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A new way of taking on the Murdoch empire
I’ve launched a new ‘campaign’ to double-down on the consumer boycott of Murdoch papers that many of us have been participating in ever since Wapping. I am suggesting that it isn’t enough to not buy Murdoch’s media-products. We need also, those of us to whom this is relevant, to not buy into them: i.e. we need to stop being sources for them… I’ve made this gambit initially by myself. I hope others will come on board with me. Some already have; but many more will be needed if this campaign is to win. And it’s a hard ask. Writers are afraid of being black-listed. Activists are afraid of losing even…
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Another Brexit is possible
With the Tory landslide, Brexit is bound to finally happen. Therefore what matters is making it as good, or as least bad as possible. The argument is finally settled; it will be pretty pointless to recriminate, completely pointless to try to pretend we can still Remain in the EU and (for the foreseeable future) both dangerous and pointless to fantasise about rejoining it. We need to get used to the UK ‘going its own way’ for a long time to come. This will, for a while, probably be very bad… See here and here if you need convincing on why. What this hard-Brexit hard-Right government will do is seek to…
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We must adapt to climate decline
There is no use in hiding from the bitter truth. As I’ll explain, the decisive Conservative victory means the Green Party must reassess its demands and aspirations, and make significant changes in the face of our new, darker post-election reality. Greens moved forward powerfully at this election, more by some measures than any other party did, especially in our target seats, and also elsewhere. Well done us, well done everyone for their hard work and devotion. And yet we made no gains. And we are still quite far from an actual second MP. Looking more widely, the bottom line is, of course, that we will in overwhelming likelihood have to…
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XR UK: Telling the truth through targeted disruption
It is important to re-state the truth: Our very survival as a species may now be under threat. A mass of other species have already been committed to extinction. That’s why we are in rebellion. The sixth mass extinction and climate breakdown are happening right now. The truth is that everything is not going to be OK. Even if destruction of ecosystems stopped tomorrow and greenhouse gas emissions peaked, we will still experience the consequences for a long time. People sometimes say we are hurtling toward a cliff edge, but the truth is that we’ve already breached planetary limits. We are already in the unsafe zone of the Earth-system. There…
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Sanders' Green New Deal: A Realistic Response to the Emergency That Will Define Our Lifetimes
On November 14th, the New York Times published an article which discussed the Green New Deal as proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders, claiming to speak for ‘experts,’ and framing the article around what readers were led to believe were authoritative opinions. As Common Dreams reported, the Times – without input from a single climate scientist or relevant academic – instead based their article on opinions from “an adviser to South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a business professor and maxed-out Hillary Clinton donor, and a Democratic strategist who does public relations work for the chemical industry.” This assembled cast took a predictably dim view of Sanders’ massive, dual-purpose environmental and…
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One useful thing parliament could do NOW to protect us from a Trumpian trade deal
It often feels like the media have given us wall-to-wall coverage of every single aspect of Brexit. But there is a key issue which has hardly been mentioned: the Trade Bill. The Trade Bill governs arrangements for future trade deals: with the EU, USA, Japan, India, or wherever. The next big argument after Brexit itself will be around the Government’s efforts to get a trade deal with Donald Trump. Whatever is in the law on trade agreements at that point is going to be crucial. If Prorogation had gone ahead, the Trade Bill would just have been dropped. But the Supreme Court judgement opens up the possibility of continuing with…
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Time for a government of national unity — and for citizens assemblies!
The Supreme Court’s definitive demolition of the PM’s illegal prorogation of Parliament means that Parliament will now return with immediate effect. If Boris Johnson does not do the decent thing and resign with immediate effect, then it is likely that Parliament, whose sovereignty the Supreme Court have affirmed, will look for a way of getting rid of him. There is a clear Parliamentary majority against him now that he has kicked 21 Conservative MPs out of the Party, a majority against him that will surely now look to find a way of working together to create a caretaker government that can find a way forward. Probably more Conservative (or ex-Conservative?)…
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Britain’s democratic structures are broken: Citizens Assemblies could fix them — and more.
Boris Johnson’s planned suspension of parliament has highlighted just how fragile and unfit for purpose Britain’s ‘democratic’ structures are. The decision to prorogue parliament for 5 weeks – the longest prorogation since 1945 – is a transparent attempt to block parliamentary scrutiny of the Conservative leadership’s Brexit plans or lack thereof. The fact that some of their media defenders have tried to paint this as in anyway normal is laughably absurd. This is an abuse of a parliamentary instrument that by convention has been used only for short breaks preceding a Queens Speech. Politicians, the public, and much of the commentariat are rightly outraged by this cynical exploit. But while…
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A memo to Extinction rebels: on the need for truth-telling and its possible needful consequences
Telling the truth Extinction Rebellion’s (XR’s) first demand is for the Government to tell the whole truth about the gravity of the climate and ecological emergency. The time is now because everything is not going to magically sort itself out, everything is not going to be ok. What we are currently witnessing is climate spiralling out of our reach while ecosystems are already thoroughly degraded with the sixth extinction crisis under way. Climate disasters are coming, inevitably, and the climate situation will worsen for at least a generation, probably far longer, whatever we do. This is because of the time-lags built into the system: CO2 stays in the atmosphere for…
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What is actually wrong with WTO rules?: Why they are significantly worse than the EU
For the first time in 40 years, the UK has to re-consider its trading policy. At the moment, there is plenty of talk about “falling back” onto World Trading Organisation (WTO) rules in the event of a no-deal Brexit, an outcome which Theresa May’s giant game of ‘chicken’ makes dangerously likely. And indeed, if this is what happens, the UK will find itself solely under the minimalist rules-based trading system of the WTO. As this remains the legal default position, in the event of a no-deal Brexit we will find ourselves in a position in which tariff-free trade between the UK and the EU ceases and the agreements held in…
