http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/KqNvGyRp7_c&hl=en&fs=1
Here's a little bit of video giving a flavour of our Action Days here in Brighton & Hove which are a combination of mass leafleting and canvassing with a lunch and evening social.
In the last week before the election I want to offer some of the reasons why I think a Green vote is a positive vote for the future…
I was chatting to a local resident very active in his community, particularly with regards to combating anti-social behaviour. He mentioned that he thought a party should be set up which would have as a core policy legalising drugs. “In essence, that's our policy,” I responded much to his surprise. I've had police officers privately also wish for an end to the drugs prohibition too.
Drug addiction is a public health issue, not a criminal one. Greens would take the drug trade out of criminal control and put it in a regulated, legal environment. This would cut out the criminal gangs and move us towards treating addiction – not pushing vulnerable people into an underground, unsafe black market.
Green policy is about creating a true 'health system' focussed on prevention and healthiness, rather than the current 'sickness system' which tends to intervene when problems are acute and so focus on processes to deal with sick people.
By reversing the privatisation of the NHS and reducing defence spending Greens would be able to:
We would also do much more to research and prevent the environmental causes of illness, such as from pollution or from agrochemicals in our food.
Through education, urban planning and eco-taxes we would strongly promote walking and cycling which would help prevent diseases, increase well-being and reduce pollution which is linked to childhood asthma. We'd also cut our carbon foot-print, a win-win policy!
By focussing on people and their right to be healthy, Greens promote lifelong health.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/ORKjiYUxqgc&hl=en&fs=1
With a rainy day yesterday I decided to review the leaflets I have had delivered so far.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/Vkz8XhC_sr0&hl=en&fs=1
My latest video blog entry has already started causing a stir in the YouTube comments with BNP supporters coming out of the woodwork. It just proves that the vast majority of people who welcome our multi-cultural, open society which respects peoples rights and responsibilities need to get out and vote to support a positive vision for the future, not the hate spread by the BNP.
Just one page is reason enough to realise the BNP are bad news, but if you have time read more on the Hope not Hate site.
I've always been in favour of reforming our political system to make it muchre more fair and more representative of our society. The key steps to acheive that have in my view always been the introduction of proportional representation, removing the monarch's constitutional role and an elected upper house to replace the anachronistic House of Lords.
Tied up with these would be additional reforms to enable much greater transparency and openness – strengthening the Freedom of Information Act, individual voter registration to improve the resilience of elections to fraud and a complete overhaul of how elected representatives are paid. This final point, clearly the centre of attention at the moment, is only one part of the wider reforms needed.
What I often hesitated over, uncertain as to the implications, is eliminating ministers and the Prime Minister from the Parliamentary system. In other words, electing the Prime Minister separately so that he is not brought into power on the back of an overwhelming majority (made worse by the current unfair electoral system) of MPs from his party.
It is hard to imagine divorcing the Executive, Her Majesty's Government, from the Houses of Parliament. But I have come to the conclusion that this is a step we must take. Why? Let us look at what we gain from having the Executive inside Parliament:
But what are the disadvantages:
There is growing consensus that there are too many people in both Houses of Parliament. This is undoubtedly true and cutting the numbers down will help in all sorts of ways from the practical (more room in the chambers) to the financial (lowered costs to us taxpayers). But Government now also requires a huge number of Ministers which absorbs much of the majority party in business which isn't directly scrutiny or legislating. There is room for paring down some parts of government (for example Greens would eliminate the majority of various tax credits and benefits into one simple citizens' income and similarly would hugely simplify the number of taxes such as merging income tax with national insurance). But modern day government is complex and cannot be oversimplified so the need for a good number of ministers will remain.
I am now of the view that the Executive should be separate with the Prime Minister directly elected. He would then appoint his Ministers (who would not be able to sit in Parliament) and they would face confirmation hearings (in the US style). Parliament would also hold the right to require Ministers to attend Committee meetings to explain themselves.
This would enable legislators to get on with the job of scrutinising, creating law, holding government to account and representing their constituents. Meanwhile the Executive could focus on governing but with decent checks and balances in place. This is the kind of radical change our country needs.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/v/AcuUOO88TMk&hl=en&fs=1
In my first video blog entry I talk about why we can't expect real reform from the main three parties.
I recently received a very well put together pack from Vote Cruelty Free which asked me to pledge in support of a number of extremely sensible and desirable policies if I am elected to the European Parliament. You can read them in detail on their website.
So I signed their pledge and lo-and-behold I'm the first to have done so! So they very kindly press released it, I copy the text below. I'm currently being flooded with pledges and many are very good indeed. I particularly like to see ones where groups are working together to find a consensus position which politicians can then quickly move forward with once the elections are over.
Thank you and Vote Cruelty Free!
European election candidate to Vote Cruelty Free
Green Party South East region candidate, Cllr Jason Kitcat, has become the first person to pledge his support for Vote Cruelty Free, a new non-partisan coalition of animal protection organisations working to put animals on the political agenda.
