Thursday 9 December 2010

A sad day for politics

In the May elections in Oxford, the Greens lost two council seats to LibDems in student-dominated areas - one by 14 votes - and failed to take a newly-created seat, again pipped at the post by the LibDems. During the campaign, the LibDems had taken every opportunity to make out that the Greens were "anti-student". They made great play of being the party that backs students all the way. On election day, students in East Oxford turned out in large numbers to vote for Nick Clegg, who had made a point of visiting Brookes University. Many we spoke to on the street that day knew nothing about the political set-up in Oxford, so simply voted the same way in the local election that was running concurrently.

So the spectacular LibDem U-turn on tuition fees in the Commons today is particularly galling for us. If it is true that Clegg was already minded to support the rise in tuition fees before the election then the message is, "Lie your way to power".

This could and should rebound heavily against them. It should mark the first step in their journey to political oblivion. As Lou Reed once sang : "Stick a fork in their ass and turn 'em over - they're done."

But what causes me most exasperation is the likelihood that the lesson the younger generation will have learned is that all politicians are liars whose word cannot be trusted. There is no excuse for what they have done, and there was no need for it. Every politician of integrity, of whatever party, is tainted, polluted by it.

Monday 6 December 2010

The more information that comes out about the many wondrous ways big companies find of not paying tax on income generated from the British public, and the more the evidence accrues that the banking sector is being financially rewarded for its colossal failures, the more convincing are the messages that public sector cuts (Oxford City Council - 28% reduction in 4 years) are unnecessary.

The BBC and media generally - always (in true British style) happy to ramp up stories of gloom and despondency unless it's 'Weddings of Mass Distraction' - have colluded in this talk of 'hard choices' to be made. It's this sort of talk that got the ConDems elected.

Once it starts becoming apparent that we have been conned, and that there were ways of addressing the economic mismanagement of New Labour that didn't require an assault on ordinary people, the more the public anger will build. We're seeing signs of it already. But it may only be the tip of the iceberg.

For me, tax avoidance by big capital (with the connivance of cabinet and the Inland Revenue) is the issue that tips me over from frustration to downright anger. Private Eye has been reporting on Vodaphone's £6,000,000,000 tax avoidance scam via its 'flag of convenience' operation in Liechtenstein for months. Philip Green's Arcadia empire scam (see photo above, taken in Monaco I believe) is starting to result in occupations of Topshops, Burtons &c. Technically, I suppose I should say that Arcadia is his Monaco-resident wife's operation . . . What makes Green such a hate figure is of course that he's had the gall to accept a government advisor post to help Osborne the hard-right ideologue push through "efficiencies" for the rest of us.

Maybe he will suggest the British government set up its operating base in the Cayman Islands, where Tory donor Ashdown buries his own 'pieces of eight'.

Kraft, who bought out Cadbury's whilst promising to retain the Bristol plant then immediately closed it with the loss of 400 jobs, have now set up a scam in which a holding company in Switzerland 'sells' the products to Cadbury's UK, who then also have to pay the 'Swiss' operation for use of the branding. All of which significantly reduces (by hundreds of millions) Cadbury's tax liability in the UK.

Are there any major companies that aren't playing this game? Every day, the list of tax-dodging companies grows. How long will it be before the total tax avoided equals the total amount of cash needed to balance the nation's books without the need for any cuts, I wonder.

I find myself wondering how, if MPs - many of whom have seats on the boards of these companies I wouldn't mind betting - are going to be so limp on this issue for fear of upsetting their donor friends, whether there are ways in which, at local government level, we can claim back some of our stolen money. After all, the money came from their local outlets in the first place.

Friday 26 November 2010

Growing Pains

A new series of 'In Business' returned to Radio 4 last night. The first programme explored the idea of 'economic growth' and asked whether this was what the world needed. Surprisingly, for a programme that tries to present a range of perspectives, the message was clear : 'growth' (defined as growth in GDP or GNP) is a crude, fairly recent but already outdated and misleading measure of economic performance. Even the speaker drafted in to argue for growth (the author of 'Ferraris for All') said it can't be seen as an end in itself. Will this mean that we no longer get excited BBC News headlines such as "economic output fell by 0.3% today . . fear of recession . . blah blah"? (Meaningless headlines that make me want to throw the radio out of the window.)

The half-hour programme is served up as a podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/worldbiz but I reproduce my rough notes below :

Government loooking for alternative indicators : 'happiness'

Andrew Simms (Policy Director, New Economics Foundation and author of "Economics as if People Mattered) : extraordinary . . . how recent an artefact of economic thinking it is. Only appeared in run-up to WW2, and in that context - re-gearing towards a war economy. Kuznetz, the architect of it, himself said "don't see this as the only . ."

PD : Who's responsible for elevating 'growth'?
AS : we need better indicators. A huge natural disaster, crime wave, war - 'growth' indicator would tell you it's all 'good'.

Professor Tim Jackson (Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey and Author: Prosperity Without Growth) Confirms 'growth' is a recent development as an indicator.
We had to persuade people to go out shopping because they were getting tired of it. Post 9/11 : "Mrs Bush and I would like to encourage everybody to get out shopping."

PD : isn't growth good?
TJ : we did need to improve living conditions, yes. Growth - for the 'haves' - has delivered good stuff. But as long ago as the 1970s it was pointed out that resources are finite. And we still haven't lifted the poorest out of poverty.

Sustainable Development Commission loses its government funding next year.

Daniel Ben-Ami (Author, 'Ferraris for All'.) 'they all say 'we need growth' but then add loads of caveats'
PD : the monetisation of everything.
DB : for the benefit of humanity we need more prosperity, an end of scarcity. I don't support it as an end in itself.
PD (leading him on) : what about the 'hair shirts'?
DB : there's a real elitism behind the hair shirts. They don't like chavs with big flat screen TVs. It's a rich elite that's promoting this anti-growth thinking. They want the poor in the developing world as pets - they're filled with horror at the prospect of Chinese and Indians having their own cars.

John Kay (Economist and Author of 'Obliquity') : It's dumb how people obsess about GDP. If you ask people what it is they don't know what it is. It's not an objective fact, it's a construct.
Alan Greenspan said 'GDP doesn't weigh any more'.
Most important thing we can do is divert human ingenuity into things we actually want, not (e.g.) sub-prime mortgages. GDP doesn't measure human ingenuity.

