Joe's posterous

To my Lib Dem MP

Dear Stephen Williams MP,

Thank you for adding me to your mailing list and sending me the newsletter earlier which included some of your thoughts on the Comprehensive Spending Review.

I recently wrote to Vodafone in outrage at the news I had heard that in this economic climate they had the audacity to avoid paying huge sums of taxation. I received a rebuttal from them that pointed me towards a HMRC statement that dismissed this as an "urban myth". I am unable to verify any of what I am told but I hope that my cynicism regarding the relationship between the treasury and big business is misplaced.

I also hope that you agree that by closing the gaps of corporate tax avoidance generally the burden of spending cuts and tax increases will be felt less strongly by ordinary citizens. I do however recognise that some changes are necessary but hope that the Lib Dem influence on the coalition can make these into genuinely progressive changes.

I receive Monbiot's blog posts by email and he tackled the corporate tax issue in his post today.
I wonder if you would like to respond to the points he and I make?

I have been an unpaid-up member of the Lib Dems since the 2001 election. I moved to Bristol in the spring and I volunteered on two occasions stuffing envelopes etc for your campaign. I hope you can understand why I and many others who would generally support the Lib Dems are now feeling rather underwhelmed. I hope that the party will be able to turn this around.

Normally my main focus is climate change related. This is why I have recently signed up to UKYCC's adopt an MP campaign and hence why you will be hearing from me more on climate issues in future.

To start with I notice you don't seem to have signed up for Fair Shares Fair Choice, like your colleague, local MP Steve Webb. It is a campaign to promote the introduction of individual carbon rationing being ran by the Bristol based charity; Sustainability South 
West. They ask you to support the statement "I sign up to the principle of a globally fair and safe carbon share for everyone". I believe strongly in carbon rationing as one of the key elements to bringing down our society's emissions in an equitable fashion.

Will you sign up?

Many Thanks
Joe Short
BS2 9LD

driving change

I got sent a link to this Be That Change blog - a good and thoughtful post on the perpetual debate about the future direction of climate movement. Here is my response.

 

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In the end change will be pushed by some and resisted by others.

 

Gandhi said "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." There was a time I thought we were moving into the 'fighting' stage but maybe it is not a straight line process and perhaps we've actually gone back to being ignored.

 

But back to the point that not everyone will want to join the 'big tent'. Do we even want to share a tent with some of these cynical apologists? Before the change that's needed occurs there will be a fight - hopefully not a violent one but such events can't be predicted. Would you oppose an African uprising against foreign owned land banks when the going gets tough?

 

We need to be prepared to 'fight' and by that I mean we need to become really inconvenient. They mustn't be able to ignore us. Yes we want to build the movement as large as possible but i think that point has probably been reached in the timeframe that we have. You build the movement and then you mobilise the movement (which is what 10/10/10 was about - only it got ignored). People's actions need to be confronted and challenged and they must be forced to justify them. They won't like it one bit but I think it is the way forward from here.

 

In April I was involved in a protest that involved stopping a coal train. This was largely ignored by the media too but I have mixed feelings about the results. In some senses this was the kind of small localised action causing inconvenience I think we could see much more of. In other senses though the resultant court case and the question that 'did stopping one day's work really make much difference?' meant that on balance i'm not certain it was so worthwhile. But things were learnt and I'm glad it happened.

 

Environmentalist are hippies and don't like anger but getting angry is OK as long as it is coherent and strategically directed.

 

I might come across here as a real extremist. I guess I am. I don't mean to be. The reason I found the ill judged 10:10 film to be amusing is that it represented the complete contradiction that exists for me between taking effective action and allowing for personal liberty. The reason it was ill judged is that it was too much of an in joke for people with a pretty dark sense of humour. But on liberty I think that Liberalism needs to recognise that allowing liberty to cause environmental damage does not fit with allowing liberty to live on a safe planet.

