Snowy Student Protest

Respect to all the students who demonstrated on the streets and occupied universities in protest at tuition fees, debts and cuts.

Search twitter #dayx, #corconf and #dayx2

Students show the rest of us the way to protest the cuts agenda, will the rest follow?
Next student protests are on 9 and 11 December

Met Office confident of global warming

A statement by the met office has said that this year is set to be in the top two hottest years of all time.

1998 saw the hottest year on record until now. During 1998 temperatures soared because of a strong El Nino in the Pacific. This year also had an El Nino, a warming event that takes place in the Pacific, however this El Nino was quickly diminished by the forming of La Nina, a cooling event. Despite the La Nina, records this year are still hotter than that of 1998.

A spokesman from the Met Office state that this is evidence standing on the side of man-made global warming. The last decade was the hottest ever recorded.

Ahead of the latest UN talks on climate change in Cancun, Mexico, the Met Office analyses trends in climate and reveals that the evidence for man-made warming has grown even stronger in the last year.

Dr Matt Palmer, an ocean observations specialist at the Met Office, said: “It is clear from the observational evidence across a wide range of indicators that the world is warming. As well as a clear increase in air temperature observed above both the land and sea, we see observations which are all consistent with increasing greenhouse gases.”

These changes include:
Increases in water temperature at the sea surface down a depth of hundreds of metres.
An increase in humidity as a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture.
Increases in sea level as warmer waters expand and land-ice melts.
Shrinking of Arctic sea-ice, glaciers and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover.

Since the late 1970s the long-term rate of surface warming has been about 0.16 °C per decade. However, over the last decade the rate of warming has decreased.

Natural variability within the climate system could explain all of this recent decrease. Other factors could have contributed.
Changes in stratospheric water vapour
Solar variability
Increased aerosol emissions from Asia

The rate of warming has been underestimated in the last decade because of:
changes to sea-surface temperature measurement practices;
strong warming in the Arctic — where there are fewer observations.

Dr Vicky Pope said: “Our analysis confirms that the signals of warming are as strong as they ever have been. Improving our understanding of the factors that affect short- and long-term trends is helping us to improve our predictions of the future, helping others to make choices on mitigation and adaptation providing a more resilient future.”

Interview On Climate Change

Cameron said Brown was the safest pair of hands at the Treasury for a century

One of the main themes of this government is that the cuts are necessary, and its all Gordon Browns fault. So the gushing comments, made when he was a backbencher, are a huge embarrassment.

Cameron said the then Chancellor Brown was "the safest pair of hands at the Treasury for a century! Whether they are for tax and spend or against it, all the pundits seem to agree that Mr Brown is one of the greatest chancellors since William Gladstone. The economic record in terms of growth is undeniable."

Perhaps Cameron thinks voters have short memories, for a decade his fellow Tories supported New Labour. But now they want us to think everything was Browns fault, and nothing to do with them. Similarly the LD, for so many issues the big three parties are the same.

The Greens are different, we are against the cuts agenda and would to put people ahead of business.

Adrian Ramsay said:
“It is unacceptable that young people will be saddled with these huge debts before they even begin paid work. Increasing the cap on fees will be socially divisive and risk a two-tier university system. Tuition fees, higher education cuts, job losses and cuts to social housing will all have a disproportionate impact on young people, at a time when youth unemployment is already high.

Caroline Lucas, Green Party leader and MP for Brighton Pavilion, labels the coalition government's public sector cuts as "socially divisive ... environmentally disastrous ... and economically illiterate."

She goes on to emphasise that our economic prosperity "may be built on rotten foundations ... the growth that has paid for our welfare state is built on the exploitation of natural resources, and on the exploitation of people here, and round the world."

Green Economics Video

Video of a Green Economics Institute, Green Economics training course for the clients the Young Greens in Berlin 2008

Wish Granted

from here

Never Had It So Good?

The famous words have now caused a second political career to end.

Lord Young caused quite a storm when he said the fall in mortgage rates since the credit crisis had "left most people better off" and that "they will look back and wonder what all the fuss is about".

