Showing posts with label @BBCNews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label @BBCNews. Show all posts

Friday 23 August 2019

It is the EU, not Brexit, that is the Right Wing Plot OR Combating Climate Change & other Left Wing reasons for Brexit

It is called "The Big Lie". If you repeat a lie often enough, society will eventually, despite all the evidence to the contrary, regard it as the Truth. Or as a certain German dictator put it, no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".

The Big Lie that the main stream media, New Labour, the Yellow Tories and the Establishment would have you believe is that Brexit is somehow a Right wing Coup.

These siren voices of the Establishment want you to forget that we had a "once in a lifetime" (Prime Minister David Cameron) referendum that produced a clear result. The biggest single vote for anything in UK electoral history. The UK voted to Leave the European Union (EU), including most of the constituencies represented in Parliament by Remain MPs who got elected in 2017 by promising to honour the referendum result, but who are now breaking that promise. Another Big Lie.

These siren voices want you to forget that there are many left wing reasons for leaving the EU and that many of the giants of British socialism like Barbara Castle, Tony Benn, Bob Crow and Peter Shore campaigned for the UK to leave the EU. Indeed as Union Leader Bob Crow, said in 2013:
"The EU is largely a Tory neoliberal project. Not only did the Conservative prime minister Edward Heath take Britain into the common market in 1973, but Margaret Thatcher campaigned to stay in it in the 1975 referendum, and was one of the architects of the Single European Act – which gave us the single market, EU militarisation and eventually the struggling Euro.
After the Tories dumped the born-again Eurosceptic Thatcher, John Major rammed through the Maastricht treaty and embarked on the disastrous privatisation of our railways using EU directives – a model now set to be rolled out across the continent."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/17/exit-europe-from-the-left

Supporters of Extinction Rebellion should note that it is the EU neo-liberal economics that makes it impossible to make the required changes to combat climate change in the UK. As was noted as early as the 2013 climate change conference in Warsaw (COP19):
"If the world wishes to avoid exceeding the two degrees rise in global temperatures that will trigger non-reversible climate change, then the wealthiest countries, including the UK, have to adopt a de-growth strategy."
Also at the Climate Change conference in Warsaw in 2013 we were told that: "continuing with economic growth over the coming two decades is incompatible with meeting our international obligations on climate change".

But the UK cannot change this as the EU dictates UK economic policy. The EU is a neoliberal economy committed to economic growth; designed to make the rich richer and the rest of us to pay for it. It shows it's true form when you see the EU put austerity into action; in Greece, in Ireland, in Portugal, in Spain, in Italy and even in relatively rich countries like Denmark. In Greece for instance, EU diktat has meant a 42 year plan of austerity, which the Greeks cannot get out of until the year 2060.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/26/greece-was-never-bailed-out---it-remains-a-debtors-prison-and-the-eu-still-holds-the-keys

Measures taken by the EU in Greece include:
1. Right to evict families from their home.
2. Privatisation of all saleable state assets and a ban on re-nationalisation in the future.
3. Reductions in pensions and pension funds.
4. Curtail rights to trade union representation.
5. Further cuts to wages.
6. Right to overrule Greek court decisions.
7. EU control of Greek central bank and economics ministry.

As Green Baroness Jenny Jones once said, before she was seduced by the dark side: "the EU has become a dictatorial imposer of austerity and deregulation, uncaring about its impacts on the wellbeing of people and planet, and determined to derail any elected government that dares to dissent from its neoliberal ideology."

The four pillars of the EU, ironically called its "freedoms" actually mean the freedom of multi-national corporations to move people, capital, goods and services to wherever makes them the most money. Invest your capital in sweat shops where the labour is cheapest to make the goods, move people to ensure wages are kept low and ensure contracts are kept short and temporary to avoid giving labour rights. Provide your services from tax havens and allow profits (as capital) to freely flow back to those tax havens, whilst paying as little tax as possible.

The European Commission currently dictates Britain’s trade policy with the world.
Despite the internationalist rhetoric of the EU’s proponents, its trade agreements with some of the poorest nations on earth have a modernist colonialism at heart, imposing free market dogma (i.e. "Free Trade") to extract natural resources in the 21st century from the same countries colonised with military force up until the 20th.
After the UK leaves the EU, we could help the developing world to develop their own economies with bilateral fair trade, thereby reducing in part the push factor that is forcing so many developing world citizens to swell the migrant crisis.

Achieving this is unlikely whilst we follow the European Commission in imposing programmes such as the Raw Materials Initiative, which prevents developing nations such as Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo from raising investment through export taxes or regulating conditions in their dangerous raw minerals sectors.
This is yet another humanist left wing policy that will become available to the UK after we leave the imperialist EU. It would create a new model of fair trading that could then be followed by other countries in Europe and other developed economies, without the need for "Free Trade" agreements.
(See article by Fraser Watt "Left Wing Reasons for Brexit").

Because here is the crux of the matter. Brexit is simply a means to an end, not the end in itself.

After Brexit we don't have to have a Boris Johnson led Tory Government.

After Brexit, the British people will be free to choose an alternative Government that puts forward left wing priorities like re-nationalisation of utilities and transport, currently illegal under EU's competition rules.

Be free to reverse the privatisation of the NHS introduced by New Labour using EU competition rules and developed by the Tories and their yellow running dogs, the Lib Dems.

Be free to favour local producers and not have to put everything out to tender under EU procurement rules.

Be free to support and encourage UK manufacturing in exciting new industries like electric vehicles and put tariffs on gas guzzling automobiles from Germany.

Be free to develop a more highly skilled labour force, by investing in training for UK citizens, not poaching talent from abroad.

Or to put it another way, like another left wing hero of mine (Martin Luther King), "Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty we will be free at last."

Sunday 4 August 2019

Hypocrisy by Tory MP over Mental Health

I discovered that hypocrisy had reached new levels when I read Richmond MP Rishi Sunak's piece on mental health in the Darlington & Stockton Times (26/7/19).

Mr Sunak wrote about the importance of prevention in mental health. This from an MP whose party has overseen a rise in mental health problems as a direct result of the policies they have introduced. Since the introduction of Universal Credit, claimants' suicides have doubled and claimant sanctions have rocketed.

More than one million welfare benefit sanctions have been imposed against disabled people since 2010. Over 32,000 claimants have been issued with sanctions longer than six months since 2012. Two-thirds of these were on the government’s hated Universal Credit (UC).

The Scottish Association for Mental Health in their report “It Was A Confusion” finds that Universal Credit is not working for people with mental health problems. they find that:

"Far from simplifying the UK’s social security system the introduction of Universal Credit has added to the complexities faced by people with mental health problems. This is causing hardship and emotional distress to people attempting to engage with the system. We found problems across the Universal Credit journey, from applying for the benefit to being assessed, the conditionality regime and managing a claim. Below are some of our main findings."

At the same time 57% of Clinical Commissioning Groups planned to reduce their spending on mental health services, despite Government claims to the contrary.

This Conservative Government, of whom Mr Sunak is now a prominent member, is forcing more and more people into poverty and depression. The Trussell Trust alone gave out 1.6 million food parcels in 2018-19, a rise of 19% in just one year.

Clearly, Mr Sunak has taken economy with the Truth to shameless new heights!