 

The 'final solution'? short of the 10:10 film's means I think must be carbon rationing on an individual/family/household level. It is the only fair way to distribute our 'right' to pollute the planet and the only way to bring it under control. Enough people won't voluntarily give up the good life they have just to see other people continue and the end result stay the same. If rationing is our goal how do we get to that point? I don't know. Because it would be unpopular, democracy seems incapable of achieving this.

 

On a different note can I pass to you a couple of ideas I've had for campaigns? They are pretty 'fluffy' and so don't have to alienate our opponents as i seem to've been half advocating in this post. Do with them what you will - let me know what you think. If you like them, can I help?

 

In relation to carbon rationing: during the civil rights movement there were well known protests with placards reading 'I am a man' - I think imitating these but replacing it with 'I am 1 man - ration me' could be a powerful message that links in well with other historical parodies like plane stupid's Suffra-jets and highlights the issue of equality within this movement.

 

The other idea I had is that in April 2011 we have the census and perhaps a movement to write 'SOS' in the religion section could be built.

I live in Bristol btw
Best wishes

Why I will not be considering Vodafone.

A message I just sent to Vodafone:
I am currently trying to choose which phone company to go with. In the past I have been with Vodafone - I left because I was upset at having such high costs from overseas calls. However one of the factors that was influencing my current choice was the idea that by choosing a UK based company I would be supporting the UK economy. However my decision has been made a easier now that I discover that Vodafone has been avoiding paying tax to the tune of £6 billion with help from our chancellor George Osbourne. With the country now facing huge spending cuts Vodafone thus causes damage to our economy. I think Vodafone should be ashamed of this behaviour, and employees of the company should be asking if this is the type of company they wish to work for. I will be posting this message on Facebook and imploring anybody I know who is a Vodafone customer to leave this unethical business.

Film: How the oil industry affects the third world.

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This was the film I was referring to over dinner last night, of course most people are blissfully unaware of this stuff.

What happened to bike bloc? #g1b

On my first morning in Copenhagen, way back (it seems so long ago now) on the 8th December, with my new found couch surfing friends, we went to find the Bolsjefabrikken (wow, Danish words are hard!) otherwise known as the Candy Factory.

Here a group of activists from Bristol, UK were organising the Bike Bloc. After spending a week doing experimental workshops at Bristol's Arnolfini art gallery in November, the team took their designs to the Candy Factory in Copenhagen, where, using waste bikes, they intended to mix and match parts to produce both working bikes for activists, and to build unconventional bicycle machines to use at demonstrations.

When we were there that first morning it was rather quiet, there was one guy who I vaguely recognised from Bristol. He showed us the place and let us look through the bikes to try and find one that we could fix up easily and take to explore Copenhagen with. There was another women there that was complaining that the bike she had been working on yesterday had been stolen and the guy from Bike Bloc was trying patiently to explain that this had happened to him three times already.

Anyway after not even an hour I impatiently chose a bike that I thought would do, and we were off, promising that we would return and help later in the week. I was itching to get out and see Copenhagen.

Copenhagen is a fantastic city for cyclists. There are bikes everywhere! and the infrastructure is great too. Every main artery has a dedicated bicycle pavement which is raised a small step from the road and on the other side another small step separates pedestrians. I think all city planners should visit Copenhagen and see what they must do.

For people visiting the city it takes a day to get used to, especially if like me you are used to traffic driving on the left. But a couple of close encounters with a speeding bicycle and you soon become a bit more cautious!

So my bikes lack of brakes were made up for by the flat tyre and I wouldn't have felt at all unsafe but for my different sized and wobbly wheels! My friends had spent most of the day before repairing their bikes to a good standard. We managed to get lost a couple of times but this is the best way to see new parts of the city and I enjoyed seeing Copenhagen as it should be seen - by bike!

As the date of Wednesday's big protest approached we revisited the Candy Factory. This time it was a different place altogether. The place was full of people working on bikes and some of the bicycle machines were beginning to take shape. We asked how we could help and were told that they needed some material sourcing. So we went out and found a bunch of shopping trolleys dumped on some nearby waste land.

The machines that we saw were called, 'double trouble' they were basically chariots made from welding bikes side by side, held together with a platform for people to stand on. (The shopping carts we found were to be broken up and used on this platform) These chariots are hard to describe but I hope you can imagine them now. There were also rumours of other bicycle machines that were going to be used to get across the fences at the Bella Centre but I never saw these.

So when the day of the big Wednesday protest came although not part of bike bloc myself, I was excited about seeing the machines in action. Unfortunately, the night before the protest the Candy Factory was raided by the police. All of the weeks of hard work that had gone into the operation were wasted. Even though I had not put great effort into the project I was pissed off for their loss. The police called the chariots 'war bikes'. Indeed, standing on the platform made you feel rather like Julius Caesar, but the police were over reacting. The bikes were designed more to be seen than to be used for illegal actions and it is a great shame that they never made it out of the workshop.

Bike Bloc still took place and around 50 bikes cycled up and down the roads around the Bella Centre, getting in the way of police and generally making a nuisance of themselves. I spoke to a guy who was arrested with bike bloc and taken to the cage. His experience was quite different from mine the day before. On this day the police were in no mood for jokes.. 

Now what? #cop15 #g1b

For many people, they may now be wondering what all the Copenhagen fuss was about. The politicians gave us plenty of words but were completely lacking in action. As the Greenpeace slogan says 'Politicians Talk - Leaders Act'.

These negotiations have been flawed from the start. I don't believe they were ever going to achieve the deal that the science demands. This is because the politicians were paralysed by politics and economic interest. At home, the politicians' citizens have been confused by the sceptics and the media's willingness to give them coverage, into thinking that the science is uncertain. If I went to the BBC with 'proof' that the world was flat, I wonder if they would let me go on the news? Either way, intelligent citizens, that know about climate change, have not yet woken up to huge transition that needs to take place and politicians fear upsetting their citizens. Couple this with the power that corporations have to influence decision making, and you have a recipe for inaction. Words and stuff, but nothing that will save us.

Recently I was at a fiends house and on his wall he had a verse that went as follows; 
'This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done '

Now, although frustrating, this is not a problem if your task is just to wash the dishes. But if your problem is a fire that has started in the kitchen, the result will be disaster.

Yes, the ideal solution would have been for politicians to pull it together and do what was needed, but they didn't. So what now? There are 1 billion people in the world today who will be alive in 2050, and of course this figure rises with every new born child. Whether or not you too will be around in 2050, these people need your help. We all need to be somebody that does something.

The climate belongs to us all, as does the responsibility. I know we can do it. Politics fails when the people don't lead.

I'm sure there are plenty of options for what to do now but I am working on mine, which you can investigate here bit.ly/TA350FB.

Copenhagen's Activist Soup Kitchens #g1b #cop15 A great place to meet.

Soup_kitchen

I think the most positive places here in Copenhagen are the multiple soup kitchens that have sprang up around the city for activists.

These act as a place where people can meet, relax, talk and of course get some much needed warm food.

The food is prepared by volunteers who ask for a donation to cover their vegetable and cooking gas costs. The kitchens are enormously popular and you can meet people from so many places and hear their stories and exchange thoughts. Some activists hop from one soup kitchen to the next all day long! When I was in one with my new found Californian friend, a solar PV consultant, (we had just cycled from a kitchen one block away). We were just finishing off our soup when a sack of veg was dumped in front of us along with some knives and chopping boards. So we got on with peeling and chopping the veg, and talked to our German neighbour. In the past he had travelled across land up and down the east coast of Africa travelling back to Europe through Syria. This was really interesting for me because I want to visit my girlfriend in Kenya but I have, of course become increasingly anti-flying. (The payment for chopping was an unexpected piece of chocolate for dessert)