To Totnes (transition town).
Hal Gilmore and Ben Brangwyn (Transition Towns Network).
Lots of listed buildings makes it difficult to install double glazing. Only river crossing for miles - lots of traffic.
Looking for a longer-lasting change - not obvious what's happening on the surface.
Small business closure doesn't register in traditional measures.
Working in schools : asking kids 'what do you think is important?'.

PD : era of cheap energy coming to a close.
Ben Brangwyn : we get 'transition pilgrims'. Some are disappointed we don't have goats on the roofs.
If we wait for the government it will be 'too little, too late'. If we leave it to individuals it's 'too little'. If we do it at community level we may just manage it.
Wouldn't it be good for health to grow?
Economic wealth and happiness are not linked once you reach a certain level.
Economic no-growth is an inevitability in the long term : we need to learn how to work with it.

John Kay : people have been telling us for three or four centuries that things would stop as resources ran out.
PD : what about poverty - don't poor countries need to grow?
JK : of course. China has grown and it's pulled millions out of poverty. They are not poor because we are rich, but because their economies have not been as productive as ours.
Human ingenuity is what is creating growth. Growth doesn't have to mean that we use more stuff. In Britain we are consuming better and more interesting stuff .

Andrew Simms : Ruskin, Smith, Mill. All assumed that economies would grow to a certain point and then level off. Even though advanced economies have continued to grow, the happiness the deliver is tailing off . . dimishing returns.

PD : yet we sigh in relief when GDP expands. GDP is ridiculous.

PD : is the human race not ingenious enough?

Tim Jackson (Univ Surrey): we're making assumptions so heroic about our own ingenuity . . . We're not that clever - we need to concentrate on our economic measures.

Thomas Carlyle : economics, the 'dismal science'.

Monday 8 November 2010

Lobby for Financial Reform, Nov 19th!

On Nov 19th the Financial Services (Regulation of Deposits and Lending) Bill has its second reading in the House of Commons. Although it's being brought by two back-bench Conservative MPs the issue should be able to secure cross-party support. We have a financial system in which the greatest proportion of money in circulation is effectively counterfeit, and as it circulates (your average deposit being lent onwards 15 or more times over) it requires interest payments. The private economy has to grow simply for us to stand still, with all the knock-on implications for global warming that that entails.

Quite why this bill isn't getting more media attention I don't understand. A brief account of it is found lower down the page at http://www.moneyreformparty.org.uk/. The summary includes the following :

"The Bill proposes ending the privilege currently held by the retail banks whereby they may create credit based solely on their borrowers' debts. In the future, bank lending will be limited to the amount deposited with them by their savers (as many people wrongly suppose to be the case at the moment).

"This will prevent the further expansion of the money supply over and above the amount created by the Bank of England. It will therefore permit the Bank of England to move towards increasing the amount of positive, debt-free money within the economy without fear of inflation.

"As the Bank of England is a government agency, this money will be available for the Government to pay off its debts without the need for public spending cuts, tax increases, reducing the nation's money supply or for more households or businesses to go ever more deeply into debt."

Lobby your MP!

Thursday 4 November 2010

C4 : "What the green movement got wrong"

For those that watched tonight's Channel 4 documentary (see http://www.channel4.com/greenmovement) this is my quick response :


The debate revealed that the film alone - without the debate - would have been a disaster. The documentary was ideologically driven, contained serious factual errors, and omitted key information.

The debate revealed that the 'green movement' left its hippy origins behind 20 years ago and has grown up, whereas documentary makers are still stuck in the past.

The debate revealed that the green movement is broad, more united than the documentary suggested, and much more interested in solutions than personal point-scoring and partisanship.

In fact the documentary itself was largely unnecessary.

Friday 22 October 2010

Overpopulation

Recent Guardian headline: "Baroness Amos: Population growth could lead to non-stop food crisis . .
Returning from Niger, the UN humanitarian chief says education on family planning must be part of the development agenda."

Overpopulation causes poverty and environmental degradation and it is right to draw attention to this fact; but above all (surely) it's the other way round : poverty causes overpopulation and environmental degradation.

If there is no financial security in old age, children are your 'pension' and your support system in old age. If infant mortality is high, and you don't know know until your child has safely reached ten years old that it will survive into your old age, you have an incentive to keep having children. War and disease increase this pressure.

So although education and empowerment for women is essential, and there are cultural and religious pressures that are no longer appropriate, the most effective way of stabilising population growth is good health care available to all (but especially children), ditto support systems for the elderly.

Isn't this why population growth has slowed significantly in Europe. I believe that Italy - a Roman Catholic country - has a negative indigenous population growth rate.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

A waste of time and effort?

I suppose councillors get used to it and stop questioning it, but reflecting on last night's Full Council meeting it seems to me that only about a quarter of the meeting time was spent doing anything that might make a difference to anyone in Oxford. Three quarters of it was largely a waste of time. That's if you include in the quarter reports from the administration telling us what they are doing or planning to do - but all the opposition can do is praise or criticise it. Such is the system, they're not going to change anything by doing so. A one-seat majority means the Labour administration will do it anyway. Probably the most productive time of the evening was sharing a meal together half-way through.

It's a far cry from the church meetings I'm used to where something more akin to consensus decision making happens. Does any actual decision-making actually happen in Full Council meetings, or is it simply a bit of political theatre?

I used to think that the advantage of political parties is that when people vote they can have some idea what they might be voting for. They might not know the individual whose name is on the ballot paper, but they would have some idea what they might stand for. Many who voted LibDem will be wondering about that, now. And when the elected renege on their manifestos within weeks of being elected . . That's where the other side of it - the candidate as a person with their own integrity (rather than as party stooge) - is important. Has the party system become so degraded that we'd be better off all standing as independents? Certainly, from last night's experience, we'd have had better decision-making if there had been no whip. (The Green Party isn't 'whipped'). Is it cynical to say that it wouldn't last, and that parties would inevitably re-emerge? They don't in my own national church - alliances and coalitions happen all over the place, but they shift according to the issue in hand.

I'm also used to more tightly-chaired meetings where people who speak at great length off the point are invited to either address the issue in question and not stray - or sit down. We had a lot of lengthy irrelevant speeches last night, and it's hard not to believe that there was filibustering going on, in the hope that my motion on Temple Cowley Pools would be 'talked out'.

