And now to the hustings

There’s been a bit of a gap on this blog – I’ve just been too busy finalising the Manifesto and then going to it’s launch.

But now the focus is shifting to the local election campaign, and in the last two days I’ve performed as Green South Dorset candidate at two hustings, one in Swanage and one at Weymouth College.  I’ve enjoyed both, though the format doesn’t really allow the candidates to engage with each other; there needs to be a bit more space to come back on the others’ contributions.

I’m struck though by a difference in many answers from me and ones from the three main party candidates.  They typically answer with lists of things they are going to do or lists of policies.  That’s odd for me in two ways.  First, I’m not going to win and so everyone knows I’m not going to do anything anyway.  But second, it is almost always the case that the question contains an assumption about the world that I don’t share.  A good example was in Swanage where we were asked where we thought future prosperity was going to come from.

Now one way to tackle that was with a list of green economy things we need to do – new energy industries, new modes of transport and so on, and on one occasion in Weymouth I gave that sort of answer.  But in Swanage I think I was last and we’d had all that from the others  (not enough of it quantitatively, but getting over quantitative points is very difficult).  So instead, and I rather felt taking my life in my hands, I attacked the very idea of prosperity and growth as being incompatible with a finite planet.  Rather to my surprise I began to get lots of nods and sympathetic looks, and I gathered from talking to people afterwards that that was one of my most successful interventions.

So two lessons I think.  First being bold pays.  Second, yes you need some lists because you’ve got to show you can play the lists game.  But some more general, stepping back answers go down well too, and actually convey a lot more to an audience what you are really about.

What an amazing day on Portland!

With 400 other people I marched from Portland Heights to the port on Saturday morning to protest about the plan to build a palm oil fuelled electricity plant at Balaclava Bay.

It was an amazing experience, and I’m hugely impressed by what the No Oil Palm Energy core group had got organised in a very short time.  The problem though is that making our local councillors feel remorse (whether genuine or electoral) for their daft decision won’t stop the plant being built.   The best bet now is for the government to stop it, and that’s why we need to up the pressure on Jim Knight.  If you want to join in go to the No Oil Palm Energy (NOPE) website at www.nope.org.uk.  And there are loads aof pics and comments on the Facebook Group at http://www.facebook.com/wesaynope.

Tony Blair at Chilcot

OK, I confess, I had the live feed from Chilcott running in a separate window on Friday when I was supposed to be doing lots of other things.  But mainly I just watched Tony Blair.

One has to admire the sheer skill of the man as a political operator, though he couldn’t really do anything about the central allegations that he decceived MPs about weapons of mass destruction, or kept his colleagues in the dark, especially about the legal advice.  One particular technique he used time and time again is over-generalising a question.  If he is asked a difficult question he steps so far back that the original question begins to look quibbling and over detailed in the greater scheme of things.

So for example Iraq was presented as but one episode of a whole series of interventions to secure peace justice and freedom, and which includes Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and which will include Iran, with echoes of World War II.  And yes somehow it is less bad because if you look at it in this longer and more heroic context the particular reasons for doing things kind of melt away.  And WMD is of course not just a matter of actual WMD, but also of ones that may have existed and been used in the past, and ones that might be dreamt into existence in the future, and indeed of the general nastiness of a dictator who might have had and used them – concentrating on here and now actual WMD is a narrow and short-sighted way of looking at things, that people with the heavy responsbilities of nations on their shoulders can somehow transcend.

I suppose what worries me most about this particular rhetorical technique – for that is what it is – is that I catch myself doing it sometimes.  In some contexts it is probably actually valid – but not when, as a matter of fact, you have relied exclusively and heavily on a very particular argument, in this case the actual existence of WMD, to persuade Parliament to approve the war.

Copenhagen – it wasn’t all China’s fault

I’ve been too depressed about the outcome from Copenhagen to write anything about it over the holiday period.  The slender chance it offered seems to have been squandered.

It’s hard to work out what happened, and the accounts you read are clearly designed to blame or excuse one country or another.  But if there is any consensus in the media here then it is that the villain was China, who in particular snubbed the efforts of that nice Mr Obama.

Now, I’ll confess, I love China and all things Chinese.  I remember as a sixth form student at the height of cold war paranoia about China attending the inaugural meeting of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding in 1964.   My long standing respect is for a great and troubled civilisation though, not for a particular government.  So I start from a position of understanding and sympathy.

China at Copenhagen was reflecting the justified anger of the developing world over climate change.  They didn’t cause it, and yet those who did, largely the industrialised west, expect them to stifle their development with scant help in moving to a carbon free economy.  And the US in particular still blocks real progress; Obama may be sympathetic, but the 100 US senators will prevent them making any real concessions soon.   Yet no deal in the long run is possible unless it fairly reflects the interests of the developing world and has all countries converging on the same level of per-capita emissions.

What next?  Just as with nuclear weapons the only effective and morally justifiable path is unilateralism.  We must make our own reductions whatever is happening elsewhere, and hope that in time other countries will join us.  Within the US many cities and states are taking local initiatives; the US political system despite the strength of corporate interests still shows a remarkable capacity for change, as witnessed by Obama’s election.  China itself is entirely serious about climate change – it has more to lose than most countries.   So my hope is not entirely wishful thinking, though we remain desperately close to doing too little too late.

Santa 5K

One of the stranger Weymouth Christmas customs is the Santa 5K, when several hundred people dressed as Santa chase a runner dressed as a plum pudding along the beach.

I entered a couple of years ago but didn’t run because I twisted my ankle hoovering the stairs (I won’t do that again) a day or two before the race.  But this year apart from a small cold I was fine.  I wasn’t even last, and I didn’t see any older Santas.

The best bit was the warming up before we started; hundreds of Santas dancing sort of in time on a freezing beach.  Quite surreal.

The Wave and Copenhagen

I was in London at the weekend, and went to the demonstration on climate change.  Here I am round the back of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square.  I have to say I didn’t make it into the square, it all looked a bit compressed.  But it was good to meet lots of friends, and to feel that there is at last some real momentum behind change.

I fear though that Copenhagen, and with it the chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change, is going to founder on the opinions of the hundred or so mainly middle aged male Amercians who make up the US Senate.  Whatever Obama’s personal views, it is the Senate back home that will have to ratify any Treaty.  I’m not quite sure what will be worse – no agreement or an agreement which is simply not up to the scale of the problem.

My shiny red car

So what’s a Green Party parliamentary candidate doing with a sporty looking red car?  One where, horror of horrors, the roof comes down.  Does de-selection loom?  Will my opponents make something of it?  Surely an old small hatchback running on recycled chip fat would be more appropriate.

I confess, I do like my car.  I’ve always wanted one where you can take off the roof, feel the wind and hear the sounds.  But it is rather reprehensible.  Green politics is unusual in that its politicians are expected to live their values and politics as well as expound them.  Many in the green movement believe that the main or only way to change the world is through personal example.   And part of me agrees.

But I live in this world, and my desires and emotions have been formed in this world.  Like many of my generation one of my deepest desires when I turned 17 in 1964 was to have my own car.  A succession of old bangers absorbed a quite disproportionate share of my income for the next ten years.  And even then I wanted to take the roof off!  You don’t throw off that kind of enthusiasm lightly, whatever your head is telling you.

So I try not to use it too much, and to use my bicycle a lot (which I do, but not quite enough).  I drive as economically as I can, watching the average mpg computer obsessively.  I almost always go the London by train.  I argue that the fact the roof comes off is actually irrelevant to its environmental impact, and nobody would bat an eyelid if I drove a comparable boring hatchback.  But I can’t quite escape the thought that the real crime is that I’ve bought a car that’s fun and that I enjoy.

Tax or cuts?

To our local Green Party meeting last night, where we always try to have some sort of policy discussion as well as all the organisational stuff.

Because I’ve been doing the work for the national party, I introduced a discussion on the public finances.  The problem is simple if bleak.  Government spending is running at more than £150Bn ahead of the taxes coming in.  That’s about £2500 a year each, including the kids.

How to fill the gap, even over a period of years, will probably dominate the forthcoming election.  The broad choice is between maintaining public services, like health and education and raising taxes to pay for them, or cutting public services and keeping taxes low.  We were all quite clear on what side of this divide we basically came down.  We’d preserve the services and raise the taxes, concentrating the latter on the better off.  That way we will do something to increase equality, since the quality of public services affects everybody.

But anyone in politics would be daunted by the level of the tax rises required.  We had a long discussion for example about the exemption from capital gains tax of the sale of a person’s principal home, which costs the government about £10Bn in tax they would otherwise get in a good year for house sales.  It’s a nice little bonus people have come to expect.   But there’s no real justification, and I feel it has had its day, just as mortgage interest tax relief was ended in the 1980s.  Tough choices, and I don’t know which way my Party will go, but it’s the sort of thing I’d gradually phase out and use the revenue to meet the remorselessly rising health service bill, rather than cut the NHS.

Fulham FC and Cardiac Rehab

I had a nice surprise at cardiac rehab (more below) this morning.

Perhaps because I had been dressing nattily in a Fulham strip with a big number 2 on the back and also the name ‘Cohen’ , Alan (another participant) produced a photo of the 1958-59 Fulham team and gave it to me.  And there they all were, although George Cohen on the top left had rather more hair than I remembered – I don’t think I went to Craven Cottage before about 1962.

Cardiac rehab?  It’s where the wonderful Tony keeps us fit after our heart surgery.  I’m sure he’s saving the NHS the salaries of about 3 heart surgeons all by himself.

Isn’t socialist medicine wonderful!

I went to the Hotel Rembrandt in Weymouth for my swine flu vaccination this morning.  I’m eligible because five years ago I had a small heart attack followed by a very successful bypass operation.   It was mass medicine, with I think five nurses operating in parallel – no wait, no appointment time, just a couple of questions, a chance to read the leaflet and a quick jab in the arm.  Very efficient.  We were a curious mixture of the old and infirm and lots of clearly very healthy health service workers.

Obviously I’m a fan of the NHS having had an expensive and life transforming operation.  But I’m a fan too of the way it can respond in a proportionate way to a public health emergency like the swine flu epidemic, should it really turn out to be such.  In a private system the question of who would get vaccinated would be decided by the market, and not ultimately be the responsibility of democratically elected politicians to decide how to use relatively limited resources.  It’s been controversial, with lots of arguments about what should be done, who should get vaccinated, whether the government is properly prepared, or conversly whether it has over prepared for something that might not happen.  That’s democracy.  If the market decided then we’d hardly know what was happening and certainly wouldn’t be able to influence it.

OK, maybe I like it because in this case I’m one of the ‘lucky’ ones.  But then I barely went near the NHS between my childhood vaccinations and my heart attack at 58.  And I’d rather not have the condition that got me my jab.  The NHS is wonderful – let’s keep it like that!