Last night I met a man from Bristol, where I plan to move to in the new year. I spotted him because I had already met the woman he was with at a Copenhagen planning meeting and also he was wearing a t-shirt from the business (Bristol wood recycling project) he manages, reclaiming waste and surplus wood and reselling it. It was great to network with someone with such experience, he said that the type of business he runs is available in many cities, but by no means all. So opportunity exists if you wish to set out and do something like this. Some of their costs are covered by the local council because they provide voluntary opportunities and a useful waste stream diverting service. Otherwise it is a reasonably profitable business with a simple model. I spoke to him of my plans to use waste bath tubs to make vegetable planters which recycle the water that flows through them back to the top of the soil again. He was positive about this idea and gave me some good realistic advice.

So you can see how the kitchens can represent a change in the way of doing things. They are not exclusive and only for rich people, they are healthy and sustainable serving tasty local vegan food and they really do inspire a sense of community with complete strangers. Copenhagen is an expensive city but as a couch surfer my only major out goings (apart from my (not worth it) splurge on Trivoli (amusement park) and the Ice Bar (yes, a bar made of ice!)) has been beer because food is pretty cheap. On soup kitchens, I'm sold!

Police Brutality #g1b #cop15

Bella_centre_4of_8_-medium

So far mainstream media has down played the violence inflicted by police at yesterday's Reclaim Power demonstration.
As you can see from the photo some of this violence was very serious. But it all came from the police. Protesters wished to peacefully enter the summit which so many people are now excluded from. As police used batons and pepper spray, protesters asked the police questions such as 'who do you serve? what do you protect?' and 'what would your mother think?' 
We chanted 'The whole world is watching' because we believed that the police brutality would be broadcast around the world and that this fact would protect us. Of course there was tons of media present but if the world's media does not consider this newsworthy then we protesters have little protection in the form of global public opinion.
Just to describe how awful it was; at one point I was stood very near the front with people crushed up behind me. In front of me was a short redhead american girl with platted hair. The policeman, twice her size, started to hit her with his baton. Once he had hit her several times she of course decided it was time to drop back but because of the crush of people behind her this was impossible. He continued to hit her despite me, her and others pleading him to stop.
We did manage to get her away from the front line and as she fought back the tears I gave her a hug and congratulated her courage. I hope this helped her but I don't know if she will feel able to protest again in future.

These are emotional times, and it almost brings tears to my eyes to describe all this to you.
But it also brings anger. We are not violent demonstrators. On the walk back into town I scrapped some left over snow off a car and threw a snowball at the police. It narrowly missed an indiscriminate policeman's temple. You see violence breeds violence!

The fact is the police are citizens too, they have families, hopes and fears just as we all do. But as an instrument of the state and as we all know the state belongs to big business, the police will do whatever they are ordered to. Whether or not they agree does not come into it. Whatever tactics protesters use the state will always be able to overwhelm it.

Power to the people!

New Free Website! and the politics of faff. #g1b #cop15 #innovation

Many sweet ideas come to me in the shower..(!)

MyFoodCarbonFootprint.com is an unregistered domain.

The Carbon Footprint of food is a serious issue.
Couple this with the fact that many people are very keen to eat more healthily, you could surely, with the right data, create a website which with daily input from the member, could calculate these figures and recommend ways in which to improve them.

In the spirit of the People's Forum that was held outside of the summit today surrounded by police brutality, I am putting this idea out there for someone with the time and resources to run with. Maybe this idea already exists, maybe I will one day get an award, maybe it just won't fly. But what is clear is that selfishness and greed must become a thing of the past. We need to share ideas and solutions and work fast to minimise the effects of the current emergency. So please if you like the idea and know of someone who could do it. Get them to do it!

In other news tomorrow Copenhagen will wake to a crisp layer of snow. Delegates to the summit should enjoy this event. The effect of their faffing will make it less common in future.