Rupert's Read

I will be speaking on Wednesday at the UEA Festival of Resistance...do join us if you can! UEA FESTIVAL OF RESISTANCE: Timetable – Wednesday 1 st June Union House 1.31 12:00 – 13:15: Education Not For Sale - With Mark Bergfeld NUS NEC (pc) and speaker from the NUT (National Union of Teachers). 13:30 – 14:45: One Million Green Jobs – with Rupert Read , UEA Lecturer and former local Green Party Councillor. Arts Building 3.01 15:00 – 16:15: Media and the New Social Movements – With Jan Ainsley (Future Radio Presenter). 16:30 – 17:30: FILM SHOWING – Egypt: Inside the Revolution – Film showing of the new documentary by John Rees about his experiences of the Egyptian Revolution, and its implications to the broader issue of Imperialism and the Middle East today. Followed by questions and discussion. Lecture Theatre 3 18:00 - STOP THE CUTS: WHERE NEXT FOR THE MOVEMENT? – Rally with Billy Hayes (General Secretary of the CWU), Ian Gibson (Former Local MP...

Please join us for this fascinating presentation where I will be appearing as a guest speaker: Material Inequality in Britain Based on “The Spirit Level: why more equal societies almost always do better” by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett Martin Wilkinson (Richard's brother) will give a presentation on the book and lead a discussion on equality, both in terms of the Quaker Testimony to Equality and more generally on how we in Britain should respond to the message of the book. (Rupert Read will then offer a short philosophical, political and Quakerly response.) Saturday 25 th June, 2-5pm at Friends Meeting House, Upper Goat Lane, NORWICH, NR2 1EW All welcome – entry free For further details contact Teresa Belton 01603 465851, teresa.belton@ntlworld.com

A 'Cafe Conversation' led by me, today, Saturday, 28 May, 3 pm, at Aladdin's Cafe, Magdalen Street, Norwich.  All welcome! In politics, at work, when making major personal decisions, the values you hold dear determine what you do. Often, people and organisations are unaware of the values they hold. This conversation will be about getting clearer about (y)our values using techniques derived from the latest philosophical, psychological and linguistic research (which I will be drawing on in the book I am writing on this: see www.greenwordsworkshop.org ).  

I will be speaking at the launch of this excellent new book by Andrew Pearmain - please join us if you can. The Politics of New Labour: A Gramscian Analysis Andrew Pearmain Full of excellent research, intellectual promise and visionary concept... an important analysis not merely of the near futile decade of Blairism but of the failure of the wider Labour movement and indeed the entire British left’ – Tribune, 3/5/11 This book is an attempt ‘to think in a Gramscian way’ about the curious political phenomenon of New Labour. It is written partly in retort to those people at the heart of the New Labour project who have cited Gramsci as a source of inspiration for their ideas. Pearmain argues that New Labour makes a far better object than agent of Gramscian analysis. Part I discusses Gramsci’s influence on left thinking in Britain – culminating in the 1980s debates in Marxism Today on Thatcherism and the ‘Forward march of Labour halted’. It shows how arguments loosely based on these debates...

Read up from the bottom:   RupertRead RupertRead #Israel now mobilising planes to help 'contain' protests. It's time for a #noflyzone over the #Golan , West Bank, #Gaza ...   RupertRead RupertRead @ @NickKristof Yes, you got it right. Check out @RupertRead for @JulietteHarkin 's reporting from #Qalandiya .   RupertRead RupertRead I have seen plastic bullets fired (in Northern ireland). But I never heard live-fire (?) before today. Eerie, to hear down the phone. Terrifying 4 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete   RupertRead RupertRead #Israel behaving similarly to #Bahrain , #Gaddafi , #Assad ... Is this the new #intifada ? It was promised for #May15 : it has begun... 4 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete » RupertRead RupertRead I heard on the phone Israel firing on protesters (unarmed) at #Qalandiya . My brave wife @julietteharkin is there to report on this. 4 hours ago Favorite Reply Delete   » RupertRead RupertRead The # ArabSpring ...

To the Rt. Hon Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister: I am delighted to see that you are proceeding with Lords reform. We Britons have been awaiting this for over a century. It is vital to our being (becoming) a democratic country. But: Lords reform might be severely hampered if it is perceived to be bringing in a variation of the very system that the British electorate has just voted down. This makes AV-Plus or STV (which is simply AV in multi-member constituencies) extremely undesirable as potential methods for use in elections to the upper house. See my recent piece here explaining this: http://www.libdemvoice.org/the-independent-view-how-to-implement-full-lords-reform-now-that-the-referendum-is-lost-24070.html  .  So I was dismayed to see that you are contemplating...STV as your preferred method. This is inviting contempt from the media, the public, and from the Lords themselves!: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/may/11/plans-reform-house-of-lord...

My 1st ever piece [a guest post, obviously!] on LibDemvoice!: http://www.libdemvoice.org/the-independent-view-how-to-implement-full-lords-reform-now-that-the-referendum-is-lost-24070.html

  GAINS FOR GREENS: Significant gains for Green party in parts of the Eastern Region as voters reject the main parties to vote Green.   Highlights: Norwich Greens set a new record for the largest Green group even in the Region; Mid-Suffolk Greens become the official Opposition on the Council; Greens break through onto new Councils in St.Alban's and Kings Lynn and West Norfolk .   The Green party gained seats and votes in many areas of the Eastern Region of England on Thursday/Friday as voters rejected the main parties in favour of voting for local Green Party Councillors.   In Norwich the Green Party romped home with increased majorities in all cases, increasing the amount of Green-held seats on the council by one to a total of fifteen, with Jo Henderson taking Thorpe Hamlet from the Liberal Democrats with 41% of the vote, (1328).(1)   In Mid Suffolk the Green party held Mendlesham and Onehouse, with increased majoriti...

So: the margin was slightly huger even than I had predicted. Let the post-mortems begin. Because we need to know how to do much better next time. The next referendum – on PR – might be as little as 5 years away… And we should be pressing immediately for PR for the upper house, which would be a historic accomplishment. (On this, see my guest piece appearing tonight on LibDemVoice.)   Let's get some obvious and crucial points out of the way first:   ·          Clegg was of course an albatross around the Yes side's neck. ·          The right-wing-press decided that it wasn't going to tolerate AV, and that made a huge impact. ·          The No side had more money (it hasn't declared how much more – that's exactly how we know that it had more, because otherwise it would certainly have declared otherwise), and money buys votes in a '...

Check out my latest BRIGHTGREEN article, '4 questions and a funeral': http://brightgreenscotland.org/index.php/2011/05/bin-ladens-killing-four-questions-and-a-funeral/

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE REFORM CAT VIDEO!: http://www.youtube.com/user/thepeoplesayyes#p/a/f/0/HiHuiDD_oTk  In terms of online, now, in the AV referendum, this is where it's at...

The sensational #Yes2AV piece that made the OBSERVER frontpage today happen: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/01/av-referendum-huhne-lucas-denham