short Stories blog clearly have. Check it out - and write something. You can't do worse than a lot of what gets published in the national media...

Impressive Fan Film

2009-08-04T14:31:00.000-07:00

I am a Tolkien nerd, and it has ever been thus. Not only have I read the books numerous times, I've even read the Silmarillion. Numerous times. And I loved Peter Jackson's film trilogy...a more faithful, expert and passionate interpretation of the Tolkien legendarium could not have been hoped for.

However, fans tend to be a bit too passionate sometimes, which is why when I heard about The Hunt For Gollum, my heart sank a little. An under budgeted fan film purporting to be a 'sidequel' to the Jackson trilogy? Lets face it - it's going to be awful.

I just got around to watching it. And not only is it not awful, it is...whisper it...good. You would not believe that it had a £5,000 budget...indeed, it looks almost as good as the trilogy, in parts. The acting is decent, the atmospherics are spot on, they even get around the problem of not having the resources for a digital Gollum by sticking him in a sack for most of the film. Sorted. I'd recommend you watch it, if you're a Tolkien fan - you're unlikely to be disappointed.

Does my athletic skill know no bounds?

2009-08-04T11:06:00.001-07:00

Those interested in how I did in the HOPI vs LRC fundraising cricket match may have been puzzled by my sudden silence.

As you can see from the scorecards and reports, I am a cricketing titan. A whole 3 runs, and the most expensive economy rate of any HOPI bowler. In an attack that included someone who had never bowled before, and Attila the Stockbroker, who was both drunk and playing for laughs.

Of course, the game and gig raised well over £1,000 - but surely how I did is much more important?

Thanks to the organisers - it was a fun day, and I'm really glad to have taken part. I hope we can do it again next year!

New Labour's Thought Police

2009-08-03T07:53:00.000-07:00

Originally posted on Matt Sellwood For Hackney

I'm not usually one for the hyperbole and overstatement that takes up space in so many political blogs. Right-wing bloggers castigate anyone who puts forward the scientically proven fact of climate change as a conspirator. Left-wing bloggers refer to the Labour Party as 'ZaNuLieBore' and so on. All a bit tiresome, really.

However - I really, honestly, think that the phrase 'thought police' is not an overreaction to this latest piece of genius from the Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas.

A few choice extracts:

New migrants who demonstrate an "active disregard for UK values", possibly including protesting at homecoming parades of troops from Afghanistan, could find their applications for a British passport blocked under new citizenship proposals published today.

But migrants who contribute to the "democratic life of the country" by canvassing for political parties could find the application process speeded up so that it takes one year instead of three.

The Home Office consultation paper proposes a new category of "probationary citizen" whose application for a British passport can be speeded up or slowed down depending on the points system.

What, exactly is a contribution to the "democratic life" of the country, Mr Woolas? Is it, in your mind, strangely similar to whatever you happen to agree with? Is it, perhaps, determined by whoever is in government at the time? Is this, in fact, a pitiful attempt to pick on the more vulnerable elements of our society, in order to get them to step into line and stop speaking their conscience?

Unbelievable.

Of course, it's worth saying that while the most ridiculous elements of what the Minister had to say have been rightly picked apart today, even more worrying is the underlying reasoning behind the entire proposal. A points system for immigrants, reducing people and human circumstance to their qualifications, education and wealth, should be abhorrent in any sensible society. People should not, must not, be measured simply by the opportunities they have had in life or the pound sterling contribution they might make to our national GDP. They should, instead, be viewed as human beings - people who may have made a thousand contributions to our society that cannot be measured by economics or the crude yardstick of the state.

For the record, if we were forced to have a points system, I'd view having the courage and committment to stand up and protest about what you believe in to be a positive attribute. It's no surprise that Mr Woolas, a time server of the lowest order, takes the opposite view.

ADDENDUM:

This is just one extract from the interview itself. Has the Government decided to derogate from the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and not told anyone?

Interviewer: Are you effectively saying to people who want to have a British passport, you can have one and when you've got one, you can demonstrate as much as you like, but until then, don't?

