Making Your Mind Up

I’m in a mixed marriage – I’m in, he’s out. Of the EU that is. My partner is an anarchist, with a loathing of global governance and social control. He’s crystal clear about his decision.

I, however, am an active member of the Green Party, and it is hard to distinguish whether or not my opinions are derived from the peer pressure of being in a party where a Leave vote is considered eccentric and naïve. 

I’m told this is the most important decision of my life, that leading Greens with much more knowledge and experience than myself are campaigning to Remain, and just look at that toxic mishmash of right-wingers who want to Leave! How could I possibly agree with them? 

Yet there is so much that is wrong about the EU – the secrecy, the austerity agenda, TTIP. How can I possibly vote for it?

The challenge is that I, like most of the population who have a vote in the 2016 Referendum, know very little about the structures, policies and laws of the European Union. Its unwieldy complexity acts as a smokescreen making it very hard to judge who we are actually ruled by.

This fog is perhaps at the heart of the debate.  People always want certainty, simplicity, clarity. For the old, this means a sovereign national government, just like the one ‘we used to have’.For the young it means their own status quo – their only experience is being in the EU, so why would they want to take the risk of changing that?

And yet, change is what we so desperately need, in or out of the EU. We need a massive switch of resource and focus onto environmental sustainability across the world. We need to challenge the haywire neoliberalism which has created spiralling inequality and political conflict and is premised on a win-lose paradigm. We need to break down the orthodoxy that says we need infinite economic growth, which is of course impossible. In short, we need a future.

In, Out, Shake It All About

The Green argument is that we stay and fight for reform within the EU. As a pragmatist, I’m trying to make my decision based on whether we are more likely to achieve the required scale of change by staying in or by leaving.

If we remain, then Cameron stays as Prime Minister, the EU limps on, the economy breathes a short sigh of relief. Perhaps we can then put pressure on for the reforms we so desperately need, but it will take a huge amount of concerted effort across Europe and a firm clarity of vision. The contradictions of the EU run deep. The European Commission has climate change as a priority but it also has ‘competitiveness’, often a byword for lower wages and tax avoidance, and in any case a zero-sum game.

If we Leave, then we have to look at Nigel Farage’s smug face (and then the disappointment of those who somehow think this will put an end to immigration) and face the consequences of Scottish independence. Leaving is not a simple process – we will be tied into lengthy withdrawal negotiations and still have to decide whether or not to leave the European Economic Area (which is the bit that creates freedom of movement among other things).

The Tory party is in crisis either way, which is the good news.

 If I stay there will be trouble …if I leave there will be double.

In my pessimistic heart, I don’t think it makes too much difference overall at one level whether we are in or out of the EU. The same greedy and reactionary forces will be at work either way. It is more a question of how best we can fight against them.

Perhaps the single most convincing point for me is that any gains that we make in reforming the EU and getting it to work in the interest of social justice and the environment will be gains made across 28 countries. If we leave and campaign for reform just here in the UK (ultimately perhaps losing Scotland) then our impact will be much tinier.

If this is true then we need to commit to EU reform as a leading area of campaign activity. Now is our chance to articulate what we need from the EU and to use the threat of Brexit as leverage for fairer and more sustainable world.

So, in summary, It’s a Yes from me.

Why Corbynmania is a Win for the Green Party

It's difficult as a Green not to feel a little conflicted about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn. After all the policies he is espousing are pretty much identical in many cases to those the Greens championed during the General Election. Against austerity and fracking; in favour of state ownership of the rail network; cancelling the renewal of Trident; a humane and intelligent response to immigration. Indeed Jeremy's latest soundbite about education is lifted straight from the strapline of the Green Party Manifesto: 'For the Common Good'.

Not only did the Labour Party not stand on this manifesto (far from it), but they also received a lot of votes from the very people who are now excited about Corbyn. Much of this may be due to the electoral system which favours the big parties and the breadth of 'tactical' voting which went on across the country ( in the end to no avail). In Bristol we estimated about 18,000 people may have split their vote, electing Green councillors but 'playing safe' in the national elections, even in seats which were nowhere near marginal such as Bristol East or South.

There is also a wariness in the party that now that Labour's failure to oppose the Tories has been made crystal clear, the people who might have turned finally to the Greens are hanging in with the Labour Party in the hope that Corbyn will be the new leader. It must be true that the Greens are losing out here on potential new members and supporters.

