Green Party Leader on BBC Question Time

Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party (England and Wales), was on the panel on BBC TV Question Time on Thursday 18 March. And what a refreshing change she brought to the show.

Being a bit of a politics junky, I hardly ever miss this programme, but am usually left shouting obscenities at the screen, as a panel of five right wing politicians and journalists pontificate on questions from what the BBC describes as a ‘balanced’ audience. To be fair, the audience tend to be the most interesting thing about Question Time, but being from Wythenshawe myself (where the show was filmed), I thought the audience was not really representative of the area. Where the BBC managed to find so many Tory supporters from around there, is beyond me.

Anyhow, we had the usual dreary line up of right wingers (a possible exception, in Charles Kennedy, ex leader of the Liberal Democrats), peddling the same old establishment nonsense that we have become accustomed to. Some weeks the non professional politician panellist is of a left persuasion, but this time we had the historian and broadcaster David Starkey, who is as reactionary as they come.

I was therefore pleased to see that Caroline struck a clear left wing tone, which is mostly absent from the professional politicians that appear, even though I suspect it has a fair amount of support amongst public at large. Talking about the British Airways industrial dispute, which the Tories on the panel were trying desperately to turn into a ‘unions call the shots with this Labour government’ argument, she had a good grasp of the facts of the dispute, and accused BA management of indulging in ‘macho’ tactics. She said Greens in the European Parliament had a ‘fantastic’ record of cooperation with unions, and that she couldn’t see why trade unions gave any funding to the Labour party, as its government constantly attacks union members, and privatises public services to the detriment of users and the employees alike.

The best bit for me though, was when David Starkey interrupted Caroline to say that greens are ‘just’ socialists with a green tinge, and she said, ‘Well, we have socialist principles’. I can’t remember when I last heard the S word on this show said with any positive intent. At last, the leader of a growing party of the left, has had the courage to speak up for trade union members and for the virtues of socialism on the BBC’s national flagship current affairs forum. What a pity that Caroline will not be invited to the General Election party leader debates next month on TV, when Labour, Tory and Lib Dem leaders will lecture us on the need to our tighten belts to pay for the banker’s bonuses, and how we have to pour more money down the drain fighting unwinnable wars in the Middle East.

You can watch the programme here…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rmvy6/Question_Time_Wythenshawe/

Elections in the Air

Hopefully, the long cold winter is over. Spring is in the air, and the election season is well and truly upon us.

The bookies have stopped taking bets on the General Election being held on 6 May, I hear. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, could yet surprise us, but it does look as though General will be held on the same day as the local elections in London (and elsewhere).

I always expected the national opinion polls to narrow as the General Election got closer, but the speed with which they have narrowed is astonishing. A Tory percentage lead of somewhere in the teens a couple of months ago, has shrunk to maybe 3 or 4 points. A succession of gaffs by the Tories has no doubt helped, but it may just be that unpopular as Gordon Brown and Labour have become, the voters are beginning to think, ‘better the devil you know’. Who would you want making the promised deep cuts in public spending, inevitably leading to cuts in frontline services? Many people will remember the last Conservative government and their hatred of anything publicly owned. As Peter Mandleson said ‘they are foaming at the mouth over the prospect of slashing public spending’.

There appears to be the best chance of a ‘hung parliament’ since 1974, with no party having an absolute majority in the Commons, and the prospect of some kind of coalition government. Maybe, a few Green MP’s could extract some proper action on climate change and other concessions, as the price for supporting a minority government?

More likely, I think, is a minority Tory government supported by the Lib Dems. The Lib Dems are talking an even tougher game on cutting public spending than the Tories, so they wouldn’t be such strange bed fellows. I couldn’t really have seen this happening when Charlie Kennedy was Lib Dem leader, but Nick Clegg, oh yes. He recently spouted his admiration for Margaret Thatcher, and the way that she destroyed the National Union of Mineworkers in the 1980’s. What better right wing credentials are there than that?

Of course, we’re all getting excited about the local elections here in Haringey, where we think we have a great chance of winning our first council seats in Stroud Green ward. Certainly canvassing returns look to be encouraging, and there is still a mood of protest amongst the voters over the bigger party’s involvement in the Westminster expenses scandal. This could play very well for us, as it did in last year’s European Parliament elections.

