Lib Dems beaten by Bus Pass Elvis Party in council by-election

This is the result of the Clifton North, Nottingham council by-election held yesterday.

Bishop - Bus Pass Elvis  67
Clarke - UKIP             536
Ferguson - Labour      1179
Marshall - Lib Dem        56
Rule - Tory                 1025

It would be remiss to let today pass without noting the highlight from last night's council by-elections. In Clifton North, Lib Dem candidate Tony Marshall was beaten into last place by David Laurence Bishop of the Bus Pass Elvis Party (Marshall received 56 votes to Bishop's 67). The party's policies include the legalisation of brothels with a 30 per cent reduction for OAPs.

Bishop told the Nottingham Post that he was now "confident" of beating the Lib Dems in the general election. He said: "I will either stand in Broxtowe or Skegness and I'm more confident of beating the Liberal Democrats than I was two days ago. It's not the best news for the Liberal Democrats. But perhaps people actually liked my policies of legalising brothels with a 30 per cent reduction for OAPs and holding an enquiry into the cost of vets fees."

The Lib Dems, who have lost their deposit eight times in parliamentary by-elections since 2010, have previously been beaten by Professor Pongoo, a climate change activist who visits schools dressed as a penguin.

Written by George Eaton and first published at The New Statesman

It's Official: Badger Culls Were Inhumane, Ineffective and Unnecessary

Last autumn, more than 1,800 badgers lost their lives in Somerset and Gloucestershire in the name of bovine tuberculosis control. From the very beginning, Humane Society International/UK and our Team Badger colleagues warned that badgers would suffer and that the cull would be ineffective. Now the government-commissioned report by independent experts, who have studied the evidence, has shown our grave concerns to be justified.

Inhumane 

The independent report, leaked to the BBC at the end of February, shows that a significant proportion of free-shot badgers took more than five minutes to die.

 Additional analysis of compliance monitoring reports from Natural England (the statutory body responsible for issuing the licenses for badger culling) shows that, while the number of shootings they observed during the pilots was very low, nevertheless a third of those badgers were shot in the wrong part of the body such as the head or neck, some wounded animals needing to be shot a second time, in some cases after being pursued for five to ten minutes. These reports suggest that hundreds of badgers will have suffered considerably during the pilot culls.

Failure

The damning conclusions of the independent report are extremely important. The pilot culls were ostensibly set up to test whether the shooting of free-roaming badgers at night with shotguns and rifles would prove to be a humane, effective and safe way of reducing badger populations.

From the start Defra ministers have ignored animal welfare concerns, public opposition and overwhelming scientific evidence that culling badgers wouldn't help to prevent the spread of TB among cattle. While the cull was underway, Defra revised the badger population estimates downwards and extended the culling period well beyond the initial six weeks stipulated in the licenses.

The culls proved highly controversial and divisive, with members of the public turning out in force at rallies and at night in the cull zones to walk the footpaths, check the setts and provide assistance for any wounded badgers. More than 300,000 people signed Brian May's Stop the Badger Cull e-petition. Costs spiralled, with the total bill for each badger killed estimated to be in excess of £4,000.

Ineffective

Despite being given more time to kill more badgers, in the end the shooters failed to even get close to their kill target of 70%. In Gloucestershire they barely reached 40%, after shooting for more than 11 weeks.
Far from helping, most scientists agree that killing a smaller proportion of badgers over a longer period of time is likely to make things worse. This is because the remaining disturbed badgers roam more widely and the prevalence of TB in the badger population increases.

Unnecessary

Let's not forget that culling badgers is also entirely unnecessary.
In Wales, annual testing of cattle, among other measures, was reintroduced in 2008. Since then, the number of 'reactor' cattle slaughtered each year has reduced by almost a half, without a single badger being killed. In England, similar measures are slowly being introduced, and while we are a few years behind Wales, we are already seeing rates of TB in cattle reducing.

In the 1960s, TB in cattle was brought under control using strict cattle testing regimes, movement restrictions and biosecurity measures. Over the intervening years these measures were slowly relaxed and abandoned altogether during cattle restocking after the BSE and Foot & Mouth Disease outbreaks of the 1990s and 2001 respectively. Reintroducing these stricter standards may be unpopular among some farmers who resist reform, but it is surely an appropriate way to bring cattle TB back under control while we await the introduction of effective cattle vaccines.