Sources:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/15/welf-m15.html
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/13/sanc-m13.html
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/universal-credit-and-mental-health/65632/
https://fullfact.org/health/spending-mental-health-services/
https://universalcreditsuffer.com/2019/04/25/trussell-trust-foodbank-use-up-19-in-2018-19/

Monday 24 June 2019

Brexit Party must not become a new Tory Party

As Brendan Chilton of Labour Leave said so eloquently this week, leaving the European Union is not a “hard-right Tory project”. It is just a decision made in a democratic and free referendum in which a majority of people, 17.4 million, voted to leave the EU. This is not an expression of hard-right politics, however convenient it is for left wing Remainers to smear it in this way.

( https://labourlist.org/2019/06/brexit-is-not-an-expression-of-hard-right-politics/ )

This is why it is imperative that the Brexit Party keeps the broad church of supporters it attracted when it was launched. In particular, the more than five million Labour, Green and other left wing supporters who voted Leave at the 2016 referendum and the many more who formerly voted Remain, but now respect the democratic result of the referendum.

As a former leadership candidate for the Green Party, I thought long and hard about supporting the Brexit Party. It seems to me to be the last best hope for getting the will of the people, the decision to leave the EU, enacted in the face of the near hysterical antipathy of the establishment towards Brexit.

Just look at the massive campaign to undermine Boris Johnson as potential leader of the Conservative Party by the main stream media, this week. Look at the supporters of Brexit, both big and small, who have been subject to vilification and in some cases, prosecution, by organs of the establishment such as the Electoral Commission. Look at the bending of the rules by the Speaker of the House of Commons, unprecedented in recent Parliamentary history.

Anyone and I mean anyone, who could potentially deliver the 2016 peoples' vote for Brexit is hunted down by the establishment pack and savagely attacked. Which is why we the believers in democracy need to stick together in the face of this extraordinary denial of our rights.

On June 30th the Brexit Party are having a rally to announce new policies to support their General election campaign. For me, the Brexit Party only needs one policy: to facilitate the UK leaving, permanently, the dictatorship that is the European Union.

Personally, I admire Nigel Farage's tenacity at sticking to his views on the European Union and his leadership skills in helping to create the effective campaigning organisation that is the Brexit Party. Anyone who helped during the Peterborough by-election could not have been more impressed with the efficiency of the organisation put together at such short notice. I fully expect that professionalism to be repeated at the Brecon and Radnor by-election and I expect and hope that the Brexit candidate there wins the seat.

However, I am not a supporter of everything that Nigel Farage has said in the past, particularly on economic issues. As a Green Socialist, I want the freedom to challenge the neo-liberal economic orthodoxy that the unelected Eurogroup have imposed on the EU with such devastating effect in countries like Greece. Brexit can and should give me and other socialists like me the opportunity to argue our case to the British electorate after Brexit.

So it is vitally important that the Brexit Party does not do or say anything now that will alienate their left wing supporters before we leave the EU. To do so will inevitably lead to a damaging split and calls for a new Lexit Party. In my opinion, to create such a party at this time would undermine the solidarity of Leave voters and play into the hands of the Remain establishment.

So far the Brexit Party appears to be favouring members of the business community and their negotiating abilities when picking candidates (although there are exceptions such as left wing MEP Claire Fox). Fair enough, perhaps, when you are picking MEPs to try to negotiate our way out of the EU. But candidates to be Brexit Party MPs should reflect the broad sweep of political opinion across the Leave spectrum. Candidates in former Labour seats need to appeal to left wing voters. The Brexit Party can do that if its focus is on leaving the EU. It cannot if it starts developing new business friendly polices outside of its brief to deliver Brexit and unpopular with left wing voters.

After the mess made of Brexit by the Conservative Government over the last three years, the last thing the UK needs now is another Tory Party. I urge the leadership of the Brexit Party to focus on the main task in hand, which is leaving the EU and creating an independent country that can decide for itself its future path. Whether that be to the Left or to the Right is for future generations of the British people to decide. That is what democracy is about, after all.

Friday 5 April 2019

Leslie Rowe Independent Brexit Candidate for Catterick & Brompton on Swale Ward

I have decided to stand as an independent candidate for the district council elections. For many years Catterick & Brompton on Swale were represented by independent councillors. Then the Conservative election machine took over and Tory councillors were elected. Since then this area has seen a marked decline in services. Children's playgrounds and bus shelters left to rot are a clear visible sign, but the Conservatives have overseen a decline in health and social services, public trainsport, social housing and increased homelessness. The operation of a food bank in an affluent area like Richmondshire is a clear sign of the damage caused by Conservative Government at all levels, nationally and locally.

The betrayal by a Conservative Prime Minister of the Brexit referendum result in 2016 sums it up. YOU CAN NEVER TRUST A TORY!

I will continue to fight for democracy, to fight for our right to make our own decision, particularly on economic policy. The right for a local council to source its supplies locally, to support local people in terms of improving social housing, improving local services, improving the poor recycling rate of Richmondshire district Council and reducing the use of plastics (including the plastic cups used at Council offices!), supporting local businesses and fighting to get local schools out of the clutches of avaricious academy chains and back under local control.

It is time to change. For a new type of politics based on representation of the people, not representation of vested interests and the establishment.

Break the chains! Vote Leslie Rowe on May 2nd!

If you want to contact me, write to the address below or send an email to lesliearowe@yahoo.co.uk
Published & Promoted by Leslie Rowe, West End, Richmond Road, Brompton on Swale, Richmond DL10 7HF

Monday 25 March 2019

My Resignation letter to Green Party

Dear Green Party,
It is with great sadness that I tender my resignation from the Green Party. This is not because I have changed my mind on the need for a strong ecologically based political party in UK politics, quite the opposite. It is because the current leadership of the Green Party has taken the Party away from its guiding principles of democracy and fighting for a sustainable society and embraced the undemocratic autocracy and neo-liberal economics of the EU.

For several decades the policy of the Green Party on Europe has been
"to replace the unsustainable economics of free trade and unrestricted growth with the ecological alternative of local self reliance and resource conservation, within a context of wider diversity. We want to foster co-operation on issues of common interest, not establish international institutions for their own sake." (Policy EU100) and

"EU101 We recognise the value of the original goal of the founders of the European Communities, who sought to remove the threat of another war between European states. This has been distorted by vested political and economic interests into a union dominated by economic interests, which lacks democratic control, and promotes the goals of multinational corporations which are interested in profit not people, and which runs counter to the professed core values of the Union."

However, now the leadership is actively campaigning to overturn the democratic will of the British people that it promised to uphold. Prior to the referendum, in our 2015 manifesto, the Green Party promised the British people to respect the outcome of an in-out EU referendum. The Green Party said:

"The biggest lesson of the Scottish referendum was that when people are given the responsibility for making big decisions, they grab it with both hands." (Section 11)

"We support the proposal to have an in-out referendum so that the British people can have their say. This is because much has changed since the UK joined the Common Market in 1974. Endless debate on membership is a diversion from more important matters, such as ending inequality and adapting our economy to one-planet living."

The Green Party is now encouraging that endless debate in a concerted attempt, (funded by the same big business interested only in profit not people that the Green Party previously condemned), to overturn democracy and frustrate the British people from their choice to leave the European Union. This endless debate is frustrating the fight against global extinction by diverting the attention of the media away from the climate change crisis towards a campaign to reverse the decision on leaving the EU that the Green Party had previously promised to honour. (This was clearly demonstrated this weekend when climate change demonstrations in Newcastle and elsewhere were over shadowed by the rally to overturn the referendum result in London.)