Woolas: In essence, yes. In essence, we are saying that the test that applies to the citizen should be broader than the test that applies to the person who wants to be a citizen. I think that that's a fair point of view, that if you want to come to our country and settle, that you should show that adherence. And incidently, I think part of the mistake in this debate, in the public comment, is the assumption that the migrant doesn't accept that point of view. The vast majority, in my experience, do want to show that they are aspiring to intergrate and to support our way of life.

It appears Mr Woolas doesn't understand that the freedom to protest is part of 'our way of life'. Maybe he should leave the country.

Saying no to NHS privatisation

2009-07-30T06:14:00.000-07:00

Originally published on MattSellwoodForHackney.

One of the most cherished institutions in the UK is the National Health Service. Not many people know it, but the NHS is being slowly privatised, piece by piece, right before our eyes.

I was the only Parliamentary Candidate to attend a public meeting held last week by Hackney Keep Our NHS Public, the local branch of the excellent national organisation Keep Our NHS Public. The meeting was called specifically to address the utterly ridiculous plans to sell off two new 'GP led health centres' to big private health care companies (including one centre based on the site of the existing OldHill practice), to add to the three GP surgeries that have already been sold off to the private sector in Hackney.

It is clear that the first interest of these big private companies is in making money for their shareholders, not in caring for patients. The “GP-led health centres” will use a new contract model, called the Alternative Provider of Medical Services contract, or APMS, which allows the private sector to take over GP services.

This will have a direct effect on patient care in Hackney, as well as pay and conditions in the NHS. GPs employed on short contracts by large private companies don’t have the commitment or knowledge of patients that local GPs do, and commercial contractors do not have to adopt NHS pay and conditions for staff, and do not offer NHS pensions, allowing them to undercut traditional GPs and slash their wage bill.

I was delighted that one of the speakers at the public meeting, Dr Wendy Savage, pointed not only to the consensus among the three large political parties about the creeping privatisation of the NHS, but also explicitly stated that the Green Party were the only national electoral force serious about preserving the core principles of the National Health service. As this recent press release, and the accompanying report make clear, Greens are committed to an NHS that "meets the needs of patients, not the needs of the market and corporate shareholders."

Of course, no institution is ever perfect, and as with all public services, a Green NHS would be a democratised organisation. At the moment, as the report points out, "the NHS responds to centrally driven targets and initiatives at the expense of the needs and wishes of local people. Local services are accountable to Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) that have unelected boards; these in turn are accountable to Strategic Health Authorities, who are accountable to the Department of Health. The Department of Health is accountable to the Secretary of State who reports to parliament. The NHS is a centrally controlled mammoth where local people have almost no influence."

Greens want to change this, by giving patients and NHS workers real control over the services that the state provides for everyone. The most effective, efficient and moral way of providing healthcare is to ensure that it is free at the point of use, treats people like human beings rather than numbers on an accountacy ledger, and is controlled from the bottom-up by ordinary people.

The next meeting of the Hackney branch of Keep Our NHS Public is this evening, at 7.30 pm, in the Churchill Room, General Browning Club, Valette Street, E9, Hackney. Lets all get behind this vital campaign - privatisation must stop here!

Sellwood to star in charity cricket match. Unlikely, but true.

2009-07-29T03:35:00.001-07:00

Those of my legions of readers who have thrilled to the tales of my cricket mediocrity over the last year or so, will doubtless be awe-inspired at the opportunity to see such a sporting hero in the flesh on Saturday.

Yes, I am indeed a batsman extraordinaire for the Hands Off The People Of Iran cricket team, who are playing the Labour Representation Committee in a fundraising match for the Iranian worker's movement. Low Hall Sports Ground, Walthamstow, stumps at high noon.

Be there, or lose the opportunity to mock me as I make a duck.

http://hopivslrc09.wordpress.com/

UNISON witch hunt against activists

2009-07-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

I have written previously about my proud membership of the grassroots, fighting union, The Industrial Workers of the World. One of the many reasons that I am a member is that there is no bureaucracy of full time officials to strangle the democratic voice of IWW members. Just as in the Green Party, if I believe something, I have the right to take it to a democratic forum - and if enough people agree with me, it becomes policy. No rigged processes, no sham democracy...just grassroots decision making.