By withdrawing my motion on the need for better cycle routes under the railway at Frideswide Square we were able to claw back the time necessary to address it. But the suggestion that closing, demolishing and selling off the Temple Cowley Pools site for housing - probably another hall of residence - will further downgrade a Temple Cowley District Centre that needs enhancing and improving, not being pulled to pieces, well - it fell on deaf ears. It's all about a quick fix and money, not about long term strategy for people and communities.

Thursday 7 October 2010

Myths about the cuts

short notes from Red Pepper Aug/Sept 2010 recirculated by Sarah Lasenby :

Economists have spelt out with alarming clarity the dangers of a double-dip recession increasing cost of unemployment benefit and lowering the tax take.

The International Monetary Fund has also warned that the proposed cuts are too rigorous and will lead to an economic crisis in the UK

Myth – the debt is the highest it has ever been
At 70% of GDP [the total of goods and services produced in one year] this is high but far from unprecedented.
From 1920 – 1960 our debt never fell below around 100%
At the end of WW11 our debt reached 250% and the Welfare State was set up plus nationalisation of the health service and major industries.

Myth – the UK's debt is the worst -
UK has the lowest percentage of Government debt of all the G7countries.

Myth – Our Government debt is unsustainable
Interestingly the nature of our debt is helpful as 70%- 80% of our debt is held within Britain and held on a long term basis – over 12 years on average. This makes our debts more sustainable than those of Greece and Portugal.

Myth – Public spending got out of control under Labour.
Levels of public spending are at the same level as in the early 1990s, during the last economic crisis. This is usual as spending always rises during a recession as result of welfare spending on unemployment and lower tax take.

Myth- UK has a bigger public sector compared to other countries
UK public spending is lower, as a proportion of the economy, than in France, Italy, Austria and the Scandinavian countries.

On Health UK spent 8.4% of GDP in 2007. roughly half of that spent in USA and well behind Germany and France.

Dr Alex Nunn of Leeds Met. Uni.+ Transpennine Working Group wrote the article this comes from.

Unison's Alternative Budget
£4.7 billion could be raised by a 50% tax on incomes over £100,00
£5 billion from tax on vacant housing.
£25 billion could be raised by closing tax loopholes. The Tax Office says its more like £42 billion and some experts say its £120 billion.
All these taxes would be progressive in contrast to the increase in VAT

Tuesday 20 July 2010

the Root of the Problem?

Unashamedly nicked from James Robertson's website and newsletter at http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm :

The UK Coalition Government's Emergency Budget proposals of 22 June ignored a huge potential source of expenditure saving and public revenue. It has been estimated at £200 billion (click here).

It consists of: the hidden subsidies that we all pay to commercial banks because our governments give them the privilege of creating our national money supply as part of their profit-making business; and the lost money we would be benefiting from if new money was created as public revenue and spent into circulation by the government on purposes that meet public needs.

Political and media reporting and debate about the recent UK budget has been limited to conventional questions: does it strike a proper balance between rich and poor, between tax increases and public spending cuts, and between a Keynesian and a Thatcher/Reagan economic response to our potentially disastrous prospects? Decision-makers and mainstream commentators appear to be totally unaware that monetary reform could change our prospects dramatically for the better by providing a very significant contribution to paying back our huge deficit.

As well as that contribution to our immediate needs, there are other overwhelming arguments for monetary reform. They require no academic economic teaching to understand, just common sense. They include the following.

(1) In a more "normal" context, if the banks are allowed to create over 95% of our money as interest-bearing debt, the only way to maintain a financially sustainable situation is to let them create more money continually, in order that borrowers can pay the interest on the debt already created. That systematically creates inflation, a more indebted society, and a growing gap between rich and poor.

(2) "Normal" situations can't last very long when money is created that way. As profit-making businesses competing with one another, commercial banks are inevitably under pressure to create too much money; that causes recurrent booms which end in busts; in busts the banks will not create enough money to meet society's needs; then they can hold the government to ransom to bail them out with enough taxpayers' money to enable them to lend us what should be our own!

(3) Allowing the banks to decide how almost all the money in society is used on its first entry into circulation, and to be paid interest on it as it circulates until it is repaid,

- distorts the economy in favour of activities profitable to the banks,

- imposes a hidden charge on everyone who uses money, and

- subsidises the banking industry, and so reduces the efficiency of the services it offers.

All these problems could be avoided by transferring to an agency of the state (the Bank of England) the function of:

- creating all the national money debt-free to meet the monetary objectives laid down by the government; and

- giving it to the government as public revenue to be spent into circulation under democratic budgetary procedures.

The present out-of-date, undemocratic way of managing national money supplies is a central part of how the world's money system now operates perversely as a whole, nationally and internationally.

Citizens of other countries also suffer unnecessarily from it, as the G8 and G20 meetings last month in Canada confirmed.

Wednesday 30 June 2010

Cuts : the Big Lie

On radio the other day I was treated to a clear explanation of ConDem economic theory. (I can't remember the name of the speaker, who I think was an economist). He said "It's only the private sector that creates wealth". i.e. the public sector doesn't; the public sector consumes wealth. So in order to get us out of the enormous hole in the country's wealth that, er, the private sector has created, we've got to swing an axe through the public sector and stop it consuming so much.

The private sector, you see, is good (according to the ConDems) because it produces all the things that people want (like cars and gadgets and entertainment) and is subject to the honest discipline of the market which makes sure that companies make the maximum profit for their shareholders who can award enormous bonuses to the bosses (for them to bank offshore to avoid paying taxes) whilst at the same time keeping prices competitive by employing as few people in this country as they possibly can and paying producers the least they can get away with.

The public sector is bad (say the ConDems) because it takes people's money away against their will to produce all the things they don't want (like health care and social services, roads infrastructure, schools, rubbish collection, oh - and benefits for all the people the private sector doesn't feel it needs any more). And of course the public sector is so undermining of freedom, isn't it? : Whereas in the private sector you can rejoice in the freedom to choose from fifty different brands of yoghourt in your supermarket (but don't worry your little heads about who is appointed to run the company or at what salary, or whether the company trades ethically, uses its weight to crush other small businesses or any of that 'do-gooder' stuff) the nasty public sector just takes your money away and you have no choice. Don't worry about citizen rights or voting or anything like that - "they're all as bad as each other", your vote is worthless. (Anyone who finds themselves agreeing with that has just swallowed the big lie).