Indeed, the leadership of the Green Party of England and Wales knows that the long term EU neo-liberal economic policies, which recently forced Greece into 42 years of austerity, make effective action on climate change, like promoting de-growth, impossible in the time the UN says we have left to attempt to reverse climate change. And yet they continue to sacrifice our planet so that they can continue to get their thirty pieces of silver from the EU.

This is cynical, self-centred hypocrisy and I can no longer be a party to it. Therefore, I resign my membership of the Green Party.
Yours Faithfully,


Leslie A Rowe
Richmond Green Party Parliamentary candidate 2005, 2010 & 2015

Sunday 25 November 2018

Not just the UK the Brexit Betrayal of Europe

It is now clear that Theresa May and the metropolitan elite have betrayed the British people in a grand conspiracy undreamt of in modern times.

The Brexit deal that she and her allies have signed up to could not have been worse, if the EU bureaucracy itself had sat down and written it for her. The likelihood is that that is exactly what they have been doing.

The plan seems to have worked beautifully. For over two years, the people of the United Kingdom have been strung along, been made to believe that May was negotiating a Brexit trade deal. But at the end of it there is no trade deal, just a Gordian knot designed, if accepted, to give the UK no legal route out of a permanent vassalage, unless the EU agree to free us from it, which of course they will never do.

At the same time her allies in all political parties, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour, Scottish Nationalists and Greens have all been carefully manipulated and orchestrated in a well paid for campaign (paid for by people who got very rich in the EU controlled market) to seek a second referendum to reverse the popular vote.

The future ploy of this minority Prime Minister is now clear. Unless the House of Commons has lost its wits entirely, they will reject this ridiculous deal. The conspirators will then say, as May has now said, the alternative to this bad deal in not, as was promised, no deal, but no Brexit. The Government will bow to the orchestrated campaign for a second referendum. Huge resources will then pour in to persuade the British people that they were wrong to choose independence and that they must, to save their very lives, vote to stay in the EU.

At the same time as this has been going on, supporters of Brexit, both big and small, have been and continue to be bombarded by legal challenges. The fact that more than twice as much money, money from the Government and shady foreign-backed characters was spent on the Remain campaign is ignored. The money spent by the EU itself, by the IMF, by numerous overseas interests, including the then President of the USA, has been and will be ignored in the grand push for the UK to remain under the yoke of Brussels.

Every critical referendum in EU history has been reversed, either by a second referendum or Government capitulation. Ireland, Greece, Netherlands, Denmark France, the EU has always managed to coerce and cajole a reversal of the anti-EU vote.

They knew, however, that the UK would be harder, the 2016 referendum having been the biggest popular vote in the UK's history. But the EU is used to playing a long game. Just look at Greece, locked into ant-austerity measures by the neo-liberal dictatorship of the EU for the next 42 years. Or Italy, where Governments have been rejected and brought down by the EU.

I myself would not have dreamt of such a conspiracy until I read Yanis Varoufakis' book "Adults in the Room" which showed the lengths that the EU deep establishment would go to bend the will of a sovereign nation towards its own agenda. As Varoufakis said in that book, it is the death of democracy in the EU.

No sovereign nation in Europe is now free to choose its own path. There are sufficient traitors, used to living off the EU's shilling, who are willing to continue to conspire to keep the tyranny of the unelected elite who control and run the EU forever in control. The fourth Reich is here, a reality that, unless a decisive revolt happens now, this time WILL govern the enslaved peoples of Europe for a thousand years.

Monday 13 August 2018

How the Retail Sector can be better off after the UK leaves the EU

Once again we are seeing a large retail chain under threat. For the time being, with the takeover of House of Fraser, that threat has been averted, but for how long?. Over the last decade, retail chain after retail chain has fallen victim to overseas multinationals selling online from tax havens. How can we protect our retail heritage and at the same time ensure that the multinationals are paying tax on everything they sell in the UK?

The answer is a Lexit Brexit. After we leave the EU, the UK will be no longer fenced in by the EU trading laws that favour the tax avoiding multi-nationals. After a Lexit Brexit, a Green Party in Government will be able to ensure that all trading in the UK is done through a UK institution and ensure all profits are taxed when they are distributed either to an individual or to another corporate entity (see tax voting paper being put to the 2018 Green Party autumn conference in Bristol).

Photo: visitlondon.com

Such radical reforms of the taxation system are impossible in the straitjacket imposed by the unelected officials in Brussels who control the EU fiscal policy. Outside of the EU, we can, if we have the right Government, protect British industry, agriculture and commerce and begin to, at last, reduce the massive and unsustainable balance of trade deficit we have with the rest of the world. Rather than being a threat to the retail sector, Brexit could be its saviour.

Thursday 2 August 2018

The UK exit from the EU: a catalyst to re-unite Ireland after 200 years?

At the EU referendum in 2016, I predicted that the UK leaving the EU made the possibility of a referendum on a united Ireland much more likely, thereby eliminating any border problem. (See 2016 blog below).

If polls suggest that if there is a majority in Northern Ireland in favour of reuniting Ireland, the UK government, under the Good Friday agreement, is legally bound to offer a referendum on reunification.

And polls do show that. According to "The Week", polling of Northern Ireland residents by LucidTalk in December 2017 found that - in the event of no deal between the UK and the EU, support for remaining in the EU through reunification with the Republic was marginally greater (48%) than support for staying in the UK (45%).

(http://www.theweek.co.uk/northern-ireland/89293/will-ireland-unite-after-brexit )

Driving support for reunification is thought to be the fear of a hard border between the north and south. The UK government and leaders in Dublin and Belfast have all repeatedly said border posts and physical checks, synonymous with the chaos and conflict of the Troubles, will not return.

However, Ireland and the EU remain adamant that they want to keep Northern Ireland in the customs union, a plan that has been roundly rejected by both parties in the Tory / DUP alliance. Both Ireland and the EU have also rejected the use of technology to police trade between the north and south. However, a frictionless border is incompatible with Theresa May’s promise to leave the EU customs union.

As part of the alliance deal with the Tories, the DUP received assurances that there would be no referendum or border poll on Irish unity. As we have seen, this appears to contravene the Good Friday agreement, so probably could be successfully challenged in court.

Following the collapse of power-sharing talks, and the effective re-imposition of direct rule by Westminster, Reuters said that Irish nationalists “fear that that their unionist rivals may effectively govern the province through their influence of May”.

In a Guardian article, Powell, who was the chief British negotiator during the Good Friday Agreement talks called the Tory-DUP alliance a “a terrible mistake with lasting consequences” that “would risk undermining 20 years of hard work”.

Northern Ireland voted Remain by 56% to 44%, so is at odds with the English and Welsh who voted strongly for Leave. But a U.K.-wide referendum cannot automatically over-ride the terms of the Ireland-wide referendums on the Good Friday agreement of 1998, and a majority within Northern Ireland for remaining in the EU.

The obvious solution to this impasse would be to call for a border poll to give people the option of remaining within the EU through Irish reunification—especially if there is no alternative that respects the clear local majority preference to remain within the EU. The very same compromise may also weaken the pressure from the Spanish government for the U.K. to cede sovereignty over Gibraltar. Gibraltar also voted to remain in the EU.

This might just then be the catalyst that would solve the Irish problem; 200 years after Ireland joining the UK caused it.

Monday 16 July 2018

Revisited: Why you should vote to look Forward and not Back. Why you should vote for Leslie Rowe as leader of GPEW

This blog is linked to the Green Party website to give members an insight into the alternative paradigm for the Green Party being championed by Leslie Rowe in his bid to be leader of the Green Party in England and Wales. Here is the statement accompanying his application repeated and updated, so that it appears first on his blog. No other candidate is putting forward such a radical ecosocialist agenda.

Have you looked out of the window lately? You know as well as I do that climate change is not a campaign for the future, its effects are being felt here and now.

That is why I am standing for leader of the Green Party. I want the Green Party to focus on climate change, on localism, democracy and economic de-growth and not on the EU. Prior to the 2016 EU referendum we, in our 2015 General Election manifesto, faithfully promised to accept the result. We should do that now and move on.

Our basic message has long been of replacing a pro-growth consumer society with a society wedded to conserving our environment. We have been told many times that if the world wishes to avoid exceeding the 2°C rise in global temperatures that will trigger non-reversible climate change, then the wealthiest countries, including the UK, have to adopt a de-growth strategy for a limited period.

"Having even a 50/50 chance of keeping the planet under a 2-degree level of warming is incompatible with economic growth," author Naomi Klein said at the 2014 Leipzig De-growth conference.

We should return to our roots and actively campaign for a UK de-growth economic policy, a beacon for the rest of the world to follow.

In the Green Party policy statement, EU100 we state "In our Green vision for Europe we seek to replace the unsustainable economics of free trade and unrestricted growth with the ecological alternative of local self reliance and resource conservation, within a context of wider diversity."

This is totally at odds with the declared aim of the EU for continuing Economic Growth. In his opening statement laying out his vision for the single market, the President of the European commission, Jean Claude Juncker put economic growth as the main goal of the single market.

There is no evidence that this policy will change in the foreseeable future.

In fact, economic policy in the EU is controlled by the unelected and secretive Eurogroup. As Yanis Varoufakis said in his book "Adults in the Room" ..."democracy had indeed died the moment the Eurogroup acquired the authority to dictate economic policy to member states without anything resembling federal democratic sovereignty" (page 237). It is the Eurogroup who continue to force privatisation on Greece and other EU states.

So it is time for the Green Party to campaign not for the EU and continued growth, but for a sustainable future based on de-growth and meeting the societal needs of the British people.

We can carve out a unique position by opposing ALL UK free trade agreements (including the EU single market) and focus on reducing the out of control UK trade deficit by supporting sustainable UK manufacturing, agriculture and fisheries. This may lead to disputes within the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but it would re-balance the UK economy and give us a unique position in UK politics.

Campaign to embrace localism in our procurement policies for schools, hospitals and other public institutions, making it a virtue of buying local, preferably organic, food and other supplies.

Step up our opposition to the creeping privatisation of the NHS, especially now that the Tories would no longer have the excuse of EU neo-liberal policies on procurement. Campaign to use the extra money for the NHS in tripling the number of training places for doctors and nurses, reintroducing bursaries and abolishing student fees.

Point out that leaving the EU does not mean that we have to leave the European Court of Human Rights, which is a separate and older institution. Indeed we can champion the Court in our opposition to Tory attempts to water down our rights.

Campaign for a progressive UK Government, supporting universal basic income and Positive Money; to reverse the neo-liberal economic policies favoured by all successor governments since Thatcher, both Labour and Tory.

Campaign to re-nationalise the UK railways and utility companies unhindered by EU Directives such as 2012/34/EU establishing mandatory competition in a Single European Railway Area.

Solve the Northern Ireland border issue by actively campaigning for a referendum for a United Ireland.

Renew our campaign for the abolition of the House of Lords and the creation of a new elected senate of the regions.

Actively campaign for more local democracy with proportional representation, a new independence referendum in Scotland and greater autonomy for Wales.

In this way we can renew and invigorate the Green Party by following a more radical agenda. If you agree, please vote for Leslie Rowe as GPEW leader.


Leslie Rowe is a retired accountant who stood for election for the Green Party in Richmond (Yorks) in the general elections of 2005, 2010 and 2015, the European Election of 2009, along with many other local council elections. He has been a Green Party member since 2003 and is a former treasurer of Yorkshire and Humber Greens and Richmond (Yorks) Green Party.

Promoted and Produced by Leslie Rowe as part of their campaign for election to the post of Leader. This is not an official communication from the Green Party of England and Wales.
Voting is open to all paid up members of the Green Party in England & Wales as at the 29th July 2018.

Tuesday 10 July 2018

CETA, TTIP, "Common Rule Book" & all Free Trade Deals

If you look at the fine print of Ms May's Chequers compromise on Brexit, you will see that resolution of disputes may be done through "binding independent arbitration".

This will be the notorious Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) so discredited as part of all Free Trade deals, such as NAFTA, TTIP and CETA. These arbitration decisions undermine democracy and have forced changes in laws that protect the environment and even changes in taxation.

In this article I discuss the dangers of Free Trade Deals like May's "Common Rule Book" proposals, using the example of CETA (Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement between Canada and the EU currently going through the ratification process, but, in the words of War on Want, "under the EU’s anti-democratic procedures, it has applied most of the content of CETA on a provisional basis already, without worrying about any accountability to the people of Europe".)

There was a vote recently in the House of Commons on the ratification of CETA. There was very little debate and this infamous trade deal was backed by Tories, Lib Dems and Labour MPs, who, frankly, should have known better.

By signing up to CETA, the UK has given away far more sovereignty than was given to the EU.

At this point I must be honest about the debt I owe on this subject to David Malone, the Green candidate for Scarborough. If you haven't seen his talk called "The Death of Democracy" on YouTube, then please see it ASAP. It is three years old, but still relevant as all he says about TTIP applies equally to CETA. Most especially, because, as War on Want also point out, "CETA not only gives rights to EU and Canadian companies but also for any US firms with offices in Canada (which is most of them)."

The biggest threat to the UK from CETA is the threat to our food standards. The EU claim that they have built in safeguards to our food safety standards in CETA; no chlorinated chicken, they claim. But if standards remain, why have a trade agreement? The declared aim of a free trade agreement is to lower mutual tariffs, to gain access to each other's markets and to harmonise regulations.

The corporate lawyers have, time and time again, shown themselves to be more adept at drafting legislation in their own favour. That's why they get paid millions.

The EU itself said that 80% of the benefit of Free Trade deals is from reducing non-trade barriers (i.e. standards).

The heart of a Free Trade Deal (FTD) like CETA and the proposed "Common Rule Book" between the UK and the EU is the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). These treaties always have four main elements and CETA is no exception.

1. Expropriation: to protect the assets of any company trading in the Free Trade Area (FTA). That includes any future profits of that company as was shown when Vattenfall, a Swedish nuclear energy company sued Germany for abandoning nuclear power generation at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
Even changes in tax have been successfully stopped as being a form of expropriation.

2. Equal Treatment: Governments are not allowed to stop Companies from bidding for any service, such as the NHS and the BBC. So if you have a Government, as we do, that favours privatisation, it becomes irreversible and as we have seen, companies can sue if they are not awarded contracts in the NHS.

3. A Fair and Equitable clause. This was used to stop the Canadian Government from banning a petrol additive, MMT. The Ethyl case set a precedent where, under NAFTA and similar agreements, a government has to compensate investors when it wishes to regulate them or their products for public health or environmental reasons.

4. Arbitration via the toxic Investor State Dispute Settlement procedure. ISDS is not a court, has no judge and no jury. Traditionally, three corporate lawyers decide the merits of an arbitration dispute. Civil society has no representative; there are no rights to know what evidence was considered or who brought it, no right of appeal and no right to know the reasons for the decision. Worldwide, just 15 corporate lawyers have decided 55% of all disputes.