The obsession among some farmers and veterinarians with badger culling must end. Badger culling is inhumane, ineffective and unnecessary. The government, the British Veterinary Association, and farmers unions must recognise that the answer to the problem of bovine TB is within the industry's own hands. They must now abandon all notions of badger culling and focus on introducing and ensuring compliance with stricter cattle measures, and promoting vaccination of both badgers and cattle.

Only then will we have an effective policy we can all support.
Take action to help protect badgers -- Send a message to the Prime Minister: Kill the Cull, not the Badgers

 

Follow Mark Jones on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hsiglobal      

Executive Director for animal protection organisation Humane Society International/UK

First published at The Huffington Post

Haringey Lib Dems in Meltdown

As reported by the local newspaper the Ham and High almost two thirds (12 out of 21) of the Lib Dem councillors on Haringey Council are stepping down at the London council elections in May.

The departing councillors rather skirt around the reasons for taking this decision now, and the Lib Dem Group Leader cllr Richard Wilson even suggests that this is all part of natural process. Come off it mate, I’ve never known so many serving councillors quitting at the same time, and the reason is plainly obvious.

The Lib Dems in Haringey and much of London (and the north of England) are a toxic brand. People in these areas voted Lib Dem because they were unhappy with Labour in 2010, but are horrified by the subsequent ConDem government’s attack on the welfare state. These councillors know full well that they are highly unlikely to retain their seats and have no doubt been making alternative plans for some time. Rats leaving a sinking ship, you might reasonably conclude, rather than some natural turn over of personnel.

A brief look at the results of the GLA elections in 2012 paints the picture perfectly if you are in any doubt about the Lib Dems prospects at this year’s local elections. Labour won comfortably in every ward in Haringey, and in 18 of the 19 wards in the borough, the Green party beat the Lib Dems. I said at the time, that the writing was on the wall for Lib Dem councillors and sure enough they have just been marking time for the last two years. Some of them have no doubt tried to do their best, but such is the impossibility of providing good quality local public services, whilst central government funding for local authorities is slashed, have decided to jump rather than wait to be pushed.   

But what of our MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone? Well she’s got another year to think about it, since she is not up for re election until 2015, but she is showing no sign of throwing in the towel like fellow north London MP Lib Dem Sarah Teather (Brent central). No, Featherstone seems to think she can win, because she is ‘personally popular’ unlike her party.

There is a great myth spread around by Featherstone and her supporters that she is a ‘good constituency MP’. We are bombarded in Hornsey and Wood Green (Featherstone’s Parliamentary seat) with leaflets telling us what a good constituency MP she is, a case of if you say something often enough, people will eventually believe it.

Well, I’m not buying it. I admit she is very good at self publicity, but that is all. She recently tried to take credit for the halting of plans to build a huge waste plant at Pinkham Way, for instance, but this was all the work of the residents in the Pinkham Way Alliance. This is only one example of Featherstone shamelessly claiming the credit for some achievement, when she’s done nothing but write the odd letter about it.

What’s more, she is an embarrassment in Parliament where she is commonly referred to as ‘Featherhead’ by other MPs (including some in her own party). But the main thing is, as the dozen departing Lib Dem councillors realise, personal reputation, whether real or otherwise, is not enough to save Lib Dem politicians. Featherstone will be unceremoniously booted out in 2015, for the part her party has played in propping up this deeply unpopular Tory led government.   

Close the door on the way out please Lynne, but make sure it doesn’t hit you in the face.        

The science is clear: global warming is real

A new word, ‘warmist’, has entered the vocabulary of discussion about climate change. It is often intended to mock and to imply that those who promote the fact that the climate of the earth is warming are members of some weird cult. It joins another word ‘denialist’ that is applied by some to those who refuse to accept that there is a human cause of climate change and disruption.

These words are unhelpful. Of course there is a fair debate to be had about the uncertainty of some of the precise details of climate prediction. But that is a far cry from the way in which extreme opponents of the conclusions of the science of climate change denigrate both the science and the scientists involved. This includes personal abuse of scientific leaders including the Met Office Chief Scientist and successive Presidents of the Royal Society.

Scientists are used to argument and to debate, and indeed science proceeds by posing questions driven by scepticism and uncertainty. One of the fundamental methodologies of science is to reduce uncertainty by means of experiment and observation. However, there is a difference between robust debate and unwarranted personal attacks.

