Paul Blomfield PPC for Sheffield Central, Wes Streeting President of NUS, and Sheffield Labour Club out campaigning

It’s not always easy campaigning in a difficult climate (literally in the case of some of the freezing weather we get in Sheffield!), but Sheffield Labour Club are always campaigning in some capacity at least once a week.
Most of our campaigning at the moment is for Paul Blomfield, Labour’s excellent candidate, in a tough fight in Sheffield Central Constituency.

Today for example a big group of us went out with Paul on the streets of Sheffield, talking to voters about their concerns and views, and got a really good response.
We were particularly pleased to be joined by Wes Streeting, President of the National Union of Students, who despite frequently criticising the Government on issues like tuition fees, is always ready to campaign for good Labour candidates.

If you want to get involved with any campaigning come along to a Club meeting or drop us a line on labour@sheffield.ac.uk

Guest at Bright Star lend their faces to fight TB

On 19^th November, the campaign to bring attention to tuberculosis (TB) was given a boost as politicians, civil servants, actors, members of the press and the healthcare community were brought together by Bright Star, Jane Campion’s film about Romantic poet John Keats and his true love Fanny Brawne.

RESULTS and the UK Coalition to Stop TB hosted sixty guests at Hampstead’s Keats House for a reception, before viewing the film.  After the guests had explored the historic site, Paul Sommerfeld, Chair of TB Alert, gave a tribute to Sir John Crofton, the late giant of TB treatment, and a “Bright Star” in his own right.  Dr Marc Lipman of the nearby Royal Free Hospital and the British Thoracic Society spoke of the nature of the modern epidemic, which kills 5000 people every day, and the need for a stronger response from governments and the international community.  They were joined by Glenn Thomas of the World Health Organisation in emphasising that TB is beatable.

The evening was a fantastic success, educating prominent figures in the UK about the ongoing TB pandemic, while providing great fun for all. Many of the guests agreed to speak out against TB by having their photograph taken with a special message: ‘No more Bright Stars lost to TB.’

Actors, designers, pop stars have all got behind the hot new ethical campaign: food. From saving species to investigating conditions for pigs, star quality is pushing it to the foreground

It is, by anybody’s standards, an arresting image: a truly beautiful photograph of a luscious, radiant creature, all shiny eyes and silky skin. And Greta Scacchi, who is pictured clutching the cod to her naked body, doesn’t look bad either. In the months and years to come, this picture, flashed throughout the British media last week, will doubtless come to be seen as the seminal image for a particular moment, when the gruelling, knotty business of campaigning around food issues finally became sexy. The use of celebrity skin to push an ethical issue is nothing new, of course. In the 1990s, Peta – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – convinced a bunch of supermodels, including Naomi Campbell, to appear in the buff under the legend “I’d rather go nude than wear fur”. But fur is just so passé. And, in any case, Campbell proved just how fickle the modern celebrity can be by soon deciding that actually, come to think of it, she would much rather wear fur than go nude, and did so on the catwalk in Milan.

Where celebrities are concerned, it seems, food is the new fur. The current set of images featuring Scacchi alongside actress Emilia Fox, director Terry Gilliam and actor Richard E Grant, were launched to back the cinematic release of The End Of The Line, a film about the threat of overfishing – but they are only a part of it. Tomorrow, Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary are launching a campaign to convince the public to go meat-free for one day a week. Another movie, Food Inc, which looks at the excesses and foul side-effects of industrial food production has just been released in the US and will shortly arrive here. Plus there is a major investigation by environmental campaigner Tracy Worcester into the dark underbelly of the global pig-rearing business which is about to be screened on digital channel More4. Food, and more importantly, really bad food, is hot.

What marks out these campaigns is their sophistication. It began a couple of weeks ago with the news that Nobu, the global high-end chain of Japanese restaurants favoured by the glitterati, was still serving bluefin tuna despite it being an endangered species. The restaurant had added a note to its menu pointing out the threat to the magnificent bluefin and inviting diners to ask for an alternative, but had refused to stop serving it, unlike big-name chefs such as Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.

This was an old story; it had first been reported in September. It reared its head again because it features in The End Of The Line, the film version of a book by respected journalist Charles Clover.

Cue a letter from a familiar roster of celebrities – Jemima Goldsmith, Trudie Styler, Elle Macpherson – demanding Nobu remove it from their menus so they could eat at the restaurant with a clear conscience. Stephen Fry took to twittering about the issue. “It’s astounding lunacy to serve up endangered species for sushi,” he later said. “There’s no justification for peddling extinction, yet that is exactly what Nobu is doing in its restaurants around the world.” For its part, Nobu has refused to change its policy; apparently it feels it can do without the custom of Trudie and Stephen.

The producers of The End of The Line weren’t finished, though. Clover had been discussing how to publicise the film with Nicholas Rohl and Elizabeth Bennett, friends of his who run the highly regarded ethical London sushi restaurant Soseki and who have helped pioneer sustainable fishing methods. “It was they who suggested getting celebrities on board,” Clover says. “It was basically using celebrities to shame other celebrities and I’m rather keen on that.”

Nicholas Rohl, who as well as co-owning Soseki is a screenwriter, has long known Scacchi. “I contacted her and she opened up her address book,” he says. “It took us two or three weeks to set up. We sent out hundreds of emails and made hundreds of calls, but eventually we got the names together.”

The photographer Rankin agreed to take the shots. Richard E Grant, pictured bare-chested with two feet of lovely, silvery, long-snouted fish, says he was motivated to get behind the campaign by his 30 years of scuba diving. “Commercial sea-floor dredging is an abomination,” he says. “And free celebrity endorsement is the cheapest way to publicise an issue without wasting valuable funds, which are better spent on the cause itself.”

Clover agrees. “The fact is that if you want to put an issue into the popular mind you have to get it into Heat magazine,” he says. Scacchi even appeared on the Today programme to argue the case. “She’s much better suited for doing something like that than me, and catches people’s attention in the way I can’t,” Clover adds. But isn’t it frustrating that, because of the way the media work, an actress who knows almost nothing about the subject is favoured over the man who literally wrote the book? Clover says not. “When you start hearing what you’ve been saying for five years in the mouth of someone who didn’t know anything about it until five minutes before, it’s awesome. It blows your mind.”

Food writer and television cook Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who has used his shows to argue for improvements in the way cheap chickens are raised in this country, sees nothing intrinsically wrong in non-expert celebrities getting involved. “What matters is how well they carry the message and whether they are in it for the long haul,” he explains.

Nevertheless, there are bound to be some complications with celebrity-driven campaigns, not least the way they are, by habit, completely micro-managed. For example, Paul McCartney has sent letters to people in the media inviting them to a lunch tomorrow to launch his meat-free Monday campaign.

“Livestock continues to have a greater impact on climate change than the combined transportation sector,” he writes. “This industry amounts to a huge 18% of the global warming effect – a terrifying statistic … Help us to encourage the nation to reduce their meat intake by cutting it out just one day a week.”

It sounds like an eminently sensible idea, but no more can be said about it, because the McCartneys have agreed an exclusive interview deal with another, unnamed newspaper and so will not talk to us, or anybody else for that matter, until tomorrow.

So why are all these campaigns happening now? Fearnley-Whittingstall believes the current burst of interest around food is a direct response to government inaction. “I certainly thought it was worth doing something like the chicken campaign, because government wasn’t doing enough,” he says. “If you want to save fish stocks or improve conditions for livestock, do you take it to politicians or do you take it to television and cinema? The latter seems the better way to work right now.”

He credits Jamie Oliver with paving the way for campaigns like his, both by his efforts to improve school meals and his project to recruit jobless youngsters for his restaurants. “His shows marked a crossover for campaigning TV from dry documentary to more mainstream popular TV,” he says. “The crunch question is to what degree the audience are converted.”

It is a question Food Inc tries to answer. The feature-length documentary digs deep beneath the glossy, groaning piles of fresh produce in US supermarkets to reveal the less than appetising methods used to produce them – which have been held responsible for fatal outbreaks of e. coli and salmonella. The film is designed to be a wake-up call, its creators say. They include Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and Michael Pollan, author of In Defence of Food, who narrates the movie. “A lot of it is hard to watch,” Pollan has said, “but I think people are ready to take a good, unflinching look at how their food is produced.”

Naturally it comes with celebrity endorsement from the likes of US chef Alice Waters and lifestyle guru and sometime jailbird Martha Stewart, for no food campaign would be complete without that. But perhaps more intriguing is the 300-page book published alongside the film, full of essays on issues surrounding climate change, the environment and agriculture and offering advice on what consumers can do to make a difference.

“This is one of the most interesting social movements afoot right now,” Pollan told Newsweek last week. “The politicians haven’t quite recognised it yet. Hopefully this movie will be a part of the change.”

Those who regard issues around food, which affect everything from the environment to healthcare and economic sustainability, as one of the greatest challenges currently facing the developed world will hope that he’s right. They will also hope that no well-meaning celebrities have a Campbellesque change of heart and are caught feasting on bluefin tuna sashimi with a side order of baby panda rissoles any day soon.

They are what we eat

• Jamie Oliver has campaigned on many food issues. He caught public attention with his Jamie’s School Dinners TV series in 2005 which campaigned to improve the standard of school meals. Jamie Saves Our Bacon this year highlighted the plight of many pigs reared in the UK and abroad.

• In 2008 Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall presented Hugh’s Chicken Run in which he created three chicken farms, one intensive, one free range, and a community farm staffed by volunteers.

• Eric Schlosser examined the global influence of the US fast food industry in Fast Food Nation, published in 2001. The book was made into a 2006 film, including graphic footage from a slaughterhouse.

• American film-maker Morgan Spurlock, above, demonstrated the health effects of McDonald’s food in his documentary Super Size Me by eating nothing but the chain’s meals three times a day, every day, for 30 days.

Source: Guardian.co.uk Caroline White

An article in Insurance Day last week revealed that the UK government has thrown its weight behind microinsurance as an adaptation method to help poor communities to deal with the impacts of climate change. Addressing a ‘Risk Insight’ seminar at the Lloyd’s Old Library last Friday Matthew Wyatt, head of climate and environment at the Department for International Development (DFID) said that the UK government is pushing for insurance to be recognised as part of the response to climate change at the Copenhagen Climate summit next month.

This is a fantastic development for RESULTS. In August our grassroots activists wrote to Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander and Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband to ask them to push for exactly this. The response then was less enthusiastic, expressing support for microinsurance as an adaptation method but refusing to commit to pushing for its inclusion in the Copenhagen text.

RESULTS activists followed up to argue the case for microinsurance being included at the summit, explaining to DFID that the scale-up of microinsurance requires the ability to share risk between different climactic zones, which means that a global system is key to making insurance available to more of the world’s poor. International summits such as Copenhagen are crucial fora in which to make this happen.

Well done to everyone who has been involved in this campaign – this development clearly shows that your tenacity is paying off!

Copenhagen is a beautiful city that I first had the chance to visit, and subsequently fell in love with, in Autumn 2008. The Danish spirit seems to be eminently sensible, open-minded and forward facing. My cousin married a Dane and is now happily living in Copenhagen, and I’m quite envious of their social situation as working parents of young children; the state makes their lives considerably easier than our equivalent in the UK.

And the gaze of the world’s media now focusses on Copenhagen with the UN Climate Summit less than 2 weeks away, my thoughts are drifting back towards social activism for the environment. I’ve just very recently been hearing about two very different cases, and in both thinking that digital storytelling would help spread the word. And I know that citizen journalism is not without problems, but what about the voices of the people who are affected in a very real way day to day by policy and decisions…

The first is the protests in 1993 of Clayoquot Sound, Vancouver Island when the British Columbia Government actioned the ‘Clayoquot Land Use Decision’ to permit mass logging of the temperate rainforest. The story I heard was from someone who was there; Aldo de Moor’s written notes and media collection offer that insight first hand. The Friends of Clayoquot Sound website shows one example of digital activism, and I guess facilitates making informed decisions on the part of the activists much easier. Sadly, the logging continues and battles are still being fought.

The other case I’ve been hearing about is a new, rural community development south of Copenhagen. The collaborative nature of the community and participatory design of a communal centre has been quite inspirational.

Digital storytelling can be such a powerful technique with the right mandate, and these types of project just inspire me to want to head off into the wider world and work. Back in the real world, I am starting to think about what I’d like to do after my PhD is over. Any work I do will undoubtedly remain in the realm of community informatics, but I wonder if environmental issues are going to play a more prominent part.

And now that Barak Obama is set to attend the UN Climate Summit, and both the USA and China are reviewing cuts in emissions, I feel perhaps the future of environmental campaigning might be slightly more positive.

UN Negotiator Dessima Williams reminds us why now is the time to act, and sums it up nicely when she says “We’re all on the road to Copenhagen” in this media clip.

Photo courtesy of Rob Warde, Flickr.com

Tonight, New Labour was trounced: rejected by the voters and left trailing with barely 20% of the vote in a ward they used to hold.   Steve Williams is the new councillor, taking over following the sad death of Suzanne Moseley.

Conservatives won 70% of the vote (up from 60%) when Suzanne was last elected.  The Liberal Democrat and Green votes also fell and many of the former Liberal Democrat voters switched directly to Steve.  We also noticed how many fed up former Labour voters are now switching directly to us.

Steve Smith and I went along to the count at Moreton Community Centre to see the votes counted.  Well done to Cllr. Steve Williams and everyone who worked so hard for tonight’s result.

Last night, a great team of volunteers delivered newsletters to parts of Moreton while the rest of us revisited those who were out when we called two weeks ago, mainly in the Lingham area of the town.  As well as finding more new Conservative supporters, it was great to meet up with colleagues from Liverpool who came over to help. 

We were up bright and early for the 6am ‘good morning’ leaflet drop and, again, with 20+ out to help, the whole area had been covered within 2 hours.  It was then breakfast in Nile Palace before heading off to meet the staff at the five polling stations. 

This will be my last my post for today as I will be back in Moreton and Saughall Massie for the rest of election day.  I will be Tweeting, as and when I can…

Tonight, we split into several teams to complete the final night’s campaigning in the Moreton by-election following the sad death of Suzanne Moseley.  I led a team around the Wastdale Drive and Curlew Way area of the town – visiting Labour supporters and asking them to switch. 

I was delighted that so many said they would be – either to Steve Williams (the only local candidate) or Alec McFadden (the independent-scoialist-trade unionist).

Thanks also to our colleagues from Liverpool who came over to help and to Chris for the drinks in Sorella’s afterwards.

Whatever the result tomorrow, I think Steve with support from Chris, Simon and Leah, has run a positive campaign that seems to have been in tune with the circumstances of this election.

Steve Williams

Tomorrow, voters in Moreton West and Saughall Massie go to the polls, in the first council election since the local authority’s Strategic Asset Review and their u-turn on leisure provision.  The by-election was called due to the death of Councillor Suzanne Moseley, who had represented Moreton since 2003.

The candidate for the Conservatives is Steve Williams, a local man who lives and works in the area.  I’ve worked closely with Steve, he knows what really matters to local people and he will make an excellent councillor representing their views in the Town Hall. 

Polling stations are open from 7am to 10pm at Christ Church Primary, Moreton Community Centre, Foxfield School, St Mary’s Church Centre and the Grange Pub Car Park.

I was going to write a big long piece today about it being the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I was going to write about what an important day this is, and about how we marched again on Saturday night to Reclaim the Night and called for an end to violence against women and girls. I was going to write about how the blogger Noble Savage had been sexually assaulted during the march, and about the candlelit vigil tonight in Trafalgar Square that’s been called in remembrance of all women who have been murdered and affected by male violence. And I was going to write about the government’s new strategy, announced today, on ending violence against women:  Together We Can End Violence against Women and Girls

And then my daughter rang me, and told me about how she’d been physically assaulted last night. My daughter rang me and told me about the man who suddenly came from nowhere while she was busy working away in a public library: about the man who grabbed her by the throat, headbutted her, flung her on the floor, and chased after her once she’d managed to struggle free. She told me about how he’d chased her and tried to get behind the library counter where she’d run to for safety, and about how other library staff had had to restrain him. This man. This man she’s never met before. This man she doesn’t even know.

And while she was telling me all this I know I made all the right noises and said all the right things. I know that my voice didn’t catch in my throat the way it has been doing ever since. I know that I checked with her, again and again, that she was really as all right as she said she was. And I told her I was so so glad she hadn’t been seriously hurt. And I told her of course I understood now why she hadn’t phoned last night to wish her dad a happy birthday. And I told her that I loved her.

And then I put the phone down.

And then I cried.

Because do you know what? It wasn’t meant to be like this.

We were supposed to build a better world for our daughters. A safer world. A nicer world. For fuck’s sake we were supposed to change the world, so that when our daughters stepped out into it they wouldn’t have to be afraid. They wouldn’t have to know the fear that so many of us have known.

We were supposed to stop the rape and the murders and the sexual assaults and the physical assaults and the forced marriages and the sexual exploitation and the domestic violence and the FGM and the so-called honour crimes. We were supposed to make it right for all the women and girls who came after us.

On days like these, it really does come home to me, literally, just how badly we’ve failed.

On days like these, all I can say is, I’m sorry.

Tidbits from pdf europe

The pdf conference in Barcelona was fascinating, as expected of course. Great atmosphere, great crowd, great ideas. So, here are a few belated scattered tidbits and thoughts:

Pdf being a New York-born conference brought in a whole bunch of people from the other side of the Atlantic, people we usually “follow” through the web. The heavy artillery were of course the people who were involved with the Obama campaign. Now, a couple of things come to mind when talking about the Obama campaign.

First of all, our American friends have a tendency to paint an almost activist picture of the campaign. There is always talk around notions of “bottom-up”, “citizen engagement”, “grassroots mobilization” and so on. However one cannot fail to notice that the Obama campaign was still a … hmm…well, “campaign”. Which means that by definition was a top-down exercise and a very expensive one.

Listening to Joe Rospars from Blue State Digital and Kate Albright-Hanna describe their experiences – possibly for the 1000^th time – this came very clear.  The “dinner with Obama” idea is a campaign idea, the 2.000 videos (!) produced and the incredible amount of content developed and shot across the web galaxy can only be produced at great expense in money, human effort, coordination and so on. Not considering the sophisticated web platforms developed and maintained.
This is not to detract in any way from the brilliance of the campaign. On the contrary. But it is worth reminding because too many politicians in Europe now “want whatever he’s had” (remember Meg Ryan’s famous orgasm scene?).

What do European politicians want?

And what’s worse, some still think that the internet is a “cheap campaign medium”. Nothing can be further from the truth of course and for all of us working in the field know that it is a highly labour-intensive effort. However, this point was never raised by us starry-eyed Europeans. Throughout the pdf conference the lines were consistently blurred; between online political marketing and the web’s potential for self-organization and mass mobilization or novel e-democracy experiments for which old Europe can still show a thing or two (at the same time, in Malmo, Sweden an eGov exhibition was showcasing 52 projects from all over Europe).

I think that the success of the Obama campaign must be attributed to a conscious strategic decision to invest heavily on the web vs offline media. And with crystal clear conversion metrics: Votes & Donations.

On the question then of whether the Obama case can be copy-pasted to Europe most European commentators rightly gave a clear NO answer and Dominique Piotet emphasized this from day1. But I didn’t hear (I did not follow of course all the parallel breakout sessions) the simple argument that the US President has always been nominated through a bottom-up process whereby you need to form community support two years before election time whereas in Europe political parties more-or-less “appoint” their leaders. It’s worth re-reading this article in MotherJones which explained well the online/offline link.

Other tidbits that I can recall:

• Linkfluence presented their First Map of the Eurosphere. An impressive visual map of the structure and dynamics of the European political web and the communities that form inside it. We recall of course the Politicosphere, the similar work they carried out for the American presidential elections.
• Rishi Saha, Head of New Media for the Tories, reminded us that politics in the past was never the cosy, small-town, get-together, personal, honest, face-to-face affair that some people think we are moving away from in this internet age. In this sense today, he said, “we are not re-inventing politics, we invent politics”. I couldn’t agree more.
• A true activist spirit was demonstrated by Jeremie Zimmermann who put the case of the mobilization against the Telecoms Package. He explained how decisions were constantly overturned between the European Parliament -where the case went public -and the Council of Ministers -where decisions were taken behind closed doors. “When the issue was decided in public we won, when it was decided behind closed doors we lost”, he said (not exact words). Jeremie said that putting relevant and accessible info on the web raises the political cost for the politicians and also made a useful distinction between “lobbying” (you have to be nice to everybody) and “advocacy” (you have to annoy some).
• Jack Thurston put the case of farmsubsidy.org which is a great case of a european transparency project, tracking the single largest EU budget, out of which 85% goes to the 18% wealthiest farmers in the EU. He noted the significant difficulties they had in unlocking the data from government agencies and how important it was to have succeeded in doing so for the two first countries, Denmark and UK. The rest had to follow. Their umbrella project is followthemoney.eu and the next project is the fish subsidy programme. Good luck to them.
• Julian Assange of Wikileaks, said that there are 200-300 secret gag orders in the UK forbidding press to write about certain topics, something that cought many people by surprise, and he wondered why aren’t more journalists arrested in Europe, which he attributed to a “lack of courage”.

But for me the higlights were the following, which just confirmed my preconceived “groupie” tendencies:

• Tom Steinberg of MySociety.org , who won’t tell you that for many in the UK he is a “black sheep” (a medal of honour) because he builds innovative projects on a shoestring budget (6.000 GBP  for the whatdotheyknow.com project). He said that we need to build online projects that don’t stem from or replicate our offline ideas (“think of something that could not happen before”) and that we need to “nurture the geeks who can really make a difference, not just hire them”.  At the closing of the conference he rose from the auditorium to put a question he said “he may regret”. He proposed for pdf to start a movement to kick-out the people in the European Commission who fund the wasted e-participation projects and give the money instead to some of the people who can do a better job with it. Well, I think only Tom could say this, which is in many people’s minds but nobody dares to express.
• The other highlight, was watching and meeting in the flesh, the people of the Sunlight Foundation, the predominant force of e-transparency in the USA and possibly beyond. Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director, said that transparency and technology is a hot issue right now, that “technology is not a slice of the pie, is the pan” and that when asked by the administration what should they do, their answer was “put out data in raw, machine-readable format; we’ll do the rest”.
  Esther Dyson, member of the Sunlight’s BoD, gave her top-line five points to consider and I keep from those: “power corrupts but also seduces, even people with little power. It’s not enough to change govts, we need to change citizens also” (quoted because it is relevant and true for my country Greece).

There are many more interesting points and discussions that went on and thanks to the amazing work by Civico, they are documented and archived.

Thanks to Google for making my presence feasible (as part of the Google fellows team) and thanks to Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry for being great hosts. See you next year (with better wi-fi access hopefully).

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The party’s new online tool, ACT, has gone online – and I think it’s a complete waste of time.

It’s designed to be a social networking tool, like Facebook, for people “sympathetic” to the Lib Dems whether or not they’re party members. It has groups and events and profiles and 140-character status updates. I spent a few days playing with it, creating comments and making friends, before deciding to leave.

I’m struggling to work out why people thought this would be a good idea, compared to Facebook. It’s another walled garden which requires people to sign up to get any benefit. The user interface is nowhere near as slick. The e-mail notifications are annoying, containing just links rather than the content, meaning you have to go to extra hassle just to find out whether you’re interested in what’s being said.

Now, I’m certainly no fan of Facebook, but the fact remains that most people I know are on it, whether they’re committed party members or just mates of mine who like to help me out every now and again. I can create events for members of my ward campaigning group, and invite a few people who aren’t comfortable being associated with the party but are happy to help me out. There’s no way I’ll be able to get all of my friends on Facebook to sign up to ACT.

Worse than that, this doubles my workload. If the Official Word from the party is that ACT is the tool to use rather than Facebook, I’m required to create events and invite people on ACT and Facebook (as well as Flock Together, the other Lib Dem events tool). I have to maintain supporters’ groups on both networks and spend time cultivating contacts on both. I’m entirely uncertain as to what ACT is supposed to be for. It’s an inferior Facebook clone which is inward-looking. When I posited the question on my ACT status, I was told “It’s good because it’s entirely dedicated to the Liberal Democrats” – precisely why I think it’s redundant and regressive.

The party seems to be focusing on e-campaigning at the moment, and it’s a very popular move – who’d want to be out in the cold delivering Focus leaflets when they could be sat in front of their computer with a cup of tea, clicking for victory? I’m not convinced of the benefits though; it’s not the case that if you blog or tweet or Facebook something about the party, then the unconverted will come to it and be inspired. Sure, you can build up a good online profile with thousands of constituents getting your message, but the best way to do that is through traditional means like Focus leaflets, using real-world contacts to direct people to your online presence.

However, I feel that the focus of the party should be on the many broken local parties, the parts of the country where there is no effective Lib Dem local presence. The places where people who join the party are ignored rather than welcomed, not invited to contribute or to benefit from their membership. Until we have a strategy to match the US Democrats’ “50 state strategy”, to make sure that we can help people help the party wherever they are in the country, then using the Internet to reach out to people we’re not already reaching locally will be largely pointless.

While out door-knocking at the weekend I met a lady whose story was of a less than glorious part of Britain’s history. Her father was one of the many in Edinburgh’s Italian community who was interned at the start of World War 2.  Men who had lived here for years, and whose children were born and bred here, were wrenched away from families. Many of the internees were shipped off to Canada or Australia. One ship – the Arandora Star – was torpedoed . The ship was painted grey like a troop ship, bore no Red Cross signs, was overcrowded and hadn’t enough lifeboats.  This lady’s father was ‘probably’ one of the dead – I say ‘probably’ because the families were never officially notified. I knew about the internments but had never heard this terrible story. (see http://www.arandorastarcampaign.com/ for more)  And the families left behind were taunted by some of the Scots they’d lived among all their lives.

“20’s Plenty” say Stafford Greens

To coincide with National Road Safety Week, which started on Monday 23rd November, the Green Party in Stafford is calling for reductions in speed limits.

Responding to reports that the government will be reducing speed limits in residential areas and around schools, Stafford and Stone Green Party has called for the measures to go even further.

“Twenty’s plenty,” says local Green Party campaigner Tom Harris “especially in built-up areas like most of Stafford’s residential streets.”

“We welcome progress on measures to cut accidents, and Green councillors around the country have long been pushing hard for this. But if the government is serious it should go further.”

“Lower speed limits outside schools are essential, but we are calling for full-blown Safe Routes to School programmes everywhere, which involves a more comprehensive approach to keeping school children safe.”

The Safe Routes to School package involves a joined-up approach, assessing the most appropriate measures for a given school, ranging from rearranging junctions and crossings to ensuring the best possible provision for cycling and walking.

“You can implement a package like this for as little as £60,000 per school. If you do it for several neighbouring schools at once, the benefits reinforce one another. If we did this everywhere we’d make school travel safer and cut morning peak-hour traffic by 10%.”

But the Green Party’s demands for lowering the speed limits also extend to other areas.

“Where I live in Castletown, the streets are often used as a rat-run. Impatient motorists race through our area, just to save a few seconds on their commute. Residents here are overwhelmingly in support of a 20mph limit as it is seen as a way of saving lives, preventing injuries, and making our streets more pleasant to live on.”

Further details of the “Twenty’s Plenty” campaign can be found at www.staffordandstonegreenparty.org.

CAFOD Supporters from all around the Salford Diocese will be heading for London on 5th December to be part of the UK’s biggest ever Climate Change march, “The Wave“. The “Wave” is part of the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition campaign to bring about a just and binding climate change deal for all in Copenhagen, where the UN is holding a climate change conference from 7th December.

Two coaches will be leaving  rural North East Lancashire in darkness on the morning of 5th December at 5.30am with a small number of CAFOD campaigners on board. The two coaches will then take seperate routes through the region, picking up more CAFOD campaigners as they head south. One coach will be stopping at Burnley and Charnock Richard Service Station on M6 near Chorley; the other will be picking up in Salford near the CAFOD Salford Office and at Didsbury, South Manchester. To check if seats are still available please contact Mary Clark at CAFOD Salford: 0161 705 0605 or salford@cafod.org.uk.

Nearly 100 CAFOD campaigners from around the Diocese of Salford will be journeying south dressed in blue to be part of a human wave which will flow through the streets of London. CAFOD supporters from around the country will be part of this Stop Climate Chaos march, which is taking place to urge world leaders who meet in Copenhagen for the UN Summit on Climate Change to deliver a just and binding climate change deal. The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition is made of  over 100 different organisations: charities, development agencies, religous groups and trade unions. Without this deal the world faces the worst effects of climate change, a rise of over 2 degrees Celsius in the world’s average temperature which in turn leads to: higher sea-levels, more intense weather events, reduced crop yields and less fresh water. Those who will suffer most is the developing nations of the southern hemisphere, who historically have done the least in bringing about climate change.

Let’s hope tens of thousands turn out in London to urge Gordon Brown and his British delegation to press for a fair deal for all of the world, not just the rich developed world. We are all aboard the same boat, “planet earth”, so let’s work together to keep it afloat and join the Wave!

This post is a ‘rant’ by the grandfather of all LETS (Local Exchange Trading Systems), the most remarkable John C Turmel from Canada, an engineer, a professional gambler and former casino owner, accordeon player and poet. And the most committed activist I’ve ever come across.

Capitalism should be called “interestism”. Maybe then more people would understand the myths they are believing…

Master Rothswine’s Caravan: How bank interest causes wars

JCT: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/turmel/message/2656 is a
post called “World Social Time Credits for tsunami repair” I
posted on Mon Jan 17, 2005. In it was something new I’d never
explained before, how bankers’ interest generates war! What?
Interest on money generates war? you might say? Here’s how for a
second time:

David Astle’s Babylonian Woe set the historical premise.
http://turmelpress.com/babyl00.htm

First of all, keep in mind that Alexander the Great was made to
wait by his local gold-bullion-broker for the loan he needed to
conquer the world. In his conquests, he was always after their
gold and slaves to pay off his loan-shark back home. When
conquerors are after gold and slaves, they’re probably in debt
and making war trying to get out of out of debt or out of debt
making war trying to stay out of debt. “The Pit” is one name.

But go back a few millennia when no group had enough gold in one
pile to finance world conquest. Yet.

But you did have these huge powerful well-guarded trading
caravans traveling around buying and selling slaves with gold.

Now, if you bought something neat and signed an IOU for the gold
to get it, if you got your tribe into debt like many dictators
have done, and couldn’t pay, you had to hand over all your gold
when the Master’s caravan arrived or some slaves. And if you have
no slaves, the deal was that you and your kin became the slaves
they took away.

And the debt is always the principle times the interest rate. The
debt is always greater than the gold available to pay. So you
either keep handing over family when the slave-master arrives or
you get into raiding too.

Now imagine all the tribes around you are in the same
predicament. The tribal leaders all bought these neat new swords,
had a few fights and signed up for even bigger swords, all are in
debt to the global bankers and arms dealers with the only way of
getting out of debt by coming up with gold or slaves.

If your tribe is tough enough, you might prefer to raid another
tribe, grab a few of their people and use them to pay off the
traveling usury slave-master. And it pays off to united tribes so
it’s always the “aliens” who are being sold into slavery at
yearly accounting period when the Master caravan arrives to claim
his due, not your kin.

Now imagine all the regions around you are in the same
predicament. They’d better organize to be able to get their
tribes into even bigger armies.

Now imagine all the nations around yours arming and having to
raid you before you can raid them to see which of you will be
able to pay the traveling slave-master at accounting time. He can
beat you both up but would rather let you fight it out among
yourselves.

The name of the usury mort-gage game is death-gamble. They all
borrowed 10 pieces of gold and made the impossible contract to
all pay back 11 pieces of gold forgetting “Gold has no babies”
and human slaves was the only other currency.

So, throughout all history, they raid you and yours to pay their
impossible debts to the money-lenders and you raid them and
theirs to pay your impossible to the same guys.

Everywhere, bubbling up is the never-ending demand for more gold
or slaves. Never peace. Never strong enough because you need
slavery to cope with your own debts. If you ain’t the buyer,
you’re the sale. Always barbarians on the outside raiding to get
get in. Always. Throughout all recorded human history. The
impulse to war and slavery for no apparent reason. Even Alexander
the Great really didn’t want to destroy everything. He just
wanted the deeds to the property so he could mortgage more money
for an even bigger army. Why eternal war for no apparent reason?
Because the reason is only apparent in the account books of the
usury money- lender. Just like today.

Imagine what kind of organization could do this, pit each tribe
at each other’s throats forever. Some think such degenerate
thinking must be alien but I firmly hope our world’s
international bankers are simply degenerate humans. Or we’re in
real trouble if the usury system is galactic. But it sure paid
off for the money-lenders despite the carcasses of their slaves.

Imagine them still doing it to us today!!!!

Now appreciate that all the great Buddhist, Hebrew, Christian,
Muslim preachers all denounced usury, interest on something that
has no babies.

Now appreciate that global banksters were global even if they’ve
erased the recorded evidence of that. The same weights for gold
were used from China to Britain 5000 years ago. The gold slave-
traders were doing the usury scam 5000 years ago. And thus the
constant need for war, to raid or be raided, to pay debts
impossible for everyone by the usury trick.

So accept that in ancient times,the global loan-sharks had almost
every village in the world tied up in debt chains. Those in debt
could not resist and those with cash held the chains could never
give their usury up.

But it was constant combat for freedom or pillage. Go read
ancient Egyptian history. It was the constant fending off of
encroachments by barbarians, constant raids of pillage and
conquest.

And when the bankers really wanted to make easy foreclosure
pickings, they’d put large parts of their to the sword by pooling
their gold and financing an Alexander the Great.
Alexander The Great — Debtor. Har har har har.

JCT: Not enough people realize how the mort-gage death-gamble
contract causes war between borrowers. The loansharks have been
doing it to us since people could sign X on the dotted line.

Anyway, I hope it reinforces how no other reform of any other
problem can hope to succeed while money continues to be operated
with interest instead of a service charge which does not generate
death-gamble. See http://johnturmel.com/bankmath.htm

Luckily, with Africa trading with mobile-phone minutes, Arabia
trading with phone cards, with Hours being traded in Ithaca, with
Greencredits being traded in LETS, the banks get no interest. And
the silent movement to cut the middleman out of the usury is
spreading with the spread of cell-phone technology. I always used
to tell the courts, http://johnturmel.com/scc3.htm how there were
two solutions to the Miracle Equation (algebra has one,
exponential functions have two), the software “let interest=0″
and the hardware “let time=0″ solutions. See bankmath again.

With Facebook, Twitter, Graigslist, offering social currencies to
their databases, and every other social database soon too, with
large governments doing inter-national barter deals, the use of
these new self-created social credits all around the world is
undergoing unheralded growth.

But the common use of interest-free human-time-based currency is
key. When the local currency is pegged to the Time Standard of
Money (how many dollars per hour of volunteer labor, children
too) Hours earned locally can be intertraded with other timebanks
globally! In 1999, I paid for 39/40 nights in Europe with an IOU
for a night back in Canada worth 5 Hours. You can too. U.N.
Millennium Declaration UNILETS Resolution C6 to governments is
for a time-based currency to restructure the global financial
architecture.

Anyway, how you can imagine my loathing for the parasite usurers
who trick humans into a fight to the death so they can make them
slaves. You’d almost think they were an alien species, not human.
Lots of people already think the people in charge aren’t human. I
really don’t believe in outer space aliens because, how could
they have made it here with usury wrecking their civilization as
it is wrecking ours?

But what if it’s a genetic mutation? What if there’s a gene that
can be turned on to make you so greedy a pig that you hog
everything, even what you don’t need, until everyone around
starts to die off. I call it the Rothswine gene in honor of the
family who evidence more control over humanity with money in the
past 250 years than any other. So if you’re such a pig as to hog
all the resources until people around die off, you’ve got the
Rothswine gene. The real problem is if the mutation, the ability
to ignore that your Rothswinish ways are causing all the
extinctions around you, is genetic or environmental. Can the
chance at global greed give you the Rothswine gene to pass on to
your kids. Because, let’s face it, most of the leading
Rothschilds have the gene but there are hints that not all do.
The leading Rockefellers must have it, Bill Gates too. To sit on
50 billion worth of resources all for himself shows a hoggishness
that someone like me, a almost-broke living-off-the-land, never-
be-rich pauper, is proud to boast I probably don’t have.

I don’t think there’s any Rothswine gene in me. Anyway, the
family still has power to save the planet and so, deserve our
condemnation for the lousy job of running the planet they’ve done
so far. Glad to see technology putting them out of business. And
lucky for them, I’m in favor of Global Aspirin, ASA, for all:
Amnesty, Security, Anonymity. I’ll have a lot less difficulty
forgiving the butchers and torturers with amnesty than forgiving
the banksters who financed them.

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. That felt therapeutic. I just had to vent at
people who hogged more than they needed while the world didn’t
have enough.

To whom it may concern:

If you received through the letterbox this Lewisham Central Labour Party Newsletter (click picture to enlarge) be reassured, the Labour Party had no part in the Hither Green Cinema campaign and have not been authorized to tell people to write to them to support the campaign.

Funnily enough they are doing this to demonstrate that they’re fit for office.

If you want to help the campaign write to contact@hithergreenhall.org. You’ll be replied by me as secretary of the Hither Green Community Hall & Arts Society, you’ll receive no literature from any party, you won’t see or hear any party political references either in the email updates or literature or at campaign events and that mailing list will not be shared with anyone.

We’ve seen Kate Moss knock off her own designer wardrobe for Topshop, had M, Madonna’s money-saving ranges for H&M, and “Lily [Allen] Loves” a bargain at New Look. But cheap-as-chips celebrity collaborations are looking old hat compared with a new wave of tie-ups that have more than just self-promotion and the retailer’s bottom line in mind.

Natalie Portman, the star of films such as Mr Magorium’s Wonder Emporium and the Star Wars prequels, is going one step further by designing her own vegan-friendly shoes for a New York boutique. The collection, for the Manhattan shoe emporium T Casan, goes on sale next month although keen shoppers can place pre-orders from 15 January. The vegetarian actor’s designs will sell for about $200 (100), making them a cheaper alternative to Stella McCartney’s leather-eschewing shoes which sell for at least 295.

So far eco-minded celebrity alliances have been few and far between, but retail experts predict that Portman’s shoes are the future of high street fashion for 2008. Leona Lewis, the X Factor winner turned pop diva and a fellow vegetarian, last week said she would “love” to create her own range of affordable non-leather bags and shoes.

Meanwhile, Debenhams has allied itself with Sir Steve Redgrave, the Olympic oarsman, who has put his name to a clothing range made with Fairtrade cotton that will go on sale for Fairtrade fortnight next month. And Katharine Hamnett, the fashion designer, is searching for a new high street partner after axing her nascent alliance with Tesco for her range of T-shirts made from organic cotton. Even Pamela Anderson, a spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has done her bit with a cruelty-free clothing line.

Richard Hyman, who runs Verdict Consulting, a retail consultancy, said shops ploughing the well-trodden celebrity endorsement route would not be enough of a draw for saturated shoppers. “This year shops will have to find the right endorsement that is sympathetic to their marketplace,” he said, adding that tapping into the consumers’ blossoming ethical consciousness with targeted tie-ups was one option retailers would choose. “Retailing today needs to be about offering a genuine point of difference,” he added.

Lauretta Roberts, editor of the trade fashion magazine Drapers, said eco-fashion was the “number one cause at the moment”, predicting more collaborations. “I don’t think we’ve had Lily Loves Organic Cotton. Not yet, anyway.” But she cautioned: “Whoever does it, both in terms of the celebrity and the fashion brand, would have to think very carefully. It would need to be a credible pairing on both sides, as you’re just asking for people to scrutinise your behaviour and business practices if you style yourself as an eco-warrior.”

Anya Hindmarch, the luxury handbag designer, knows this only too well. Despite being for an ethical cause, her limited-edition “I’m not a plastic bag” cloth bag, sold by Sainsbury’s, hit the headlines for the wrong reasons after it emerged it was made in China using cheap labour even though the supermarket said the factory pays double the minimum wage.

And although McCartney makes vegetarian-friendly shoes and clothes, Ethical Consumer magazine, which advises consumers where to shop on ethical grounds, points out that the designer’s eponymous label is owned by PPR, the luxury fashion giant behind several other lines that use furs such as fox, badger and mink.

Portman’s shoes will be made without animal ingredients: leather, fur and feathers are all off-limits. T Casan has said it will donate 5 per cent of the range’s profits to charity.

Natalie Portman

The most glamorous of the new wave of ethical fashion champions, the actress has designed a collection of red-carpet-ready shoes that are fit for vegetarians such as herself. Now all she needs is an Oscar nomination

Sir Steve Redgrave

An unlikely eco-fashion warrior, perhaps, but the multiple Olympic gold medallist rower clearly has principles to protect. A range of Fairtrade cotton clothing bearing his name goes into Debenhams stores next month

Katharine Hamnett

The organic cotton pioneer may have terminated her contract with Tesco to produce environmentally friendly T-shirts, but her sentiment remains. Expect to see more of the same from the designer soon

Anya Hindmarch

The handbag designer sought to do her bit for the planet with a highly covetable reusable carrier bag. How many of the limited edition run ever made contact with the weekly shop, however, is another matter altogether

Pamela Anderson

The ex-’Baywatch’ star, an ardent vegetarian, has turned fashion designer with a range of “cruelty-free” clothing, which debuted in 2004. A percentage of the profits went to Peta, the anti-fur animal charity

Although sadly lacking Sid James, Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor, the New Labour campaign in Moreton West & Saughall Massie has come to resemble a Carry On movie.  Some may say a tragi-comedy…

• First, the candidate is said to ‘live in Moreton’.  This is quickly altered to ‘born and bred’ in Moreton after it’s revealed, on his nomination paper, that he lives in Birkenhead.  The candidate is relegated to the back page of the leaflet as the MP takes centre stage. 
• Then, the MP wades in saying the Tories will cut Sure Start and, within a week, Labour claims ‘thousands’ of people have signed their petition.  The week after that, it’s revealed the Labour Council is going to cut £300,000 from Sure Start in Wirral.
• The Labour Candidate then resorts to criticising the record of the three Conservative Councillors in Moreton, including Suzanne Moseley, whose sad death triggered this by-election. 
• Labour has continually criticised the Conservative record on public services yet they have refused to take part in an open debate on public services in Moreton.
• In her letter delivered yesterday, the MP asks people to support her candidate but spells his name wrong.

So, to sum up, Labour has a campaign with a candidate but they’re not sure where he lives;  not sure what his name is and don’t really have any examples of anything he has done locally but they want you to vote for him anyway…Is it any wonder that so many ex-Labour voters are now switching to other parties?

I hope, I REALLY hope, the people running this campaign go on to run the General Election campaign.

Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at the University of Colchester, Essex, has published an incisive and insightful article in The Herald, Scotland.

It illustrates how the circles of power around the super-powers of creating money out of thin air, and as interest-bearing credit, include auditing firms.

John Tomlinson, former Canadian stockbroker and author of Honest Money, told the Forum for Stable Currencies on November 4, 1999 about the differences between the audits of banks and of other companies.

We the taxpayers can only add to “public pressure” and “public opinion”, it seems…

Florence Mhango and her daughter Tionge (10), known to her friends and family as Precious, were detained this week when they went to sign at the Home Office. They have been given removal directions for a flight to Malawi from Heathrow at 19.00 on Monday 23rd November.

Florence and Precious moved to the UK in 2003 with Florence’s husband – Precious’ father. Florence left her husband in 2006 after suffering years of domestic violence and abuse. Florence is terrified of returning to Malawi because of what her husband and his family may do to her and her daughter. Florence’s mother has already been threatened by her husband and his family and if she is returned there is a real danger that Florence and Precious will face harassment and violence.

Precious will also be at risk of Female Genital Mutilation if she returns to Malawi.

Florence is active in her local church and she and Precious are important members of the Cranhill community in Glasgow. The UKBA have said that Precious would be able to adjust to living in Malawi despite that fact she has lived here since the age of 4 and doesn’t speak Chichewa, the native language of Malawi.

Florence’s friends and supporters in Scotland are shocked by the UKBA’s attempt to forcibly remove them from their home in Glasgow. We are calling for them to be returned to live in peace in Glasgow where they belong.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP

Please fax Kenyan Airways to tell them you do not want them to participate in deportation flights and that you want Florence and Tionge Mhango to stay in Glasgow where they belong. Please quote flight number KQ101, Heathrow to Malawi on Monday 23rd November at 19:00. Download model letter.

Kenyan Airlines: World Business Centre 3, Heathrow Airport, Hounslow, Middlesex, TW62TA

Tel : +44 20 82831800

Fax: +44 020 8283 1880

Also contact Alan Johnson, Home Secretary, asking him to exercise his discretionary powers to stop the flight and release Florence and Tionge from detention. Download model letter. If you are writing your own letter or email, please include their Home Office Reference number: M1369020.

Sources for this message:

UNITY

ANSU UK – Download more info in ANSU UK pdf

Fax: + 44 (0)20 7219 5856 Phone: +44 (0)20 7035 4848 or 0870 606 7766

By Email : johnsona@parliament.uk

Or: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

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In the news: MSP makes plea over asylum family’s Dungavel detention (BBC news)

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There was some buoyant activists today in the Tooting Labour Party after the exciting news in today’s Observer regarding Labour’s improved showing in the latest opinion polls. The Conservative lead has dropped to just 6 points according to the latest Ipsos MORI poll. While 6 points is still a loss, it equals a hung parliament, which is obviously a better scenario than a complete Labour wipeout. But it could also be just the start of a fight back.

While I don’t think I can add that much more to the analysis of the result by Andrew Rawnsley and the UK Polling Report’s digestion, I can say that this is certainly going to lift the mood of the Labour faithful. This is going to lead to a more hopeful, and therefore more engaged Labour base.  Having people on the street, knocking on doors is vital and the more that come back to the fold because defeat is no longer inevitable, the better.

Hopefully, it will also lead to a more focused leadership, less rumours of a putsch and a more determined party overall.

This is a letter from Councillor Abjol Miah published in this week’s East London Advertiser

Clement Atlee was a giant of the Labour party, committed to helping the less well off, the poor and the vulnerable and to making a fairer, more just and equal society.

He was also the most successful peacetime prime minister who established the National Health Service and the welfare state, nationalising the commanding heights of the economy so that public utilities received the investment necessary to ensure they provided a good public service.

It is a disgrace that his statue outside Limehouse Library should have been boxed up for so long after it was damaged by vandalism (‘Clem Set to be Repaired’, Advertiser, November 12). I welcome the decision to restore his statue at a more fitting location.

What an irony, though, that Conservative parliamentary candidate and former banker Time Archer should e photographed by the boxed statue with someone no one has ever heard of from Etonian David Cameron’s front bench!

Attlee’s statue will stand as an indictment of the rotten Tory policies pursued by this New Labour government and Tower Hamlets council over the last dozen years.

But it will stand as an even bigger indictment of the Tories themselves. Attlee, I am sure, would have strongly opposed the deregulation of the banks started by Archer’s hero Margaret Thatcher and continued by Tony Blair, the deregulation that has brought the world economy to its knees.

What we need in Britain is a return to the policies of Clement Attlee – public ownership that ensures public services meet the public interest, a crash council-house building programme and a system of redistributive taxation to ensure those most able to pay make a fair contribution to the public purse which pays for essential public services.

This is something you will never get from the Tories and their super-rich friends.