So here's a brilliant idea for getting us out of the deficit. Take the city council's leisure facilities, say, and privatise them (as Oxford has done). At a stroke, a £700,000 "saving" in that nasty public sector spending (except that, being no fools, the private company refused to take responsibility for those leisure centres that the council had failed to maintain properly - so the council tax payer is left to pick up the 'toxic assets'). At a stroke, the leisure service is now creating £700,000 of wealth rather than consuming it. That's a net swing of £1,400,000 to the country's wealth for doing nothing except passing the buck. Yay! Brilliant!

But hang on a minute, the company is 'non-profit'! Doesn't that mean it isn't generating any wealth? Now I'm getting confused.

Oh well, it's still £700,000 shifted off the council's books, isn't it? It still means the country isn't spending £700,000 that it was before. Doesn't it . . ?

No it doesn't. The whole idea that only the private sector produces wealth is utter rubbish. Worse, it's a lie told to justify passing on the costs of gargantuan failure in the spoiled and unaccountable upper echelons of the private sector to the most vulnerable in society by way of cuts to essential services. "Firm but fair", Mr Cleggeron? It's morally, spiritually, economically bankrupt. It's a lie propagated by most of the mainstream media, including the BBC. It's a lie that most of the population has been manipulated to believe. There is plenty of actual wealth in this country, most of it generated by the public sector, on which the upper echelons of the private sector are nothing more than a parasite. It's that parasite that needs cutting out. Never mind selling off Oxford City Council assets : I wonder what those buildings in the City of London are worth?

Tuesday 22 June 2010

Haven't posted for a while because life's been so busy. The issues I've been immediately drawn into :

* the closure of one of the busiest swimming pool and leisure centres in Oxford despite massive public opposition (6,500 petition signatures so far) and public consultation that tried as hard to avoid actually consulting as it could, leaving it until they hoped the plan was a fait accompli. The feasibility study will only be published days before the Executive Board plans to make the decision. In the midst of the heat generated, a very interesting proposal for a replacement pool using reed-bed water filtration has emerged.

* the issue of nightmare all-night parties in student houses. My researches reveal that the Environmental Development people do have the power to act with fixed penalty fines whilst the problem is occurring, but that a call-out involves young female staff being summoned from their bed 20 miles away at 3:00 in the morning after having done a day's work, to deal with the problem on their own. It's a serious matter : there are signs that long-term residents are starting to move out of the areas with high student concentrations, which will destroy the delicate balance that makes East Oxford great.

* the turning-over by the Council of a large chunk of the only publicly-owned green space in East Oxford for a builder's compound for two years, again without consulting the East Area Parliament as they were obliged to do.

* the proposed licensing of HMOs (houses in multiple occupation) and discussions about what anti-social behaviour conditions might be applied to the licences.

* a series of public meetings about the problems of far too many cars in East Oxford, which was not designed for cars at all. Is a Controlled Parking Zone the way forward? The more one goes into the issue the more complex it gets.

* I have created and started to build an online resource - an interactive website along the lines of Wikipedia, facilitating the building-up of an information base that members can add to and search. Up to now, a lot of key information has been locked in the heads of a very few people. It's at www.wolffs.info/tikiwiki but most of its content is restricted to Party activists.

* how to get a missing section of what could be a very valuable cycle route into the city from the south established. Unfortunately it runs across Christ Church College land, and previous attempts have not been successful.

* membership of the Standards Committee (currently examining complaints the City Council receives), the Value & Performance Scrutiny Committee (equivalent to a parliamentary select committee) and a sub-group of that, the Asset Management Group, which is currently scrutinising proposals for a radical reordering of the council's ways of working, introducing home working and hotdesking, selling off two of its offices and pulling all the staff into two places, and restructuring the council to create a single customer interface (instead of people having to find out which department they need and deal direct).

Alongside this is the more routine 'casework' - dealing with complaints and planning applications. All in all, it's been a bit of a shock. It hasn't helped that I've only just managed to get the IT equipment I wanted, and still don't have access to the Council intranet. But I'm glad to be involved and feel I can be useful.

Tuesday 25 May 2010

Finding my Feet

Since being elected to Oxford City Council for the Green Party the learning curve has steepened. At a new councillors' training event last week I came away with 3.9 kg of paper with brochures from several similar-sounding organisations (e.g. the 'Oxford Strategic Partnership', the 'Oxfordshire Partnership') each with their own list of thematic priorities to add to the existing priorities declared in Oxford's own Core Strategy and Development Plan.

All good stuff, and partnership is doubtless a good thing, but the danger is that it removes accountability and gives power to an inner circle of people (few of whom are directly elected) who decide the 'big vision'. It's no wonder that there's a growing feeling on the ground that planning (that is, the long-term planning policies not the small, local planning consents) is out of control, top-down and unaccountable. I don't think these things are mere talk-shops : they are actually setting the 'rules' by which more local planning decisions are bound. i think.

I do not make a virtue of ignorance, but one thing I bring to this political world is a very recent memory of being an 'ordinary member of the public' who has very little idea about any of this. It's easy for political hacks to imagine that everybody thinks as they do, but I'd be surprised if more than 5% of Oxford's population had much idea which political parties were actually running the city.

Wednesday 12 May 2010

Energy efficiency may increase carbon emissions

A fascinating paper (almost, but not quite, incomprehensible to this very amateur economist) cited in James Robertson's newsletter http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm argues that without an 'ethic of sufficiency' and above all monetary reform that removes the role of providing the money supply from the banks, energy efficiency may do little to reduce humanity's environmental impact, and may worsen it.

In the course of the argument there are one or two moments of real clarity where Steve Sorrell breaks into 'plain English', and on p.14 a table contrasting Conventional with 'Green' models of economic development. To hear Cameron and Clegg preaching the accepted wisdom as they describe the need to 'restore economic growth in order to overcome the deficit', it becomes increasingly clear why we need Caroline Lucas in Parliament. Who else is going to challenge this 'accepted wisdom'?What they are describing is a world spinning out of control.

