Trescothick And Mental Illness

Marcus Trescothick, a cricketer with Somerset, has written an autobiography, Coming Back to Me. Trescothick pulled out of the 2006-7 Ashes tour due to what kept being called a "stress-related illness." It turns out that he has been having anxiety attacks since the age of 10.

We hear far more about psychologists whispering in the ears of cyclists at Olympic velodromes just before their ride. It's very rare for a professional sports player to speak out on mental illness:

"I struggled mostly with the nerves and the worrying that goes with it. It doesn't matter what you do, anybody can pick it up whether you earn £1m a year or £20 a week. It strikes when it wants to and there's not much you can do until you take pills or seek help and get back on the road to recovery."

"People try and hide it all the time. I hid it for weeks, months and a couple of years before saying I don't want to run from this any more."

"Anxiety problems are seen as a weakness. People tell you to pull yourself together. But it is an illness, it's not something you make up."

Coventry - City Of Sanctuary

"City of Sanctuary" is a movement of local people, community groups, organisations and businesses who share a common aim of ensuring that their city is a welcoming place for people seeking sanctuary from war or persecution.

Sheffield is the first City of Sanctuary in the UK, and Coventry aims to be the second.

For many years, Coventry has offered a home to people whose lives were in danger in their own countries. Many have lost their homes and families, but they have brought new skills, music, food - contributing to our vibrant and diverse community.

In order to achieve "City of Sanctuary" status, Coventry has to show that our city, and its services, are welcoming and accessible to people seeking sanctuary, refugees and all vulnerable migrants.

There will be a public meeting on the 25th September at 730pm, at the Council House (Earl Street, CV1 5RR).

For more information, please contact Penny Walker on 024 7666 4616 or email: coventry@cityofsanctuary.org.

Richard Schiff On John McCain

I know he was just an actor on "The West Wing" but Richard Schiff makes a few interesting points about John McCain:

"Here is a man who had his moment in history already pass him by. After being eviscerated and politically castrated in the 2000 Republican primaries by the Bush PR machine; accused falsely of fathering an illegitimate and racially mixed child, he was given a chance at redemption and a chance to save the world from a man he considered at the time to be dangerous and untrustworthy. He could have run as a third party candidate and taken enough votes away from George W to seal the election for Al Gore. He passed."

"Four years later, John Kerry had talks with McCain about running as his Vice-President; a dream ticket that would surely bring down the Bush regime. Again he passed."

"When I ask Washington insiders why, they can only conclude that the reason was simple, unadulterated ambition to be President. But what a price to pay. This is a man who could have saved the world from the last eight years of disaster and instead is content to inherit the aftermath. But the other half of the divide chooses to imagine the younger McCain, the independent, free thinking, iconoclast he may very well have been once, long ago."

The Return Of Boom And Bust

The interview that Alistair Darling gave to the Guardian on Saturday was interesting. He said the economy was at its worst point in 60 years. Libby Purves wonders why he chose 1948 -- the year of the nationalisation of the railways, the creation of the NHS, and an Olympics in London.

I think Darling, if shuffled away from the Treasury, might have enough backbone to do something damaging to Brown, like resign from the Cabinet.

Stephen King (the managing director of economics at HSBC) says that the real surprise of the past year is not the credit crunch, it's the inflation. House prices were inflated, and there were 5 times income, 100% mortgages on offer. But, King says that policymakers are "struggling" to deal with inflation since "its arrival was so unexpected." That's economist for "we don't exactly know what's happening either."

John Redwood has an interesting blog:

"Mr Darling has demolished the more important half of the New Labour offer, the promise of economic stability and efficiency. “No more boom and bust” was the most effective of all the New Labour songs."

"The soundbite worked brilliantly in 1997, as part of the reason for change. What change did people most want? 'No more boom and bust'."

"It worked well again in 2001. After all, leaving aside the disgraceful tax raid on the pension funds and the sale of the gold holdings, most of the period 1997-2001 was characterised by prudent management of public finances and produced a reasonable economic performance. Labour still allowed boom and bust in manufacturing, but that was disguised by the strength of services in general and London’s service sector in particular which helped the national figures considerably."

"By 2005 it should have been apparent to more commentators that we were back in boom and bust, but because we were enjoying the boom part of the policy, too many people were still prepared to ignore the obvious signs. I highlighted the excess and waste in public spending, the build up of far too much public borrowing, and the change in inflation targets to keep interest rates lower than desirable. I also highlighted wrong headed mortgage regulation and the Basel I banking regulations, which became an important part of the disaster."

"Mr Darling has told us it cannot work again. In Mr Darling’s words we have lurched from pretty good economic conditions to the “worst in 60 years” ... It transforms British politics. It now allows us a more honest debate about what went wrong and what needs to be done to put it right ... It will anyway confirm the public view that New Labour is dead – it has delivered neither economic efficiency nor social justice."