But more of the local elections later.

Green Leader Backs Postal Workers

Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, today promised to “lobby at every level” in order to support striking postal workers and accused the Government of
effectively “dismantling” Royal Mail with its ongoing
programme of privatisation.

In a strongly worded letter to the Communication Workers Union - released this afternoon - Lucas, who is also the Green Party candidate for Brighton Pavilion, accused the Government of “ill-serving” workers and the UK public alike and criticised the Government for its “shameful privatisation of public services” which has led to “increased marginalisation and inequalities in terms of public access to services”.

The move comes as the row over today’s first postal strike escalated, with Gordon Brown calling upon the strikers and Royal Mail to “get around the table” to end the industrial dispute and the Tories attacking Labour for failing to deal with the crisis.Several Brighton and Hove Green Councillors will be joining the picket line in central Brighton tomorrow (Friday).

In the letter to CWU Secretary Bill Hayes, Caroline Lucas says: “In our view, Royal Mail workers and management have been on a collision course since the private sector has been forced on the service. By removing profitable parts of the business for the benefit of speculators and investors, the Government has created an environment in which the interests of the population of the UK as a whole have been ill-served, none more so than your members. It is shameful that a Labour Government should have played such a role in the privatisation of public services, and in a way which has increased marginalisation and inequalities in terms of access to services.”

“It is especially concerning that this Labour Government is not content with overseeing the dismantling of this vital service, but now appears to be colluding with Royal Mail management to undermine the rights of the Union and its representatives, and condoning the side-lining of the CWU in working towards the completion of the agreement from the last period of industrial action.”

The Green Party leader offered the CWU the Green’s full support in the coming days, stating that “…we hope that any action is swift and positive in its results. As we did two years ago, we will lobby at every level to support the CWU cause.”

Lucas used the letter of support to draw attention to the fact that in Brighton and Hove during previous industrial action: “Green Party members and our active Trade Union Group joined the CWU on the picket line, Green councillors promoted your case, including getting Brighton and Hove Council to support your action, and we publicly backed your position.”

Healthy Haringey?

Having travelled past the variously-named Hornsey Poly-Clinic/Hornsey Central Hospital/Hornsey Neighbourhood Health Centre on the bus umpteen times, it was good today to final get the chance to visit.

It was the AGM of NHS Haringey (formerly Haringey PCT – do keep up!),and I attended with my ‘Defend Haringey Health Services’ hat on.

The building is an odd combination of steel and glass with the war memorial (which was on the site already) tacked on the front, at an angle. Patients whose doctors have moved into the building have complained that they cannot hear their name being called because of the acoustics.

There’s a café downstairs run by Muswell Hill’s ‘Feast’ – good to see a local business getting the franchise, I thought, though a quick glance showed that their environmental credentials needed improving. Bottled water – so 5 years ago! If the land at the back of the building is turned into a community garden, a plan which is on the table, perhaps fruit and veg could be grown there and used in the café?

Richard Sumray, chair of NHS Haringey, kicked off the AGM by saying that resources are getting tighter – a point underlined by Harry Turner, Corporate Director of Finance. Who said there had already been a small cut in spending on primary care services.

They hadn’t scheduled questions, but we activists didn’t let that stop us. I asked where the cuts in primary care services had been, and on top of that, whether the Executives planned to take a pay cut? After all, Tracey Baldwin, Chief Executive of NHS Haringey, reportedly earned £190,000 last year.

Ms. Baldwin laughed at my suggestion and patiently explained that their wages are determined by the Government’s pay scales and there isn’t anything they can do about it. (I’ll let you insert your own comment here!)

We also asked what the plans were for the building – much of it is empty still. We were told that they don’t really know what’s going into it (the Millennium Dome situation springs to mind!) but it’ll be what we the patients want.

So here’s my wish-list: I’d like a good, sympathetic Dr I see often and can build up a relationship with, thus getting continuity of care.I’d like a baby clinic, more podiatrists and mental health provision. I’d like to see a user board that properly represents the community and has a real say about how things are run.