The vicious cycle created by the privatised money supply is described in Section 6, where he says :

". . most of the money in circulation only exists because either businesses or individuals have gone into debt and are paying interest on their loans. While individual loans may be repaid, the debt in aggregate can never be repaid because
this would remove virtually all the money from circulation. The health of the economy is therefore entirely dependent upon the continued willingness of businesses and consumers to take out loans for either investment or consumption. Any reduction in borrowing therefore threatens to tip economies into recession." (p.16)

Or, as Jethro Tull had it :

"In the shuffling madness
of the locomotive breath
runs the all-time loser
headlong to his death.
He feels the piston scraping -
steam breaking on his brow -
old Charlie stole the handle
and the train it won't stop going
no way to slow down"

('Locomotive Breath', from the album Aqualung)

Sorrell's closing paragraphs :

"Over the long term, continued economic growth can only be reconciled with environmental sustainability if implausibly large improvements in energy efficiency can be achieved ..

Instead of encouraging further growth and greater consumption, the benefits of improved efficiency need to be increasingly channelled into low carbon energy supply and improved quality of life. Quite how this can be achieved remains far from clear since a credible ‘ecological macroeconomics’ has yet to be developed. Most importantly, a crucial element of that macroeconomics - namely monetary reform - remains almost entirely overlooked. It is hoped that this paper will at least stimulate some thinking in that direction."

The paper in question is directly downloadable from www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/documents/sewp185.pdf

from 'New Labour' to 'New Tory'

So our prediction was right : a vote for the Lib Dems was a vote for a Conservative government. We wait to see how much of the Lib Dem programme will get lost on the way, and whether we will get any kind of chance for voting reform. The Greens argue for Additional Member System of voting as preferable to Proportional Representation or the others (AV, STV).

Is this in fact the beginning of the end for the Liberal Democrat party, as their key players are absorbed into New Conservative? And what are the prospects of Old Libs joining with many Old Labs (of the 'small-scale socialism' Cooperative variety) who are already in the party of the future - the Green Party?

Trying to look on the bright side, the most promising outcome of a New Conservative government might be getting centralised planning development objectives for the South East region off our backs, and with it a chance to bury Oxford's 'Core Strategy' once for all, and start again from scratch with proper consultation with the people of Oxford this time.

Or should we say 'peoples' : Oxford has so many discontinuities in it that there is no such thing as a typical Oxford citizen. Whether Oxford's peoples could ever agree on a coherent vision for our city . . . .

Tuesday 11 May 2010

an auspicious encounter

A strangely auspicious event this (Sunday) afternoon : two days after being elected to Oxford City Council as a Green Party member, my wife Karen and I were cycling back from our county councillor's birthday party in Iffley along the Isis towpath. We got separated when I stopped to take a picture for two foreign visitors and after finding each other again ended up taking an unintended route back across the grassy Port Meadow.

As we approached the Trap Grounds allotments we saw a group of twenty or so parishioners and choirboys from St Margarets Church processing in their cassocks and choir vestments behind a large silver crucifix, swinging incense as they went. It was like something out of Monty Python's 'Holy Grail'.

We stayed with them as they blessed the vegetable allotments and prayed for their fruitfulness, then the meadow and river, then back over to the canal, blessing the railway en route to the children's playground next door to the school where Karen teaches. It was very moving to hear the famous Gospel passage "Jesus said . . let the little children come to me" in the context of a playground, and to see the swings and climbing frames censed.

Somehow everything about it reflected the spiritual heart of the Green vision; the simple liturgy and ritual with its completely serious intent (in years gone by, lives depended on those prayers being answered) was the 'carrier' for a light-hearted and inclusive social occasion that gathered the curious as it went. The bizarre nature of the encounter and the amazing coincidence of the timing seemed to augur well for the service that lies ahead of me.

Saturday 8 May 2010

Lib Dems last chance to make a mark?

It is absolutely essential that the Lib Dems use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drive a change in the UKs hopeless electoral system. It is so poor it is almost impossible to interpret with any real confidence the results it delivers, as people vote for things they largely don't believe in. It is specifically designed to drive smaller parties out. What that means is that the frightened huddle of parties in the middle doesn't have the courage to publicly address hugely important but divisive issues : migration, desperate inequality, climate change (climate change addressed fully and properly, that is - not just tinkering with a runaway economic system).

It is the single most important contribution the Lib Dems could make to the political life of this country in the present moment. I believe it will do them no electoral harm, whereas failure to drive for this change and succumb to Conservative overtures stands to obliterate the Lib Dems for ever.

David Cameron must be given no opportunity to drive for a re-run election : only the Conservatives have the financial backing to withstand another campaign, and I'm sure they know it.

See http://bit.ly/aBSqrL

Friday 7 May 2010

In by a whisker

The Oxford City Council count is over. Labour took one very marginal seat off the LibDems and claimed one place off the Independent Working Class Association whose candidate withdrew, Lib Dems took two seats off the Greens - by 14 votes. But not the seat I was contesting, which we held by 79 votes (it went to a recount). That was 32% of the vote.

In some wards the Green Party made a very strong showing (17%) in a formerly strong Labour ward with minimal input and 14% and 15% in safe Lib Dem territory on nothing more than a single leaflet.

It leaves Labour with an overall majority of 1, from having no overall majority.

"What do we want?" "No idea!"

What a great voting system! I've been looking through a somewhat random selection of Parliamentary election results and find it impossible to discern what signals the voters have wanted to send. The only clearly discernible trend across the board is the small, steady but remorseless rise in single(ish)-issue anti-EU and anti-immigration vote of BNP and UKIP. (Our local UKIP candidate was a fervent climate change denier, too - don't know whether that's party policy.)

It's all very well having a system that delivers (supposedly) a 'clear winner' - but if the 'clear winner' actually has no idea why - or even whether - they really won, what kind of mandate is that? In what sense can they claim to represent 'the British people'? Yet Prime Ministers can send our armed forces into battle without even going to Parliament.

On the streets of East Oxford (I was canvassing students all afternoon) it seemed the Labour vote was collapsing and Lib Dems were surging. In fact, the opposite happened.

In Oxford West & Abingdon, I've just learned that the Green Party strategy of putting out a single, carefully crafted brochure/leaflet (instead of the very un-green reams of glossy bumf and 'personal' letters from Lib Dems and Tories) backfired : the Royal Mail simply failed to deliver them to much of the constituency. But then to those of us who suffer the vagaries of the local postal service perhaps that should have come as no surprise.