The EU claim in their document, "CETA, ISDS" that arbitration will be done " in a transparent and impartial manner". Apparently our national courts are not good enough to settle these disputes. Personally, I have no faith that the corporate lawyers will not be too clever for them on this and dominate any permanent investment Tribunal set up by CETA.

In the past this arbitration has been used to overturn laws, moratoria and even taxes.

Defenders of this insane policy argue say that only countries that sign up to this arbitration will receive foreign direct investment (FDI). There have been several studies, however, notably from Yale and the World Bank in 2003 that conclude that there is no correlation between Bilateral Investment Treaties and FDI.

The General Equilibrium economic models that state that CETA will increase UK trade, in common with many of the economic models used by the Treasury, have been shown to be flawed. For instance, the models assume that if any part of our economy shrinks, then another part will automatically expand. So why has the UK developed such a massive trade deficit since joining the Single Market?

In October 2014, the UN policy economic model was used to assess the effects of TTIP (and by implication CETA) and showed that TTIP would result in a loss of net exports, a reduction in GDP, a loss of Government income, an increase in inequality and 800,000 job losses across the EU.

Sources:
David Malone "The Death of Democracy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fDCbf4O-0s
War on Want: https://waronwant.org/what-ceta
Michelle Sforza and Mark Vallianatos Chemical Firm Uses Trade Pact to Contest Environmental Law April 1997 https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45381.html
European Commission February 2016 Investment provisions in the EU-Canada free trade agreement (CETA) http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/november/tradoc_151918.pdf

Sunday 8 July 2018

Leslie Rowe's Response to the Fudge issued from Chequers on Brexit

The BINO (Brexit In Name Only) Chequers statement from May's Tory Government is a joke worthy of a comic book.

By suggesting that "The UK and the EU would maintain a common rulebook for all goods including agri-food," the Tory Fudgeteers have committed the UK to remain in an ever destructive economic growth regime in perpetuity, with an international treaty to bind the hands of any future Green Government.

It would lock in the ever growing UK trade deficit with the EU27 for the foreseeable future. Rising UK debt makes this totally unsustainable and will lead to the EU forcing more austerity, fire sales of public property and restrictions on organised labour on the UK, as they have already done in Greece.

My message to Green Party members is that we must, to avoid exceeding the 2°C rise in global temperatures that will trigger non-reversible climate change, plan for a de-growth economy as has been recommended by successive climate change conferences.

But this Tory BINO would make that illegal, as it would be against the common rulebook set by the EU, making the UK perpetually subservient to the neo-liberal economics set by the unelected and secretive Eurogroup (the committee that control EU economic policy).

The Green Party (when in Government) is committed to assisting the development of UK sustainable industries, like new tidal barrages, community wind and solar farms and a state owned viable public transport infrastructure.

However, the Tory BINO commits the UK to "apply a common rulebook on state aid and establish cooperative arrangements between regulators on competition".

In other words, subservience by the UK to all EU regulations on competition, including a ban on re-nationalising the railways and adherence to EU Directives such as 2012/34/EU establishing mandatory competition.

This is contrary to both Green Party and Labour Party manifesto commitments. I call on all Green and Labour MPs to reject this comic book policy and pursue a "de-growth" strategy to have any chance of saving our planet.


Promoted and Produced by Leslie Rowe as part of their campaign for election to the post of Leader. This is not an official communication from the Green Party of England and Wales

Leslie Rowe Video

My home made but heartfelt video to accompany my campaign to be leader of the Green Party in England & Wales is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnSckiWLLOg

The transcript, if you need it, is set out below.

"Hello. Today I want to talk about the weather. Is climate change a problem to be addressed? NOW? If not now, when?

In eight years time? Forty years time? Can we REALLY wait THAT long?

We have been told many times that if the world wishes to avoid exceeding the two degrees Celsius rise in global temperatures that will trigger non-reversible climate change, then the wealthiest countries, including the UK, have to adopt a de-growth strategy.

Kevin Anderson & Alice Bows-Larkin presented compelling research on this at the Climate Change negotiations in Warsaw in 2013 which stated that: "continuing with economic growth over the coming two decades is incompatible with meeting our international obligations on climate change".

That was five years ago, and what has the Green Party's focus been on since? Curbing consumerism? Climate Change? Or our continued membership of an organisation wedded to economic growth for the next forty years?

In the Green Party policy statement, EU100 we state "In our Green vision for Europe we seek to replace the unsustainable economics of free trade and unrestricted growth with the ecological alternative of local self reliance and resource conservation."

THIS is the goal the Green Party should be pursuing.

But, this is at odds with the declared aim of the EU. In his opening statement laying out his vision for the single market, the President of the European Commission, Jean Claude Juncker put economic growth as the main goal of the single market.

There is no evidence that this policy will change in the foreseeable future.

In fact, economic policy in the EU is controlled by the unelected and secretive Eurogroup.

May I quote the Irish Examiner as an impartial observer of the Greek tragedy?

"Until 75% of Greece’s public debt is repaid — in 2060 at the earliest — the country will be subject to ‘enhanced surveillance’.
This means 42 years of quarterly reviews, during which the European Commission and the ECB, “in collaboration with the IMF”, may impose new measures on Greece, such as austerity, fire sales of public property and restrictions on organised labour."

The neo-liberal, pro-growth economic policy of the EU has been locked in for the next 42 years. What chance of de-growth in that period?

Unless, WE, we in the Green Party of England and Wales, provide an attractive and unique alternative paradigm of promoting De-Growth and the championing of conservation over consumption. A beacon of hope for other nations to follow.

And we can start by accepting the result of the EU referendum so that we can offer a unique and attractive sustainable future for Britain.

I am offering you a chance to vote for a new direction, a path that means we manage our own economy.
As was said in Molly Scott Cato's trade report:
"Greens have always argued for greater self-reliance and stronger local economies. It now looks like such a path will be the best future on offer for the UK outside the EU."

Or as was said in her farming report:
"Brexit could be a unique opportunity to move towards an ecologically sustainable farming system."

We could promote widespread re-nationalisation.

We could support sustainable industries and start tackling the enormous public and private debt by ensuring all companies that trade in the UK pay tax in the UK.

And yes, we could fund the NHS.

My name is Leslie Rowe and I am standing for the leadership of the Green Party.

If you want the Green Party to focus on climate change, on localism, democracy and economic de-growth and not on the EU, indeed to have its own unique appeal to the electorate then please vote for me. I believe in a new Green revolution that would transform our country. If you share that dream, then vote Leslie Rowe for leader.

Promoted and Produced by Leslie Rowe as part of their campaign for election to the post of Leader. This is not an official communication from the Green Party of England and Wales

Friday 29 June 2018

Looking Forward, not Back, the campaign by Leslie Rowe to be the new leader of the Green Party

Leslie Rowe has submitted his nomination to be leader of the Green Party in England and Wales. Here is the statement accompanying that application.

Have you looked out of the window lately? You know as well as I do that climate change is not a campaign for the future, its effects are being felt here and now.

That is why I am standing for leader of the Green Party. I want the Green Party to focus on climate change, on localism, democracy and economic de-growth and not on the EU. Prior to the 2016 EU referendum we, in the interests of democracy, faithfully promised to accept the result. We should do that now and move on.

