Rupert's Read

THE COPENHAGEN CONFERENCE ON FOOD SECURITY http://www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/plan_b_updates/2009/update84 By Lester R. Brown For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely. For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry. This climate change conference is about all these things, and many more, but in a very fundamental sense, it is a conference about food security. We need not go beyond ice melting to see that the world is in trouble on the food front. The melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets is raising sea level. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, sea level would rise by 23 feet. Recen...

See the MediaGuardian: http://bit.ly/3ZIj67 'Sidewiki changes everything'. Now _we_ can start to take back the power from the PR people... ____________________________________________________ Read what Google has to say: http://tinyurl.com/lkbxbw And when you're done, and have set this up on your computer (it will take you less than a minute - the privacy sacrifice is a relatively small price to pay, in my view), go visit http://www.nestle.com and see what we've done to Nestle's website...! See also the sidewiki started I've up on The Sun homepage, e.g.: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ ...Let's 'get out there' and start having fun! There are _plenty_ of webpages worth targetting... Suddenly, 'other people's' websites are open to us as they have never been before... The web becomes the interactive space it was supposed to be...

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE EMERGENCY NORWICH PUBLIC MEETING WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2009 7.30pm United Reformed Church, Princes St, Norwich (near Cinema City) Prof Kevin Anderson Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research This internationally renowned climate scientist will outline the action needed to prevent climate disaster. Ann Pettifor, New Economics Foundation Former head of Jubilee 2000 Drop the Debt’ campaign Others will describe how we can change to a low-carbon economy which will create jobs and benefit us all. Discussion on how to help this and how to press politicians to do more locally, nationally and at Copenhagen. Organised by Campaign Against Climate Change, supported by FOE, Greenpeace members, Transitions Norwich NORWICH CLIMATE MARCH SATURDAY 21 NOVEMBER 2009 Ahead of the crucial UN climate summit in Copenhagen, millions of people around the world are marching to demand a safe climate future for all Assemble Chapelfield Gardens 12.00 A colourful, family-fr...

This is really kinda fun and clever... You can make one for your friends too...click the link! Crush Global Warming!

These are brill speakers! Do come to this event! I'll be there; looking forward to it a lot:   On the subject of Global Warming, addressees may be interested in an event taking place in Norwich this wk.  No climate event of this significance has been staged in Norwich since the Climate Public Mtg at the Assembly House in April 2001, hosted by Friends of the Earth - this is the final push before the U.N Climate talks in Copenhagen!            NORWICH  ACTION  ON  THE  CLIMATE  EMERGENCY   PUBLIC  MEETING     UNITED  REFORM  CHURCH,  PRINCES  STREET                         7.30  WEDNESDAY  NOVEMBER  11TH   Speakers:   PROFESSOR KEVIN ANDERSON  Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Cha...

The MPs expenses scandal is all about economic inequality. It would never have happened if MPs hadn't been trying to 'earn' as much as others such as headmasters, managers, etc. For narrowly political reasons, MPs were reluctant to award themselves salary increases. So for years they covertly took 'pay increases' via the route of massive expenses packages. MPs should not earn way more than the average salaried person that they represent. This is totally inappropriate, because it leads to MPs getting out of touch with their constituents. But equally, it is dangerous for MPs to earn far less than similar or lower status professionals and private sector workers. If they do, it risks us losing some talented would-be-MPs to these other professions, and it increases the risk of MPs becoming corrupt - being easier to bribe. So, we are in a cleft stick. But we wouldn't be, in a more equal society. We need a society where MPs can be paid the average salary in their...

  Reacting to former UK Independence Party Eastern Region MEP Tom Wise's guilty plea today at his trial for false accounting and money laundering, Dr Rupert Read, Councillor for Norwich and former European election lead candidate, said:   "If only Tom Wise had had the basic decency to admit that he is an expenses fraudster a few months back, I surely would have been elected Green MEP for Eastern England , in June. For this admission would have destroyed the public's sense of UKIP as a Party that could potentially stand up against expenses fraud.   "As it is, his having held out for four years before admitting guilt, wasting huge amounts of public money on the legal process in the meantime, has meant that once again UKIP have two MEPs in Eastern England, managing to hold onto a second MEP by narrowly defeating me, by just one per cent, on June 4th.   "It is shameful that UKIP managed to get in on an 'expenses sc...