Nonetheless I see the enthusiasm for Corbyn as a success for the Green Party. The Greens (along with the SNP and Plaid Cymru) held the torch of opposition to mainstream neoliberalism and the  austerity programme throughout the General Election. For all the criticism of Natalie Bennett's technique, people on the doorstep told us they liked what she had to say. That torch is - for now- in the hands of a man who might actually be able to set something on fire.

The point of the Green Party is to see its policies implemented. We can achieve this directly through electoral success or through shifting political discourse towards the environmental sustainability and social justice which are our core values. Electoral success and the agenda shift are of course interconnected and voting Green certainly turns the heads of the parties who lose votes in the process. In Bristol City Council the Liberal Democrats demise has co-incided with the Green's rise but the Tories and Labour are also finding it harder to hold their seats.

I am in no way suggesting we should not stand for election. The Green Party is not simply a pressure group. However we have to recognise, with the electoral system we have, that success may not always come in the form of winning seats. Watching a major party shift its position towards our own has to be viewed gladly. After all it is the policy not the party that counts.

Digital Billboards & Green Economics for Tories

‘Advertising on roadside presents a multitude of street-level opportunities, targeting your audience while they are engaged in some form of transportation. OOH International can provide your campaign with enormous opportunities across many roadside advertising mediums. Surfaces such as phone boxes and lamp-posts can be transformed from outdoor furniture into purveyors of your business, with options escalating as far as fully wrapped buildings and motorway trailers.

The commuter of today spends more time out of their home than previously in history, which means that your publicity will be vastly strengthened by a carefully organised plan. As advertising platforms have the possibility of illumination, there is nothing limiting your visibility – from dusk until dawn, your brand can unavoidably walk alongside the public as they engage in their daily journeys.’

This is an extract from Out of Home International’s website – the company which Mayor George Ferguson wants to install digital billboards in Bristol.*

The Greens were mocked in the Bristol City Council meeting today for their opposition to digital billboards. One Conservative declared that he could ‘not understand Green economics’, on the basis that we were against austerity but also against generating income from digital billboards.

I’ll explain it to him.

Green economics arises from the very simple scientific fact that there are finite natural resources on this planet. Using up these resources rapidly – mining, soil degradation, overfishing – creates a poorer world in the long term. In addition all sorts of complications arise from the extracting, processing and disposing that industrial production and consumption incur. We now have climate change and toxic waste on a massive scale as a result of the accelerated consumption of natural resources.

We depend on our environment to continue providing us with the basic physical necessities of life – food, clean water, warmth and shelter. The famous Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has these as the most fundamental.

Advertising exists to promote consumption. It does exactly the opposite of what we need to do. Along the way it creates a host of other problems for mental and social wellbeing, creating discontent and objectification of people, undermining the next tier of Maslow’s pyramid (for some excellent insights see http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ziad-elhady/the-dogma-of-advertising-_b_2540390.html).

What Green economics offers is the idea of investment in wellbeing rather than in growing consumption (which is the basis of GDP orientated economics). We want enrichment of people’s lives – hence we are opposed to an austerity that cuts vital services and the incomes of people who need help. We want investment in technology and systems which minimise and reverse environmental impact. We believe that a fairer taxation system could provide this. We don’t need digital billboards to fund this investment – that would be counter-productive.

The Tory councillor who could not understand Green economics was operating in a paradigm where profit and income generation are thought to be intrinsically good. It is ‘self-evident’ to him that any profit is good profit. This is part of a fantasy culture where consumption can be infinite. Greens are accused of not living in the ‘real’ world; in fact we are the only political movement which fully acknowledges the limitations of the planet.




*It turns out it is a different company with a very similar name. The principle holds however.

Photo Tim Pierce, Creative Commons Licence

Libraries - a Common Good

Bristol, like many towns and cities across the UK, has recently faced the prospect of major cuts to its library services as a result of the central government's programme of austerity. This has included the proposal to close seven community libraries, principally on the basis of the locations and conditions of the buildings which house them.

Marksbury Road Library faced closure a few years ago and is once again on the list of those libraries under threat. While there has been a stay of execution for a further year for the library, it continues to be vulnerable. The 1930s building is old-fashioned and freestanding, without the benefit of being among other services such as shops. One reason cited for its place on the list of proposed library closures is the absence of a toilet.