Unfortunately, as this article in The Socialist makes clear, such practice is not always common in the larger, more bureaucratic unions. UNISON have finally concluded their case against four Socialist Party activists on trumped up charges, and - surprise surprise - found them guilty. Now, I've had a number of disagreements with The Socialist over the years, and this will doubtless continue - but here is a basic issue of solidarity on which I am sure we can all unite.

I've already emailed Dave Prentis at d.prentis@unison.co.uk, telling him what I think of the decision. Fancy doing the same?

Save Vestas!

2009-07-21T02:25:00.000-07:00

Dear Secretary of State,

I am writing to you with a plea to step in and stop the closure of the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight. Shutting down such productive capacity makes absolutely no sense, either in environmental or long-term economic senses. Please immediately intervene!

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Sellwood

REPOST FROM THE COMMUNE BLOG

Workers at the Vestas wind turbine blade plant on the Isle of Wight have occupied their factory in Newport in an attempt to prevent its closure, which was scheduled for the end of this month. Their brave fight in is an example of what workers can do when they get together and take militant action to save jobs and sustainable industries.

We call upon everyone around the country to send whatever support they can to the workers at Vestas. We all have an interest in a sustainable future, and we all have a responsibility to show solidarity to workers in struggle.

The occupation has occured against a background of unionised workers, and revolutionary anti-capitalist activists appear to have made a significant contribution to the organisation so far, including instigating the idea of an occupation.

More news will follow when we have it. A list of resources, events, and things you can to do help follows.

London demonstration called by Campaign Against Climate Change

Wednesday 22nd July , 6.00 pm, Outside the Department of Energy and Climate Change, No 3 Whitehall Place (off Whitehall, Charing Cross tube)

Families and communities campaign meeting

Wednesday 22nd July, 6.30-8.30pm at the Methodist Church Hall, Quay Street, Newport. We are setting up a campaign for Vestas workers’ families and Isle of Wight residents to show their support for keeping jobs at Vestas. The families and communities campaign will be very important in keeping spirits up through this stressful time. For more details call 07775 763750.

Isle of Wight demonstration

Come to St Thomas Square in Newport at 5:30pm on Friday 24th July where we will be making a very public display of how we feel about the Vestas closures! Come to the Isle of Wight to support the struggle! Ring 07775763750 for more information.

Send messages of support to: savevestas@googlemail.com

The Vestas Fighting Fund: Cheques Payable to ‘Ryde and East Wight Trades Union’. Send Cheques to: 22 Church Lane, Ryde, Isle of Wight, PO33 2NB

Occupation blog – http://savevestas.wordpress.com

My Inspiration

2009-07-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

Firstly, my apologies if I'm repeating myself. I may have referred to this primary source of inspiration for my politics before. However, even if I have - it bears repeating.

This speech, more than any other I have ever heard, sustains and supports the foundation of my political outlook. A perfect blending of spiritual belief, a radical yearning for social justice, and a refusal to accept the status quo, I think it stands comparison with the greatest speeches of all time. It would certainly get my vote as the greatest speech available via audio recording.

Just listen. It's worth it.

William Morris speaks - 1887

2009-07-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

I will give you a more concise and complete idea of the society into which I would like to be reborn.

It is a society which does not know the meaning of the words rich or poor, or the rights of property, or law or legality, or nationality: a society which has no consciousness of being governed; in which no man is rewarded for having served the community by having the power given him to injure it.

It is a society conscious of a wish to keep life simple, to forgo some of the power over nature won by past ages in order to be more human and less mechanical, and willing to sacrifice something to this end. It would be divided into small communities varying much within the limits allowed by due social ethics, but without rivalry between each other, looking with abhorrence at the idea of a holy race.

Being determined to be free, and therefore contented with a life not only simpler but even rougher than the life of slave-owners, division of labour would be habitually limited: men (and women too, of course) would do their work and take their pleasure in their own persons, and not vicariously; the social bond would be habitually and instinctively felt, so that there would be no need to be always asserting it by set forms: the family of blood relationship would melt into that of the community and of humanity. The pleasures of such a society would be founded on the free exercise of the senses and passions of a healthy human animal, so far as this did not injure the other individuals of the community and so offend against social unity; no one would be ashamed of humanity or ask for anything better than its due development.