As I write, the city election ballot hasn't been counted; but we fear the Greens may have taken a hit.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

"Meet the new boss - same as the old boss"

Until my mid-30s there was a clear ideological difference between the two main parties. At gut level, you knew what they stood for. With the Lib Dems it wasn't so clear — they seemed to me as some sort of fudge in between although, being in origin far older than socialism, that couldn't be quite right.

Thatcher's assault on the old working class — the dismantling (and eventual banishing overseas) of nationalised industries, the forced sale of council housing, the intimidation of trades unionists through fear of litigation or unemployment — roundly and permanently defeated the (old) Labour Party. In order to preserve something of its past glories New Labour had to abandon socialism, and left behind a large chunk of its membership.

What the 'first-past-the-post' system has delivered is three grey parties competing for a narrow middle ground that most of us know instinctively has had its day. The rise of Nick Clegg's LibDems is not exciting. It does not usher in anything particularly new. I have reached the point where I am not only bored by the BBCs election coverage but angered by it.

Only the parties on the fringe are addressing the real issues in people's minds. The BNP, UKIP and the Greens are not afraid to speak their mind on migration, and the gulf between the latter and the other two is almost total. People instinctively know that there is something horribly wrong with financial systems that have nearly bankrupted the country yet continue to pay eye-watering sums to those responsible for their failure. They know that capping bonuses will do nothing to address the fundamental sickness, even though they can't put their finger on what that sickness really is. Many fear that serious attempts to address our carbon-hungry lifestyle will be 'too little too late' for their grandchildren, and that electric cars and green technology on its own is an inadequate answer. Oxford probably has the highest-qualified wine waiters in the world — young people taught they have a 'right' to aspire to something 'better', but unable to access housing and the promised exciting jobs with prospects. The Cabinet Office's recent publication "Unleashing Aspiration" says we need to see how parents 'could be empowered with a new right to choose a better school for their children'. The absurdity of this statement is laughable. As Stefan Collini's excellent article in a recent issue of the London Review of Books says : 'If all parents have a right to choose a 'better' school, won't we have to maintain in each locality a number of ghostly 'worse' schools to which no children are actually sent, whose function is to show that some schools are 'better' than others?'

What is most galling is that the same parties that promote such 'aspiration' have actually delivered a society in which, of all the world's rich societies apart from the USA, parental levels of wealth are by far the single biggest determinant of a child's life chances in the UK. Indeed, it's the father's income that most determines the child's. And this is the conclusion of a January report from the government's own Equalities Office! If this is what New Labour delivered, can anyone seriously imagine the Conservatives or even Lib Dems delivering anything better? 'Fairness' is on all their lips, but only the Green Party talks robustly about equality.

'First past the post' has delivered a debt-ridden, politically disenfranchised electorate torn apart by inequality, where people with less chance of economic self-improvement than ever in living memory are given sermons on their duty to aspire to 'better'. A 'brave new world' for electoral politics emerging? I hardly think so. Which shade of black do you prefer? Until we can get the real questions addressed by politicians with some political courage it will only get worse — and 'first past the post' saps political courage. That is the reason, amongst a hundred others, why I'm throwing my weight behind the Green Party. The BNP and UKIP claim to be 'telling it like it is', except that they're 'telling it how it seems' to disenchanted, largely white, little-Englander Tories of working class and middle class (respectively) who think that human-induced global warming is a European plot. The Green Party alone actually 'tells it like it is' and knows how to begin tackling it.

Friday 30 April 2010

To Let in Manzil Way

Following my earlier blog post "Not to Let in Manzil Way" about the 20 empty apartments in the Manzil Way Health Centre (built under PFI) - they've just appeared on the private market. (See http://premieroxford.co.uk/product_details.php?&product_id=913)

This despite a planning condition fought for by Green councillors that the apartments should be affordable for the use of medical staff and other key workers. (See planning condition 7 at : http://planning.oxford.gov.uk/WAM/doc/Decision-580829.pdf?extension=.pdf&id=580829&appid=911&location=VOLUME1&contentType=application/pdf&pageCount=7)

The cynicism of the developer is astounding - it's an insult to the citizens of Oxford that its planning decisions should be treated with such disdain.

It's thanks to outgoing Green councillor Craig Simmons that this has been picked up. I sincerely hope that any future planning applications from the developer in question are refused on principle.

Thursday 22 April 2010

Jobsworths and meaningless growth

What's not coming out in political debate - because far too much attention is being given to the pasty pastel parties and the 'past-times parties' (UKIP and BNP) - is that we are heading for disaster because of a toxic addiction to a version of 'economic growth' that doesn't understand what 'the economy' actually is, and doesn't understand the difference between 'good growth' and 'bad growth'. I mean, cancer's a growth.

They all think that 'the economy' is about money and jobs. No, the economy is about the distribution and sharing of resources to maintain and enhance quality of life for all.

Money can help that happen, but the worship of the golden calf, which The System has forcibly recruited most people into, has now brought the inevitable curse. Except for its high priests, that is.

A 'job' is work that you do when you help some employing organisation fulfil its own objectives. Some jobs are economically valuable (in the true sense) and rewarding. But many people hate their jobs and don't care tuppence about their employer's objectives which often entail producing pointless products and services, or (in Gordon Brown's constituency) weaponry, or (in the dangerous Disneyworld of finance) making money out of borrowed money out of borrowed money. Many live for the precious time they can grab with their families and doing the things they really love. Which often involve hard work!

Many people - I'm thinking of carers - are doing immensely valuable work which could actually be life-enhancing for them as well as the loved-ones they care for, if they weren't isolated and punished by The System because they don't have jobs. And in the 'leaders debate' the pastel parties agreed that they're scared of this issue - quite rightly, because their model of money-economy and jobs doesn't know how to handle it without immense and wasteful complexity.

The Green Party, on the other hand, with its Citizens' Income proposals inextricably linked with a whole lot of stuff about health care, transport and access, exchange of goods and services independently of the money system and so on have a handle on it because we're not blinded by The System and its insatiable appetite for meaningless 'growth'.

It's the difference between managerialism and practical vision.

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Dream Oxford

On Sunday, at a hustings, candidates were invited to imagine their dream Oxford in 20 years' time. I struggle to imagine what a New Labour city might look like, and in a Tory city I can imagine you might want to pull Magdalen Bridge down and let the worlds of north and east Oxford drift apart. But a green Oxford . . that's easy!