The Green Party supports public libraries. Up and down the country Greens have been involved in campaigning to keep libraries open. We believe in local public services, in access for everyone to information and imagination through books and the internet. We cannot hope to improve literacy and education without them. Libraries are a vital part of democracy and lifelong learning. Marksbury Road Library in its distinctive building, with its own garden, is a focal point in a place where there is little other community space. The lack of a toilet is not an adequate excuse to close it down.

Bristol Green councillors are working closely with the Mayor to find resources to keep the libraries open. It is a difficult task, because the funding will have to be taken from another area of council activity. What we really need is a government which invests in people via public services and which sees the provision of local libraries as excellent value, engaging people of all ages individually and in groups in learning, as a common good.

How to really improve mental health

 “I want this to be a country where a young dad chatting at the school gates will feel as comfortable discussing anxiety, stress, depression, as the mum who is explaining she sprained her ankle.”

Nick Clegg to Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference, 2014.

It has – and this is a good thing – finally become fashionable for politicians to call for mental health services to be high on their agenda.    And the Liberal Democrats are making this a key plank of their election campaign, having committed to an additional £500m a year for mental health services.

Of course, any extra funding to the NHS is welcome.  But the devil, as so often, is in the detail:  how it is spent is key.

Green Party policy supports the concept that mental and physical health is equally important and often inter-related.  Our stance is holistic. It is hard to think of any Green Party policy that does not aim to improve the quality of life for everyone. 

For the Greens, mental health is promoted through a positive society with security of income and housing for all, with access to nature, based on equality of opportunity. It is not achieved with a stress-inducing programme of austerity, benefit sanctions and reduced public services, all of which the Liberal Democrats have gone along with over the past 4 years.

In a previous job I worked as a manager for a small mental health charity in Bristol. We provided self-help groups aimed at people experiencing anxiety and depression. However, since the service was open to anyone, we found that up to 50% of our attendees were actually suffering from mental health conditions which had formerly required secondary mental health care: bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and personality disorders were common.

We had repeated episodes of people coming to our groups in great distress, sometimes deeply suicidal, often summarily discharged by services that they depended on. The trusting relationships they had - often painfully - built up with mental health staff were suddenly terminated. In many cases, the strain they were under was compounded by the threat to their incomes from disability assessments and tribunals.

We were sometimes worried that we wouldn't see some of these people again.

Many mental health conditions need sustained, often lifelong, care. The NHS, in contrast, is now geared towards turnover.

Target setting and the endless search for cost-effectiveness means that people who need on-going support to maintain even a basic level of wellbeing are screwing up the figures. The impetus is towards getting them off the books and turning attention to those who can (hopefully) be sorted with a quick fix.

Back in the office, we faced another problem. As a small charity, secure funding was becoming harder to find. The trustees were keen to consider NHS-commissioned work as an option.

At that time the so-called ‘talking therapies’ in Bristol were being re-commissioned under a new system (Any Qualified Provider), which supposedly offered opportunities to small voluntary organisations. There were plenty of loopholes to jump through to be eligible but the real obstacle was the price that was on offer. Unlike a traditional tendering process we did not put in a bid based on the costs of providing a service, but a fixed amount was on offer and we could apply to supply a service for that figure.

When I looked at the numbers it just didn’t add up. Ours was a low cost service but it looked as if we might not break even; in fact we could have ended up subsidising the NHS with our other income (from grants and fundraising).

The only service that would be able to be provided at this price would be extremely short-term and shallow. It would have to be run by a large organisation with significant economies of scale – with all that that implies   And, crucially, the long-term effectiveness of these therapies was not being properly evaluated:  results were measured at 3 months, and never again, and no-one was counting re-entry to the system.

In short, the NHS market, set up by Thatcher, extended significantly by Labour, and bound into by The Coalition’s Health and Social Care Act 2012 (which Clegg refuses to repeal), is not working in favour of UK citizens. Nowadays even the commissioning process itself is being put out for commission!

Genuine and sustainable mental health policy

Good general public policy will increase mental wellbeing but we recognise that there will always be people needing care, and a good mental health service is an integral part of a healthy society. The Greens will promote mental health at three levels.

The first will be making people’s lives more equitable, secure and less stressful through wide-ranging public policy.

The second will be to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and return the NHS to a non-profit, publically-run body, where medically trained people can deliver care in ways which benefit the people needing their services. The health service will be entirely in public ownership.

The third is to fund the service adequately. In direct contrast to the programme of austerity that is crippling this country - the current economic policy of all the other major parties - the Green Party will pay NHS staff adequately and provide them with the necessary resources to research, treat and care for all people with mental illness.

