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

The Campaign Against Climate Change meeting about “climate scepticism” on 14 April 2010

The Campaign Against Climate Change meeting about “climate scepticism” on 14 April 2010 was contentious, not least because the very term “climate scepticism” (or more accurately perhaps “climate change scepticism”), was one of the many subjects of disagreement.

I liked the contentiousness, as one of the speakers (1) admitted, it is possible to be bored, or at least complacent when listening to yet another panel asserting that the majority of current scientific opinion is that human caused climate change is taking place.

He also suggested that simply relying on this scientific majority opinion had led the Green movement to blunder into the media furore that some now call “ climategate”, (although the use of that term too was disagreed about). “ Climategate” involved the leaking of emails about the work of climatologists at the University of East Anglia suggesting that some data they had about climate change may have been exaggerated. Their defenders assert that their findings were basically true but the apparent uncertainty was seized on by those who wished to deny that human caused climate change is happening. This matter received media coverage in November 2009 shortly before the climate change summit in Copenhagen.

As two of the panel speakers were from Green pressure groups and one was an environment correspondent of a quality paper (the Guardian), they were from bits of the Green movement that I seldom come into contact with. I was interested to hear them confirm, in slightly different ways, a report I had heard earlier that some such greens were in varying states of despair over the failure of Copenhagen. Most of my associates were not pleased that these talks had failed, a perhaps even a bit surprised that they failed as spectacularly and chaotically as they did; but I doubt if anyone really expected much real progress from them.

So when the panel speakers all basically advocated combating “ climate scepticism” with counter information campaigns and reaching out to sections of the population that the green movement allegedly did not usually reach, (trade unionists and Conservatives were the two examples given), I did not disagree but I came away doubting if that by itself would be enough.

There were differing nuances on this point of view, the journalist seemed the most sanguine, and some of the suggestions that people mainly agree with information that confirmed their existing opinions did seem to have pessimistic and possibly self-contradictory implications.

However I‘ll leave that one for one or other of the Green movements many philosophers to sort out merely noting that framing Green augments against “ climate scepticism” in such a way as to widen their appeal is a good tactic but may not an entire strategy.

One panel member was against using Climate change as an argument for organising anti-capitalist revolution suggesting that the threats posed by climate change were now too close for there to be time for such distractions. Similar grounds were given for not ruling out nuclear power generation, and there was no contradiction when it was suggested that the emerging middle classes of developing nations were not going to accept cutbacks in their improving standards of living.

The question as to how capitalist pressure for ever increasing economic growth was a definite indoor pachyderm and outside I wondered if persuasion was enough.

Town centres: Voids, antheaps, and covered markets

A week ago, a walk around central Birmingham could have confirmed my many metropolitan prejudices, especially as spent a long time not finding an open photocpying shop, but finding many many closed chinese resturants instead. A week later a triple night bus ride across central London showed that it seems to be changing into a 24 hr city as jolly revellers mingled with the morose and knackered leisure industry workers who had been servicing them.

But whilst London now has hosts of Rickshaws clogging its night arteries like pedalled cholestrol, Birmingham, which seemed to lack covered bicycles , does have several covered markets, which seemed to have the convenience of modern malls with none of their bland characterlessness.

“Thirlington Cubicles”

In the good old, bad old days, before flying away for foreign holidays became more immoral the more that you thought about it, I went to Bulgaria. This was in the very last days of Communism, at the time of the coup against Gorbachev in the USSR. Bulgaria was beautiful, or I saw the beautiful bits of it, but there was something a little boring about it and I couldn’t figure out what that was.

Then I realised whilst sitting in a roadside café that, the passing lorries had no logos on their sides. They were not emblazoned with any slogans, names or images. Bulgarian camions at this time were mostly pale grey in colour with a black registration number on the side in some sort of militaristic font.

I would rather be bored by Bulgarian logoless lorries than see capitalism continue along its destructive trajectory, but the all pervasive advertising plastered on nearly every available surface in contemporary Britain, brings me all sorts of absurd statements that I sometimes enjoy if I’m in the mood for it. I’ve even seen a sandwich delivery van than claimed, in its mission statement, to have an overarching existential purpose.

Today in Cricklewood I saw a large white lorry with the words “Thirlington Cubicles” written on it.

I realised immediately that I had been given a new name and a solution to some of the quandaries that might confront me when I sit at the Standing Orders Committee table at the next Green Party Conference. If someone approached with a problem or query and asks “Are you Peter Murry?”. I will respond “No. I am, Thirlington Cubicles, Peter Murry is that person of there in the red pullover who is grinding his/her teeth” This might buy me enough time to escape.

THE Kneeling Man

When I turned the corner into the narrow Holborn back street which leads to the Dragon Hall, I saw a man kneeling on the pavement. He was silhouetted against the bright electric light coming through a plate glass door situated behind him. At first he knelt, then he went down onto all fours then he rose again.

I can be sure how many times he repeated this movement as I slowly approached, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. His movements did seemed voluntary and did not indicate pain, so I began to come to the conclusion that he was engaged into the ritualised grovelling to an imaginary being that people call prayer.

This assumption depressed me until I came near enough to see the screwdriver in his hand. He was engaged in fixing the lock that was situated in a metal strip on the bottom of the plate glass door. I was relieved to see that his actions were rational and not mindless self abasement following a dogmatically dictated formula.

I was not to encounter much other such rationality that night because I was about to attend a meeting of the London Federation Of Green Parties.

Two Camerons in Cricklewood

The citizens of Cricklewood are being confronted with a frightful sight, as they stand in large grey meltwater slushpuppies at the northbound bus stop on the Broadway.

The Conservative Party has seen fit to erect two vast, adjacent and almost identical billboards both depicting huge images of David Cameron’s head and shoulders, captioned with some implausible slogan about ‘cutting the deficit not the NHS’.

The two giant Camerons are only almost identical, since in each he is a different colour. On the left, (if you were facing east), he has a very pale green skin tone, like fish flesh just going off. However the right hand Cameron is a shiny orangish hue, like a Kilroy-Silk suntan.

Could this diversity in skin tone be deliberate?, After all Cricklewood is possibly one of the most ethnically heterogeneous places on the planet, whilst waiting at the bus and staring at the strange Camerons, you are likely to hear people speaking English, Polish, Tamil, Brazilian, Portuguese, Somali and Lingala at least. However I doubt if many know or care who the terrible twins on the billboard are.

Perhaps there is a subliminal political message, e.g.: ‘I’m slightly concerned about the environment sometimes, but also a bit liberal and democratic’.

As I stand staring incredulously at the dual apparitions, waiting for a bus, I find it warming to think that the Tories have wasted money putting up these silly posters, but chilling to think how much more such rubbish they will be able to afford before the general election.

Notes for speech on The way forward for the working class- re political representation

1. Socialism and Green as political terms have many things in common notably that they are and have been applied to a wide variety of things, from fascism to washing powder.

2. Socialism is possibly the more coherent of the two, in terms of political movements, it usually refers to political movements and/or organisations that seek to replace and/or reform capitalism with a government which operates with the explicit aim of using the profits of capitalism for the benefit of those seen as the real generators of wealth under capitalism, the working class.

3. Green usually denotes political concerns which identify which identify the physical environment of this planet as being under threat from a variety of sources that are mostly human in origin e.g.: Pollution, the destruction of species and ecosystems. The one that is currently seen as most threatening is climate change impelled by increasing human -caused Carbon emission. Some contemporary Green media pundits (eg Monbiot & Lynas), suggest that unchecked the impact of climate change might lead to the extermination of humans or at least the destruction of most contemporary industrial societies.

4. Greens advocate various solutions or even adaptations to an inevitable catastrophe. Jonathon Porritt insists that capitalism is the only workable economic system and therefore the only one that can avert eco-cataclysm. Other Greens think that capitalism cannot provide the solution because it will continually pursue increasing profit and economic growth. (Sharks’ reputed need to continually swim is usually mentioned here).

5. Some of the latter (e.g. Kovel) come from a Trotskyist wing within a Marxist tradition which means that they could account for the ecological damage caused by historically existing socialist societies such as the USSR in terms of them not being Truly socialist.

6. Be this as it may most of the damage was done and is being done by societies which are capitalist.

7. Global warming is often evidenced by the ‘ hockey stick’ graph of readings same time as European industrial Revolutions and coinciding with continuing world industrialisation from that point.

8. This marks a technological change which some suggest was preceeded in Europe by cultural changes, eg max Weber argues that the advent of Protestantism which changed attitudes and laws regarding ususry thus making capitalism possible.

9. It is also possible to argue that the problem has deeper roots than this . Anthropologists (eg Harris and Diamond) have commented on human societies can cahnge organisation and technology to cope with existential needs and threats (eg food supply, disease, climate. Predation, war etc).

10. seen from this perspective capitalism combined with industrialisation is the latest (and perhaps most effective) means of coping with these threats but arguably it not only does this but also to expands its scope to increase the profits of its dominant classes.

11. There a number of ways in which it does this
a)using new technologies and often thereby exploiting more natural resources
b)making previously free or shared goods and/or services into saleable products
d)reducing workers’ abilities to organise in defence of pay and conditions in an attempt to minimise labour costs
e) Increasing workers and consumers insecurity. In the British context mortgages, other debt and pensions create powerful incentives to curb union militancy and even union membership. Globalisation, Privatisations, marketisations, advertising and aspects of culture all play their role in this.

12 . Insecurity fuels continuing consumption, which encourages compliant labour and a fuels incessant pressure on natural resources which in turn causes climate change and other ecological threats.

13 hence Greens must advocate changes in lifestyle especially for the more affluent sectors of populations in industrailised nations (which does include groups of relatively better paid workers).

14 the only feasible way to do this is by enhancing workers rights and their abilities to defend them and the only feasible way to do this is by replacing capitalism.

15 a strategy to achieve this is by making what Trotskyites some times term ‘transitional demands’ which might be at least partially granted under capitalism. The GPEW has its only version of this its Mfss and policy pointers contain both reformist demands to the current system (eg a minimum wage of a level compatible with literally earning a living) and a wish lists of proposals that a Green gov’t might one day enact, (eg a citizen’s income).

16 Therefore Greens defend existing workers rights and call for their extension recently in the following ways
 GP Conference Autumn 2006 Emergency Motion Support for NHS Logistics workers’ strike
 14 August 2007 support for low paid City cleaners
 23 August 2007 Support for RMT anti privatisation lobby of Downing St
 24 September 2007 Lambeth Green Councillor Rebecca Thackray & Jean Lambert MEP Supports the Remploy Campaign against factory closures
 Support KEEP the NHS public campaign 3.11.2007
 Thursday, 15 November 2007 SUPPORT THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE TRADES UNION CONFERENCE
 12 December 2007 support protest against the dismissal of Karen Reissman
 Green Party of England and Wales (Response to consultation on welfare reform, ‘No-one written off’.) By Alan Wheatley and Anne Gray October 2008
 Green Worker - November 2008
- MEPs Demand Recognition for Green Union Reps.
- Green Success Makes Southwark A Living Wage Employer
 Support PCS Strike 10TH Nov2008
 8 October 2008 Green Euro Mps call for legal recognition of green reps
 Tuesday, 23 September 2008 support CWU dispute
 Tuesday, 23 September 2008 support camapaign against Victimisation of Trade Union Official, East North East Homes, UNISON Convenor, John McDermott
 Friday, 19 September 2008 GPTU statement on public sector pay dispute “GPTU notes that the NUT, and PCS, are balloting for strike action over public sector pay and that Unison still has the possibility of calling strike action over this issue. GPTU supports industrial action over this issue when relevant Union members decide it is appropriate, especially as the pay settlements now being discussed are below current inflation rates”
 Thursday, 11 September 2008 Protest UCU derecognised at Nottingham Trent University
 Sunday, 7 September 2008 Green Party Minimum Wage Motion (Passed At Green Party Conference 6/9/2008)
 UNION WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTAL REPS (MOTION PASSED AT GREEN PARTY CONFERENCE 6/9/2008)
"Trade Unions and their branches will have the right to establish workplace environmental representatives, who will have the same rights at work as other trade union representatives. This will include appropriate facilities and time off to undertake their duties. Such representatives should play a decision making role in the development of strategies and implementation plans for making workplaces, companies and other public, private and third sector organisations greener and more
sustainable." (This text to be inserted in the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society, the main GP policy document)
 Thursday, 28 August 2008 Support RMT LONDON´S TUBE CLEANERS campaign
 24 August 2008 affiliate to Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning
 19 August 2008 Support RMT tube strike ballot
 Thursday, 24 July 2008 Derek Wall, the Green Party's Male Principal Speaker, has called for trade unions to put increased pressure on the Government and public sector employers by uniting to carry out sustained strike action, in opposition to attempts to impose pay cuts.
 Support for Campaign for reinstatement of PAT CARMODY shop steward at Pell & Bales Tuesday, 22 July 2008
 21 July 2008 Darren Johnson, Green Party London Assembly Member, has called on London's Mayor to lobby Tubelines, the employer, to follow Transport for London’s lead and pay cleaners of its section of the network at least £7.45 an hour.
 Friday, 18 July 2008 Support For Unison Strikers in Norwich by Green Councillors
 Wednesday, 16 July 2008 Vauxhall Green Candidate Supports Local Unison Strikers , also statements of support from Jean Lambert MEP and Darren Johnson AM, and Brighton & Nottingham Councillors Richard & Sue Mallender
 Saturday, 16 February 2008 EMERGENCY MOTION PASSED AT CONFERENCE 14/2/08 “The Green Party is extremely concerned to learn that a private American health firm (United Health Europe) has won control of three GP surgeries in London. We fear that this is the first step in an attempt to corporatise health care in the UK. “(Continues)
 20 September 2009 The Green Party Trade Union Group supports the postal workers’ Union, CWU
 GPTU Fringe meeting at GP Conference, Hove 5/9/2009 "Welfare Reform & Low paid Workers "
 GP conference plenary on Just Transition with Cllr Romayne Phoenix, Caroline Lucas MEP, Chris Baugh (PCS), Chris Rapley (Director, Science Museum),
 July/September support Vestas campaign
 Tuesday, 1 September 2009 Support all out strike at Tower Hamlets College
 Green Party wants full railway nationalisation From Gp website 01 July 2009
 July 2009 campaign against sacking of Stalin Bemudez & Removal of SOAS cleaners
 1/10/2209 support REINSTATE JUAN CARLOS PIEDRA, SACKED FOR UNION ACTIVITY

A visit to Headcorn, summer 2009

PUBLIC MEETING: Campaign to Safeguard Brent Residents 12/07/2009 St Mary & St Andrew’s Church, Dollis Hill.

notes by p>murry

This meeting was advertised to me by a handbill which came through my door, it was not immediately clear from this document that this was a Labour Party meeting but it was and it carried the legally required “printed & promoted by…” rubric. One speaker suggested a cross party campaign against the proposed Cricklewood development, so I asked why a one party slate with an MP (Dawn Butler), speaking in a neighbouring MP’s constituency. It was tit for tat for an earlier exclusively Lib Dem meeting on the same subject.

The platform was Anne John (Brent Labour group leader), Dawn Butler MP for Brent South and Navin Shah AM for Brent and Harrow . Invited speakers from the floor included Dawood Perez , Director and Company Secretary of Bestway, (the cash and carry group whose premises are threatened by the proposed Cricklewood development), Leah Evans of FoE, Ben Tansley of Brent Cycling Campaign, John Cox (Campaign for Better Transport), Cllr Ralph Fox and the Chair of the Dollis Hill Residents’ Ass’n.

In summary it was explained that the proposed development would allegedly result in involve creating 2700 jobs, 750 homes, a new station and three schools.

Bestway’s main beef appeared to be that it would also involve the relocation of a new waste processing station to the Brent side of the main railway out of King’s Cross possibly endangering the Bestway operation. Several Bestway workers turned up with three neatly produced placards, one of them and their manager both assured me they were doing this voluntarily in their free time. Bestway was not unionized because, Dawood Perez, assured me, it treats it workers so well.

The platform speakers seemed to object to the scale of the scheme and the amount of extra traffic it might generate. Anne John asserted that this was a wider approach than that taken by the Lib Dems who, she alleged only objected to the proposed Waste transfer station, whilst (according to Dawood Perez) bidding for some of the gov’t funding associated with the development.(“section 106 money”)

The apparently more holistic Labour approach was to complain about the inadequate consultation by Barnet Council and insist (how ?) that the development be Carbon neutral, although Dawn Butler required reminding by FoE the term was, which did raise the question in my mind as to whether she knew what it meant.

Never mind, FoE thought that “you can’t stop progress” and Dawn thought that Bestway brought “social and economic benefits to local people” whilst he new scheme did not deal with the relative shopping deprivation of Brent. “We don’t have a major shopping centre in Brent, the developments round Wembley will address that to some extent.”.

Like Obama, Dawn believes in change, but perhaps only the kind found in shopping centre tills. However, as John Cox pointed out even if the Cricklewood is topped there are more similar developments planned for Colindale, Wembley, Barnet and Park Royal adding to the new White City mega shopping mall. Further more it is apparently the opinion of my neighbours as expressed by the Secretary of the Dollis Hill Residents Ass’n that they want a new bridge across the railway so that they can drive around more quickly.

Industrial accidents demo April 2009

SPITTLE FLECKED WAVES OF FURY

HARD CORE GREEN LEFT ACTIVISTS 'CELEBRATE' GREEN PARTY LEADERSHIP ELECTION 2008 IN BLOOMSBURY BEIRKELLER-STYLE SONG ORGY