How about (in no particular order):

> a quiet city without the roar of petrol and diesel engines

> . . . or the smell and air pollution

> a brilliant place to cycle, walk and get around by wheelchair/buggy. Reclaim the streets for kids. Maybe a tram system east-west and north-south.

> with no one in substandard accommodation, being ripped off by unscrupulous landlords or intimidated by neighbours

> thriving and varied grassroots cultural life of dance, music, poetry, theatre

> no commuters because everyone's able to find gainful employment and the shops and services they need within walking distance. Big local farmers' markets.

> no great disparities of wealth, with rich and poor moving in different worlds and never meeting

> perhaps our own Oxford currency so we can raise two fingers to the fairyland of the money system . . most people banking with the Oxford or Blackbird Leys Credit Unions

> open and transparent city and county government that puts genuine energy into building relationships with people, not imposing "consultations" on them; where at the click of a button people can see what their councillors are proposing and supporting (rather than being fed versions manipulated for party political ends)

> much stronger and better-attended Area Parliaments with a buzz about them, keeping the big players (including the City and County Councils themselves) in check

> the universities taking much more responsibility for their impact on East Oxford

> more rather than less green space, with the colleges granting better access to local residents (e.g. a cycle route into Oxford that doesn't have to go via the Plain/Magdalen Bridge . . .

> no corruption and bullying in local politics

> hydro power generation at Osney, Iffley, Wolvercote; attractive wind turbines to north, south, east and west rather than great ugly pylons striding across the view from Cumnor Hill

> a thriving hub of creative green technological innovation in small workshops and offices across the city (not dumped in green belt periphery)

> no one caught in the benefit trap - a Citizen's Income encouraging everyone to contribute to building a better city

> world-class palliative and end-of-life care for all who need it.

> the hospital wings and health centres, privatised under PFI, brought back into public ownership.

> a City of Sanctuary - a city that 'thinks global, acts local'

> so-called 'faith schools' teased away from the control of religious institutions (and private corporations) so that every school can be a 'school of faith and hope', and every parent, whether religious or not, can trust that their attempts to impart lasting values to their children won't be undermined by the school.

Where do I stop . . . . ?

I could go on . .

Saturday 17 April 2010

Politicians Not Welcome Here

'Politicians not welcome here' is the BBC strapline for its 'The Politics Show' broadcast from Oxford tomorrow, Sunday. It's an apt title from the Biased Broadcasting Company : the Green Party is not welcome on the programme. UKIP has been invited, but not the Greens, despite the Green Party polling 6 points ahead of all other rivals in the city's Euro election and setting the City Council agenda with its seven city councillors.

And UKIP!? After the offensive performance of Nigel Farage (the politician who the BBC does welcome) in the European Parliament where he treated President van Rompuy to a tirade of personally offensive remarks. It made me ashamed to be British, and yet this is the party that trades on that very sentiment.

Friday 16 April 2010

Green Party manifesto

People have some funny ideas about what the Green Party stands for. Find out by reading the manifesto : http://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/resources/Manifesto_web_file.pdf

Monday 12 April 2010

Beware the Grey/Green New Deal

It's a curious thing : Green policies on Economy, Education, Defence, Taxation, Transport, Energy, Animal Rights etc (see http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/policypointers/index.html) are immediately recognisable and distinctive. But the other parties are so keen to claim the climate change vote that to hear them speak you'd think they were there first.

In all the hot air, don't be fooled! Whereas, for the main parties, the carbon agenda has been bolted on to the side of the manifesto (inevitable, since their political philosophies evolved between 100 and 300 years ago - and are now fossilised) the Green manifesto arose out of concern for humanity's relationship with its environment. Our short climate change policy document contains 23 links to other Green policy areas, it's so thoroughly stitched-in.

The other parties are still saddled with an addiction to a debased model of economic growth that has lost touch with the reality of people's lives. They have turned us from citizens into consumers until (we're told) we've got to shop to save the nation. (Was Napoleon right to call us a 'nation of shopkeepers'?)

What this means is that all the talk of 'green jobs' means little more to the grey parties than shopping for green technology - a fad that will quickly be ditched if it doesn't make massive profits for investment bankers. Indeed, we recently had a Conservative Party glossy brochure round that seemed to think green energy meant helping customers find the cheapest energy supplier! For the Greens it's a far more fundamental shift than that. The difference is, we mean it.

Wednesday 7 April 2010

'Wealth' versus 'Money'

Listening to the heated arguments about increasing National Insurance contributions (as New Labour, the "party of the middle class", are proposing), I'm struck by a number of assumptions that noone from the three largest parties are challenging :

1) that the public sector is grossly inefficient, whereas the private sector isn't. I struggle a bit to understand how companies that pay the salaries to their board members that they do could possibly be 'efficient'.

2) that investment in the NHS, schools and policing wouldn't create (or protect) jobs, whereas holding back on National Insurance increase would. I'd have thought that if creating jobs was the objective, hospitals and schools in particular create proportionately far more jobs per pound of investment. Many private sector companies are falling over themselves to outsource their employment to the developing world. You can export manufacturing and finance jobs, but you can't export nursing and teaching jobs.

Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford University, the hospitals/PCT and Brookes University account for 58,500 jobs in Oxfordshire, by far the biggest provider of employment. Remember - that's direct employees : you can easily double the figure if you include all the subcontractors and indirect jobs created.

3) that the only people who create wealth are people in the private sector who make things. (Well, who used to. Increasingly, they make their profits by selling things made elsewhere, or by selling financial services. Are we to become a 'nation of shopkeepers'?) The assumption seems to be that doctors, nurses, teachers, cleaners, social workers etc etc don't create wealth. But wealth is not money. Wealth is a roof over your head, warmth in winter, food on the table, healthcare, being surrounded by people who care for you, security and having an opportunity to contribute. It's also about having a healthy relationship with the planet. A lot of profit making enterprise actually undermines true wealth.

4) And besides, don't hospitals and schools pay National Insurance employer's contributions, too?

For me, the fact that these assumptions - which are fundamental in Green thinking - are not being challenged is further proof that the main parties have lost the plot.

Sunday 4 April 2010

Andrew Smith suggests: "Vote Labour! . . . I don't!"

The Labour Party have just put out a striking campaign newssheet around East Oxford. It's striking for the absence of red ink and the presence of green. The banner headline is Andrew Smith's (sitting New Labour MP)'Green New Deal', complete with requisite photo of MP on bicycle.

