Rupert's Read

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you all my readers who are supporters of the Green Party for your continued support and to reflect on all the successes the region has had this year. Having launched our European Elections campaign at the beginning of the year, the momentum has been building. Our members responded generously to our fundraising appeal, raising thousands of pounds. This increases significantly our ability to fight a strong and effective campaign. The local elections in May saw us increase the number of councillors in the region for the eighth year running, and the Green Party now sits on more district authorities in the East than in any other region in Britain. Many Green candidates were only a few votes away from being elected, and we look set to make further gains next May. So far our future looks promising, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us. Our continued success comes amidst fresh reports that the effects of manmade climate change could be...

On the second day of the ‘January’ sales, my girlfriend and I took the bus into the city. I was shocked and disgusted that it now costs £2 to get a single on First from where I live (just inside the Outer ring road) to the city centre. No wonder the bus was mostly empty. Cycling into town next morning, on the third day of the ‘January’ sales, I was struck by the even more dire traffic levels than there had been the day before. The entire central area of Norwich was gridlocked. It is desperately urgent that, with the coming of the long climate crisis, we sort out our transport system. We simply must find ways of encouraging people out of their cars, and onto buses and bikes. But this will obviously never happen while the bus system in cities like Norwich is run by profit-grabbing private companies. The appalling congestion that I have witnessed and that many many others have been caught up in, sometimes for hours, over the past few days, must be the last of its kind. This is why, in 20...

Here is my latest EASTERN DAILY PRESS column, which you can get in print in today's paper. This column was previewed in an earlier incarnation a couple of months ago on this blog. Quite timely, at the Christmas / New Yesar period, I think: http://oneworldcolumn.org/190.html

Goto http://futurefmplatform.podbean.com to listen to the podcast of my Book Review of Martin Bell's 'The truth that sticks' on Norwich's community radio station, 'Future radio'. [It is a little under half way through the programme on Dec. 23 2007]

Further to my posts below on Clegg, check out the letters in yesterday's _Indy_, at http://comment.independent.co.uk/letters/article3266532.ece , on the same topic. The first such letter, 'A bad time for Clegg's liberalism', by myself, takes up the same vein as my posts here and at 'Our Kingdom' (Open Democracy). A little further up in the letters, there is a lovely contrast between the radicalism of Caroline Lucas, Green MEP, and a degree of low horizons from Chris Davies, LibDem, on the question of whether we should move to coal, or alternatively press for lower energy demand, decentralisation of energy sourcing, and big growth in renewables.

Bruce Anderson (See his http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/bruce_anderson/article3258031.ece ‘The environmental debate…’, Mon. 17 Dec.) pretends to be a friend of cool dispassion, and spends a fair bit of his article repeatedly and distastefully making fun of the Dutch man at the heart of the UN climate change negotiations who cared so much about what he was trying to do that he broke down in tears while on the podium. He accuses us greens moreover of being devotees of a “fanatical cult”. But Mr. Anderson himself is a devotee of what truly is a fanatical unreasoning cult: the cult of economic growth. He never stops to ask the question why economic growth is presupposed by so many, including himself, to be ‘a good thing’. The answer to the question of whether economic growth actually is a good thing is: It is when it improves quality of life, and it is not when it does not. And the evidence is getting stronger all the time that since about 1970, economic growth in the West...

http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/2007/12/18/cleggs-liberalism-is-not-the-opposition-we-need/

Sir; Your story (p.4, 17 Dec.) concerning Cameron's call for a 'progressive alliance' between Tories, LibDems and the Green Party reads strangely for a Green residing in East Anglia. Here in Norfolk, for example, the Tory County Council wants to build an incinerator, backs the expansion of Norwich airport, wants to throw hundreds of millions of pounds into building a new road on the north side of Norwich, backs nuclear power, and opposes wind energy planning applications at every opportunity. Such a Party has no Green credentials at all. David Cameron would have to utterly transform his utterly-anti-progressive Party, before his 'alliance' call had any credibility whatsoever. I can't see that ever happening. For, so far as I can see, the Tory Party, in reality, here in Norfolk is much like the Tory Party everywhere else in Britain -- the very opposite of progressive. As -- to be slightly cheeky -- the Letters pages of the _Telegraph_ itself q...

