Louis Stephen

The following letter comes from the letters page of The Guardian 31/12/10……

While I share Seumas Milne’s analysis of the fragility of the coalition, I do not share any optimism that Labour can offer a credible alternative (Cameron and Clegg have shown they are for turning, 30 December). Having ditched their principles in government, Labour want to reclaim them now they are out of power. But politicians must take some responsibility for their actions, and show some consistency over their policies. How can a party that introduced student fees now oppose them on principle? Like the Liberal Democrats, Labour broke a manifesto pledge in doing so. But unlike the Lib Dems, they were not then the junior members of a coalition. Labour had a Commons majority when they ended the principle of free tuition. It was entirely their decision. Now Ed Miliband appears to believe he can airbrush that decision from the record.

Similarly, the ethos of the NHS as a public service, where patient needs come before profits, is taking another blow. Yet Labour is unable to mount a principled defence since, when they were in power, they welcomed in private healthcare providers, and saddled the NHS with huge debts through PFI.

Across the board, Labour simply cannot oppose coalition plans without laying themselves open to the charge of hypocrisy. Academies? A Labour idea. Selling off Royal Mail? A Labour idea. Even the programme of cuts in public services is something Labour admit they would have done, had they won in May.

But Labour’s leadership, with a typical lack of humility, assume that students and others will meekly return to the party that betrayed them. Ed Miliband wouldn’t be seen meeting students, let alone marching with them – he said he thought about it, but was “doing something else” at the time. There lies the heart of Labour dilemma – they want to win back the trust of voters, but also pander to the Daily Mail. Joining the protests or challenging heavy handed policing in parliament, as I have done, does not seem to fit with Labour’s obsession with the fabled middle ground of British politics.

Politics does not have to be a straight choice between power and principles. In our election campaign in May, the Greens did not drop any of our controversial policies. We stuck to what we believed in and, against all the odds, we won our first seat. It shows that if you tell the truth and offer people something better, the public will respond.

Caroline Lucas MP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/31/dilemma-of-labours-opposition

Pensioners living in Worcester are being prevented from using their free bus pass before 9:30am. This is very frustrating for example when trying to get to the doctors or a hospital appointment first thing in the morning. Where is the joined up thinking – I thought we were trying to encourage people to use public transport rather than their cars to get to Worcestershire Royal Hospital?

A proper hassle free bus pass is affordable, pensioners in the nearby local authorities of Wychavon, Malvern, Redditch and Bromsgrove do not have any restrictions on their early morning buses. To reduce congestion and CO2 emissions the Green Party would re-regulate the buses, reduce all bus and train fares by 10% and yes, provide proper free pensioner bus passes without the petty restrictions

The proposed incinerator in Hartlebury will be fed from the waste we create right here in the city of Worcester. Instead of shipping our rubbish out to Hartlebury for incineration we as residents of Worcester must take responsibility for our own waste. We could all recycle more of our household rubbish but it is incumbent on the local councils to facilitate this by allowing more items to be recycled including aluminium foil and food wastes. There is still much we can do to increase recycling rate – many council flats currently do not even have segregated recycling bins.

The incinerator will cost millions of pounds when instead we could be increasing our recycling rates saving investment costs, raising cash from the materials we recycle and at the same time creating hundreds of jobs.

For more info see: http://www.wail.uk.net

The proposed new voting system Alternative Vote (AV) will be decided by a referendum next May. The Green Party believes in true proportional representation (PR) where the number of MP’s for each party is linked directly to the number of votes cast for that party. Unfortunately the Lib Dems were not able to persuade the Conservatives to have proper referendum vote on PR. Is AV any better than the system that we have today and what will it mean for the people of Worcester?

AV will mean that our MP will have to win the support of at least 50% of the voters. Whilst not being a proper proportional system at least MPs will have to actively seek out 2nd and 3rd preference votes and this should lead to more consensus driven grown-up politics.

The Con-Dem government has just announced big reductions in public spending that are bound to affect local services and jobs in the district. So what’s the Green Party’s response to the cuts crisis?

Clearly, the budget deficit needs to be eliminated. But we think that the Government should focus less on slashing the public sector, and more on raising taxes from the wealthiest people and companies. For example, we would like to see a 50% tax on incomes above £100,000; a crack-down on tax avoidance; an empty property tax; and a ‘Robin Hood tax’ on currency speculation.

We would cancel the Trident nuclear missile system, saving £100billion over the next 30 years.

We would separate retail banking from investment banking, and we do not support Government bail-outs of failed investment banks.

Locally, we will continue to look for imaginative ways for the City Council to save money and invest in a low-carbon economy, instead of losing vital jobs and services.

The Greens will continue to try to defend funding to help vulnerable people (eg. grants to the Citizen Advice Bureau), and to fight for better youth services and provision for people with mental health problems.

Thinking about the impending cuts planned by the Conservative and Lib Dem coalition I was struck by the way we seem to be sleep walking into the cuts. Remember when the Conservatives introduced the poll tax? Yes – a terribly regressive tax but it served as a central rallying point to everyone opposed to Maggie Thatchers view of the world. The Tories were pumelled as practically every town organised Anti Poll Tax marches and grannies started to be imprisoned for non payment of the tax.

In contrast these planned cuts are likely to be very cleverly implemented – piecemeal and staged over several months even years. The cuts will be far reaching but most people will not see the entirety of the cuts – maybe the cuts will be affecting others in ways not known to us. The cuts will probably present not nearly as neat and unifying a target as the Poll Tax was to us living in the late 80′s and early 90′s. This is definitely a case where we need to stick together:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a communist;

Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a socialist;

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a trade unionist;

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a Jew;

Then they came for me–
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If you want to do something about this please come to the inaugural meeting of “Worcester Against The Cuts” 7pm Monday 1st November at St Andrew’s Methodist church, Pump Street, Worcester, WR1 2QT.

The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has risen from 270 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in the 19th century to about 390ppm CO2 today. In the Conservative’s manifesto they aim to stabilise the greenhouse gases to about 550ppm CO2 by targeting an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050 (or about 2.5% per year).

However the Stern Report (which summarises the scientific consensus) says that at that level of greenhouse gases there is a 75–99% chance (that is, near certainty) of global warming exceeding 2°C. If that happens there is a high chance of runaway and disastrous climate change, costing us all more the longer we ignor the problem and fail to act.

We in the Green Party think it is both imprudent and immoral knowingly to accept that level of risk. We think we should aim to stabilise the level of CO2 in the atmosphere at a level just slightly below the present level (i.e. around 350ppm). The scientists agree with us. To achieve 350ppm industrialised countries with high emissions, like the UK, need to reduce their emissions with by 90% by 2030. That means an annual reduction of about 10% per year from now until 2030.

Ordinary people all over the world will be taking part in a Global Work Party event 10/10/10 this October to urge politicians and policy makers to act. For the sake of future generations we should be focussing on creating the infrastructure now (investment in railways, insulation, renewables) to cut carbon emissions; investment in human ingenuity and jobs.

The Green Party has major concerns with the Lib Dem / Conservative plans to repay the last governments’ massive debts.

The Republic of Ireland is about 12 months ahead of us in the economic cycle. They have made large public sector cuts which have caused a massive increase in unemployment that has actually been counter-productive due to lower tax receipts and increased welfare costs. The simple fact is that these Conservative cuts are ideologically driven.

The Green Party also rejects the Labour Party’s proposals that create a consumer led bubble that simultaneously increases personal debt and at
the same time sows the seeds for the next recession.

There is another way. Reinvest in our country’s infrastructure – invest in the railways, home insulation and renewable electricity generation to create a million new jobs and at the same time rebuild a sustainable and stable economy.

Just because the next General Election could be up to 5 years away it does not mean that we have to just sit back and take the new governments’s cuts. Do something: lobby your MP, join a union, support the many planned demonstrations planned when the cuts are announced in October. You could even join the Green Party!

So the legislation to enable more state funded Academy schools has been passed today (26th July).  Academy schools opt out of local government controls, so instead of being open to all, far more restrictive admissions policies can be devised. This encourages separation between those of various religious beliefs and those with none. Should our children not all be taught together for the sake of community cohesion?

In the General Election hustings I argued that we should be reducing not increasing religious control of our state schools. Last night Caroline Lucas MP also argued in the house of commons debate that ‘there will be no requirement on academies to teach evolution, and the Government do not even appear to have plans to prevent the teaching of creationism in academies.’

Our academic system needs to be based on science and facts. Morals and ethics quite rightly have a place in our schools to enable us to work and live together in harmony but we must resist the creeping rise in faith schools. I vigorously defend the freedom to religious belief without persecution but the right place for teaching these matters is in our mosques and churches.

It is expected that on Monday 14th June the government will announce more cuts in jobs and services in an attempt to redress the financial deficit.

Yet despite these cuts, in David Cameron’s words, being “unavoidably tough” and affecting “our whole way of life” we are continuing to waste around £100 billion on replacing our Trident nuclear missiles. We cannot continue to lecture countries such as Iran on the implications of their nuclear programme whilst proceeding blindly with our own – a move which would be both hypocritical and dangerous.

Moreover, nuclear weapons remain a costly distraction from the real security threats we face, like climate change. The billions being spent on Trident replacement could be much better spent on investing in developing the infrastructure we need for a zero carbon economy, as well as in protecting public services.

To use the money on a project that will make Britain and the world a far more dangerous place is politically irresponsible, morally bankrupt and economically obscene.