Rupert's Read

My new piece at liberalconspiracy.org - please check it out!

I held my place this year - so still 8th! Good to see brightgreenscotland.org enter the rankings at No. 2...I post articles there fairly often so check it out if you haven't already! Full results: http://www.totalpolitics.com/blogs/index.php/2010/08/25/top-25-green-blogs-1

Regular readers of my articles will no doubt have noticed that I sometimes use words like ‘epochal’ and ‘history-making’ when describing Green Party achievements. I use these ‘hyperbolic’ phrases to reflect reality. They are a reflection of the massive steps the Green Party has taken in recent years, and in anticipation of future milestones to be passed not too far further down the road. For example: In the last decade we’ve had our first MEPs elected and re- elected, and our first MSPs. This year we finally returned our first MP to Westminster. Now we stand on the threshold of an occasion every bit as historic as those achievements, if not more so: In the local elections on Sept 9th (See here for why these elections are happening), the Green Party can capitalise on years of hard work by becoming the largest party on Norwich City Council (we are at present just 2 seats behind Labour) and potentially then forming the first-ever UK Green Principal Authority administration (We may well em...

We reject these cuts as simply malicious ideological vandalism, hitting the most vulnerable the hardest. Join us in the fight. It is time to organise a broad movement of active resistance to the Con-Dem government’s budget intentions. They plan the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s, which will wreck the lives of millions by devastating our jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services. The government claims the cuts are unavoidable because the welfare state has been too generous. This is nonsense. Ordinary people are being forced to pay for the bankers’ profligacy. The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VATto 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBTpeople and pensioners. Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden. The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest. Interna...

Colleagues interested in the success and growth of the Party may wish to read my 3-part 'series' of posts on this topic, over at BrightGreen: http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2010/07/green-shoots-of-a-different-kind/ http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2010/08/more-members-more-councillors-more-green-success/ http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2010/08/democratising-and-professionalising-our-party-further/

  My newest on OPEN DEMOCRACY'S 'OUR KINGDOM' project, on the huge and exciting opportunity offered by the Norwich local elections: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/rupert-read/could-green-norwich-change-local-rule-across-uk . [If you're commenting, do comment THERE rather than here!]

There is an interesting blog today by Steve Keen, which I think explains quite a lot about our current predicament. Go to www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/ to read it, as well as www.nakedcapitalism.com/ to see it reproduced on another very good, and wider, blog. Keen refers to the situation in Australia, where he says government debt is 5.5% of GDP and private debt is over 150% of GDP. Of course both figures are very different in the UK and the US, but I think his argument still holds. [Hat-tip: Tom Lines]

To the Editor,   RP ;        Steve Platt ('Plattitudes', June/July) is plain wrong on several aspects of the aftermath of the General Election: 1) It isn't true that AV will make it "even harder for minor parties to get elected". Rather, by disposing of the wasted vote argument and of the need for tactical voting, AV gives all smaller parties a foot in the door. AV, if it comes in, will certainly be of great benefit to the Green Party. 2) Platt's attempt to get the Left falling in line behind Labour is, given this, extremely crude. At this election, the Labour Party suffered a massive defeat; while the Green Party got its first MP elected. Platt claims that "when it comes to the next Westminster election, everyone knows it will have to be Labour or bust." No - when it comes to the next Westminster election, especially if we have AV, for the first time in ages socialists won't have to hold their noses and vote for dreadful New Lab...

We are launching our Manifesto in an hour's time for the crucial local elections here in Norwich, now exactly ONE MONTH away. http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/05-08-2010-norwich-byelection-open-council.html Come join us at the Forum!   Here are the top headlines from the Manifesto: Foreword The Green Party in Norwich is ready to form Britain's first Green council, by taking over from Labour, to run Norwich City Council in a new way. Our aim will be to create a fairer and healthier low carbon city where every voice counts. Addressing social and environmental injustice lies at the heart of our agenda and, if residents in Norwich elect more Green councillors than councillors from any other political party on 9th September, we can begin to work towards a more just and secure future for the city. The changes we want to make will not happen overnight, and our immediate focus will be on minimising the impact of the cuts being demanded by the Conservative / ...

News at One today on BBC R4. The main items: The vast floods in Pakistan (No mention of manmade climate change, which will make such events progressively more common - until the glaciers in the Himalaya have melted away, after which the sub-continent will be in permanent drought). The growing forest fire menace in Russia (No mention of manmade climate change, despite the all-time record temperatures of the first half of this year which will have contributed strongly to these fires. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703309704575413244052775582.html ) Humungous iceberg breaking off from Greenland, two thirds the size of the Isle of White. At last, a mention of manmade climate change - the reporter reminds us of the record-breaking temperatures of 2010 - but tells us that a leading oceanographer remarked that "It isn't clear that global warming is to blame" for the iceberg breaking off... ...God save us all. If this is th...

