Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015

Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 (in order of appearance) Green Party GLA candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 introduction by Caroline Allen (co-chair London Federation of Green Parties) and Laura Davenport https://youtu.be/KqMgh4On1sM Caroline Russell (@highburyonfoot)https://youtu.be/7NJUPHdUzgQ Siân Berry (@sianberry)https://youtu.be/LqJfJi8BEAs Peter Underwood https://youtu.be/yS6hZHUeAb4 Benali Hamdache (@GreenBenali)https://youtu.be/BGDnJuZ6AN0 Noel Lynch https://youtu.be/RH6XdYFaQjs Andrea Carey Fuller https://youtu.be/F_RYd6JVzZs Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 questions: alliances? https://youtu.be/1z9FgfDcqm0 Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 questions: strategy https://youtu.be/c_qqZiR6Yz4 Rashid Nix (@RashidNix) https://youtu.be/Pa_aodZGoFo Jonathan Bartley (@jon_bartley)https://youtu.be/O1AgfBsDlFI Barry Cooper's statement Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 https://youtu.be/OMdieNJ-pAU RoseMary Warrington https://youtu.be/5b1iKMsdSa8 Shahrar Ali https://youtu.be/hWF__JsxEMs Michael Gold https://youtu.be/2mnONflVUbI Tom Chance (@tom_chance) https://youtu.be/KMR81GMTTBQ Dee Searle, Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015. Dee Searle, was unable to be present in person, her statement was read by Jane Forbes.https://youtu.be/t35IcEE4g9E Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 questions, housing https://youtu.be/wUh6xQQVdzw Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 questions, policiing https://youtu.be/aHH9A7JB6uM Green Party Greater London Assembly candidate hustings Sunday July 19th 2015 summing up. Apologies to Sian Berry a technical problem prevented her final remarks being recorded. http://youtu.be/qOIDc5_m0v0

an expedition to folkestone in search of cryptozoological seagulls

forbidden fruit?

This is what happens to a Kiwi Fruit when it gets sent from GP conference to the home of obese eco-socialist P.Murry, (aka the Dollis Hill Kremlin). Murry, who ate the fruit ALIVE, says "It made me mildly nauseous at first, but I am starting to become more moderate already and can begin to see some good points about Positive Money. I expect that after eating the lime, I will begin to see the sense in having a quaintly outdated education policy too."

The Vindication of Ginger John

Ginger John is owed a retrospective apology. Ginger John had been/was/is a performance poet from the “punk wing” of what was a decade or two ago, a movement to politicise and popularise an art form that had, like a hat made from an ornamental chicken, become simultaneously effete, over elaborate and dead.

I can only remember three or four things about Ginger John: he was big, he had cropped ginger hair, he wore army surplus olive green combat trousers and he performed a poem about the Falklands(Malvinas) War which had the refrain: “No Blood for Oil”.

Back then, just after the Falklands (Malvinas) War of 1982, there had been no announcement of any oil field in or near these islands. The war then looked like a political manoeuvre driven by the demented patriotism of Margaret Thatcher. Some say that then she was clinging onto power by manicured and varnished fingernails; and that if she had let Argentina have the islands, she might well have consigned the Conservative Party to at least a generation of political oblivion. Thanks to some expertly organised killing, it took her about another decade to manage that, and thanks to the preceding expertly organised killing of its own population by the Argentine Junta, her military adventurism made even elected government by crass monetarists preferable to an unelected government pursuing a policy of selective political genocide.

Anyway the point of this convoluted rambling is to assert that some British lefties,  thought that Ginger John and his ilk were wrong when they alleged “Blood for Oil”.

Thirty years later, as a South American shipping Boycott kicks off against the Falklands over the issue of British claims to own South Atlantic oilfields because Britain holds the islands. Ginger John, who did seem like a moronic yob at times, now seems like a lost prophet equipped with incredible perspicacity and foresight.

Looked another way Norris and his ilk now seem very stupid and naïve. After all every twentieth century war and probably very human war ever, and even the Chimp tribal total wipe-outs recorded by Van Lawick-Goodall, were basically resource wars. Death-dealing weapon-penises may be lightly covered by fig leaves such as nationalism, religion, liberalism, fascism, humanitarianism, and even colonialist feminism, but they are all aimed at consequence-free imperialist resource-rape. And the more black, viscous and useful as vehicle fuel that the resource concerned is, the worse the wars are. It is and always has been “Blood for Oil”.

Of Muddy Carrots and Optimum Population

Recently I heard, within a few hours, three snippets from radio programs concerning food. Firstly a British farmer complained that he could not produce food without government subsidies because consumers would not pay the prices that he would charge, “They would rather spend money on computers than food” He alleged.

Later the Radio told me that Africans were dying as they trekked across deserts to a UN feeding camp, they had no food. .