It was a highly controversial statement that sparked outrage; within hours his resignation as a Tory adviser had been accepted. Even David Cameron branded his remarks "insensitive and inaccurate".

There will be little doubt that the one million people who have lost their jobs over the past three years will disagree with Lord Young's comments. So too will the 150,000 who have had their homes repossessed since the credit crunch took hold, while 190,000 borrowers who have fallen into arrears.

Still for those on a good income are doing ok, as long as they don't look at the rest of the country they may think things are going well. Open your eyes and see inequality increasing, the poorest are suffering. Students, disabled people are paying the price for those years of mistakes made by bankers and Gordon Brown. Funnily enough for years Cameron described Brown as “awesome” and “a figure of colossal power and intellect”.

Cameron said the then Chancellor Brown was the safest pair of hands at the Treasury for a century! “Whether they are for tax and spend or against it, all the pundits seem to agree that Mr Brown is one of the greatest chancellors since William Gladstone. “The economic record in terms of growth is undeniable."

How things change.

Lords A Leaping

The new peers were announced today, in a list of 'working peers'.

Perhaps this is to distinguish the new peers from the other lot of peers who presumably do little work.

They include:
The millionaire car importer Bob Edmiston, who gave £2m to the Tories, the Conservative party treasurer Stanley Fink, and the Labour donor Sir Gulam Noon.

Howard Flight, a former deputy chairman of the Conservative party, and Tina Stowell, a former deputy chief of staff to William Hague when he was opposition leader, were also on the list.

Better-known names include the screenwriter Julian Fellowes, celebrity divorce solicitor Fiona Shackleton and the former defence chief General Sir Richard Dannatt.
Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff who clashed with the last Labour government over Afghanistan, was nominated by David Cameron when he was leader of the opposition, but has chosen to sit as a crossbench peer.

Others promoted include: Rachel Heyhoe-Flint, the former captain of England women's cricket team, Susan Kramer, the ousted Liberal Democrat MP, and Oona King, the former MP recently beaten by Ken Livingstone in the contest to become Labour's next candidate for mayor of London.

Afghanistan Perpetual War

British Defense Chief Gen. Sir David Richards, has stated that “Nato now needs to plan for a 30 or 40 year role to help the Afghan armed forces hold their country against the militants,” though he “stuck to the government’s plans to withdraw combat troops by 2014 but made clear that thousands of troops will be needed long after that date.”

In an interview on November 14, Richards said, “Everyone is clear that we will have to remains a lot longer than” four to five years. “The plans,” he added, “are now in place to do that” and will be made “rather clearer” at the upcoming NATO summit in Lisbon.

Richards argued that the Taliban and al-Qaeda cannot be defeated militarily and that victory cannot be declared by “marching into another nation’s capital,” as in conventional warfare. They are after all loosely organized, perhaps he has learn something from 9 years of warfare.

It doesn't seem to enter his head that we are never going to win because we are wrong to be there and have the wrong tactics. We have been there for longer than World War 1, World War 2 and Vietnam? We have even been there before, and had a similar result.

Meanwhile the media is obsessed by a wedding, and mostly ignores this disaster.

Stop Rupert Murdoch Dominating The Media

Rupert Murdoch is on a fast track to control over half of this country’s newspapers and television. This week is our chance to tell regulators to stand up for a wide choice of news, and defend our democracy. Berlusconi dominates the media in Italy, lets not go even further down that path.

Britain loses if Murdoch wins. With all of the BSkyB TV network his massive dominance of our media would become further entrenched, extending his power and political influence. Here and elsewhere Murdoch has used his reach to promote conservative political candidates, the persecution of minorities, climate change denial and the dangerous lies that led to the invasion of Iraq.

