Rupert's Read

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2009-06-30-norwich-north-caroline.html

The Norwich North by-election has been announced for July 23rd. The Green Party is ready for the challenge, and delighted that the fight for Norwich North can now begin in earnest. The Green Party candidate for Norwich North is Dr. Rupert Read, a Norwich city councillor and UEA lecturer who narrowly missed election as an MEP in the recent European elections. Rupert Read said today: “After the gloom of the economic downturn and the scandal surrounding MPs expenses, which has sullied all three main parties, the Greens are offering a fresh new approach. We want cleaner politics as well as consideration for the environment underpinning every aspect of policy. “For the first time ever, the national spotlight will be on the Green Party in a byelection campaign and our prospects are being taken extremely seriously. The big three parties have everything to lose. The Green Party has everything to gain.” Dr Read, who has previously won plaudits for his Party’s ‘Clean Campaign Pledge’, recently s...

If you're a member of facebook please take the time to join my new group and stay up to date on the Norwich North campaign trail! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4929582869

  http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2009-6-26-norwich-north-poll.html This is very encouraging... This puts us on about the same level that we got in the Euro and County elections in Norwich North - but this is a Westminster election! The Green Party is being taken seriously, in this byelection, at last...

Interesting article from 'Labour Briefing', July 2009 (www.labourbriefing.org.uk) Martin Booth, former President of Norwich CLP, gives an eyewitness account of how the Labour Party debarred Ian Gibson from standing as a Labour candidate. I have been a member of the Labour Party for 30 years and President of Norwich Labour Party for the last two. On 21st May I returned home from work to find that our Norwich North MPhad been on the local TVnews, apparently embroiled in the MPs’expenses affair. I was shocked: Ian Gibson is one of the most ethical men I have met and I could not believe that he would knowingly abuse his expenses. I found out later that the Telegraphhad warned him he would be in the paper, and he had immediately contacted the local media to answer the charges – not the action of someone who has somthing to hide. The next morning’s Telegraph claimed that Ian had covered up the fact that his daughter and her partner were living in his flat rent free by blanking out th...

The Green Party has selected Rupert Read to be its candidate in the forthcoming Norwich North Parliamentary by-election. At a packed meeting of 50 plus Green Party members tonight (Wed) Dr Read was selected ahead of fellow Norwich City Councillor Claire Stephenson, and former councillor Jessica Goldfinch. Rupert Read said: “I’m honoured to be given the opportunity to represent the Green Party in a by-election in which, for the first time ever, the national spotlight will be on the Green Party and our campaign and our prospects are being taken extremely seriously”. As well as being a Green city councillor, Dr Read (43) is also a lecturer in philosophy at the University of East Anglia. Dr Read recently won a huge expansion of the Green vote in the east of England in his campaign for the European elections and came within 1% of securing a seat. Hundreds of supporters took an active part in that campaign, and, in the absence of the high-level funding enjoyed by other parties, the Greens ar...

From now until the general election, our focus switches from the European Parliament elections (where we received over 1.2 million votes, from people like you) to the general election... Our three "target constituencies" are Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), Norwich South (Adrian Ramsay) and Lewisham Deptford (Darren Johnson). Before then, the Norwich North by-election will be the first by-election where the national media take the prospects of a Green win seriously. We have a great deal of work to do, and we are asking you to swing behind this effort in a big way, as other parties (most notably the Liberal Democrats) do in similar circumstances.  We could gain general election credibility nationwide from a good result in the seat. Here is just one of the large number of bullish press stories that have appeared about the byelection – http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&catego...

  I do not accept the idea that we should expect politics to be dirty. The terrible danger of dirty campaigning is that it can induce a kind of relativistic 'Gresham's Law' of politics: dirty campaigning drives out clean , if we reach the pretty pass where members of the public (and of the press) simply say 'You are all as bad as each other' and fail to make distinctions between those of us who use accurate graphs etc etc and those of us who don't. If dirty campaigning triumphs, if we reach the point where there is no point in even trying to give the electorate accurate information, because they won't trust any of us and so one might just as well mislead them for short-term advantage, endlessly, then we might as well all give up and go home, and the 'clean up politics' agenda that rightly seems so vital now in the wake of the expenses scandal will just die. There is a better way: Let's raise the standard of political campaigning, and...

Interesting discussion of an article of mine going on here: http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/06/17/those-fibdems/  

I think that it is high-time for what political parties say and put out to be held up to higher standards. We attempted to do this during the recent campaign with our 'Clean campaign pledge', asking other Parties to buy in to a voluntary code of conduct, in effect: http://www.clean-campaign-pledge.net/ . Martin Bell backed our pledge, but sadly the other Parties refused to sign up. I think now that government should act. Commercial corporations cannot say whatever the hell they like in their ads and get away with it: the Advertising Standards Authority, weak as it is, has some power over them.  I hope that readers will consider the arguments in favour of regulating political speech to exclude patently misleading claims, graphs etc., and to help instead to inform our citizenry and begin the hard task of getting people to believe that politicians are not just shysters and cynics who believe that all's fair in politics...