The alliance has sent its manifesto to all candidates in the forthcoming European elections and asked them to show their support for the issues raised.
Cllr Kitcat said, “I am delighted to support the Vote Cruelty Free pledge. How we treat animals is a reflection of the state of our society. I believe that in this day and age we have a clear ethical duty to eliminate animal suffering wherever possible. This has always been a key Green policy and a strongly held personal view.”
Vote Cruelty Free comprises the BUAV, Compassion in World Farming, International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), League Against Cruel Sports and Respect for Animals. It covers a broad range of animal welfare issues including wild and marine animals, animal experimentation, cruel sports, the fur trade and farming.
Vote Cruelty Free is urging all candidates to pledge their support for the initiative. Voters can track candidates who have signed up by visiting the website at http://www.votecrueltyfree.org.
As the MP expenses row continues to engulf the media bubble, life for those outside the Westminster village goes on. And for many that remains really rather grim.
Climate change still needs to be urgently dealt with, as shown so vividly by the disappearance of a glacier in Bolivia. The main political parties continue to talk about the issue, offer vague policies but fail to push for the immediate action that is needed – in fact we’re going backwards in some cases, as with the tragic closure of the only wind turbine factory in the UK.
Equally appalling is the news that the country is more unequal that any time since modern records began in the early 60s. Sadly this does not surprise me at all based on my experiences in Brighton & Hove, but it is tragic that after so many people put their hopes in New Labour that they have been let down. I hope they recognise the failure was New Labour’s — not politicians or politics as a whole (though I could support arguments that opposition parties failed us in sufficiently scrutinising some Labour policies over the years).
Rather than dissect all the policies, I would just like to highlight that all these issues: expenses (snout in trough disease), climate change, social justice… they all highlight the urgent, desperate, vital need for there to be vibrant and active politics in this country. I dearly hope people are not turning off politics as we need them to vote for change more than ever before. Stephen Fry’s take on this in a BBC interview I think is rather helpful and incisive.
Great broadcast for this year's Euro elections
Also available on lovely new micro-site http://www.thinkagainvotegreen.org.uk
Resident concern over how communal bins have been implemented in our city continues. And so I continue to try to hold the Conservative administration to account on this issue.
I recently attended a Cabinet meeting to ask Cllr Geoffrey Theobald what he was going to do to stop the new model bins (without the foot pedals) making so much noise when being shut. I also wanted to find out if the council is using more or less fuel to collect waste since the changes were introduced. I submitted my questions in writing a full 15 days before the meeting. Nevertheless I still haven’t got an answer to the question on fuel use, nearly a month since I first asked it. In the clip you’ll see Cllr Theobald claim this is a very difficult bit of information to establish – which I find rather worrying, surely this kind of information should be easily on hand to manage CityClean’s budget.
It turns out that the ‘stopper’ being promised by CityClean to deal with the problems will have no effect on the noise of it slamming shut. The proposed alterations will just prevent the flap from hanging open by welding a bit of metal to the flap to restrict the width to which it can be opened. Cllr Theobald didn’t respond to my query as to the additional cost of this alteration.
Cllr Theobald claims to have apologised at previous council meetings but as you can see in my previous blog post I asked him to apologise but no apology was forthcoming.
Two other things to note in the video clip which the microphones don’t pick up well. One is that several Cabinet members were trying to say I couldn’t ask my supplementary question about whether there were plans to roll out more communal bins as they felt it wasn’t on the same subject as my original questions — which is just bizarre as my questions were all obviously about the bins.
Secondly I made a point of order at the end because at the January council meeting, Cllr Theobald claimed the waste strategy (a key document for the city promised since 2007) would be presented to that very Cabinet meeting, but it wasn’t there!
It has emerged that the strategy will come to Cllr Theobald’s cabinet member meeting this coming week, I’ve looked at the document and my first impression is that it’s very weak indeed. But regardless, if a Councillor tells the whole council that he will present a document to a specific Cabinet meeting and then doesn’t, isn’t that a cause for concern? I think so.
You can read my original written questions and the answers (or non-answers more like!) here. The minutes don’t yet reflect what, as you can see on the video, actually happened; I’m working on having that changed.
It was recently reported in The Argus (sadly not on their website it seems), and I have confirmed with council officers, that Hastings will be introducing communal bins but with communal recycling also. They have been looking at Brighton & Hove’s experiences and it’s interesting that they are doing exactly what I have suggested. If there must be communal bins at least put recycling on a level footing with waste disposal, otherwise recyclables will get just chucked away in the big bins.
Problems with the bins continue to make the news including a video on The Argus website and front page of the Brighton & Hove Leader (with a picture of yours truly) which was an unexpected shock when picking up the morning post!
My previous posts on communal bins, in chronological order:
Jason Kitcat 