It explains how Andrew has voted against Heathrow's third runway, for carbon emissions targets, against Trident etc. All good stuff.

But it also points out that on many of these occasions he voted against his party whips. In other words : "Vote Labour! I don't!"

Or is it that he was given special permission to vote against the whips, knowing that the Green Party are a serious threat to the Labour vote in Oxford East?

Either way, the message is : if you're actually concerned about green issues, vote Green. What actually works is voting Green, because every Green vote drives the changes, whoever actually ends up getting elected. If it's the Green agenda you support it's only a Labour or Lib Dem vote that's wasted.

Thursday 11 March 2010

Accessibility not Mobility

Sushila Dhall's fronted the Greens opposition to the proposed Westgate development in the city centre for a long time now. Does Oxford need more shops and cars in the centre when what it clearly really needs is affordable housing? And (as Sushila pointed out in a recent residents meeting) that area was originally 'affordable housing'.

I've just realised that in the 18 years I've lived in Oxford I've never been into a single shop in the current Westgate. OK, so I'm a bloke and shopping isn't my thing, but even so . . . In fact, the only times I've ever been into Westgate at all are to go to the management suite to negotiate a busking spot under the canopy during Christian Aid Week.

The Greens have a slogan : "Accessibility not Mobility". Instead of trying to bus people to big shopping centres or out-of-town supermarkets and leisure facilities with massive car parks people need these things within walking distance if at all possible. East Oxford doesn't do too badly, with a wide range of shopping and leisure facilities all within easy walking distance. It's one reason why it's a great place. Let's keep it that way.

Wednesday 10 March 2010

Oxford's budget

link to the Greens report on the recent Oxford City Council budget meeting, to give some idea of the practical issues the Green group of councillors are trying to address : http://www.greenoxford.com/content/view/1081/229/

'Not to Let' in Manzil Way

Whilst doing an OxClean litter pick in Manzil Way on Saturday it was pointed out to me that the top floor of the new NHS building is vacant.

This building was financed under PFI - the Labour government's 'Private Finance Initiative' - in other words, privatised under what we in the Greens have taken to calling 'The Mortgage From Hell'.

The top floor was meant to be 20 flats for key workers; four years on, and it's still vacant space. The café on the corner of the building, which presumably hoped to draw custom from the residents, seems to have folded.

Even though this is supposedly an NHS facility, noone seems to know which shadowy organisations own it, or under what terms. Surely the key worker accommodation was part of the deal? In which case, how is it that it isn't happening?

If anyone knows the answer . . .

Monday 1 March 2010

Russian roulette with the grandchildren

Graciela Chichilnisky, on this morning's Start the Week (Radio 4) claimed that whilst US politicians in the Senate and House of Representatives are inclined to challenge manmade global warming as an unproven hypothesis, and accordingly the federal government is slow to prepare for impending crisis (albeit 30 years away), over in the Pentagon it has been identified as the single biggest threat to US national security.

She is the first person I have heard to spell out clearly what I have been saying on my blog at www.blog.wolffs.info for over a year: that when considering the probability of the hypothesis being correct (currently at least 85% I should think) it is also necessary to take into account the extreme consequences if it is indeed correct. Also, the costs and risks involved in acting to avoid the danger (costs and risks that are relatively low).

When you've spun the chamber of a revolver loaded with just one bullet, there is nothing particularly clever about saying you're fairly sure it's safe to point it at your head and pull the trigger. But a more accurate analogy would be to load five (83%) of the six chambers - and then fire the revolver at your grandchildren.

Friday 26 February 2010

Oxford fit to burst

Excellent meeting last night of various residents groups from Headington and East Oxford at the town hall. Must have been a couple of hundred there, and a lot of energy for getting a grip on future planning of Oxford.

The second half saw the four parliamentary candidates for Oxford East doing an 'Any Questions'. Green Party candidate Sushila Dhall was the only one to consistently draw a round of applause. She clearly had her finger on the pulse and the local knowledge. The Lib Dem candidate wasn't even aware that the city council had area committees that had planning powers.

There was a strong sense in the meeting that Oxford is suffering from regional and national planning decisions, taken remotely, requiring Oxford to grow : 'growth at all costs' and that this is now putting intolerable strains on the city, its housing, its green spaces, its transport infrastructure and is in danger of destroying its neighbourhood communities.

The biggest round of applause Sushila got was when she pointed out that the 'brownfield sites' that other candidates had suggested should be developed for housing are instead being developed for commercial use with the support of all the other parties. She was referring specifically to the currently-stalled Westgate development, a massive and unneeded shopping centre in area that was formerly affordable housing.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

Greens the only effective opposition in Oxford

At last night's Council budget meeting it became clear that the Greens are the only effective opposition party in Oxford. Cllr Ed Turner (Labour) admitted as much by complimenting the Greens' budget as workable but too 'green' for the Labour group to even negotiate over. It was less effort for them to agree a compromise with an unimaginative Liberal Democrat budget that hardly differed from Labour's anyway.

Amongst the items the Labour-Lib Dem pact could not be bothered to consider were :

- support for programmes that draw in additional funds to insulate domestic properties

- a feasibility study on a city centre 'cycle hub'

- a Sustainability Officer post. There are good ideas being floated for cost-effective carbon reduction schemes but the Council has no staff resources to explore them. They are content to be a talking shop.

- taking up a new scheme that offers guaranteed income from sale of renewable energy by installing solar PV panels on the Council building.

- support for a programme to prevent the most vulnerable being made homeless

For Labour and Lib Dem, it would seem, such things are not worth considering. They take the line of least resistance and offer unimaginative 'business as usual'. They can't be trusted to prepare Oxford for its most serious future challenges without robust opposition from the Green Party.

welcome to Green Wolff

My existing blog http://www.blog.wolffs.info started as the reflection of a Christian Reformed Church minister on issues to do with the relationship between religion and secular society from a theological perspective.

Increasingly, as my involvement with the Green Party in Oxford has deepened, my posts have taken the blog away from this and into different territory.

The Reformed Church asserts that the church, as an institution, must not directly hold political power; and within the life of the Church itself people should not be discriminated against on party political grounds. However, individual members and ministers are encouraged, as part of their personal witness, to be politically engaged - as individuals.

It is important, then, as a minister, to maintain a separation between my 'professional' life and my political life. Hence this blog.