We have until Friday to stop this! Let’s flood the regulator with thousands of submissions saying why we feel this deal is against the public interest. We’ll deliver tens of thousands of comments in boxloads to Ofcom’s offices on Friday, making a media splash. Send yours now via the link below, and encourage everyone you know to do the same today.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/ofcom_no_bskyb_takeover/?vl

Murdoch’s News Corporation already owns 39% of the BSkyB television company and four of our best-selling newspapers. His new expansion bid rides roughshod over the ‘media plurality’, which the government has a legal duty to uphold. Regulator Ofcom is accepting public comments on Murdoch’s plans for just a few days.

This deal would allow Murdoch to cross-promote his different outputs and increase his political roles. For 30 years no British political party has won an election without Murdoch's blessing. This ability to get voters’ attention gives him frequent access to the prime minister - hence his nickname the ‘24th member of the cabinet’.

This is a fight for the soul of British democracy. We cannot afford to have one company dominate half of our TV, newspaper and online news. From illegal spying at the News of the World here to his hate-filled Fox News empire in the U.S., Murdoch’s media erodes the values we hold dear and shows few scruples when attacking political or commercial rivals - now including the BBC.

The Avaaz movement in Canada recently proved that determined campaigning can block conservative media takeovers. Let’s do it again here. Ofcom has given until this Friday for anyone to submit comments on whether this deal is in the public interest. Let’s send a message today and tell everyone we know.

Student Ptotest

Green Party London Assembly Member, Jenny Jones has commented on police failures at protests against tuition fee rises in Central London yesterday.

Jenny Jones said:
“The policing of the student fees demonstration shows that the Met still hasn't learned how crucial communication is to the effective policing of demonstrations. They under-estimated the numbers as they didn't listen to the National Union of Students who reported a big surge of interest with more coaches being booked. The Met failed to deploy quickly, even after the students entered the wrong building at Millbank Towers.”

“To be fair on the police, they got caught out by a spontaneous outburst of anger and those moments are very hard to anticipate and plan for.”

The Green Party is committed through its Constitution to non-violent forms of direct action, and has condemned yesterday’s violent protestors for drawing attention away from the aims of the overwhelming majority of peaceful demonstrators, who are appalled at the government’s plans to raise the cap on tuition fees to £9000 per year.


As always the media attention is on a small number of violent people, virtually ignoring the thousands of legitimate protesters.

The majority were just plain old students, but angry. The kind of students who go to their lectures, go to parties, play sport at the weekends and sometimes get a bit drunk and lairy. And there were a lot of very young students there. Maybe they were first years, but many of them looked like school students. They weren’t all middle class, they weren’t all white, they hadn’t all come in on the student union buses.

These are the people who made up the majority of the people at Millbank – ordinary young people, working class and middle class, from school age up to university age, who hadn’t been on many demos before, whose only encounter with the police, or with agitated crowds, had been Saturday night lairiness or sports matches.

And that set the mood. It felt like a rowdy night in a busy town. People were angry and frustrated, and they hadn’t had the training or the experience to deal with the situation. If it was true that a militant anarchist faction had led the violence at Millbank then here’s what it would have looked like:

Everybody facing the police line would have had a mask on. Nobody would plan to feature prominently in national newspapers with their face clearly exposed, throwing a stick at a police officer or smashing a window. But what did we actually see? A few make-shift bandannas slipping down people’s faces and a huge number of students who hadn’t even tried to hide their identity.

Millbank showed what happens when a generation realises that they are being disenfranchised. We voted, it didn’t count.

Condemn the stupidity of dropping a fire extinguisher on a crowd, of course. But the masses who swarmed peacefully into the lobby through open doors should be heroes

Woodley And Earley Waste Collection

My local council, Wokingham, have made some changes to waste collection.

From April 2012 we will have to pay if they want their garden waste collected.

The scheme will apply right across the borough and is expected to save the council £992,000 each year.

Householders will be given unlimited recycling boxes, but they will only get 80 official council black sacks a year – fewer than two a week.

Recycling collections will increase to weekly collections and the residual waste in sacks will also be collected weekly.