  The below is instructive. What is totally missing from the analysis are two massive downsides of this strategem: 1) That acting in ways such as this confirms the electorate's perception of the Democrats as unprincipled, as 'politicians not statesmen', etc. - it cancels out any efforts that they might be making (and that Obama did make) to rehabilitate politics itself. This is bad news for politics in general and for the Democrats in particular. 2) That the danger of this strategem is not only that it COULD lead to the far Right (e.g. Palin, following Bush) being elected, but that, whether it does or not, it is LIKELY to lead to the agenda moving Right. If Tea Party people become 'normalised', that is a disaster. "Sure, you might be forced to debate a reactionary nut job. But this only makes you look more reasonable." But, over time, you look less and less reasonable, and what really is reasonable looks more and more 'extreme', as t...

I will donate £50 to Norwich Green Party but only if 50 other people will do the same. - Rupert Read, Norwich Green Party Fundraiser. Deadline to sign up by: 31 st August 2010 More details We want you to help us accomplish something extraordinary... Norwich Green Party is this week formally launching its campaign to become the largest party on Norwich City Council, having been just two seats behind Labour for the last two years. This would be the first time that the Greens ever became the largest party on a Principal Authority Council! Please help us attain our target within the next three weeks! Please pledge; if 50 people join me in making this pledge, then that will raise £2500... Visit: http:/...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/aug/04/balance-sheet-on-voting-lib-dem   John Kampfner tells us that "whenever I get the wobbles [about having voted Lib Dem and thus helped put a Con-Dem coalition into power] … I recall two words – Iraq and banks". Would that be the same Iraq almost every Conservative MP voted to go to war against, David Cameron included? And would those be the same banks now profiting hand over fist from George Osborne's slashing of corporation tax? You've come a long way, Johnny, from being a socialist to being a de facto Cameroon. What a shame you lacked the vision to look beyond the soggy centre, to the only party that consistently opposed the war and the only party that has called for the genuine nationalisation or remutualisation of the banks. Two words that John Kampfner should have considered, and should now consider more carefully: Green Party.   C'llr. Rupert Read    Green, Norwich

  Caroline Lucas has been quoting this remarkable book a lot lately. It has also come under attack from various parts of the political spectrum, mostly the Right. Here is my response to the attacks, which may be of interest:   http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/rupert-read/philosophical-and-political-implications-of-spirit-level-response-to-gerry-ha   If you want a primer on Wilkinson and Pickett's joint book   The Spirit Level , then the   pieces here   are worth a look (one by me). And for a comprehensive set of responses to their critics, including a pre-emptive strike against Gerry Hassan's recent   piece on OK   this is   all you need . (It is worth noting too that Wilkinson and Pickett's work is peer-reviewed; that of their critics isn't.) For me as a philosopher, the thing about   The Spirit Level   that is most exciting is that as a study of the pervasive harms of inequality it strongly suggests that J...

I had a powerful dream last night. In the dream, everyone was glued to screens watching a film about an impending/unfolding disaster. Some viewers dimly realised that the film was true, was, in real-time, and was about their actual lives, their actual world. Some people found themselves dragged away from the screen-addiction when they realised that it was true: the dream was reality, and the calamity was fast coming to engulf them. What the calamity in fact was, as it was starting to be experienced - what made the viewers realise that the viewing had to stop - was lots of people driven to despair by societal breakdown produced by ecological disaster turning on each other and on their richer neighbours. In other words: Our heads were rudely jerked away from the screens we were fixed to, that is, by the hordes of desperate violent people charging our way. We then started peeling away and running away ourselves. In some of our minds, we hunted rapidly for solution...

Norwich Green Party today launched its bid to become the largest party on the City Council by announcing its list of candidates for the local elections to be held across the city on Thursday 9th September. Five of the candidates have previous experience as a City Councillor, one of these with the Labour Party and one with the Liberal Democrats.  Graeme Gee, a former Labour Councillor [1], will be standing as a Green Party candidate in Mancroft ward . He said: "The Green Party is the party with the ideas and the passion to guide Norwich through these tough economic times. I am pleased to be standing for the council again with a party that will really look out for the interests of Norwich residents. I have already been out talking to people about the issues that matter to them and I'm looking forward to being able to work on their behalf if elected." Paul McAlenan is a builder and former Liberal Democrat councillor who lives with his family in...

Check out my new post on this: http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2010/08/more-members-more-councillors-more-green-success/

This _good_ news, from the excellent people over at Ecological Internet: - It is reported Ecuador will be compensated for leaving oil reserves in Yasuni National Park untouched. This is a major victory for Ecuador, the rainforest movement, and Ecological Internet - who was the first to campaign internationally on the issue. From Earth's Newsdesk and the Rainforest Portal, projects of Ecological Internet (EI) http://www.ecoearth.info/newsdesk/ | http://www.rainforestportal.org/ Ecuador's government announced today it has reached a deal with the United Nations Development Program under which donor countries will compensate Quito for leaving oil reserves untouched in a large primary rainforest filled national park. Yasuni National Park - covering some 9,820 km2, or about the size of Massachusetts - is thought to be one of Earth's most biodiversity rich sites and is also home to several nomadic Indian tribes. Yasuni's preservation (total protection, not "sustainable...