Stall At LMHR Event In Kenilworth

I spent four hours yesterday at an anti-racism music festival in Kenilworth. Myself, Ken and Tom staffed a stall for the Green Party. It was organised by sixth formers at Castle Sixth Form in Kenilworth. We were lucky enough to borrow a table and two wooden fold-up chairs from a nearby church hall, and just walk across Abbey Fields to the festival site. About 200 young people attended over the 4 hours we were there.

It was good chatting with other attendees, notably the folks from "v" -- about seed funding for volunteering projects in Warwickshire, and how the "v" team in Coventry may be able to help us find volunteers (newsletter editorial assistants, newsletter ad sales people, fundraising event assistants?).

Currently, there are a variety of opportunities for 16-24 year olds through "v" in Coventry:

- helping with an allotment at Henley College
- being an admin volunteer for the "Young Leaders" project at Terrence Higgins Trust
- doing events and fundraising work with the RSPB
- being a befriender at Coventry Refugee Centre
- or being part of Nature Force at Warwickshire Wildlife Trust.

Oil Drilling And US Election

John McCain's pick for his vice-presidential running-mate (Sarah Palin - governor of Alaska) signals that off-shore drilling will be a centrepiece of his strategy against Obama. For example, over 60% of people in Florida say they support off-shore drilling. Palin supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

In contrast, Obama, in his acceptance speech in Denver, said:

"Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and John McCain has been there for 26 of them. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office."

"Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close."

New Eco-Features For SUVs

Coventry Telegraph Coverage - Plastic Bags

Plastic bags account for just 0.6 per cent of the city's domestic waste. The council needs to emphasise not just a plastic bag ban, but to reduce our consumption overall:

Coventry Green Party spokesman Scott Redding said:

"Plastic bags are more symbolic than anything. They might make up a small percentage of waste but cutting down on them might get people thinking in a different way."

"What's more effective is to get across the idea that plastic is oil and we should cut down on our use of plastic, full stop, by using glass bottles instead of plastic."

"Right now, the council is shying away from trying to reduce people's waste overall. They want to up the household recycling from 25 per cent to 50 per cent but they're taking 12 years to do it. In terms of non-plastic bag waste, they're setting their sights lower than they could."

Food Waste Into Energy

BBC's Midlands Today had a piece on a new MBT plant in Ludlow, South Shropshire. The plant opened in March 2007, and it is the first of its kind in the UK to process source-seperated municipal kitchen waste into biogas (renewable energy) and a biofertiliser (for local farmland). For more information, you can visit the website of the firm, Greenfinch, that runs it.

Obama's Problems Against McCain

From a certain point of view, it's a miracle that Barack Obama is making the US Presidential race close at all:

- To state the obvious, he's African-American. He's had to walk a fine line between being able to talk about race but not be "the angry black man."
- He doesn't have traditional pre-Presidential-race experience (he's not a second-term-or-more Senator, a state governor or the Vice-President).
- 12% of the country think he is Muslim (a further 1% think he's Jewish).
- He's under 50 years old.
- He's a "lifelong city dweller" trying to win over rural areas.
- He represents Illinois (the last fellow to run for President from Illinois lost the '52 and '56 elections for the Democrats). He was born in Hawaii, the first person to be his party's nominee to come from that state.
- His success will rely on turnout by young voters.
- It was an incredibly divisive battle against Hillary Clinton.

But, I think his main problem is that Obama keeps using high-falutin' words, like "specificity" -- he needs to keep talking about hope and change, but start talking far more about unemployment, about falling real incomes, and explain things in 10-word chunks that people in the check-out line at Wal-Mart can understand.

It's interesting that Obama's reading up on the convention speeches of Kennedy in 1960 and Reagan in 1980. Andrew Sullivan has also written a compare and contrast piece that examines the strengths and weaknesses of McCain and Obama.

Sellafield's Radioactive Waste

Jamie's blog, over at Greenpeace UK, has some interesting information about Sellafield:

"Many containers storing the radioactive waste are made of second-rate materials, handled carelessly, and are liable to corrode. Through a combination of slip-shod management and lacklustre construction, 40 per cent of the containers are expected to fail, quite possibly before a long-term storage area can be built and sealed."

Oh, and did you hear that Spain had a 90-minute fire at one of its nuclear plants on Sunday? It led to Spain going to "the pre-alert level of the country's Interior Emergency Plan." I wonder if that is Spain's version of Cobra. Greenpeace, and Ecologists in Action, have demanded the withdrawal of the operating permits, as well as a precautionary shutdown, for the three nuclear plants in Tarragona (the Asco-1, Asco-2 and Vandellos-2 facilities).

"Fundamental Doubts" About Titan Prisons

The National Council of Independent Monitoring Boards says it has "fundamental doubts" about the entire idea of "Titan" prisons.

You might know IMBs better as "Boards of Visitors" -- they visit prisons and listen to detainees, not necessarily about issues like immigration problems, but issues like access to a solicitor, staff behaviour, living conditions, or food.

The National Council feels that the proposed Titan jails (at least 3 jails, with 2500 inmates each, on a site of 50 acres, at £350 million a pop) could be dangerous, that ministers have failed to explain why they would save money, and that ministers appeared to omit any concern for the importance of monitoring conditions in prisons.

Nacro, the Howard League, and the Prison Reform Trust are also against the Titan proposals.

The council said "there will be major and potentially dangerous consequences if services such as health and education are provided centrally, as it will be difficult to protect the most vulnerable prisoners from those who might cause them harm".

The council's president, Dr Peter Selby, said: "Most of our boards favour smaller units and have negative experience of large establishments and clustering of prisons to achieve efficiency, but at the cost of effective rehabilitation. We shall continue to emphasise and carry out our task of monitoring fairness and respect wherever people are imprisoned, and point out the major disadvantages of prisons of a size that present serious management problems."

Both Labour and the Tories favour expanding the prison population, a prison population already the highest per capita in Western Europe.

This flies in the face of a recent study (July 2008) by Professor Carol Hedderman (University of Leicester; a former Assistant Director of research at the Home Office). She argues that the Carter Report (the idea of Titan prisons and expanding the prison estate) was largely "unevidenced." Her main conclusions were that prison reconviction rates have escalated as the population has increased, and that expanding the prison estate will generate, not satiate, demand.

Does that sound like the right way to protect society?

Labour And City Academies

Andrew Adonis, the schools minister, wants to accelerate the government city academies programme.

He says it could be possible to continue opening 100 academies a year after 2011, when the target of 400 city academies is likely to be met. Furthermore, he now says they should become "akin to private schools," with strict disciplinary codes, a broad curriculum and 12-hour days.

The Green Party is against the idea of city academies. Education is for the public good, and should be publicly funded.

City academies empower private-sector sponsors to have control over admission policy and the curriculum. State schools should remain under the democratic control of local education authorities.

Neither the Tories, nor the Lib Dems, are opposed to city academies.

But more importantly, when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, did you think that key Blairite policies, such as city academies were going to be kept in place?

Children At Yarl's Wood

A report from the Prisons Inspector, Anne Owers, has raised "serious concerns" about the treatment of children at the Yarl's Wood detention centre for immigrants. Completed in November 2001, Yarl’s Wood is located on MOD land, and it's a "prohibited place" under the Official Secrets Act. The centre is monitored by hundreds of CCTV cameras, and it's surrounded by a perimeter fence topped with razor wire. In a recent four-month period, 83 children had been detained for over 28 days.

- They've wrongly detained disabled children.
- They've had no specialist health services for children, no registered sick children's nurse, no "easily accessible" mental health services for children, and no children's counsellor.
- There was inadequate education and after-school facilities.
- They've kept inaccurate records.
- Some families had been transported to and from the centre in caged vans.

A spokesperson for the UK Border Agency described the entire situation as "necessary [as part of maintaining] a robust but fair asylum system."

It's interesting that the Rudd government in Australia has changed its policy in the last month. No more asylum-seeking children would be detained by Australia, and all asylum seekers will now have access to lawyers at the Australian government's expense.

The alternative for Britain was outlined back in July by the Independent Asylum Commission.

They called for an end to the detention of all child asylum seekers by the government. They found that detention was not necessary for the majority of asylum seekers, and that it should never be used for children or pregnant women. "Guardianship schemes for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children" could take the place of detention -- with the appointment of named individuals to safeguard their best interests.

Monsanto's Record Profits In A Food Crisis

- Monsanto, which has a virtual monopoly of US GM cotton, corn seed, and soya, has just made record profits in the middle of a world food crisis. So, naturally, they are increasing their herbicide prices by more than 50%, and the price of its soya and corn seeds by 35%.

- Water policy, with McCain being from down-stream in Arizona, could play a key role in the swing state of Colorado.

- Someone's trying to steal our clothes.

- I've lost count of the data losses in the last year of the Brown government. This time, they've lost:

- the names, addresses and dates of birth of around 33,000 offenders in England and Wales with six or more recordable convictions in the past 12 months on the Police National Computer
- the names and dates of birth, but not addresses, of 10,000 prolific and other priority offenders
- the names, dates of birth and, in some cases, the expected prison release dates of all 84,000 prisoners held in England and Wales

The Guardian points out that: "if it falls into the wrong hands it could leave some criminals with spent convictions open to retribution at the hands of victims, raising the possibility of the government being sued."