But here’s the big ask: I’d like to then pick this up and put it in a small practice, within walking distance, so people don’t have to get two buses to get there, especially when they’re feeling unwell.


When I brought up some of these points I was told that people don’t mind travelling on two buses if they are going to a nice building. I was told that mothers want to go to the polyclinic (again, because it’s a sexy building – supposedly). My reply: I’m a mother. I don’t. I want to go to the one around the corner (which was closed down with one week’s notice). I was also told that people don’t care about seeing the same GP and that is why they often go to A&E.


I love the NHS, and to see it taken apart before my eyes was thoroughly depressing. Let’s defend our local doctor’s surgeries whilst we still have them!

Spinning the war in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is fast running up the UK political flagpole. A succession of British ex-army generals are making noises that the army wants out, and now, Eric Joyce a ministerial aid, has quit the government over the way the war is being justified.

The recent Afghan elections are subject to loud claims of fraud from opposition parties, whilst we continue to prop up the corrupt government of President Karzai and a collection of narco barons.

The prime minister, Gordon Brown talks deluded nonsense about ‘our aims being realistic and achievable’, but what are these aims?

The first justification to be trotted out is that by fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, we are stopping terrorism visiting the streets of the UK. This is verging on risible. There has not been a single link to Afghanistan with terrorism in this country. Meanwhile, opinion polls say that two thirds of the British public are against our involvement in this eight year long occupation, so few seem to be convinced by this argument.

The second justification for this occupation, is that we can stop opium growing in Afghanistan, and so reduce the supply of heroin onto our streets. It is true that opium growing has reduced this year, but this is mainly due to the rising price of wheat, making it an attractive alternative crop. The price of wheat will fall again, and so too, the price of heroin will rise, the presence of the British army has little to do with the situation. The Taliban did manage to almost completely wipe out heroin production in Afghanistan before the US/UK et al invasion, albeit by brutal means, but foreign armies actually increase the attraction of growing this crop, as has been seen since 2001.

A recent British army operation, dramatically entitled ‘Panther’s Claw’, saw around 3000 British troops clear an area the size of the Isle of Wight of 500 Taliban fighters over a couple months. In the process, a dozen British soldiers were killed and getting on for a hundred wounded. Of course, as soon as the British withdraw in substantial numbers to fight in another area, the Taliban will return.

The truth of the matter is, that we have got ourselves involved in a civil war in Afghanistan, rather reminiscent of Vietnam, with no doubt the same abject defeat for the invaders, in the long run. The Russians, with hundreds of thousands of troops, were unable to quell Afghan resistance in the 1980’s (although we did supply the resistance with as much weaponry as they could use). The British army also failed in the nineteenth century to occupy this country, have we learnt nothing from history?

The sooner the US cuts a deal with the Taliban, the sooner we can bring some resolution to the conflict in Afghanistan. The British government should tell the Americans that this is the case, and announce plans for the withdrawal of our forces. I don’t think that the British public will put up with the continuing level of losses to our armed forces for much longer, in a far away country that they know nothing about. And how much is all this costing, with cuts to public services being roundly predicted?

Time to cut the spin, and come up with a sensible plan, to get us out of this disastrous situation.

Dirty hands, happy faces

Stroud Green candidates Anna Bragga, Sarah Cope and Pete McAskie attended a ‘guerilla gardening’ event on Tottenham Lane. A neglected piece of land, supposedly one that the council should’ve been tending, is in the process of being transformed into a mini oasis of colour and scents.

We met the woman behind this excellent venture, Bethany Wells, and spent several hours with a group of volunteers. We swept up debris, dug over the soil and started planting donated plants such as geraniums. We enjoyed cakes, art, and homemade lemonade, not to mention the great community spirit!

The idea is that anyone who wants to can come along to the plot, which is next to the police station on Tottenham Lane, and do a bit of gardening whenever the fancy takes them. Bethany explained that rather than wait for the council to do something, she decided to take action and sort out the land herself. It’s a good attitude to have.

Earlier this year, together with a group of residents on my estate in Highgate, I cleared a disused garden and planted vegetables, fruit and flowers. We are now enjoying the fruit of our labour, with carrots, onions, tomatoes, beans and potatoes in abundance!