The garden waste scheme will be optional and available to everyone in the borough for a £60 annual charge. Residents will get a 240-litre garden waste wheelie bin for the money or they can buy 75-litre compostable sacks – either way they will be collected fortnightly for those who pay to be involved.

The real question should be what impact this will have on waste collection rates and on residents, not just how much can be saved. Some councils in the past have moved to alternate weekly collection to reduce costs and cut waste. Its not appropriate for every area though.

Those of us who have bought green waste bags already will be a little miffed if they will no longer be collected. They should buy back the garden waste backs in return for the new ones.

Tax Dodgers Millionaires

George Osborne says 'we're all in this together' but are ministers and top Tories paying the same rates of tax as the rest of us?

The list of dodgers includes millionaire Ministers Chancellor George Osborne, Transport Secretary Philip Hammond and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, who is worth £7 million, moved shares in his family property business into the name of his wife, who pays tax at a lower rate.

Mr Mitchell, ‘whose job is to alleviate world poverty’, has made large returns on investments in the British Virgin Islands, another tax haven. The ConDems made a policy U-turn over the Cayman Islands, a base for companies run by wealthy Tory donors such as Hugh Sloane, worth £185 million, and Michael Hintze, worth £250 million.

Mr Osborne has a trust fund worth more than £4 million, tax havens will save him and other family beneficiaries an estimated £1.6 million in inheritance tax.

Much has been said already about Philip Green and Ashcroft.

Also theres the corporate friends of the ConDems; Vodaphone and Google.

How The Rich Beat The Taxman was shown Channel 4 last month, and can be seen by clicking on the link.

And yet all hear from the ConDems is about benefit scroungers. I wonder why. We are all in this together, but some of us clearly more than others.

Woolas Hypocrisy

What a shambles. "It is not part of Labour's politics for somebody to be telling lies to get themselves elected," the party's deputy leader Harriet Harman MP, which is rather contradicted by evidence up and down the country.

Labour say "..no self-respecting MP (especially not the immigration minister) should have allowed leaflets that conflated Islamist extremism and immigration to go out in their name. The leaflets were vile. Of that there is no dispute." Well said.

For the LD Simon Hughes spoke against Woolas, ironic considering his own questionable election leaflets. He initially won his parliamentary seat by presenting the election between himself and gay-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell as "A STRAIGHT CHOICE". It was some time ago, but still.

Locally LD Cllr Gareth Epps says the Woolas campaign was vile. He refers to local Labour camaigns that were similar, including "A smear that all Green Party candidates were associated with animal rights terrorists". Thanks Gareth; I don't recall him defending us at the time but better late than never. Unfortunately he goes on "(I don’t like the way some Greens support some of the less savoury elements of the animal rights movement, but there are limits….)" So he repeats the slur, as always with no proof. There is no proof because we greens are into peaceful protest, not violence.


Gareth does have form. In an unprovoked attack on me he said in a letter to the local paper "..anyone our LD members select to fight Reading West will have much firmer green credentials than Lab and the Tories could muster between them and the credibility lacked by the maverick Green candidate there." Daisy Benson may have done better without 'help' like that.

When candidates of other parties are under such personal attack I will defend them regardless of their party. Gareth doesn't mention the more recent Labour attack on his colleague Daisy for being lazy, I defended her. I even defended Labours unfortunate Naz Sarkar when he made a mistake, he is only human.

More recently when I blogged about broken ConDem promises Gareth seemed to take it as an attack on him. Gareth implied that every Green Party website/blog is always wrong! Talk about prejudice.

So in Reading Labour are the worst for these attacks followed closely by the LD. The Tories while further from us in policies have a far better record on their campaigning style. I admired Alok Sharmas approach, he got involved with local campaigns and seemed a fair man. Unfortunately he is a member of a party that will cut services more than Maggie Thatcher.

About half the MPs of all the big parties have dodgy expenses, they should be tried in court as the rest of us would be. MPs are not above the law, as Woolas in now learning. The rest must learn the lesson too.

'When Two Worlds Collide' a film about the rainforest in Peru

'When Two Worlds Collide' is a film about the rainforest in Peru set against the backdrop of global recession and climate crisis.

Forced into exile for resisting the sale and commercial exploitation of Amazonian lands, Alberto Pizango’s efforts shed new light on the ferocious battle for the world’s most precious natural resources. Falsely accused of insurrection and sedition by the Peruvian Government, he faces 20-years in prison.


Hatip Derek Wall, who is calling for investments in this.

"What the green movement got right"

Tonight Channel 4 are showing "What the green movement got wrong".

Caroline Lucas MP said:

"The green movement welcomes genuine and constructive interrogation of the principles of green politics. However, if anything, the two issues taken up by Channel 4, GM and nuclear, are what we've got right.

"Even if we were to double the number of nuclear power stations in the UK, we’d only cut around 8% of emissions, since nuclear only provides around 4% of the UK’s energy mix. There are much cheaper, safer and crucially, quicker, ways of reducing emissions than by building more centralised nuclear power stations. What we need instead is a nationwide programme of energy efficiency, together with investment in a range of renewable energies, and decentralised Combined Heat and Power.

"With regard to Channel 4's other focus, the public have never had an appetite for GM food. More corporate control of our food system has unfortunately led to what we have predicted: less food diversity and more food speculation. GM technology doesn't necessarily increase crop yields – research has actually shown the opposite can be true. Finally, the green movement was right to push climate change to the top of government concerns. Now, we need to shift from a traditional economic recovery with a few green trimmings to a recovery rooted in social justice and which balances our needs against those of the developing world, the natural world, and those of future generations."

Ecologist says author Mark Lynas thinks environmental groups like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are 'clinging' to out-dated ideological opposition to solutions like nuclear power. They disagree.

FoE
"The documentary promises to reveal a radical new approach to solving the planetary crisis we all face," says Craig Bennett, Director of Policy & Campaigns at Friends of the Earth. "But it pushes the same tired myths about GM crops and nuclear energy being miracle cures." We're always up for having a debate - but this is just misinformation based largely on the views of lobbyists and journalists with books to sell.

Greenpeace

A coalition of anti-GM campaigners, including Vandana Shiva have also complained to the makers of the documentary that both the Southern-based commentators speaking out in favour of GM crops in the programme were in employment funded by major biotech companies.

Green campaigners say it was wrong to cast the movement as a failure and pointed out the 'extraordinary' success of campaigns on climate change. The political, corporate and business world had slowly been brought onboard to an agenda that may once have been seen as radical, but was now mainstream. Perhaps we could all do with a few more 'failures' like this.

Road Safety Concerns After Two Fatalities

Yesterday a motorcyclist died at around 7.50am after a collision on the A4 Bath Road in Calcot. I involved a blue Renault Clio and a black Yamaha TRX motorcycle. The driver of the motorcycle, believed to be a man in his late thirties, was pronounced dead at the scene, while the driver of the car was taken to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.

Meanwhile, the M4 was closed eastbound between junction six (Slough) and junction five (Langley) following another fatal road accident earlier. Just before 3am, two articulated lorries collided on the motorway and the driver of one of the lorries, a 44-year-old man, was declared dead at the scene.

The week before a cyclist was fighting for his life in hospital after a crash that caused major delays when the A322 had to be closed. The 79-year-old cyclist was in a collision involving three cars on Bagshot Road near the Coral Reef roundabout.

Road safety should be a priority, but something seems to be going wrong here. Unfortunately the message the ConDems are giving by cutting speed cameras is the opposite. George Monbiot says "There is and has never been a war on the motorist. Motorists are handled more gently than anyone else: they are the only people who can expect to get away with breaking the law on almost all occasions. A war is an event in which people are injured and killed. Which circumstance most closely resembles one: an occasional £60 fine, or the daily carnage on the roads?"

About 120 children killed in Britain every year: 120 families plunged into lifelong grief. And its tabloid myth that speed cameras are unpopular. "The most recent poll whose results I can find shows that 82% of British people surveyed approve of them, and that the percentage has been rising."

24 hours to save Sakineh

Have you heard that Iran could kill Sakineh Ashtiani today?

I've just sent an emergency message to Iran's allies and key UN powers urging them to intervene and help safe Sakineh's life. Please read the email below and join me in sending a message now.


Our global outcry stopped her unjust stoning sentence in July. Now we have 24 hours to save her life.

Iran's allies and key UN powers are our best hope -- they could persuade Iran of the serious political cost of this high-profile killing. Click here to send them an urgent call to action and send this to everyone -- it only takes three minutes and we are her last chance


Sakineh's adultery case is a tragic sham stacked with human rights violations. First, she was to be stoned to death. But the Iranian government had to revoke the sentence after her children generated a tremendous outcry against the farcical trial, she could not speak the language used in court, and the alleged incidents of adultery took place after her husband's death.

Then her lawyer was forced into exile, and the prosecution conjured up a new trumped-up charge for which she would be executed; the murder of her husband. Despite this being double jeoprady, as she is already serving time for alleged complicity in this crime, Sakineh was tortured and paraded on national television to 'confess', and was found guilty. The regime has now arrested two German journalists, her lawyer and her son, who has bravely led the international campaign to save his mother. All remain in prison and Sakineh's son and lawyer have been also tortured and have no access to lawyers.

Now Iranian human rights activists state an order has just been issued from Tehran to implement her killing immediately, she is on the list and tomorrow is execution day.

Persistent campaigning led Iran to drop Sakineh's stoning sentence and captured the attention of leaders in countries with influence on Iran, like Turkey and Brazil. Now let's urgently raise our voices to stop her killing and inhumane treatment and free her, her lawyer, her son and the jailed journalists.

A massive public outcry has the moral authority to stop heinous crimes. Let's use these 24 hours to send a clear message -- the world is watching and we all stand together today to save Sakineh's life and against injustice everywhere.
With hope and determination,
Avaaz

Devonport Blockade 13 Arrested

Thirteen people were arrested during an anti-nuclear demonstration outside Plymouth's Royal Naval base today.

More than 100 people from campaign group Trident Ploughshares began "blockading" the main gates at Devonport before 0600 GMT. Some lay down across the road, while others chained or glued themselves together. A small group of protesters also got on to Drake's Island at the mouth of the dockyard in Plymouth Sound. The main road outside the dockyard was closed to traffic for about two hours and workers had to go in on foot.

Trident Ploughshares said it was expressing an "unambiguous message of opposition" to the UK's Trident nuclear weapon system.

Protester Shirley Law said: "Radiation and people don't mix and to have something like a Trident refitting programme in a city of 250,000 people is a bad idea."

By 7am today the group had successfully blockaded Albert Gate and Camel's Head gate.

CND UK said a police van had been made 'part of the protest' after a number of people climbed underneath it and refused to come out. Some protesters are believed to have glued themselves together.

Plymouth Moorview MP Alison Seabeck said she had "some sympathy" with the protest, but getting rid of Trident was not the answer. "In a perfect world I wouldn't want nuclear weapons - I really wouldn't want them. However, we're not in a perfect world. There are risks and I therefore support the continuation of Trident."

David Wildman of the Plymouth Green Party said he was supporting the event. "Where's the logic in having nuclear weapons in a city of a quarter of a million people?" Mr Wildman said.

John Chapman, who is the landlord of the Royal Naval Arms opposite HMS Drake, said: "The majority of people outside Plymouth disagree with the nuclear work but the majority of people living here don't mind. They wouldn't live here if they felt that way."

A spokesman at the naval base said in a free and democratic country people had a right to protest.

There were a few "minor" scuffles, but Devon and Cornwall Police said the demonstration had been mostly "peaceful and good natured".

On its website, Trident Ploughshares states Plymouth is becoming known as the 'Sellafield of the South West' because of its involvement with nuclear submarine refits, maintenance and upgrades.

A police spokesman said more than 10 people were arrested for public order offences.