What the Greens want to see is not just a dad feeling ‘comfortable’ discussing his mental health problems, but a dad who has fewer anxieties and stresses in the first place and, if he needs them, is able to access similar services as the mum who has sprained her ankle.

Voting Green is not just 'Nice' - it's Necessity

I've been thinking about the messages that we can put out on our campaign to elect a Green councillor for Windmill Hill Ward here in Bristol. Underneath the simplicity of slogans such as 'Better Public Transport' and 'Living Wage' there are some deeper and more critical issues which make me realise that voting Green is not just another option, or even simply a 'nice' option, which is often the way we are seen (and perhaps present ourselves).

Behind Caroline Lucas' smiling face, Natalie Bennett's tweed suits and even my own apparently innocuous campaign photograph, there are some hardcore radical politics which have come of age.

We are facing some deep crises in this world. One of the world's largest cities, Sao Paulo, is facing a disastrous water shortage due to drought and rising water use. In the Middle East and Africa we see terrible violence and conflict which relates at least in part to power struggles over key resources such as oil and gas. In the UK we are being repeatedly beaten with the stick of austerity measures in an attempt to dismantle public infrastructure and local democracy.

The perilous threats to the welfare of people here and across the globe cannot be remedied with 'politics as usual'. Voting for a party with a 'peg on your nose', for a party which has already failed you repeatedly in the past, a 'tactical' vote, is no longer sufficient. The economic systems of the last 300 years are worse than redundant - they will lead us into the final stages of environmental and social catastrophe.

We need radical reform of our institutions and of policy objectives. We need people to take the system into their own hands, to be assertive in taking power from those who are holding on to it for the benefit of a minority. I don't mean random looting and arson - those pointless actions of the angry and impotent which harm the wrong people and create fear, inviting a conservative backlash. I mean voting for policies which will support everyone - such as putting public transport provision back in the hands of those who use it (the public!) and finding ways to run an economy which does not suck the value we all create into profits for the few.

At the same time we need to ensure that individual creativity and freedom is preserved and that everyone has opportunities to thrive. These are the values of The Green Party. All our policies are to that end, and if we need to change them to fit or add more, that can be done. Ideas are welcomed and the internal  processes are democratic and friendly.

It's refreshing and feels good to be part of a party which is so nice. It feels even better to be campaigning for values which are vital for our future.

The Green Surge - a chance for real change in politics

Bristol Green Party celebrated its 500th member this month. The irony was that by the time the actual event occurred we were already at 565 members. Nationally, 1000 people joined the party over the last fortnight, many of them young people and students. And we are supposed to be living in a time of political apathy!

Here in Windmill Hill ward, we launched our residents' survey last weekend. The rain poured down and we only managed to survey five streets, but the response was phenomenal. Fifty surveys were completed and half of these said they would consider voting Green at the next election. Several offered to help out with the campaign!

What is causing this massive interest in The Green Party? There are a number of factors of course. The recent exclusion of The Greens from the TV debate has given us a huge amount of publicity and ignited public sympathy. But the Greens have been doing well all year, gaining a significant vote share at the May elections in Bristol, Liverpool, Solihull and Scotland, among other places.

My feeling is that we have become the only real alternative voice in UK politics. We have managed to convey that we are not purely about the environment, but that our policies are about supporting people too, in a sustainable and fair way. We are all born with equal rights to live on this planet, but inequality is increasing and wealth is being ever more concentrated in the hands of a few. Changing this is at the heart of the Green movement as much as looking after the planet we live on.

Sustainable Living for Windmill Hill

I have lived in Bristol for four years, half of that time in Lower Totterdown and now around the corner in Lower Knowle. I love Bristol. I am excited every day about living here.

I am interested in your lives. I care about your children or grandchildren being able to get to school safely. I care about the quality of air that you breathe. I care that you have access to health facilities if you need them. Most of all, I care that these things can go on being provided for the whole of your lives– it is called sustainable living.

Please get in touch if you have any comments or questions or would like to help. Email me at deb.joffe@bristolgreenparty.org.uk

We are now asking residents to complete a short survey about the issues which matter to them most. We are looking for people to help deliver the survey – the more of us who help, the more residents we can ask.

If you can help please contact me or Barney on windmillhill@bristolgreenparty.org.uk

To complete the survey online please click this link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3G576FC