We Greens were easily the largest gainer of all Parties in terms of votes gained; but, so frustratingly, we didn't gain any seats! We were however extremely close to doing so. Another 1-1.5% gain would have seen us gain at least 4 seats, including me getting elected in Eastern Region (where despite an endless persuasive stream of lies from the LibDems that we couldn't win, we came within 1% of doing so; the FibDems instead let in a climate-denying UKIP MEP). So near... The dream of an apolitical techno-fix is persuasive, given how hard electoral breakthrough is to achieve: but it will only work if there is a techno-fix that will actually WORK. There is good reason to believe that there is no such magic-bullet: see e.g. http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3126 We came so close in these elections to the long-awaited breakthrough, and performed fantastically well in our strongholds such as Norwich and Brighton. This bodes well for our prospects of a Westminster break...

One of many media hits from last night: http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=NewsSplash&tBrand=EDPOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=NOED07%20Jun%202009%2023%3A26%3A21%3A443

  Despite a significant increase in Green Party vote share from around 5.5% in 2004 to around 9% tonight, the Greens have just failed to win a seat in the East of England.   Green support rose right across the UK with the 2 existing Green MEPs Dr. Caroline Lucas (South East) and Jean Lambert (London) each being elected for the third time, and with significantly increased vote share.   Over 140,000 voters backed the Greens in the East of England, fo llowing a campaign that the Eastern Region Green Party began 2 years ago.   Support peaked strongly in the emerging Green strongholds with the Greens in Norwich coming first with about 25% of the vote, a result which was on the cards following the Greens coming first across the city in the County Council elections on Thursday.   The Green campaign covered every part of the region and was particularly focussed on meeting people and finding out what they wanted to see...

We were very unlucky , coming so close in Eastern [I needed just 1% more, to win] and NW and close also in SW and to a second seat in SE,;but no cigar...   In Eastern, we were the big winners on the night in terms of increased vote share. It wasn't quite enough to win a seat but it was a superb achievement boding well for our party across the region, especially in our strongholds such as Norwich and Cambridge. It bodes especially well for our prospects in the Norwich North byelection. . .   If there had been 8 seats in Eastern, we would have won the 8th seat. We added over half our vote relative to what we scored in 2004.   Ah well... Politics is a touch vocation...   In terms of voteshare, the Green Party did very well across the country last night. In terms of results (in terms of seats), last night saw a sad lurch to the racist Right. I feel ashamed to be living in a country that has just elected Nazis to the Euro-Parl...

http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/news/story.aspx?brand=ENOnline&category=News&tBrand=ENOnline&tCategory=News&itemid=NOED05%20Jun%202009%2014%3A52%3A00%3A890

Eight new Green County Councillors elected; Greens make debut on two more county councils in region   With the county council election results just about all declared, the Green Party in Eastern region is celebrating gains and breakthroughs on to councils.   The Greens gained eight county councillors:   5 In Norfolk [incl. two in Norwich North] 2 in Suffolk 1 in Cambridgeshire   The Greens also held their existing 3 county seats in Hertfordshire (1) and Norfolk (2).   2 district seats were lost in Bedfordshire, but this was largley as a result of the change to unitary councils there, with green councillors having to contest different wards.   A major story of the elections in the East of England was the collapse of the Labour vote. Right across the region, Green candidates were often beating the party of Government.   The Greens also secured second place in a number of areas, including in Essex, point...

  There is great danger and great opportunity in the current political scandal facing Britain .   The danger is that we will never recover from a soured public perception whereby every politician, indeed the practice of politics in general, becomes seen as crooked and illegitimate from the start, where all political views are lumped together, and approaches to our problems homogenized.   Where the country's best brains run screaming from public service.   This danger has paralyzed many politicians throughout history, but now, with cataclysm looming for a globalized economy and our global environment, inaction simply cannot be tolerated.     The up-side of crises, however, is that they present enormous opportunity, and I believe that there really is a once in a generation opportunity in the political upheaval facing this country: there is so much anger, not just about the expenses issue, but about the rotten Parliamentary system it sym...

http://www.londonfile.org/articles/green-s-parade-on-eastern-england-roads.html

Observer ethical awards honour Caroline Lucas MEP for second time   On the eve of the European elections, with the Greens showing at a record 15% in today's ComRes poll, the Green Party is proud to announce that Dr Caroline Lucas MEP is to be named as the Ethical Politician of the Year in the fourth annual Observer Ethical Awards.   Caroline Lucas beat Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor Vince Cable and Conservative leader David Cameron to the top spot - picking up the prestigious award for a second time.  Caroline, a passionate campaigner on social justice, green economics, the environment and animal welfare – at both the grassroots level and in the European Parliament – also won the title in 2007 against David Cameron and Gordon Brown, and is delighted to have been chosen to receive the award once again by readers of the Observer .   Dr Lucas said: "I am honoured that Observer readers have chosen to recognise my work in this way – i...