Finally another Brit, manager of an electrical goods shop, lamented lack of demand, people felt insecure, so they were spending all their money on food.

This illustrates how complex and contradictory the politics and economics of food have now become. In some parts of the developed world, medical conditions associated with overconsumption of processed foods, such as obesity and diabetes are epidemic, and paradoxically in some cases are doing most damage amongst poor and minority groups in these societies. When they are able to afford it, some developed world consumers attempt to seek alternatives to mass manufactured food, seeking out alternatives such as organics sometimes via “alternative“ outlets such as “farmers’” markets. But whilst a TV producer living in Kensal Green may be able to afford a bunch of organic carrots with real mud on it, poorer consumers on the nearby housing estates may be making do with processed food.

In other parts of the world, industrialised overdevelopment elsewhere, is putting more and more pressure on the availability of agricultural land. Some of this is simply due to the demands of developed world consumers for fresh (often airfreighted) food and even cut flowers all the year round. Then some rich nations, like Japan and Saudi Arabia which have relatively little agricultural land of their own, are buying up large swathes of land in poorer countries in an attempt to assure their future food supplies. Other nations and corporations are attempting to assure future fuel supplies as well by buying up land to grow crops used for biofuels. Such neo-imperialist tactics compound the pressures being put on agricultural land and the food resources available to the original inhabitants.

More pressure too arises from climate change, changes in ocean temperatures due to emissions from industrialised nations could well be affecting climate cycles, delaying or eliminating rainy seasons. Groups such as African pastoralists and farmers, who may have previously co-existed relatively peaceably, are now increasingly being forced into conflict over scarcer and scarcer amounts of fertile land. Climate wars and population displacements are already happening. Even when the consequences are not so immediately extreme land shortages may be placing strain on the environment as forests are cleared for farms. Some ameliorations, such as introducing agricultural methods similar to permaculture may be feasible in some regions, but so far these are not being introduced on a sufficiently large scale to have a marked effect on these problems.

Seen in this light, population pressure on land is, it is true, an exacerbating factor, but not the root cause and when pressure groups in the developed world harp on obsessively about this issue, they sound the same note as some reactionary land owners did during the Irish potato famine, blaming the poor (and perhaps their immorality) for poverty and want and focusing solutions onto the poor rather than onto the rich and inequality which really cause the problem

Coalition of Resistance Against Cuts & Privatisation National Organising Conference - 10am-5pm, Saturday November 27th

Coalition of Resistance Against Cuts & Privatisation
National Organising Conference - 10am-5pm, Saturday November 27th

Camden Centre Bidborough St, London WC1H 9AU (opposite St Pancras station)

Register here: http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/?p=317

Already several hundred people have registered for the conference. If you have and have not yet heard back from us please don't worry. We will be sending out tickets and a full programme of sessions in the next week. We have had to book further space for the conference and have obtained three large halls within 100 metres of the Camden Centre for workshops and forum sessions.

Apart from the opening and closing plenaries, sessions will include:
    •     Organising against the cuts locally
    •     Defending the Welfare State
    •     States of Inequalities
    •     Mobilising in the unions
    •     Analysis of the crisis
    •     Debate on our alternatives
    •     What should political representatives do?
    •     What future for education?
    •     Cultures of Resistance
    •     Youth and students
    •     Women and the crisis
Confirmed speakers include: Billy Bragg, Caroline Lucas MP, Tony Benn, John McDonnell, Paul Mackney, Bob Crow, Jeremy Dear, Dr Jacky Davis, Professor Colin Leys, Dot Gibson, Zita Holborne, Ozlem Onaran, Derek Wall, Lindsey German, Chris Baugh, Laurie Penny, John Hilary, Lowkey and many others.

There will be speakers from local anti-cuts groups from around the country. The National Secretary of the French railway unions will report on the recent strike wave there. And there will be a fraternal speakers from the People's Charter and other organisations.

The conference will discuss a plan of action and will elect a National steering committee.

Please register for the conference. You can either do this online using paypal or by printing off the form - http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/?p=317 - and sending it to our office with a cheque to the address below.

Conference Registration:
Unemployed / Student Rate £3.00
Standard Rate £5.00
Representative £10.00

The conference is costing many thousands of pounds to put on and we are keeping the registration fees as low as possible to allow maximum attendance.

We need volunteers to help cover the forthcoming student and Stop the War marches. Please contact Sam on 07872481769 if you can help.

There will be a small number of stalls for movement organisations at the conference and these will be £75 each. The stalls will have to be booked and paid for in advance.

Coalition of Resistance badges and t-shirts are now available and will on the website soon.

Please circulate this bulletin throughout the labour and trade union movement.

Andrew Burgin
07939 242229
Coalition of Resistance
Housmans Bookshop
5 Caledonian Road
London N1 9DX
www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk