Jon Snow and Remembrance Poppies

Poppies really bother me.

Don't get me wrong. My grandfather fought in WWII (Irish Guards), my uncle fought in Korea (Canadian Air Force). I took a tour of WWI battlefields in Belgium in 1998 and stood at the frontline in the 1st Battle of Ypres, when mustard gas was used to liquefy Canadian lungs. I hate war, and I hope we all mean it when we say, "never again."

But, that's the problem, you see, the utter hypocrisy of the weeks leading up to Remembrance Sunday.

The PM and his cabinet, and hundreds of other MPs and city councillors, up and down the land, who support the war in Iraq, who voted for arms sales, who don't say boo to countries that make war upon their citizens (like Russia), all wearing poppies. Business leaders who sell arms wearing poppies. People whose pension funds invest in defence industry and arms sales wearing poppies.

If we say "never again," we should really mean "never again" ... not never again except for Iraq ... or never again except for selling arms to both India and Pakistan over Kashmir.

On a related note, I really appreciate Jon Snow having the guts to break with other newsreaders/presenters and refuse to wear a poppy on-air.

He said that "I am begged to wear an AIDS ribbon, a breast cancer ribbon, a Marie Curie flower ... You name it, from the Red Cross to the RNIB, they send me stuff to wear to raise awareness, and I don't. And in those terms, and those terms alone, I do not and will not wear a poppy. Additionally there is a rather unpleasant breed of poppy fascism out there - 'He damned well must wear a poppy!'. Well I do, in my private life, but I am not going to wear it or any other symbol on air."

A Super-Incinerator For Coventry?

The Telegraph reported on the 8th of November about secret negotiations for a "super-incinerator" to service waste from Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull.

Follow the logic: the Whitley "waste to energy" plant will reach the end of its "useful life" in 10 to 15 years, so they want to make a decision now on its replacement. They're assuming that they'll do so little to encourage recycling, that 10-15 years from now, we still won't be recycling enough, and we'll still need an incinerator.

It's such a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Part of the justification for the incinerator is that it generates electricity for Coventry homes. Well, we should be working towards having a greater and greater percentage of homes in the city powered by "green" energy from renewable sources, not burning plastic.

Keith Kondrakor, a Green Party member in Nuneaton, has done a great deal of research and lobbying, and generally being a busy bee, on the issue of incineration in the county.

Friends of the Earth thinks they're taking the wrong approach and should be looking to recycle more than two-thirds of rubbish.

Senior waste and resources campaigner Michael Warhurst said: "In Flanders in Belgium they're already recycling 71 per cent of waste, which is a demonstration of what you can do."

He said a better way was to recycle out all glass, plastics, metals, paper, then use a special process to treat biological waste, including food, so it doesn't emit the green house gas methane.

Then the resulting residue could safely go to landfill.

Autumn Newsletter / November Meeting

We've printed our Autumn Newsletter, two sides of A4, and we're beginning to distribute it throughout Coventry, mainly in the ward of Earlsdon, where we ran in May 2006. We've covered (or are about to) 13 streets so far, and we aim to distribute more this coming weekend and next week.

If you haven't received a copy yet, and want one, drop me an email at sgredding2003@yahoo.co.uk, or give me a call on 07906 316 726.

Our next monthly meeting will happen on Tuesday, the 14th of November, at The Grapevine, Doe Bank Lane, Spon End, at 730pm.

Shortage of Flu Jabs in Coventry

Some GP surgeries in Coventry are struggling to get a steady supply of flu jabs.

Maxine Simmons, practice manager at Kenyon Medical Centre in Chace Avenue, Willenhall, says the surgery is struggling to get supplies for the vaccine and some lower priority patients are being forced to wait. She said: "I do think it's a problem in Coventry as well as nationally ... At the moment we have run out but we have two deliveries this month ... We have arranged for staggered deliveries but it's difficult in that the majority of people want it in October ... We are being advised to prioritise people aged over 65 and people with chronic diseases. It's not available for everybody."

US Election Aftermath

A few interesting things from the US elections, both for state governor races and for the House of Representatives:

- First female Speaker of the House (leader of the majority party) in history, Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker is 3rd in line to the presidency, so you can make an argument that she's the most powerful woman in American politics in years.
- Bernie Sanders was elected as a senator from Vermont. Sanders was a long-standing Congressman, but he identifies as a democratic socialist, and he called in his campaign for universal health care.
- Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected as the govern-a-tor of California by distancing himself from George Bush and by embracing environmental policies over the last year
- 6 states passed ballot measures (state wide votes to bring in binding laws) on raising the minimum wage. The national minimum wage ($5.15, that's £2.70) hasn't risen in the US since 1997.
- The Democrats, with control of the House, are now pledging to implement all the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, raise the minimum wage, cut the interest rate on student loans by half, negotiate for lower prescription drug prices, end subsidies for Big Oil, and allow federal support of embryonic stem-cell research.

Budget Flights vs The Train

Today was a national day of action against short-haul flights, led by a group called Plane Stupid.

18 from the group (12 on the roof, 6 at the front entrance) targeted EasyJet's headquarters in London.

Aviation may only account for 3% of UK global warming emissions, but it's a sector that is expanding. The government's Aviation White Paper from 2003 predicted that air travel would treble by 2030 (from 180 million annual journeys to 501 million). Runway additions or extensions are planned around the country.

If the air travel sector of the economy keeps expanding, we'll need to make far deeper cuts in emissions across all other sectors of the economy. Trains are over 10 times less polluting, and besides, trains are more fun. I've taken trains from Hong Kong to Helsinki, from Chicago to LA, from San Francisco to Detroit, and what would I have seen if I had flown ... the inside of a plane.

Even farther destinations, say, Venice, aren't really far. Train to London, Eurostar to Paris, TGV to Geneva, and if you time it right, sleeper train to Venice, so that you wake up beside gondolas.

UNISON Blog on Single-Status Campaign

The UNISON campaign against the single-status decisions by Coventry City Council has been maintaining a blog. BBC Coventry had a live debate on the issue last Friday at 10am. Here is some background info on the single status debate.

Spending Money on Trident or Climate Change?

The government allocates less than £1 billion per year to directly tackle climate change ... this despite the rhetoric of Tony Blair. To put that into perspective, the Ministry of Defence estimates that the cost of operations in Iraq between 2002 and 2006 has been £4.17 billion.

Why should we spend £76 billion to renew the Trident nuclear deterrant (buying missiles, replacing submarines, over a 30-year period) when we know that we need to spend roughly the same amount to drastically cut emissions?

Analysts were unanimous that it would make most sense to begin by investing public money to conserve energy. The Energy Savings Trust calculates that a one-off investment by government of about £4bn could insulate nearly 6m cavity walls, saving almost £2bn per year in reduced energy bills and nearly 12m tonnes of carbon - almost 28% of Britain's domestic emissions.

Oxford University's environmental change institute calculates that to reduce emissions across the domestic sector by 60% could require £420bn, but for about £5bn the government could kickstart a low carbon UK economy by overhauling every British home. Director Brenda Bordsman said government subsidy for home improvements would then be enhanced by private borrowing. As well as refurbishing housing stock, government money could help promote the redesign of appliances, and the development of solar and and other micro generation technologies. "It would, as a bonus, create thousands of jobs and it reduce overall emissions by around 60%."

Climate Change March

Strangely, I posted something yesterday about this, and it's disappeared into the ether. No matter. There was a great deal of media coverage about the more than 25000 people who converged on Trafalgar Square for the Stop Climate Chaos events. This is a good collection of photos from the demo. Stop Climate Chaos is a coalition of environment and development groups, faith groups, humanitarian organisations, women’s groups, and trade unions pushing for three key demands:

- Action internationally: ensure that global greenhouse gas emissions are irreversibly declining by 2015.
- Action for justice: deliver assistance to developing countries to adapt to climate change and give access to clean energy to meet their developmental needs.
- Action in the UK: introduce a Climate Bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 3% per year.

Ethical Buying and Green Energy

The Observer has a poll today on ethical buying.

While only a small minority of people in Britain have switched over to green energy suppliers (electricity sourced from renewable resources), 64% of those polled said yes to the question, "Would you consider switching your gas and electricity services over to 'green' companies which provide the same service?"

"A Crude Awakening" - Peak Oil

It's a film being screened this week at the Sheffield Int'l Documentary Film Festival. A Guardian blog writes about it here.

World demand for oil is rising, and we will reach a point when oil supply will peak, and oil demand outstrips the annual supply. Whether that peak occurs in 2007, 2008, 2014, or the optimists version, 2020, it will happen. And our society is dependent upon oil (petrol, plastic gloves in hospitals, oil-based paint, oil-based fertiliser for agriculture).

Conventional oil reserves are now declining about 4-6% a year worldwide.

18 large oil-producing countries, including Britain, and 32 smaller ones, have declining production; Denmark, Malaysia, Brunei, China, Mexico and India will all reach their peak in the next few years. World oil demand is surging. Oil demand rose faster in 2004 than in any year since 1976. If world demand continues to grow at 2% a year, then almost 160m barrels a day will need to be extracted in 2035, twice as much as today.

According to industry consultants IHS Energy, 90% of all known reserves are now in production, suggesting that few major discoveries remain to be made. Oil supply is increasingly limited to a few giant fields, with 10% of all production coming from just four fields and 80% from fields discovered before 1970. Even finding a field the size of Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, by far the world's largest, would only meet world demand for about 10 years.

Greenpeace and Didcot Power Plant

In advance of the 4th November national Climate Change march in London, Thirty Greenpeace volunteers halted the conveyor belts at the coal-fired Didcot power station today.

Most British power stations waste two-thirds of the energy they generate in the form of heat escaping up their cooling towers. By locating smaller generators close to where energy is used, the heat created in power stations can be captured and used to heat our homes. Woking Council has reduced its carbon footprint by 77% by employing decentralised technologies.

Greenpeace campaigns director Blake Lee-Harwood, who is part of the team that shut Didcot's conveyor belt, said: "Power stations like this are energy dinosaurs. This one power station emits over six millions tonnes of CO2 a year, that's more than the 29 lowest polluting countries put together. And, shockingly, Didcot could halve its emissions overnight if it switched from burning coal to gas."

Under Tony Blair: The use of coal for electricity generation has gone up from 47.3 to 52.5 million tonnes a year; Between the second quarters of 2005 and 2006 coal-burn for electricity rose by 10.5%.

CCTV in Coventry

Britain now has 4.2 million CCTV cameras , one for every 14 people. Dr David Murakami-Wood, the co-author of a report to be presented on Thursday to a data protection conference in London, said to the BBC that Britain has "more CCTV cameras and looser laws on privacy and data protection" than any other industrialised Western state. Murakami-Wood continued: "We really do have a society which is premised both on state secrecy and the state not giving up its supposed right to keep information under control while, at the same time, wanting to know as much as it can about us."

The Green Party is against the idea of a further scheme to undermine civil liberties and increase state monitoring (the national ID card system). We're also in favour of far more community based, visible, policing to avoid this kind of drenching in CCTV.

Upcoming Radio and TV

- 4th November, 1030am, Radio 4 - "Living with AIDS: Britain's Battle" - twenty-five years after the first recorded case in Britain, a look at the social impact of AIDS
- 5th November, 1015pm, BBC 1 - Panorama looks at soaring gas prices and gas supplies through pipelines
- 6th November, 8pm, Channel 4 - Dispatches has a documentary on how the invasion and occupation of Iraq has affected young people in the country
- 6th November until 10th November, 930pm, Radio 3 - highlights of the "Free Thinking: Festival of Ideas for the Future," a conference held in Liverpool, Thursday looks especially interesting, as Doreen Massey "challenges globalisation gurus who insist local places are all becoming homogenous and lays out a manifesto for an alternative global vision"

New Documentary On 2-Tone

It's called "Ghost Town" and it was put together by members of Godiva Young Gays and Lesbians (GYGL). GYGL is a youth group for young gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgendered people under the age of 25. Richard Wood, a director from Leofric Films who worked with the group, told the Telegraph that: "It was great training the group on camera and sound. We ran workshops at the BBC Open Centre and also went out on the streets to interview people. I was surprised at how much the group grew through the process and how much confidence they have built up from the filming."

You can contact Leofric Films here.

You can find out more about GYGL and their activities here.