Our basic message has long been of replacing a pro-growth consumer society with a society wedded to conserving our environment. We have been told many times that if the world wishes to avoid exceeding the 2°C rise in global temperatures that will trigger non-reversible climate change, then the wealthiest countries, including the UK, have to adopt a de-growth strategy for a limited period.

"Having even a 50/50 chance of keeping the planet under a 2-degree level of warming is incompatible with economic growth," author Naomi Klein said at the 2014 Leipzig De-growth conference.

We should return to our roots and actively campaign for a UK de-growth economic policy, a beacon for the rest of the world to follow.

In the Green Party policy statement, EU100 we state "In our Green vision for Europe we seek to replace the unsustainable economics of free trade and unrestricted growth with the ecological alternative of local self reliance and resource conservation, within a context of wider diversity."

This is totally at odds with the declared aim of the EU for continuing Economic Growth. In his opening statement laying out his vision for the single market, the President of the European commission, Jean Claude Juncker put economic growth as the main goal of the single market.
There is no evidence that this policy will change in the foreseeable future.

In fact, economic policy in the EU is controlled by the unelected and secretive Eurogroup. As Yanis Varoufakis said in his book "Adults in the Room" ..."democracy had indeed died the moment the Eurogroup acquired the authority to dictate economic policy to member states without anything resembling federal democratic sovereignty" (page 237). It is the Eurogroup who continue to force privatisation on Greece and other EU states.

So it is time for the Green Party to campaign not for the EU and continued growth, but for a sustainable future based on de-growth and meeting the societal needs of the British people.

We can carve out a unique position by opposing ALL UK free trade agreements (including the EU single market) and focus on reducing the out of control UK trade deficit by supporting sustainable UK manufacturing, agriculture and fisheries. This may lead to the UK leaving the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but it would re-balance the UK economy and give us a unique position in UK politics.

Campaign to embrace localism in our procurement policies for schools, hospitals and other public institutions, making it a virtue of buying local, preferably organic, food and other supplies.

Step up our opposition to the creeping privatisation of the NHS, especially now that the Tories would no longer have the excuse of EU neo-liberal policies on procurement. Campaign to use the extra money for the NHS in tripling the number of training places for doctors and nurses, reintroducing bursaries and abolishing student fees.

Point out that leaving the EU does not mean that we have to leave the European Court of Human Rights, which is a separate and older institution. Indeed we can champion the Court in our opposition to Tory attempts to water down our rights.

Campaign for a progressive UK Government, supporting universal basic income and Positive Money; to reverse the neo-liberal economic policies favoured by all successor governments since Thatcher, both Labour and Tory.

Campaign to re-nationalise the UK railways and utility companies unhindered by EU Directives such as 2012/34/EU establishing mandatory competition in a Single European Railway Area.

Solve the Northern Ireland border issue by actively campaigning for a referendum for a United Ireland.

Renew our campaign for the abolition of the House of Lords and the creation of a new elected senate of the regions.

Actively campaign for more local democracy with proportional representation, a new independence referendum in Scotland and greater autonomy for Wales.

In this way we can renew and invigorate the Green Party by following a more radical agenda. If you agree, please vote for Leslie Rowe as GPEW leader.


Leslie Rowe is a retired accountant who stood for election for the Green Party in Richmond (Yorks) in the general elections of 2005, 2010 and 2015, the European Election of 2009, along with many other local council elections. He has been a Green Party member since 2003 and is a former treasurer of Yorkshire and Humber Greens and Richmond (Yorks) Green Party.

Promoted and Produced by Leslie Rowe as part of their campaign for election to the post of Leader. This is not an official communication from the Green Party of England and Wales.
Voting is open to all paid up members of the Green Party in England & Wales as at the 29th July 2018.

Saturday 12 May 2018

A History Lesson: Did the UK join the EEC for the wrong reasons?

Giving all the fuss about Brexit, you may have wondered why did the UK join the EEC in 1973 and did the UK achieve the goals it set itself?

The reasons can be traced back to a study made by the Macmillan Government in 1959. The "Future Policy Study" was a long range study of UK overseas policy during the decade to come (1960 to 1970). It revealed amongst other things that the then French President, General De Gaulle, regarded the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community in 1957 (the EEC, the forerunner of the EU) as a purely commercial treaty, which De Gaulle admitted he would not have signed, if he had been French president at the time.

The Britsh prime minister Harold Macmillan still wanted the UK to be a world player. However, the summit meeting in May 1959 between the four "great" powers of the time (USA, USSR, UK and France) had failed to achieve any positive outcome, because of the shooting down of an American U2 spy plane over Russia earlier that month. It was at a time when the UK was losing its Empire and Macmillan realised that on its own, the UK could no longer be the "World player" that it had been. The study suggested that the UK had two possible routes, either to help develop the emerging economies of the Commonwealth or to throw in its lot with the EEC.

As historian Peter Hennessy wrote in his book "Having it so good: Britain in the Fifties" , "EUROPE, for the British was not a shining collective goal in itself, but a means of sustaining BRITISH power." As the French philosopher Raymond Aron put it in 1962, "those for whom Europe is to be a fatherland cannot avoid recognising that in British eyes (except for a small minority) it will never be anything but a means for something else".

The main reason for joining the EEC then, was to sustain Britain's powers in international affairs. Indeed the reports suggested that the UK expected to become the lead player in the EEC, if it joined. Hennessy described UK "wishful thinking" in not believing what the Treaty of Rome said about ever closer union in its opening paragraphs on the grounds that only French "mystics" could subscribe to it.

However the report acknowledged that joining the EEC might be unpopular. " It is to be expected that , if we were to join the Six (the original six countries of the EEC) there would be considerable opposition from some sections of public opinion.."

In a conclusion that Hennessy describes as "chilling", the 1959 report declared " This opposition would require careful handling; intensive RE-EDUCATION would be needed..."

This re-education started before 1973, when the UK joined the EEC and continues to this day. However, the UK never did achieve the dominance over the EEC that was its original goal. That honour now clearly lies with Germany. Indeed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, then the Amsterdam, Nice and then Lisbon treaties increasingly took power away from Westminster and gave it to Brussels. The UK went from being a net exporter to the EEC to having a massive trade deficit with the EU (£82bn in 2016).

Notes to the 1959 report also concluded that the UK " should consider full membership, but seek special terms to meet our fundamental interests and those of the Commonwealth." Edward Heath, who took the UK into the EEC, failed to achieve any special terms and the UK has continued to fail to negotiate any meaningful "special terms" even when the EU was faced with Brexit (as David Cameron discovered).

The time has come to recognise that the UK failed in its original objectives and that the EU juggernaut will continue towards its goal of "ever closer" union until a United States of Europe is achieved or the EU implodes as its nation states collapse.

It may or may not be too late for plan B, to develop economic ties with Commonwealth countries. But it is time to recognise that the massive private and public debt (more than doubled since 2010 under Tory "austerity" to over £2 trillion) that the UK has amassed by being part of the EU must be addressed. As the 1959 report predicted:

"Whether we join the Six or not, we shall have to reduce the proportion of our output devoted to consumption and increase the proportion which is invested or exported."

We have ignored this advice in the forty five years since we joined the EEC, which has left the UK in massive debt. Now is the time to reverse that situation, exacerbated by the urgent need to reduce consumption in order to reduce the risk of global warming. We need to stop pretending we are a global power and instead put the needs of the British people and the country first.

Tuesday 24 April 2018

An Opinion on the House of Lords and Brexit by Leslie Rowe


Brexit is a wonderful opportunity, a catalyst if you will, for change. The day after the EU referendum, I presented the GreenLeaves (the Green campaign for Brexit) nine point plan for change.
See below (in 2016) and pined to top of https://www.facebook.com/greenleaves2016/

One of these points was the plan to abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a directly elected chamber, representative of the regions of the UK.

Never more starkly does the need to abolish this chamber of privilege present itself than now. Blithely their Lordships ignore the democratic wish of the people and vote again and again to try to reverse the vote for Brexit.

Who are these people who feel that their wishes outweigh the 17.4 million UK citizens who voted for Brexit? Take for instance Baroness Ludford, the author of the motion to keep the EU charter of fundamental rights enshrined in UK law and one of the one hundred or so unelected Lib Dem peers (far more than the twelve members in the House of Commons).

I knew Sarah Ludford when I was chair of the Liberal European Action Group and she was vice-chair. She was made a peer even before she was given a top slot on the Lib Dem European Parliament list. Like so many others whose backsides polish the red benches, I have absolutely no idea why she was given a seat in the House of Lords.

One of the many reasons why I eventually abandoned the Lib Dems and joined the Green Party, was because, in my opinion, the Lib Dems were about who you know, not what you know. (Clearly I am not a Party animal, having changed my mind on the EU and am now in disagreement with the Green Party leadership over Brexit).

Ms Ludford continues to turn a blind eye to inconvenient truths. Such as that the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is a political tool (set up to bind the EU closer as part of the Lisbon treaty), not a judicial one. The European Court of Justice is very selective in what it decides to prosecute and no action is taken if it is politically inconvenient for the EU establishment.

For instance, the EU is itself contravening several Articles of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights by supporting the Spanish government’s actions against supporters of Catalan independence. Similarly the EU is in direct contravention of the Charter in their disregard for the basic rights of the Greek people including the right to trade union representation.

In both examples and many more the EU is directly contravening:
Article 1: The Right to Human Dignity
Article 6: The Right to Liberty or Security of Person
Article 11: Freedom of Expression and Information
Article 12: Freedom of Assembly and Association
Article 21 Non-discrimination (on political or any other opinion)
Article 54: Prohibition of Abuse of Rights

These rights are being denied in Catalonia and Greece. When Catalans want to exercise their right in a democratic vote, the Spanish government calls it treason and sends in police thugs to beat up Catalans and repress their legitimate right to freedom of expression. Why has the European Charter of Fundamental Rights not been implemented?

Because the EU institutions, including the Court of Justice, allow politics to overrule legal protections. In Greece the legitimate Syriza Government and the wishes of the Greek people were overruled by an EU body with no legal standing (the Eurogroup). As Yanis Varoufakis says in his book "Adults in the Room" "..democracy had indeed died the moment when the Eurogroup acquired the authority to dictate economic policy to member states without anything resembling federal democratic sovereignty (pg237)."

We need a UK Charter of Fundamental Rights, administered by impartial UK courts, not the politically motivated European Court of Justice, which would have the power to overrule the democratic wishes of the British people, just as the EU has done in Catalonia, in Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and many other EU vassal states.

Tuesday 20 March 2018

TORIES USING BREXIT NEGOTIATIONS TO CLING ON TO POWER

The so-called agreement announced yesterday (19/3/18) proves just one thing. The Tory government has yet again kicked the can down the road on the Brexit negotiations. They should be dealing with the difficult issues first, not last, to avoid wasting time making agreements that can never be implemented. Many people realised months ago that this Tory Government is incapable of negotiating a fair Brexit deal and are spinning it out just to remain in power for a few months more. They know that admission of failure is likely to trigger an immediate general election, especially as they will lose the support of the DUP over the Irish border.

The big issues the Tories are not able to deal with and have therefore postponed:

1. The Irish border: there is no way that you can have a soft border with the Irish Republic unless Northern Ireland effectively remains part of the Single Market and the Customs Union. Green Leaves recognised this from the start and have been calling for an Irish re-unification referendum since before the 2016 EU referendum. The only other alternative is to move the customs border to between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a situation totally unacceptable to the DUP and Ulster Unionists. A referendum vote to re-unite with the republic is the only way that that Unionist veto can be over-ruled.

2. Fishing: under Article 125 of the agreement, the UK will not be taking back control of our fisheries when we leave the EU – something which the Government had previously promised. I predict every MP representing fishing communities will agree that we must have absolute control of our waters and fish from the end of March 2019 and anything less is totally unacceptable. As this must be put to a vote, there is no way that this will pass in the House of Commons.

3. The EU is suggesting that the EU Court of Justice should decide on any impasse between the UK and the EU. For instance if there was no agreement on Northern Ireland, the EU’s draft protocol for a ‘fallback’ option to resolve the Irish border would take precedence, which would see Northern Ireland remain in the EU Customs Union and aligned with much of the Single Market after Brexit. Again unacceptable to the DUP.

4. But the big issue: not even mentioned by the UK Tory negotiating team, is the massive trade deficit that the UK has with the EU and the unsustainability of this ever expanding trade to the world's environment. The UK must develop self sufficiency after Brexit; learn to live within its means if it is not to become bankrupt, both financially and environmentally. Financially its trade is in a worse situation than the likes of Greece, which has been crippled by austerity. Environmentally, we are still learning just what a horrific disaster 100 years of plastics have been and we know that drastic action to vastly reduce our consumption is needed now. Not in three years, ten years or fifty years. We should be campaigning for Brexit be the catalyst for action on the environment NOW!

Monday 12 March 2018

Remain supporter condemns EU interference in elections

It is a shame that so main "Remain" supporters like Vince Cable resort to personal abuse when describing "Leave" voters. It's as if they know that they own arguments often lack veracity, so they similarly make up reasons why the majority of UK voters in the EU referendum opted for Brexit.

For myself, there were a number of reasons why I voted for Brexit, including the lack of sustainability of the EU economic model and the undermining by the EU Commission of European democracy. In particular their (I believe illegal) interference in the election of Governments in EU member states and the outcomes of EU referenda.

A classic example is described by ardent "Remain" supporter, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in his recent book, "Adults in the Room". He describes how the European Central Bank (elected by no one) deliberately tried to affect the outcome of the Greek general election in 2015.

Varoufakis says "..the ECB had just announced that in the near future it would stop accepting the IOUs issued by banks and backed by the governments of bailed out countries as collateral for further loans. In other words, a vital component of the smoke and mirrors machinery (set up by the ECB, EU and IMF to mask Greece's insolvency in 2010 and stop them leaving the Euro) used by Greece's four largest banks to ensure their day to day liquidity would be removed. The date on which the new policy became effective set alarm bells ringing in my head: March 2015 - the month the president of Greece's term expired, when new elections were likely to be held and in all probability Syriza would form a government."

"The ECB was creating the conditions necessary to close down the (Greek) banks without any warning or reason just as Syriza was taking over."
(Yanis Varoufakis "Adults in the Room" page 84).

Coming from such an ardent "Remain" supporter, this criticism is striking and nor is interference by the EU an isolated case. There are literally hundreds of examples, including new "technocratic" governments put in place to replace democratically elected governments who refused to toe the (unelected) EU Commission line. Further examples can be found not just in Greece, but also in Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Cyprus to name but a few. The bullying attitude of the EU now displayed in the so called negotiations on Brexit with May's weak Tory Government is, therefore, par for the course. Let's hope it won't be too long before the UK can walk away from this corrupt institution and that other countries will see the light and follow suit.

Tuesday 2 January 2018

HANDY HINTS FOR THE NEW YEAR FROM YOUR UNCLE LESLIE

Happy New Year!

Made a New Year resolution yet? Money tight after an expensive Christmas? Well now is the time to resolve to live a bit more frugally in future and preserve just a few more resources to help your pocket and the planet! Here are a few tips from your friendly retired accountant!

When you go shopping make two lists. On the first list put everything you need and on the second list put everything you want. Then throw the second list away!

Go through your "needs" list and decide whether you really need them. For instance, butter in the UK has doubled in price in the last 18 months. Even English butter, so the exchange rate is no excuse. It's time we, as consumers, started wielding our power NOT to consume. So strike things you don't really need from your list or find a cheaper alternative.

Eaten far too much chocolate over Christmas and the kids drunk too many fizzy drinks? The UK government's latest propaganda campaign to distract you from their appalling cock ups is that children should not have sugary snacks of more than 100 calories. Healthy eating is in fact cheaper than unhealthy eating, which you will know if you have ever compared the price of an apple to a chocolate bar.

It's also cheaper to be a vegetarian than an omnivore....

Next: don't buy brands. I know you always buy that coffee made by a multinational company that has just moved its HQ to a tax haven overseas, but do you need to? If you go to a store they will probably have just as good a product marketed under their own brand. For instance, you can get 40 one cup tea bags from Tesco for just 25p (and the bag is not plastic and so therefore biodegradable).

Finally, and by no means least, don't buy the fudge being sold to you by the terrible Tories. Get out of the house and protest at the privatisation of the NHS, the fracking of our countryside or the failure to protect our population from floods and fires. In particular, whether you are in favour of Brexit or in favour of Remain, please get off your backside and protest about the fudge being peddled by May and Co. You know that policy of being in the single market (to ensure no hard border in Ireland) and out of it (as promised by Brexit) at the same time is totally impossible. We either leave the EU entirely or we Remain in the EU: there are no other viable alternatives!

The sooner we get this ridiculous minority Tory Government out of office, the better it will be for all us. So start THE revolution now, forget the shopping and get down to the barricades!

Friday 22 December 2017

The Establishment talks to the Establishment

Have you noticed how it is always the usual suspects who appear on all the talk shows and write all the newspaper columns?

What the establishment says needs to be treated with such scepticism, as lies and half truths spew out of the TV and radio.

The BBC yesterday in parliament programme reported this week, for instance, that the Liberal Democrat former minister Tom Brake had claimed that the EU referendum result was in part because of Russian cyber terrorism. Then they reported the Tory grandee Edward Leigh saying that this was just sour grapes, because liberals could not accept that the working class rejected the left wing in the EU referendum!

Finally "Yesterday in Parliament" shamelessly reported, that "the UK democracy is the most robust in the world." Robust yes, democratic no. Just look at the makeup of the Houses of Parliament. The Lords full of unelected establishment yes men. The Commons full of brown nosed sycophants, who also owe their position to patronage and an undemocratic electoral system which allows a government to be elected by just one third of the electorate. No surprise that MPs do not reflect the views of the majority in the country on such a fundamental issue as Brexit. No, democracy to Parliament is voting to allow themselves to overturn the will of the people on Brexit if they disagree with the dog's breakfast being served up by this minority government.

There are many such examples touted as truth by the Ministry of Truth, aka the BBC and the mainstream media.
If you believe the establishment, there is no such thing as a left wing supporter of Brexit or a right wing remainer. How often do you see Labour Leave invited onto the talk shows and yet we hear from Tony Blair all the time, despite the fact that he has been out of office for almost ten years. As a member of Green Leaves, the organisation of Green Party supporters who support Brexit, I am not aware that any of our members has ever been invited by the media to comment since the EU referendum. Why are the views of Labour Leave or Green Leaves less relevant than those of Nigel Farage or Tony Blair? More importantly, why are the alternative paths to Brexit they propose not reported?

The establishment continues to have the same agenda that the BBC have had throughout its history. To limit the voices you hear through the establishment media to the people who control the selection of MPs, the appointments to the House of Lords and the rest of the ruling class.

Tuesday 5 December 2017

Tory plan for a United Ireland?

The day after the Brexit referendum on 23rd June 2016, I set out my vision on how to achieve a Green Brexit (see below). I think I can safely claim that my planning was considerably more advanced than that of the Tory Government who have looked totally without vision and bumbled from one crisis to another ever since.

One of the positive aspects of Brexit, I predicted, would be a referendum on a United Ireland, a simple solution to the Irish border question. Well, at last, the Tories seem to have caught up, with their proposals for "a continuing regulatory alignment" between Northern Ireland & the Republic, strongly welcomed by the Irish Taoiseach & the EU, but not surprisingly, rejected by the Ulster Unionist Parties. Rejected as it is clearly a first step on a united-Ireland agenda. As both the Tories and the DUP are scared that a general election will see Labour gain power, expect to see a loosely worded re-branding of this "alignment" accepted next week.

Thereafter it will only be a matter of time before Scotland also asks for the same arrangements and new referenda on Irish reunification and Scottish Independence lead to the new paradigm I hoped for.

(You will find my original post from 24 June 2016 in the history of this blog, but I reproduce it below):

Priorities for a post Green Brexit
Those priorities, I believe, should be, as follows:
1. The UK having addressed the democratic deficit in the EU, our next priority should be to address the democratic deficit in the UK. We should call for immediate discussions on electoral reform to give the people of the UK a more representative voting system. We got this referendum because of internal Tory Party squabbles and a weak Prime Minister who promised the EU referendum in the clear expectation that he would not get a majority in the House of Commons in 2015 and not then have to deliver on that promise. Now literally hoisted on his own petard, the Green Party should take this opportunity to attack the electoral system that got him elected with the support of less than one quarter of the electorate and demand proportional representation.
2. Similarly we should renew our campaign for the abolition of the House of Lords and the creation of a new elected senate.
3. The Green Party in England & Wales should support the demands for a new independence referendum in Scotland and a referendum for a United Ireland.
4. One of my greatest criticisms of the position of the Green Party over Europe is that we seemed to have forgotten our basic message of replacing a pro-growth consumer society with a society wedded to conserving our environment. We have been told many times that if the world wishes to avoid exceeding the 2°C, then the wealthiest countries have to adopt a de-growth strategy for a limited period. We should return to our roots and actively campaign for a de-growth economic policy.
5. That would embrace localism in our procurement policies for schools, hospitals and other public institutions, like the military. Making it a virtue of buying local preferably organic food.
6. Step up our opposition to the creeping privatisation of the NHS, especially now that the Tories will no longer have the excuse of EU neo-liberal policies on procurement.
7. Given the new spirit of rebellion engendered in the EU by the UK's unprecedented rejection of the arguments put forward by international vested interests, I believe TTIP is now dead. Obama has already promised that the UK will be put to the "back of the queue" regarding a free trade agreement and we can carve out a unique position by opposing ALL UK free trade agreements.
8. Point out that leaving the EU does not mean that we have to leave the European Court of Human Rights, which is a separate and older institution. Indeed we can champion the Court in our opposition to Tory attempts to water down our rights.
9. Try to develop an electoral pact with the Corbyn wing of the Labour Party, to increase the possibility of a truly socialist and progressive UK Government, to reverse the Thatcherism and austerity favoured by all successor governments since Thatcher, both Labour and Tory.
In this way we can renew and invigorate the Green Party by following this more radical agenda.