Rupert's Read

http://oneworldcolumn.blogspot.com/2010/01/from-norwich-eyewitness-gaza.html  Check out my latest EDP newspaper column, on local here Peter Offord!

Free movement of capital ought to imply free movement of labour. The only people with a right to be able to support having any immigration controls at all are people like me, people such as Greens who do NOT support free movement of capital. It is a cruel joke for free-trade and free-capital-movement fanatics, including the majority of Labour, LibDem, Conservative and UKIP politicians, to call for stricter immigration controls into this country. If you do not believe in complete abolition of immigration controls, then you ought not to believe in free trade and the abolition of capital and exchange controls.   -- Rupert Read Green Party Councillor, Norwich. http://rupertread.net [If you have an urgent email for me while I am away from a regular computer, you may wish to try contacting me instead on rupertread+mob@gmail.com]

UKIP's dog-whistle politics include centrally an ongoing attack on immigration into this country, and pressure on immigrants to assimilate. What I find hilarious about UKIP, however, is that quite a lot of their voters in fact have holiday homes in - or even live permanently in - France or Spain, and do not integrate or assimilate AT ALL, there. It is such a farce to hear such people calling for English to be the required national language of the UK, when these people themselves live for months of the year or even permanently abroad, and can barely even say 'Merci'...   Now, it is of course absolutely clear that there are absolute ecological limits to growth (of the economy, of population) on our finite planet, and (by extension) on each country within that planet, and each locality. It is tragic and deeply revealing to see how many people assume that economic growth can be permanent, while shouting loudly that population growth cannot be. (Do such people secretly love ...

    http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/rupert-read/im-not-racist-but This is my latest article on Open Democracy . -- Rupert Read Green Party Councillor, Norwich. http://rupertread.net [If you have an urgent email for me while I am away from a regular computer, you may wish to try contacting me instead on rupertread+mob@gmail.com]

Where's Your Argument? Informal Logic, Critical Thinking and Argumentation A Two-Day Conference at Manchester Metropolitan University, Cheshire UK Monday and Tuesday April 12th & 13th 2010 Frans van Eemere n on the Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Argument Lars Hertzberg on the Grammar of Inference Don S. Levi on the Informality of Logic Michael Loughlin on the "Evidence Based Medicine" Debate Steven Poole on Unspeak John Powell on Criteria for Good Argument Rupert Read on “Reframing” and “Unspeak”? or Politics Without Propaganda? Jamie Whyte on Bad Thoughts and Worse Policies The conference is free to attend, but you must book a place before April 1st 2010. We can arrange discounted accommodation, for a booking fee of £10 per person For More Information email: whereisyourargument.mmu@googlemail.com The conference is supported by donations from the Aristotelian Society, the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, the Mind Association and the Department of Interdi...

Last Friday, as a local ward Councillor, I went to one of Charles Clarke's community meetings. Much talk from the platform about crime levels in Norwich going down. ...But these are of course reported crime levels. Those in the audience at a meeting like this are presumably more community-spirited than most residents - that's why they turned up. But again and again, when asked, they said that they had NOT reported to the police (or to anyone) the crimes and ASB incidents they then related to us. . . I suspect that crime levels are NOT going down, but may indeed be going up - only REPORTED CRIME is going down. It's true that people tend significantly to overestimate their risk of being victims of crime (this has a lot to do with bad journalism). And it's true that, compared to many other parts of the world, Norwich is a very safe place. But maybe if we were more realistic about how much crime is not reported these days, we would not be so complacent a...

Palestinian girls on wagonload of bombed olive trees, Jabalia, January 2009 (S.Lock) ‘An honest, forthright account full of compassion and insight. It plunges the reader into Gaza.’ Jeremy Hardy The Israeli offensive in Gaza was described by Amnesty international as ‘22 days of death and destruction’. Defying an international press ban, Sharyn Lock’s eye witness blogs became crucial reading for anyone following the conflict. Sharyn’s candid and dramatic accounts, now published as a book, provide an important glimpse behind the media black-out, of Palestinians who face their oppression with courage - and humour Reading & signing of “Gaza: beneath the bombs” by Sharyn Lock Featuring readings by the author and by Ian Gibson Saturday January 23rd 2010, 4.30pm At The Book Hive, 53 London Street, Norwich Refreshments available and donations will be collected for Defend the Rescuers, helping medics in Gaza. For further information, call Helen on 01508 531636 or visit www.thebookhive....

  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeremy-rifkin/the-empathic-civilization_b_416589.html http://empathiccivilization.com/

Current climate policies place society on course for 3.5C global warming and almost 800 ppm CO2 equivalent by 2100. So the latest output by the Climate Action Tracker run by the Potsdam Institute suggests. CO2 concentrations would be over 650 ppm. Existing pledges will not halt emissions growth until 2040, 35 years after the 2015 target called for by the IPCC. By 2020 emissions from all sources would be some 55 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent, up from around 46 today, and just 3 billion less than business as usual Time to change course...  

The authoritative ENDS Report endorses my judgement that the hack at UEA last Autumn casts no doubt on the underlying climate science. Worth a read: http://www.endsreport.com/downloads/ends_report_cru_emails.pdf  

The best way to tackle health inequalities, Mr Cameron, is to tackle all inequality For once, we can agree with the Adam Smith Institute : David Cameron’s new headline plans to “banish health inequalities to history” by introducing “a health premium that targets resources on the poorest areas” will fail . The key reason why it will fail was already brought out implicitly on Left Foot Forward a couple of months ago – it is that you cannot attack major societal inequalities, such as health inequalities, without attacking inequality itself. In other words, by far the most consequential way of reducing health inequalities, it turns out, is to target economic and other societally-central inequalities directly. Not to target absolute poverty or ‘deprivation’, not to pursue economic growth, but simply to reduce inequality (whether by reducing high earnings, or by increasing low earnings). Here is how Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett put this point, in their celebrated recent book (pp. 2...

Evidence-based politics works for the left / for greens. There is simple and unequivocal evidence that reducing inequality improves society for everyone (including the rich), that manmade climate change is destabilising the climate for everyone (including rich countries), etc. etc. The issue is this: what are the issues where directly seeking 'the wisdom of crowds' can help to put the needful policies into place? Well: One such issue, perhaps surprisingly, is reducing inequality and economic growth (i.e. the fact that we don't need any more of it). Ask economists, and most of them will say we still need more economic growth. But ask real people, and it turns out that what they actually want is: not to be worse off than other people (See Solwick and Hemenway, "Is more always better? A survey of positional concerns" (Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation 1998 (vol. 70), 157-83)). If you offer people economic growth as the alleged means of them ...

If as of this summer there is no Party that wins an overall majority, then I hope that national politicians will -  if this happens - show a little of the maturity that many of us local Councillors have of necessity developed concerning this phenomenon, in recent years. The number of Councils in no overall control is, I believe, at an all-time high. Certainly, since Norwich went no overall control a few years ago, coinciding with the rise of the Green Party here, there has I think been a significant improvement in behaviour in the Council chamber. Parties have grown used to working with one another. Not just barracking each other. We have had a Labour minority administration for a few years now, here in Norwich; it has been on balance an OK experience for all concerned, I think. If national politicians are serious about doing politics differently, then they too will learn to live in a 'balanced Parliament' (the term 'hung [Council/Parliament]' is SOOO 20t...

For convenient access to most of my academic / philosophical publications online, goto http://tinyurl.com/ye98czs (or, failing that, to http://philpapers.org/autosense.pl?searchStr=Rupert%20Read ).