But from this healthy freedom would spring up the pleasures of intellectual development, which the men of civilisation so foolishly try to seperate from sensuous life, and to glorify at its expense. Men would follow knowledge and the creation of beauty for their own sakes, and not for the enslavement of their fellows, and they would be rewarded by finding their most necessary work grow interesting and beautiful under their hands without their being conscious of it. The man who felt the keenest the pleasure of lying on the hill-side under a rushen hut among the sheep on a summer night, would be no less fit for the enjoyment of the great communal hall with all its splendours of arch and column, and vault and tracery. Nor would he who took to heart the piping of the wind and washing of the waves as he sat at the helm of the fishing boat, be deadened to the beauty of art-made music. It is workmen only and not pedants who can produce real, vigorous art.

And amidst this pleasing labour, and the rest that went with it, would disappear from the earth's face all the traces of past slavery. Being no longer driven to death by anxiety and fear, we should have time to avoid disgracing the earth with filth and squalor and accidental ugliness would disappear along with that which was the mere birth of fantastic perversity.

Quite.

Patience Is A Virtue

2009-07-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

Has it been a week already? Well - as my title suggests - patience, dear reader, is a virtue....

The cause of my recent silence was a very busy week - for all sorts of reasons. I've been doing some consulting work for the London based social enterprise, TalkAction, as well as researching articles for the Hackney Citizen, Red Pepper, and the New Internationalist. Also, of course, I've been knocking on doors, talking to people around Stoke Newington, and continuing to lay the foundations for my Council and Parliamentary campaigns.

As well as all of this, though, I'm trying very hard to balance my life, and to do a bit of self-improvement. I've always been quite a planner when it comes to learning and transformation, and recently I seem to have emerged into a bit of an interesting equilibrium. For me, there are a number of important areas to work on in life - physical fitness, physical presence/control, mental sharpness and spiritual development. I'm lucky enough, at the moment, to be pursuing a few different endeavours in all of these areas.

Physical fitness - Jogging and aikido.

Yes, in the style of Run, Fat Boy, Run, I've taken up jogging. I'm following the Couch to 5K programme, and as a motivator I've signed myself up to a timed 5K run in mid-September. I'm also halfway through a beginners course at the Stoke Newington based London Aikido Club. I was enjoying wing chun kung fu, but my relocation to Hackney has meant that a twice weekly journey to Bromley for martial arts practice didn't hugely appeal!

Physical presence/control - Aikido and cricket.

Of course, the main result of aikido has been the rediscovery of all my various physical weaknesses. Not just lack of fitness, but things like my lack of flexibilty, my dodgy left knee, lack of visual and physical memory, and all sorts of other embarassing deficiencies! Rather similar to my experience as a mediocre if enthusiastic batsman. On which note, hilariously, it looks like I am going to be playing in the Cricket For Iranian Workers fundraiser on August 1st, vs the Labour Representation Committee (captain, John McDonnell MP). Should be entertaining.....

Mental sharpness - Chess and political theory.

As well as trying to improve my physical state, I've also been trying to improve my concentration, memory and visualisation abilities. One of the best ways I know of doing that is by playing a lot of chess. I've even signed up to the excellent Better Your Chess, a membership website run by a Dutch guy who seems extraordinarily approachable and pleasant. I certainly need to better my chess, because at the moment, I'm awful....

Spiritual development - Meditation and aikido.

Of course, my meditation practice also continues, and I'm doing fairly well at sitting for at least fifteen minutes each day. I'm also finding aikido to be good spiritual practice too - especially on those rare occasions when things 'click' and I feel as if I and my training partner have executed a technique in something resembling the way it should be done.

I've written about a few of these topics before, in this previous post, informed in part by books like Samurai Chess and Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning. In that previous post, I talked about the importance of patience in all of the disciplines I've chosen to pursue - but I didn't mention probably the most important outcome of all - humility.

There is nothing better for dealing with pride (a sin from which I have been known to suffer!) than to take up challenging pursuits that are outside one's comfort zone. I've made an idiot of myself in aikido, gotten out for ducks in cricket, been beaten by a twelve year old in chess, and wheezed my way around Clissold Park while jogging...but it's all been good for me. Not only because I'm slowly improving at all of these things, but also because I can see how far I have to go. In a strange way, that feels good....