Nick Clegg has beaten Chris Huhne, by just 511 votes, in the LibDem Leadership contest. I knew and worked with Chris Huhne long ago, back as a student in Oxford in the 1980s, when we were both in the SDP there. He always impressed me, and he would have been a serious Leader for the LibDems. But as I detail at http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/voices/read.htm , I left the LibDems 8 years ago, terminally dismayed at their (lack of) direction. The critically important thing, from my perspective as a Green, was that the LibDems, like New Labour and like Cameron’s ‘New Tories’, became thoroughgoingly committed to neo-liberalism and to globalisation. That is why it didn’t really much matter to us whether Clegg or Huhne triumphed today. The differences between them in terms of underlying political economy are negligible. Clegg is marginally more right-wing, marginally less green, and marginally more vacuous – but the key word here is “marginally”. Similarly, that is why Camero...

Of COURSE Parties should be state-funded. If we want a proper democracy that gives fair play to smaller Parties such as the Greens, then we should be willing to pay a little bit in our taxes towards it. The alternative is to have politics dominated by the interests of wealthy individuals who want peerages...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7146705.stm David Cameron has just given the Green Party a lovely piece of free publicity.

Summary: More and more people are talking about how 'Transition Towns' (www.transitionculture.org) might change the world and save us from oil depletion and climate catastrophe. But there is I am afraid one critically important respect in which this bold hope could not possibly come true. It is this: The Transition Towns movement alone cannot save us, because, within the existing economic system, some communities reducing their use of fossil fuels is received by everyone else as a price signal that it is OK to use even more fossil fuels . I.e. For every litre of petrol that (say) Totnes does not use, everyone else in Britain is very slightly incentivised to use more petrol, by the price not going up as much as it otherwise would. Transition Towns alone can only function as demonstration projects. They show what is possible . But in order for them to be part of a movement of movements that actually reduces overall use of fossil fuels, legislation is needed. Leg...

One thing I plan to do if elected MEP for Eastern Region -- is give a substantial portion of my salary 'back', to the Green Party (the local, Regional and national party). THAT will really make a difference, to future generations etc. I don't need all that money -- I would like to help the Green Party's causes with much of my potential-salary, instead.

Further to my post below, about the Bali 'roadmap' toward serious action on dangerous climate change: Looking more closely at the small print, some serious problems emerge. The adaptation-to-dangerous-climate-change fund is generally good, and the call for "deep cuts" in emissions is genuinely groundbreaking -- though the numbers to be put back in, to turn the call for "deep cuts" into concrete and sufficient targets. But the measures to deal with deforestation, an urgent and pressing problem, turn out to be deeply inadequate. Here is what leading Environmental Consultant Deepak Rughani has to say about these: "Ten years after the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, the Bali roadmap ensures that...carbon trading schemes will be expanded which will further harm the climate, accelerate rainforest destruction, and undermine the human rights and land rights of indigenous peoples and other communities in the global South. ...[S]ome of the agreements reached wi...

I feel delight this morning at the news from Bali of agreement at the climate talks ( here ). Delegates have the for the first time ever agreed a 'roadmap' to a new treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol, a roadmap committing the U.S. and other developed countries to making "deep cuts" in their carbon emissions. This morning, there is real hope, for the first time in years, that humankind may pull back from the precipice of climate catastrophe. I am hugely relieved that the U.S. delegation at Bali has seen sense, and that at last all the world's nations are committed to the amount of greenhouse gases going into our atmosphere being deeply cut. This agreement needs to be greatly strengthened and fleshed out over the next 12-24 months, with real numbers attached to it. Our children desperately need us to get a climate agreement together that actually does force deep and fast cuts in emissions. What has happened last night is only a start. But it is, than...

My earlier post on this was obviously worthwhile... Hundreds of thousands of people, including many from East Anglia and from Norwich in particular -- including me --, have voted £50m of lottery cash to walking and cycling schemes across the country ... including £1m to help build a path from Norwich railway station to Whitlingham Country Park . I was really pleased today when I heard the news that the Sustrans Connect 2 scheme, which I have been pushing hard across East Anglia and especially in Norwich , was the victor in the vote. The public have certainly chosen well: this scheme is a brilliant way to get people fitter healthier and happier, and to cut carbon emissions. I am just delighted that everyone’s efforts to get this scheme voted through have been successful! This news makes it all the more vital that the rest of the money needed is now as firmly secured -- in order to build this path and bridge to Whitlingham. I look forward to the day when everyone can walk or cycl...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2225780,00.html My earlier posts (especially http://rupertsread.blogspot.com/2007/10/who-will-lead-on-combatting-dangerous.html ) on the true scale of the UK's carbon emissions see some vindication here, in the lead letter. We are polluting the atmosphere heavily with CO2 -- it is just that we have cleverly exported that pollution to China and India, so that it is harder to see that we are doing it. Further down, see also my friend and fellow Green Councillor Andrew Boswell's excellent letter on the big 'biofools' scam.

Why do people love email so much? My theory is: that it enables them not to have to talk to people. It enables easy avoidance of the 'inconvenience' of actual human contact... Of course, this means that email is often used highly-inappropriately, where talking to someone directly woudl be much quicker / more efficient... "There's this amazing new form of email! It allows you to message the person you want to message _immediately_, and for them to message you back in real time too!! What's more, you can even hear their voice while you do it!" Yes ... The email of the future is here... It's called: the telephone...

Is the Green Party beyond the old ideologies of ‘left’ and ‘right’? The answer I think is complicated. A yes and no story: The most obvious example of an excellent Green idea in the traditional Right is the idea of conserving things. That is what I typically say to self-admitted Conservatives on the doorstep: If you believe in conserving things, then you should vote Green, because unfortunately the Conservative Party has given up on conserving things, and now believes mostly in tearing them up and converting them into trinkets etc. . Whereas the Green Party actually cares about conserving our countryside, our wildlife, our traditional ways of life, in the face of corporate profiteering. [For an intriguing account of some other respects in which the Right can foster genuinely Green thinking, see the always-intriguing John Gray’s book, ‘Beyond the New Right’.] But, speaking of corporate profiteering: To think that the Green Party is ‘beyond’ all left ideas, and that we can accommoda...

Martin Kettle ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2224278,00.html ) thinks the next decade might belong to the LibDems. He admits his evidence is fairly thin: It consists mainly of the fact that Labour has allegedly abandoned the ‘liberal tradition’ in British politics, thus opening up room for the LibDems. But, as several commenters here have pointed out, he does not define ‘the liberal tradition’. It seems to me that the liberal tradition consists of three components. One, political and juridical liberty, has indeed been massively eroded by Labour. A second, economic liberalism, has been massively embraced by New Labour. A third, the maintenance of other liberties of the person, has been eroded in some instances – e.g. via the ban on smoking in enclosed public places –, but it is only a dogmatic liberalism that would insist that economic liberalism and general liberties of the person must be maintained, no matter what the public good that they undercut. If the ban o...

Am I the only one to be fed up with the endless talismanic intonation that we should all be using low-energy lightbulbs? If the government were serious about leading on environmental issues, it would make low-energy lightbulbs compulsory and BAN high-energy lightbulbs ... rather than trying to foist the responsibility and the blame onto the rest of us.

It is Green Party policy to re-nationalise the railways and to build new freight lines. An example would be from the new Outer Harbour at Yarmouth running inland. Where inadequate rail infrastructure exists, adequate infrastructure should be created. If we want to stop monster 60 tonne trucks coming to this country, we are going to have to invest in alternatives. Rail is the most crucial of these. Ruth Kelly recently announced plans for spending £10billion on enhancing rail capacity in July's rail white paper. However, only £200 million was for freight. Whilst capacity enhancement for passengers is absolutely essential, freight must be given a higher priority than it is currently getting. In total, rail investment should be much greater, at least £20-30billion for the next 5 years. This investment could be made by halting the government's climate-dangerous road-building programme. It is worth adding that the monster trucks that they want to bring here [see my post ...