Questions can be divided into 2 types, those for which there is an answer, even if we don’t know what it is, and questions for which there is no right or wrong answer and where different people will hold different views. The question of whether humans are causing climate warming is an example of the first type of a question, not the second. There is a correct factual answer. For this type of question Daniel Moynihan’s quote is apposite;

…you are entitled to your own opinions but not to your own facts.

As with any science which aims to understand and predict the future state of a complex system, there are uncertainties in climate science. That humans are emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases on an unprecedented scale, and the fundamental physics that carbon dioxide warms the Earth’s atmosphere, are not among these uncertainties. Climate scientists may not be able to quantify the precise impacts of climate change in a specific locality in fifty years time, but they do know we are performing a very risky experiment if we carry on emitting carbon dioxide at the rate we are today.

Climate change poses very serious risks, and responding to these is one of the biggest challenges facing today’s policy-makers. For this reason, there has been unprecedented rigour and global collaboration in the analysis and measurement of climate change. There is no equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in any other area of science. It is widely expected that the Panel’s ‘Fifth Assessment Report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Change’, which will be published later this month, will present even greater confidence in the evidence that the climate is warming as a result of human activities.

This message may be unpalatable. The response should not be to shoot the messengers however - or to be abusive to them, which appears to be acceptable to a minority of commentators. How we respond is for all of us to determine. As John Holdren, scientific adviser to President Obama, put it in a lecture at Imperial College last year, we have 3 choices in responding to climate disruption, we can mitigate, we can adapt or we can suffer. The reality is that we shall have to do all 3. But unless we are very serious in our response, we and the other living inhabitants of the planet will suffer greatly.

Jointly written by Sir Mark Walport, the current Government Chief Science Adviser, and his 3 predecessors: Sir John Beddington (2008 to 2013), Sir David King (2000 to 2007) and Lord May (1995 to 2000).

The Earth Cannot Wait

The Earth Cannot Wait : Part 3 from STRIKE! mag on Vimeo.

The Green Party's Derek Wall (@anothergreen) on direct action, seven generation thinking and Marxist ecology:

"Even an entire society and nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. The are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries and have to bequeath it in improved states to succeeding generations"

strikemag.org

thepeoplesparliament.me.uk/

Floods Expose Absurdity of Austerity

In the last few weeks - intensifying in recent days as the flood waters have moved closer to London - it almost seems as if politicians have only wanted to help clear some of the mud so they can pick it up and sling it at their opponents. It is difficult to hear yourself think amid this cacophony of blame, but it is worth considering what the floods and our reaction to them tell us about the state and public spending.

Despite the usual spin and bluster, it is a fact that spending on flood defences has been cut by this government and frontline Environment Agency jobs have gone including, insiders say, those who worked alongside the emergency services and on flood warnings.

The Conservative chair of the relevant select committee of MPs has said the floods "reinforce our concerns about cuts to the Defra budget". And the GMB on Tuesday said most of the £130million extra funding planned will be spent on capital projects and will save few, if any, of the 1,700 jobs under threat.

This has been a horrible time for everyone whose home or business has been flooded and there will be no quick fixes for many families. But it is distasteful in the extreme that some on the right are preying on their misery by saying the only way to help is by cutting foreign aid that supports poverty-stricken and war-torn families around the world.

This rob Peter to pay Paul mentality is nothing new, but it exposes the absurdity of those who hanker for a smaller state. The idea that "our people" - whether our country or our constituents - are more deserving than others is not only crudely selfish, it also makes no sense.

Arch Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg is not waiting for "the market" to step in and pump out his constituents' homes, or drain the fields or rebuild battered walls and fences. No one in these communities is crying out for G4S or Serco to come to the rescue; they're asking for the state to help, in the form of the Environment Agency experts, the police, firefighters, local government officers and the armed forces.

For the likes of the privileged, Eton and Oxford-educated Rees-Mogg, the consequences of a smaller state are perhaps becoming apparent for the first time. But elsewhere, in the real world, others are painfully aware. A report on Wednesday revealed two-thirds of households affected by the bedroom tax are in rent arrears and one in seven families face losing their homes. The National Housing Federation said its survey demonstrated the bedroom tax was "heaping misery and hardship" on already struggling families.

Much has been made of what David Cameron actually meant when - in a desperate bid to claw back some political capital in the flood-hit Tory heartlands - he insisted that "money was no object" in dealing with the fallout. But the more revealing part of what he said was that "we are a wealthy country". And, as if to reinforce the point, we learned on the same day that all of a sudden there was £2.5billion available for some new fighter planes.

