Rupert's Read

[Note: this is a guest post by Roddy Newman ] Green Party MP Caroline Lucas has been criticised for supporting Paul McCartney's 'meat free Monday' climate change campaign, but her critics are simply ignorant, because the world's leading authority on climate change, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told "The Observer" in 2008 that people ought to give up meat one day a week for climate change reasons, and then ought to reduce their meat consumption further: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/07/food.foodanddrink As the above "Observer" article points out, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has stated that global meat consumption will double by the middle of the century, because the world's growing middle class in for example China, are using their extra income to buy more meat, and FAO said in its now famous book length 2006 report, "Livest...

Green thinking We at Green House cannot entirely agree with Bronwen Maddox when she says that the recent Prospect think tank awards demonstrated that "plunging markets and revolution have prompted radical new thinking." In one sphere at least that verdict seems questionable: it was noticeable that no green-leaning think tank featured on any of the shortlists mentioned for any of the awards—a disappointing state of affairs given the central importance of environmental policy to the current UK government (rhetorically at least) and to any serious approach to our current problems which looks beyond the short term. The award winners, admirable though their work is, work very much within the established terms of the debate, at a time when the fundamental premises of capitalism are being called into question very widely and when talk of economic collapse is not confined to the tents outside St Paul's. It was this failure of the political commentariat, which pro...

Statement from Eastern England Green Party:   On behalf of Eastern Region Green Party, the Regional Co-ordinator Dr. Rupert Read [that's me!] said: " The Government is ratcheting up the rhetoric ahead of tomorrow's strikes. But it is the Government's own poor handling of public sector pensions that remains a serious concern for workers across the public sector - it looks like we are still some way from the government offering a genuinely fair deal. "I know that the unions will now want to work even more closely with Government to reach a settlement, as well as to improve community relations and ensure maximum support from the wider public. But time has almost run out. "I regret the disruption caused by industrial action and feel confident that, nowadays, union leaders only resort to the strike option in special circumstances. But if public sector employees continue to feel that the Government is not listening and the need for action remain...

Any job is unsafe in the line of fire So, the Coalition want it to be easier to hire and fire people ("Cameron's war on employment rights", 23 November). This is a deceptive piece of spin. What they mean is simply making it easy to fire people. We are given a long list of measures that not only make it easier to fire workers, but to do so with impunity, however arbitrary the decision. That is why big business wants these legal changes; and that is why this government will give them what they want. This has nothing to do with improving the economy, let alone to do with reducing unemployment. It has everything to do with businesses being empowered and workers being disempowered. Dr Tom Greaves Dr Rupert Read   [Scroll down on this page to see the letter on the INDY's website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-newspapers-feed-the-greed-for-fame-6267628.html  ]

I'll be presenting Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, 2010) at the Manchester Metropolitan University this Saturday. All are welcome, at this research-engagement event that Phil Hutchinson and I are organising!

  Sir, As you report (“ Party funding reforms appear doomed ”, November 22), reaction from the three main parties to the committee on standards in public life’s proposals to tightly restrict individual donors’ donations and to introduce a “pay per vote” scheme to make up the shortfall has been rapid – and negative. It appears they would rather keep their access to soft money from super-rich individuals, corporations and trades unions than gain access to a large permanent stream of public money. This telling turn of events points to the broader issue, largely missing from the CSPL approach: the corrosive effect of the dominance of our politics by the interests of a small wealthy elite (for example, half of Conservative funding now comes from financial interests). This elite is holding our politics to ransom, at the very time when economic and climate crises point to the need for radical change. The case for radical party-funding reform, in t...

Jack Guest is a former student of mine. This film is WELL worth watching! (I enjoyed it a lot)   An Inconvenient Truth 2 World Premiere Three-part series starts 7 December 8.30pm on Community Channel Jack Guest, an extraordinary young filmmaker from Cheltenham . After graduating in philosophy and politics, Jack single-handedly funded, directed and produced a film to address the impact of climate change and uncover workable solutions.   Inspired by former United States Vice President Al Gore's 2006 documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth ', Jack travels by boat to Sweden, a country aiming to break its dependency on oil by 2020 , to speak with leading politicians, scientists and entrepreneurs. Jack also meets with families committed to reducing their impact on the environment and visits an eco-village completely dependent on renewable resources.   Jack says: "In no uncertain terms we face a huge problem on planet earth and An Inconvenient Truth 2 looks at turning that prob...

By Rupert Read, with a response by Brian Heatley Summary : Last month's developments, including the massive crash in silver and copper prices (which have, I believe, come about because people, including crucially industrialists, are realising that there just isn't going to be the economic activity to use them), presage, in my view, the next stage of the economic crisis. The world is waking up to what may be the end of growth, certainly in the ‘developed’ (sic.) world. If there is growth now in some sectors of the world’s economy, it is likely to be matched or outweighed by decline elsewhere. Meanwhile, a huge potential disaster is looming and growing in the world, as money itself comes under strain... I predict massive corporate debt crises soon, to rival the growing sovereign debt crises. But the fiat money system itself will likely be in the firing line within a year or two… This piece explores speculatively some of the scenarios for the next few years which are not makin...

[I'm pleased to have the opportunity to post this piece by BBC freelance journalist Jonathan Kent; I realy like it.]   Growing up, did you ever play Monopoly or Risk?   Did you ever get to a point where you simply picked up the board, chucked the pieces in the air and told everyone 'this is a stupid game'? I did and I feel I've reached the same point now with the much bigger game that we've been suckered into; mindless materialism. Suckered because it's a game that creates 99 losers for every winner and for 150 years the traditional left has been playing along, simply trying to ensure that more people win.   The time has come to stop playing an unwinnable game and play a different one entirely. Looking back 150 years to an age when working people had been driven off the land and into the cities, when live expectancy was short, when malnutrition and slum housing were rife, when education was accessible only the a minority, when social se...

I can't believe it! This is not a man, somehow, who I had thought would die. :-( An important thinker, a big big influence on me as on so many others, and someone who (each time I had the privilege to interact with him directly) was unfailingly thoughtful and decent. http://www.feasta.org/2011/11/15/in-memorium-richard-douthwaite READ his brilliant book, ‘THE GROWTH ILLUSION’.

  For the first time ever, an NHS hospital is going to be taken over by a private company, it has been announced this morning: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/72899cf2-0b2c-11e1-ae56-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1dHwr4IS2  . The hospital in question is Hinchingbrooke, in Cambridgeshire here in the Eastern Region of England. In my capacity as Co-ordinator of the Eastern Region Green Party, I want to say plainly this morning that it's just plain wrong to allow a private company to make profits out of people's ill-health. This is a new stage in the privatisation of the NHS; we are losing Britain's most-loved institution, before our very eyes. I have been to Hinchingbrooke and have stood with the workers and local people who have been campaigning for years to stop this NHS hospital from falling into private hands. Successive governments - first the so-called 'Labour' Party, and now the Conservative-LibDem Coalition - have done nothing to secure the future of Hinchingbr...

I am proud to be giving the 'Address' at this event. Do join us!:   THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, NORWICH   SERVICE TO COMMEMORATE   WORLD DAY OF REMEMBRANCE FOR ROAD TRAFFIC VICTIMS   Sunday 20 th November 2011 at 3.30pm     The United Nations' Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020   From Global Remembrance to   Global Action across the Decade