A political Party looks for power. If the Green Party had more power, then ordinary people would have more power. Power over their own lives. Power which turbo-charged neo-liberal capitalism deprives them of Political Parties and governments don't have a huge amount of power, in these globalised days. They -- we -- should strive to attain all and use of it that we can. And thus GENUINELY empower people. Such empowerment surely means people being empowered. Not just sitting around talking and giving themselves a fantasy of control over their own destinies. ACTUALLY having more such control and power. This recent Green Party referendum has created a Leader post. A Leader with more influence and more power -- e.g. votes on GPex, and hopefully more research and secretarial support than our Party can afford at present, as we fundraise on the back of this change that the Party has voted for -- than our Principal Speakers have been allowed. Our Leader being empowered by u...

Working as lead European candidate for the Greens here in Eastern Region Green Party is exhilarating, and it’s getting more so all the time. There are so many new local parties setting up all over the East of England and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting such a wide variety of people. All these people are driven by thought of bringing a real positive difference to their local area by having Green Party members elected to their parishes, councils and (crucially) even to Parliament(s). I’ve witnessed the number of Green councillors in the East of England grow ever year since 1999. That’s why I know we’re on the brink of something very special here, and I am proud to be a part of it. The excitement comes from knowing how quickly success can come when there are dedicated Green Party members, campaigning hard for the values they believe in. In Norwich , where I am a city councillor, the first two Green councillors were elected in 2002. Now, just five years later, we have 10 city councill...

60 tonne "Monster Trucks" may be coming to the roads of East Anglia... The European Parliament has considered a report on freight logistics which failed to rule out the use of 60 tonne trucks across EU borders and left open the possibility that this could happen without Member States giving consent for their borders to be crossed. As well as the obvious dangers to communities in East Anglia on recognised routes, the use of Sat. Nav. equipment and drivers not familiar with local roads will inevitably cause serious disruption when these huge and ultra-heavy trucks take a wrong turn and get stuck. Green MEP Caroline Lucas has warned that the failure of the EU Parliament to rule out the use of 60 tonne trucks could lead to them being used across the EU. In my view too, there can be no role for monster trucks thundering up and down our roads, guzzling fuel, damaging infrastructure as they do so. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: Do we really want these meg...

Readers of 'Rupert's read' have for the next few days a great opportunity to improve facilities for pedestrians and cyclists at no direct cost to themselves. All they -- all you -- have to do is to vote for the Sustrans Connect2 project in the Big Lottery Fund's £5 Million giveaway. The public is being asked to choose between four projects. All four are good, but one is somewhat influenced by the fact that only the Sustrans project will bring any direct benefit to Norfolk: specifically, through the construction of a path for cycling and walking to Whitlingham County Park, from Norwich train station. However, the Sustrans project is a national project, whereas the other three are each in one specific location. Furthermore, the Sustrans project is clearly the most green and sustainable of the four, and is particularly good in that it will support a large number of small projects around the country, rather than just being one mega-project. The Sustrans project...

http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/2007/12/04/green-party-embraces-new-leadership-model/ My latest, post- the referendum.

Norwich rally for action to stop dangerous climate change! Come and join us at Pottergate on the pathway and the green outside St.Gregory’s Church, at Noon precisely, on Saturday 8 th December. Norwich Green Party is organising a rally in solidarity with people who are gathering on this day in London and in every major city around the world to call for governments to take serious action NOW to rein in dangerous manmade climate change. For those who would like to be in London on the big march there, but who for whatever reason cannot be, this is the perfect opportunity to make clear your thoughts and feelings on this issue. Bring banners or just bring yourselves to this short rally. There will be brief speeches from Cllr. Adrian Ramsay, Green Party Parliamentary candidate for Norwich South, and from Cllr. Rupert Read, lead Green MEP-candidate for East Anglia; and then an open mike. [Note: Norwich Green Party's annual Christmas Fair will this year be held at St G...

http://matthewsellwood.blogspot.com/ Check out Matt Sellwood's return to blogland one last time, calling for the Party to move on from the leadership issue, now that it has been settled. Amen!