The guerrilla gardening movement is an interesting one. Since reading Richard Reynold’s excellent book ‘On Guerilla Gardening’ earlier this year, I can’t go past a disused plot, flower bed or tree pit without imagining it either blooming or providing food for local people. There are health, environmental and community benefits to this kind of action – it needs to be encouraged!

http://guerrillagardening.org/

Chainsaw Massacre’ leads to public outcry

“Haringey Council kills more trees than vandals do.” Thus spoke Mary Craine, former chair of the Tree Trust, at Monday night's public meeting, held on the subject of street trees by Haringey Green Party. It was a well-attended event, as it seems that trees provoke all sorts of strong reactions in people.

We called the meeting because residents in Stroud Green have repeatedly told us that they have worries about the street trees in their ward. The phrase “brutal pollarding” was used again and again, with additional concerns raised regarding the council’s replacement policy and the issue of subsidence.

The replacement issue is an interesting one. Only 3 out of the 19 wards in Haringey had less trees planted in the period of 2007-8 than it did in 2004-5. One of those three wards was Stroud Green. In 2004-5, 75 trees were planted in Stroud Green. In 2007-8, only 10 were planted – with only a pitiful 3 trees planted in the ward 2006-7. This may be because less trees were felled in this ward than in others. Or it may be that less trees were planted there, full stop. (Note that I haven’t called these newly planted trees ‘replacement trees’ – as Mary Craine said last night, “’Replacement tree’ should be struck out of the vocabulary”).

Replacing a broadleaf tree such as a lime, a plane or an oak, which may live to be hundreds of years old, with a very ‘snapable’ ornamental, which will never grow to a great height, is clearly not a good deal. The idea is that it will be less likely to cause subsidence (more of which later). However, broadleaf trees do a far better job of mitigating the effects of climate change, they create a natural canopy, thus slowing down the fall of rain and reducing the likelihood of flooding, and they also create a beautiful, calming ‘treescape’, much loved by resident. Indeed, one resident told me he moved to Stroud Green in the 1980s – and has stayed there ever since – precisely because of the beautiful avenues of trees. (Pollarded stumps don’t quite cut it).

The pollarding is done mainly to stem the tree’s growth and make them less likely to cause subsidence. In 2003, London Boroughs had 25 million pounds-worth of subsidence claims brought against them. However, in Ken Livingstone’s ‘London Tree and Woodland Framework’ it is stated that less than 1% of the trees in London are responsible for damage to properties. There are a myriad of causes of subsidence, but the ‘blame the tree’ brigade tend to shout the loudest.

There are lots of tests which should be done before a tree is blamed and slaughtered. The operative word here is ‘should’. Because of a lack of political will, (that’s why we need Green councillors!), a lack of money and a lack of people, shortcuts are inevitably taken.

A plethora of other problems threaten street trees, including the council’s tendency to use strimmers and ‘sit-on’ mowers (thus damaging the bark at the base of the tree), plus not bothering so much with ‘after-care’ when a tree is planted. Add to this the problem with the sub-contractors who carry out the tree works not being regulated, and, as Mary Craine put it “street trees are vulnerable trees, wholly dependent on people.”

So what can we do? Pete McAskie, target ward candidate and parliamentary candidate for Hornsey and Wood Green, suggested that rather than coming and pollarding every tree in a street, every other tree could be pollarded on a visit. This would lessen the visual impact. This suggestion was commended by Peter Corley, the present chair of Haringey’s Tree Trust.

Anne Gray, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Tottenham, said “There is no time like the present for including communities in looking after trees.” Rather than paying private contractors to fell, pollard (and possibly damage) our street trees, Anne suggested that we could train young people to become tree surgeons and possibly promote the formation of a local municipal enterprise or cooperative to provide tree care services. Experience shows that the more a community is involved in the planting and the maintenance of a tree, the more they will protect it from vandalism.

We’ll be taking forward a list of questions we’ve compiled having scrutinised Haringey’s Tree Strategy document. Last night’s meeting was the start of a campaign to bring street trees higher up the council’s agenda. Mighty oaks from little acorns grow…