Rupert's Read

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/31/barclay-sovereignwealthfunds Barclays bosses are paying 16% interest to Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to hang onto their bonuses - disgraceful high-risk behaviour (high-risk, because it may commit them to unrepayable debt) strengthening the case for nationalising the banks, as this blog has consistently argued for some time now. Why should Barclays customers -- and the banking system that we all depend on, and that could hardly take another bank tottering -- have to put up with this kind of high-risk profiteering?  

Caroline Lucas, Green Party Leader, appeared on BBC World Service's One Planet programme yesterday alongside psychologist Oliver James and US economist Peter Morici. The debate centred on capitalism and dangerous climate change, and looked in detail at steady state economics. You can listen again to the programme online at BBC iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/w0bv189y . Strongly recommended!

http://www.forumforthefuture.org/greenfutures/articles/Zero_hour_for_a_new_capitalism This piece by Jonathon Porritt does a powerful job of bringing together the climate and credit crunches.  Recommended.

Eastern Region Green Party is backing a report issued this week by the Parliamentary Transport Select Committee entitled "Ending the Scandal of Complacency: Road Safety beyond 2010". The Report calls for a much bolder strategy to address road safety calling it the "major public health problem of our age." As well as the human tragedies involved, the Committee found that the total cost of road crashes in the UK was a staggering £18 billion a year. Green Party Councillors in Eastern Region and across the country have been active in calling for much better road safety to cut the annual toll of death and injury on the roads and to make roads and pavements much safer for walking and cycling. Greens believe that a safer road environment will encourage and enable people to walk and cycle more who are currently intimidated by traffic volumes and speeds.   Green Councillors in Norwich successfully won backing for a city wide 20mph zone that is to be triall...

People are asking me whether I am still backing McKinney (the Green Party candidate) rather than Obama, for the U.S. Presidency. Here is the answer: I am still much keener on McKinney. But, due to the media etc., her campaign hasn't taken wing as one would hope. And Obama has been rather better over the past couple of months -- the betrayals [detailed in earlier posts ] that occured a little earlier this year seem to have stopped. So: I wish Obama luck. In a choice between him and McCain (e.g. in 'swing states'), I would now strongly be tempted to vote for him -- and, between the two, I very much hope he wins. I am going to a 'Election Night' Party next Tuesday night with a bunch of Obamamaniacs: should be fun! My latest prediction for the U.S Presidency: it will not be close. This will be a Democratic landslide. The biggest Democrat victory since 1964. The really interesting and important question now is what happens in the Senate. The Democrats coul...

Check out this brilliant piece by the world's premier green/ecological economist, Herman Daly, commissioned by the Sustainable Development Commission earlier this year: points the way beyond the credit crunch to an economy that actually works for us... Do spread this word! http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/Herman_Daly_thinkpiece.pdf

This blog has previously pointed out some of the unbelievably ostrich-like Tories in Parliament, who still don't believe in manmade climate change, even as we get New Orleans re-devastated, and the risk of human civilisational collapse from runaway climate change grows with the melting of the Arctic and the beginnings, terrifyingly, of large-scale methane release.  Check this out: here is a gentleman from the DUP, one Sammy Wilson, making the same garbage arguments, holding up progress on this most vital of all issues: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2008-10-28a.733.3#g774.2   In a future post, I will set out some of the appalling UKIP nonsense against manmade climate change. Watch this space... All these right-wing Parties are alike: you just cannot trust them, to have any climate-sanity...