  This is phenomenal:   From http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/disarray-in-downing-street-1695467.html  : "A ComRes poll today on voting intentions for the European elections puts the Tories on 24 per cent, Labour on 22 per cent, Ukip 17 per cent, the Greens 15 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 14 per cent. The survey, commissioned by the Greens, suggests the Tories would lose eight seats in the European Parliament, Labour two, the Liberal Democrats four and Ukip one, while the Greens would gain nine seats ."   I.e. Only the Green Party would gain from these elections!  

On the day that a ComRes voter-intention poll puts the Green Party on 15% (1) - ahead of the LibDems for the first time since 1989 - Green Party leader Caroline Lucas made a final appeal to the public to make tomorrow's vote more than a protest vote. Dr Lucas, who was first elected to the European Parliament in 1999, said: "A Green vote is much more than a protest against the big three. Let's remember they've been discredited not just by the expenses scandal but by their lack of commitment to putting social and environmental justice at top of political agenda." "It isn't just about where the protest vote goes, it's what it achieves when it gets there. Britain has had Green MEPs for a decade now, so you know we've always stood up for public services, for protecting people's rights and for making the EU more democratic, more transparent and more accountable to the voters." "You know if you elect more Green MEPs they will fight for all ...

In the run-up to the European elections, Eastern Region Green Party has been conducting an on-line survey, seeking the views of the public on a range of important issues. The results show strong support for many of the constitutional changes the Greens have been supporting for many years - and not just in the last few days as other parties have done in response to the MPs expenses scandal. StandUp.UK is a process of direct democracy, asking people to vote on a large number of current issues relevant to the need to conduct a major reform of the democratic system. The results showed strong support for proportional representation for parliament, a need to end the control of MPs by the party whips and support for an end to second homes allowances for MPs, to be replaced by flats provided specifically for those MPs that need them. There was also strong support for fixed term parliaments and much stronger rules over corporate lobbying, which the Greens have highlighted as a particular proble...

Something I would be interested to know: How does Nick Clegg square his claim (on TODAY on Radio 4 this morning) to be in favour of 'clean politics' with his Party's consistent misrepresentation, in their 'Focus' leaflets etc., of other Parties' prospects in these elections [see numerous posts, below, for substantiation]? It is a well-known fact in British politics that the LibDems are typically the LEAST clean of candidates / politicians, in the way that they campaign. LibDems more than any others are responsible for lowering and dirtying the standards of British political campaigning... This is one of the reasons that I became disillusioned with the LibDems, and left them, in 1999.

Mark Steel, in his _Independent_ column, writes "the Green Party has attained credibility while retaining its principles, and seems to be the home for many people who opposed the Iraq war, oppose the rule of bankers and private finance, and feel it might be worth looking at doing something about the fact the planet's about to melt. So I'm voting for them tomorrow, and if they implode in a petty row about nothing I'm obviously a jinx and I'm joining the bloody Tories." http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-steel/mark-steel-turn-left-and-then-left-again-1695316.html

Greens ask potential UKIP voters to "think again" The Green Party has today published a briefing on UKIP and is asking potential UKIP voters to "think again" in the light of the findings. These show that UKIP's claims about withdrawing from the EU dont stack up, that it is a party generally hostile to protecting the environment and is a party with plenty of its own questions to answer about expenses. Click to read The UKIP File (pdf)

N ew poll on eve of election points to record equalling Green vote of 15% - ahead of the Lib Dems A poll to be published tomorrow, the day before the European elections, suggests the battle for third place will be between the Green Party, the LibDems and UKIP. In the new poll, conducted by ComRes (1), the Greens have overtaken the Lib Dems for the first time since 1989. The poll suggests the Greens may be about to equal their historic 1989 Euro-election vote of 15%. The poll shows support for the parties as follows: Conservative: 24% Labour: 22% UKIP: 17% Green 15% Lib Dems 14% BNP 2% If the poll proves accurate, the Greens could win seats in the North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, West Midlands, East Midlands, South West and Eastern regions plus Scotland, as well as holding existing seats in London and the South East. The Greens may even scoop up a second seat in the South East, with Brighton councillor Keith Taylor joining party leader Caroline Lucas, who was first elected in 1999....

  300,000 people are dying due to man-made climate change every year...  500,000 deaths a year by 2030 from severe heat waves, floods, forest fires and storms...   For those who survive extreme weather-related events , many will face hunger, poverty, disease and lost livelihoods... 310 million more people will suffer adverse health consequences, 20 million more will fall into poverty and 75 million more will be displaced if emissions are not brought under control in 25 years,...  £78 billion losses every year to date...  £360 billion losses every year by 2030...   These are the results of a study released last Friday by Kofi Annan's thinktank, the Global Humanitarian Forum.  Leading climatologists are telling us that mans actions are contributing to climate change, yet 11 of the 12 countries considered least at risk are industrially developed.  Ironically, this new study shows that 98% of people seriously affected, 99% of all we...

Voting UKIP is voting for the worst abusers of the system! Voting UKIP is like turkeys voting for Christmas. See today's TIMES front page for more: 2 of the 3 MEPs they focus on as abuser-MEPs were elected as UKIP MEPs; and they contrast to them Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert, politicians with integrity:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6410920.ece?Submitted=true

Research reveals ending Norwich hospital contract could save £217 million on rent. A report by a Norfolk based economist today revealed new evidence showing the staggering true cost, to the NHS and taxpayers, of a Norwich hospital financed under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Dr Chris Edwards, an economist and a Senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia, today called for the PFI contract of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) to be bought out by the government to save taxpayers £217 million pounds. The hospital is currently due to cost more than £800 million in rent to the first break point in the PFI contract in 2037. Dr Edwards today published the final report of his research, conducted over the last five years, into the funding of PFI financed hospitals, with particular reference to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH), one of the earliest and biggest of the PFI hospitals. Dr Edwards's research revealed: How the NNUH PFI contract should ...

Eastern region Greens issue formal complaint to Euro election returning officer The Green Party in the Eastern region is issuing a formal complaint to the European Elections returning officer about the Lib-Dem party's conduct in the European election campaign. The complaint centres on false claims in a Lib-Dem leaflet that the Green Party has 'no chance' of getting enough votes in the eastern region to elect a Green MEP. This claim contradicts evidence in several recent independent opinion polls which suggest the Green Party is on its way to winning it first Green MEP in the region and several more nationally. THE POLLS: An ICM poll, in the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, May 31, records the Greens likely to win 11% of the vote and EIGHT seats at the European elections on June 4th. The party currently has 2 MEPs in the South East and London. http://tinyurl.com/mhw256 The poll puts the "resurgent" Greens on 11% - and ahead of UKIP on 10%. The ICM poll comes hot on the heels of a...

From East Anglian Daily Times THE Green Party is entering the final days of campaigning for the European Parliament in the firm belief that they will poll enough votes to get an MEP elected for the East of England. Under the list system of proportional representation used for elections to Brussels, the Greens will need around 9% of the total for their lead candidate Dr Rupert Read to win a seat representing Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. In 2004, they polled 5.6% in the East, but the party believes that voters furious with Westminster MPs will give their backing to the Greens. In its manifesto, the party promises to turn the Eastern region into a renewable energy heartland, creating lots of new green jobs in the region in the process and to achieve an international agreement on dangerous climate change. The Greens say they will divert much of the substantial EU transport budget money away from out-of-date road-building schemes, and instead inve...

The MPs' expenses scandal has rocked the foundations of the political establishment at Westminster and shed light on further expenses claims made by MEPs at Brussels.   We in the Green Party here in Eastern Region have made a Clean Campaign Pledge ( http://www.clean-campaign-pledge.net/  ) because we are angry at the extent of the corruption exposed by the Daily Telegraph , and one of our main aims in this election campaign and the next general election is to clean up politics.  But we don't just talk the talk - we walk the walk.  Using figures obtained by the Telegraph , we have calculated the percentage of Westminster MPs from the three main parties who have claimed or tried to claim unnecessary, extravagant or downright dishonest expenses for such items as duck islands, trouser presses and rent or mortgage payments for 'flipped' second homes: Labour MPs - 134/350 = 38% Conservatives MPs - 84/195 = 43% Liberal Democrats MPs - 13/63 = 20% Given that much ...

This election is coming down to a choice between UKIP/BNP on the one hand and the Green Party on the other. So many voters are deserting the main Parties, and rightly so. So the new battle of ideas is between little-Englandism, racism and climate-denial on the one hand, and internationalism, anti-racism and climate-care on the other. This is truly a choice for our times. Check out Tony Juniper's new article on this choice: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/01/green-european-election

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Yesterday the Sunday Telegraph predicted that the Green Party could win eight seats nationally - quadrupling our successes at the last Euro Elections! This is only possible if we get the vote out so please, don't forget on June 4th! Anything you can do to help in the meantime - displaying posters, donating your facebook status to the cause etc - would be a massive help! Thanks everyone - the effort so far has been massive. Just 4 days to go...keep up the good work! 'Vote Green For Clean Politics Poster' (best printed on Green Paper!): http://public.easterngreenparty.fastmail.fm/BW%20Clean%20Politics%20Poster.pdf