Congratulations Caroline!!!

(Pic from Evening Standard website, thanks)

The Greens are the only party who have  reason to cheer their result in the 2010 election. Caroline Lucas' team in Brighton have beaten the malodourous FPTP electoral system and made history by putting the first Green MP into the Mugger of Parliaments at Westminster.

This is going to have a huge effect on British politics as far as Green issues  - global warming and the environment, and social equality  - are concerned. An officer told me privately that the moment I was elected onto Woodspring District Council in 1986, the ruling Tories began to ask the officers how they could green their policies. Although we are publicly disdained, privately the other politicians seek to emulate the Green Party.

So we have a hung Parliament, though not as well hung (what happened to the LibDem vote?) as we would have wished. Will Nick Clegg's LibDems show backbone and insist on PR as their non-negotiable condition for any coalition?

Britain needs political reform, which must include reform over newspaper ownership. The readership of Tory-backing papers is three times that of the Mirror, Guardian and Independent. Given that huge propaganda advantage, Cameron's lead in MPs looks like a pretty hollow victory.

One of the most striking aspects of this election is what happens if people are given the opportunity to pick the policies that appeal to them, stripped of the context of commentary and personality. The Vote for Policies website final result on 288,142 votes is:
Greens 24%
Labour 20%
LibDems 18%
Cons       16%
UKIP 12%
BNP 10%

This is a survey of netizens, not a balanced social profile, but on the other hand, are we web dwellers so unbalanced? And 288k is a pretty hefty sample.

Finally, for today, before I go off line for a couple of days, a personal apology to my local party and potential Green voters in the Weston constituency for my ill-considered withdrawal of my own candidacy. John Penrose got in with an increased majority (congratulations, John) against Mike Bell, the LibDem (commiserations Mike). Undoubtedly the Green vote would have been squeezed, and I would have felt pretty uncomfortable in the heady days of the Cleggmania spike. But my initial assessment was right, and my unilateral withdrawal was a bum decision. On the other hand, if we go into another election under FPTP (gods forbid), I think that PR backing parties should have structured agreements.

Anyway. We have an MP in Westminster who understands the first rule of tree surgery: mankind must not saw away at the branch it that it is standing on.

[update] Here is one mock-up (incomplete results) of what Parliament would look like under PR.
[update2] Whatever else happens in this Parliament, if they have any sense at all they will put together some kind of cross-party Council of Fiscal Responsibility to guide financial decisions.

Praying and voting for real democracy in the UK

O God O God O God. Please let it be a balanced Parliament that delivers PR.
Thank you.
I'm off to vote now. For the candidate that supports Proportional Representation.

How to Vote : advice for the swing voter (3)

An amazing 40% of voters have yet to decide what to do with their vote.


Allow me to help.

The wise  voter needs first of all to find out if the seat is "safe".
Find out here.

If it is a safe seat, all votes apart from those for the incumbent are "wasted" in the sense that they do not get any representation in Parliament. There's our First Past the Post system (FPTP) for you. It is a crap system, and it has to go.

In a safe seat, then you might as well vote for your principles.The best signal to send is with a Green Party vote, because it signals your wish for radical reform of our political and economic system, reform that means your children and grandchildren will have a decent life. In other words, you get more bangs for your ballot with a Green vote.

If on the other hand you are in a marginal constituency, then I as a Green would strongly urge you to vote Green, if that option is open, since your vote will lever the winner to be more green in Parliament so as to win your vote back.

But I recognise that tactical voting is very appealing in a marginal seat, and here surely any thinking voter will wish to vote ABT (Anything But Tory) for the following reasons:

1. They are infested with climate change deniers
2. Their economic slash-and-burn policies will bring on a double dip recession
3. They support the ridiculous FPTP system
4. They would increase the Rich-Poor Gap.

This list is not complete, but should be enough to persuade any sentient being not to vote Tory.

If you have a choice between Labour and LibDem, then back the LibDem in the hope of getting a well-hung Parliament, with Vince Cable in the Treasury, and Proportional Representation well and truly on the menu.

All voters who care about democracy and political reform are recommended to murmur the words "First Past the Post Has Got To Go" to the clerks as they hand you your precious polling form.

I hope this is helpful.

How to Vote : advice for the swing voter (2)

I lifted this from Craig Murray. He got it from his local LibDems. 

More advice for the swing voter.

Green Party Policies in a Nutshell

Take a look here.

Jonathon Porritt on Nuclear Power

Porritt is the guy doing the talk. I think the old bloke sitting next to him is a pensioner who came in out of the cold...

Immigration: which countries are most likely to send people to UK, and why?

In looking at immigration into the UK, we need to look at causes. To look at causes, we need to view the rate of migration from a particular country. I have taken the figures on immigration in 2008 from the Guardian's Factfile series, which give top applications for citizenship in 2008, and divided the population of the sending country by the number of applications. There are about 200 countries on the list, so I have sampled the top 18 senders.

This gives a proportional rate of emigration from the country. The smaller the number, the greater the proportion of the country that wants to emigrate to the UK. It does not give an absolute figure, because citizens who emigrate to other countries are not counted. Countries with strong ties with the UK (Commonwealth status, or English-speaking,) will be more likely to come here.

So here is the list of the top 18 senders:

     Country          Rate of immigration to UK
 1   Jamaica          1001
2   Somalia         1,275
3   Zimbabwe     2,193
4   Iraq               3,456
5   Afghanistan    5,081
6   Sri Lanka       6,161
7   Ghana            7,603
8   South Africa  9,368
9   Turkey         15,638
10 Pakistan       17,042
11 Phillipines     17,142
12 Australia       18,767
13 Nigeria         34,156
14 Iran              33,725
15 Bangladesh   44,627
16 India             99,820
17 USA           140,223
18 China          467,591

I have put in bold the countries where there is a current or recent war, or civil conflict, or an oppressive regime.

5 of the top 6 strongest sending countries come from countries at war - two of which are wars chosen by our Government.

The conclusion is that individuals and parties who are concerned about immigration into the UK should take an active interest in world peace, international co-operation, Human Rights, and world poverty.

Paradoxically, parties like UKIP and the BNP tend to be averse both to immigration and world affairs, which shows a deep logical inconsistency in their thinking.

Green Party Immigration policy

The Green Party 2010 manifesto takes a balanced view of immigration. We recognise that immigration is a fact of life, we recognise that it has some positive economic effects, but that it can also create tension in the host population if housing, jobs and services are in short supply. (Which is another reason to supply social housing, end unemployment, and provide adequate public services).

We are concerned that asylum seekers, for whom we have legal obligations, should be able to avoid destitution while their claim is being processed.

We support an amnesty for migrants "We would open up ways for existing illegal migrants who have been here for three years to become legal."  The amnesty has been hotly challenged by the commentariat, but it makes perfect sense - the alternative is to have a shadowy underclass of stateless persons in our society, fodder for criminal gangs. It is in short a no-brainer, and critics of the amnesty show themselves to be short of brains.

We would end the detention of children, and look to their welfare.
Trafficked people can choose to stay if they wish.
Most importantly, we look to the causes of migration - wars, political oppression, and world poverty.

Migration is another social challenge brought on by inequality - this time by global inequality.

The bottom line is that green global policies for peace, international cooperation, Index of Human Rights, and renewable energy (which will make hot countries net energy exporters) are the only effective and humane way of ending such problems that immigration represents.

See also http://t.co/Lw6M3bCudm

Debate on the Debategraph.

This is the Nuclear bit of the Debategraph, which is a huge improvement on email list discussions, which are linear and confusing. The more web-like structure of the Debategraph - which is a form of wiki - comes more close to representing a system. Highly recommended.

Composting toilets are the future.

As a change from politics, my big news is that yesterday I had the pleasure of emptying my first bucket of poo+sawdust into my new Humanure Hacienda (compost pile to the uninitiated).

Sorry there are no pictures, as my Blogger has lost the picture uploading link. It would have shown my nice shiny carefully made and varnished wooden thunderbox with re-used toilet lid, that contains one 5-gallon plastic bucket.

It couldn't be simpler. You shit in the bucket, and cover each offering with sawdust. All you can detect, once covered, is a faint odour of fresh varnish.

Full buckets are emptied into a normal compost heap which will go theromophilic (hot) due to bacteria already in the poo, and the carbon nitrogen balance of the excrement and the sawdust.

Composting means that all pathogenic bacteria, viruses and worms are destroyed. Most are gone within days or weeks, but we leave it for a year to be sure.

Composting toilets are the future. Growing population and consumerist lifestyles are putting drinking water availability at under pressure.


In view of this it makes no sense whatsoever to shit into our drinking water.
IsraelPalestine needs to co-operate on their water management issues, with cross community work on saving, harvesting and storing water.

Joe Jenkins is The Man.

Very cool election video from Bristol Green Party

Very cool Bristol Green Party video. Very cool indeed. Laid back. Thoughtful.

Oil companies, Gas flaring, sociopathy

While BP's oil creeps slowly towards the coast of Louisiana, another crime committed by the oil industry on a daily basis should be flagged up. Gas flaring.

Pressure variations require release of gas. Instead of compressing and processing this gas, it is flared off. This is a waste of energy, and produces toxic air pollution, as well as 0.5% of world CO2 emissions. That is 150 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared or vented annually, an amount worth approximately 30.6 billion dollars, equivalent to 25 percent of the United States’ gas consumption or 30 percent of the European Union’s gas consumption per year. If steam is added to reduce the pollution, it produces noise pollution.

Flaring is not necessary. It has been reduced by three quarters since the 1970s by technological improvements.

It is time now to stop gas flaring totally. Why is the oil industry dragging its feet? Because the increase in supply of natural gas to the market would reduce the value of its product.

Corporations are persons in law, persons who often show a number of sociopathic traits.

Items not mentioned in the UK Election

It is impossible for all topics of interest to all people to be carried in election, but still, it is interesting to note what subjects have not figured significantly in this election, in the sense of being debated, rather than mentioned.

• The electoral system
• Global Warming
• Energy security
• Equality
• Immigration
• The deficit
• The UK's Weapons of Mass Destruction.

 I suppose we have to accept that the mainstream media, who broadly set the electoral agenda through their reporting, are unable to managed serious, information dense debate. It's a pity, really.