Archives – September, 2009
The Standards Committee took the right decision in finding Richard Barnbrook guilty of bringing both the London Assembly and Barking & Dagenham Council into disrepute.
Barnbrook’s claim that three murders had taken place over a 3-week period in Barking & Dagenham was shown to be completely false.
He engaged in the worst sort of scaremongering, playing on public perceptions of rising crime when in fact crime figures are coming down. In my opinion, Barnbrook has shown that he is unfit for public office.
In Barking and Dagenham, Barnbrook and his party won support on the basis of their “Africans for Essex” propaganda, falsely claiming that the council was offering £50,000 to Africans to buy homes in the borough.
This is how the BNP operates – by spreading lies and exploiting irrational fears.
September 25, 2009
Last weekend l was in Edinburgh at the Co-op Party conference for the launch of its manifesto “A Co-operative Agenda for a Fourth Term” (pdf here). Now I have often thought that developing ideas for the future often means going back to old ideals and principles, particularly in light of the failure of the global capital markets. A manifesto to change the culture of our financial institutions is a must, and we can start by returning former building societies to the mutual sector. The remutualisation of the likes of Northern Rock will embed much needed stability in our economy.
The principle of mutuality is also applicable in other arenas like housing and energy. In housing it can mean mutual home ownership through housing co-ops and community land trusts holding and managing assets collectively, while residents are individually both tenants and shareholders. In the energy markets we could have co-operative energy schemes, whereby we enable local communities to buy their own energy collectively, saving them money and helping boost the take-up of green energy. More so after feed-in tariffs come into play next April.
Co-operation and mutuality maybe seen by some as retro, but their time has definitely come again.
September 14, 2009
Last Thursday evening I shared a platform with Lawrence Bloom, a leading light from the World Economic Forum, where I outlined my views about the forthcoming conference of the parties in Copenhagen for the post-Kyoto agreement on climate change.
First I expressed my concern that, whatever is agreed at Copenhagen, it is likely that the US will face difficulties in ratifying it, given the problems that are already occurring in the Senate with the Obama adminstration’s proposed cap-and-trade legislation. This indeed would be in line with what happened with the Kyoto agreement, where the US took the whole world down the yellow brick road of tradeable permits, only for Al Gore to be unable to get it ratified in the US. This time round it’s going to be a lot more difficult for the US to persuade the world to swallow market-based solutions anyway, given the paradigm shift away from the Washington consensus.
If there is to be a Plan B, l emphasised the importance of mega-cities like London working to limit the impact of climate change, as some 75 per cent of CO2 emissions comes from our cities and towns where over 50 per cent of humanity now resides. Nation states will meet in Copenhagen but there is a lot of scope for cities to collaborate and take their own initiatives, and even become a conference of parties themselves with international agreements at city level. There is a localised green economy effect possible, particularly in the transport and housing sectors, and with the right city level leadership it would help move us to a less carbonised world.
Finally l made a moral plea for some thinking beyond the box, in connection with climate refugees, because environmental degradation leaves the poor most vulnerable to natural disaster. Migration as an adaptative response to poverty, hunger and environmental disasters is a practice humankind has followed since the beginning when our species came out of Africa. Today’s environmental refugees should be acknowledged and assisted in the host countries by a similiar Geneva Convention to that for political refugees. Such a safety net is the least we in the developed world should offer, in recognition of our contribution to global environmental problems and our imposition of particular models of development on the developing world.
September 14, 2009
Boris is right to suggest that government ministers should get out of their cars (Daily Telegraph, 31 August 2009), certainly in central London. But he’ll have more trouble persuading his fellow Tories to use public transport than he cares to imagine.
While the quotation attributed to Margaret Thatcher that anyone who travelled by bus was a failure in life may be apocryphal, it accurately reflects the philosophy of Tory politicians, many of whom are hooked on their perks such as taxi expenses. Here at City Hall, Brian Coleman has become notorious for his use of taxis, both as London Assembly Member for Barnet & Camden and as Chair of the fire authority LFEPA. Indeed Boris’s own expenses claims for taxis last year didn’t look too good either.
Maybe Boris needs to get his own house in order before he starts telling colleagues in parliament how to go about travelling when carrying out their political responsibilities.
September 1, 2009