Unions have consistently made the point that we are a wealthy country, that there is no need to force people out of their homes and to drive more people into poverty. We have also consistently warned about the real dangers of cutting public spending, and we have been consistently ignored.

The floods have exposed the gossamer thin argument for austerity and the cold, cruel ideology that underlies it. The inescapable truth is that we all rely on properly funded and resourced public services - maybe not directly every minute of every day but, nonetheless, all the time, because the alternative means abandoning people when they most need our help.

By Mark Serwotka General secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union and first published at The Huffington Post

Follow Mark Serwotka on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pcs_union      

A Fresh Look at Our Drug Laws Is the First Step Towards a Sane, Evidence-Based Policy

One of the most talented actors of his generation found dead in his bathroom. Over a hundred young people needing treatment after a gig in Belfast where drugs were found. Teenagers dying after a taking Ecstasy on a night out. Every day the media present us with examples of the miserable failure of the "war on drugs". Yet the government presses on with the prohibition approach, refusing to acknowledge the obvious reality that it's not working.

When I was elected MP for Brighton Pavilion, the city had the highest mortality rate from drugs in the country. I wanted to find out whether doing things differently would help save lives, and was part of efforts to form a local commission to take a fresh look at the city's strategy to reduce drug-related harm. Thanks to innovative new approaches - increased training in the administration of naloxone which can prevent overdose, better data collection on drug use trends and improving services for people with a dual diagnosis - some great progress has been made. In the last few years we've seen a higher than average increase in numbers of people leaving treatment successfully.

Yet national policies, part of the broader international 'war on drugs', are the main barrier to further progress. The UK still approaches drug addiction as a criminal issue first and a health issue second. As the former Chief Superintendent of Brighton and Hove Police has said: "The use of drugs is not well addressed through punitive measures. Providing people with treatment not only resolves their addiction - thereby minimising risk of overdose, drug related health issues, anti-social behaviour and dependence on the state, for example - but cuts the cost to the community by reduced offending".

Those costs are enormous. In England and Wales alone, an estimated £3billion a year is spent fighting the war on drugs, to little effect. Over half of the 85,000 people in prison are thought to have serious drug problems. Rates of cannabis use by young people in Britain are amongst the highest in Europe.

At the heart of the problem is the fact that our approach is being dictated by a law that's over 40 years old and is not fit for purpose. There has never been an impact assessment of the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act; nor has there been a cost benefit assessment, or any attempt to compare its effectiveness in reducing the social, economic or health costs of drug misuse with alternatives. Successive governments have seemed singularly uninterested in whether whether our current prohibtion-based approach is an effective use of public money.

Where alternative approaches have been adopted, the results have generally been positive. In 2001, Portugal adopted a new policy whereby drug possession was changed from a criminal offence to an administrative offence, following which there was a reduction in new HIV diagnoses and in drug-related deaths. In Switzerland, a series of new policies focusing attention on drug use from a public health perspective, led to a decline in crime rates. An investigation by Release looked at 21 jurisdictions that had adopted some form of decriminalisation of drug possession. Overwhelmingly, it found that such an approach does not lead to an increase in drug use but does improve outcomes for users - in terms of employment, relationships and likelihood of staying out of prison.

As Russell Brand has argued, if "we are aware that our drug laws aren't working and that alternatives are yielding positive results, why are we not acting?" Over the past year, I've been calling on the government to carry out an independent and authoritative review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. My epetition has received over 50,000 signatures, and the figure is rising rapidly. If 100,000 people have signed by the end of this week, the issue will have to be debated and voted on by MPs.

Slowly, it's starting to feel like this isn't such a hopeless cause. Even in the US, where Nixon first used the term "War on Drugs", the wind is changing - the Republican governor of Texas has stated his intention "to implement policies that start us toward a decriminalisation and keep people from going to prison and destroying their lives."

And now the deputy prime minister, back from a trip to Columbia, is arguing for "a proper debate about the need for a different strategy." It's not often that I agree with Nick, but on this occasion, he's dead right. Prohibition is costing lives, as well as billions of taxpayers' money - a fresh look at our drug laws is the first step towards a sane, evidence-based policy.

You can sign the epetition here and join our Thunderclap here

Written by Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party

Follow Caroline Lucas on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarolineLucas