Preserved for the Rich

When a newspaper like The Times has a headline like “Ticket price rises make rail travel ‘preserve of the rich‘” it really says something. The government’s claim to want to do something productive in the wake of the Stern report is completely undermined by the fact that it is now so expensive to travel more greenly.

Just one statistic that illustrates how inefficient privatisation has been is the amount of subsidy rail is receiving. In the past year, the government paid out 6bn in subsidies. That is four times more than British Rail recieved and we have to remember to factor in the increased price of tickets too! Service quality has, at best, only improved marginally since then. In the past week it has also been announced that Network Rail has made its first profits – joy for its shareholders.

Only in London, under the GLA and Ken Livingstone’s control, is public transport showing any signs of improvement. I am sure this is, in no small part, due to our two Green london Assembly Members who work tirelessly to scrutinise Ken’s plans to ensure they are sustainable.

Green Party Policy on Ticketing and Fares on Public Transport

TR220 The most appropriate local authority in any area should be responsible for ensuring that ticketing is made as simple and comprehensive as possible. This should include:

a)Through tickets available to cover all public transport modes.

b)Daily and weekly passes available for all journeys.

c)Comprehensive travel cards, including ‘transport smartcards’, available at all points of the journey.

d)Both single and return tickets available for all journeys.

e)Monthly and annual passes affording significant discounts.

For rail tickets, as a transitionary measure, this should be done by a new rail regulation board.

There should be a National Railcard available to all and offering discounts on rail fares.

TR221 Tickets need to be made available at as wide a range of outlets as possible, e.g. public transport stops, transport centres and local shops, and need to be available for sale at all times that the transport systems are operating.

TR222 Fare structures for all public transport should be simplified and properly co-ordinated, with the aim of introducing one standard fare for any given service, but including options of discounted fares for off peak journeys and for those with low or no incomes, including pensioners and children. Single fares should not be penalised at the expense of return journeys, and tickets bought at the time of travel should not be unduly penalised compared to those bought in advance, to ensure that the flexibility of public transport use is promoted. Fares on routes that offer the same journey (whether by a different company or on a different route to the same terminating point) must not differ to penalise some users to the benefit of others.

TR223 Fares must be set so that there is a sufficient price advantage between them and private motorised transport to attract many users away from these modes, but must take into account the environmental costs that public transport does create. This will involve reducing fares initially to make public transport attractive, but then working out a system that allows for the fare to cover the pollution costs that all public transport does create. Fares could then be expected to increase accordingly, but only as a price advantage is kept between them and private motorised transport, to ensure users are not attracted back to these modes.

Malachi Ritscher: A tragic protest

Malachi Ritscher took the desperate and tragic step of burning himself alive in Chicago during the morning rush hour to protest against the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. This has been completely ignored by mainstream media. Here is his suicide note, I will not comment about it, I am simply posting it here (from Another Green World):

“My actions should be self-explanatory, and since in our self-obsessed culture words seldom match the deed, writing a mission statement would seem questionable. So judge me by my actions. Maybe some will be scared enough to wake from their walking dream state – am I therefore a martyr or terrorist? I would prefer to be thought of as a ’spiritual warrior’. Our so-called leaders are the real terrorists in the world today, responsible for more deaths than Osama bin Laden.

I have had a wonderful life, both full and full of wonder. I have experienced love and the joy and heartache of raising a child. I have jumped out of an airplane, and escaped a burning building. I have spent the night in jail, and dropped acid during the sixties. I have been privileged to have met many supremely talented musicians and writers, most of whom were extremely generous and gracious. Even during the hard times, I felt charmed. Even the difficult lessons have been like blessed gifts. When I hear about our young men and women who are sent off to war in the name of God and Country, and who give up their lives for no rational cause at all, my heart is crushed. What has happened to my country? we have become worse than the imagined enemy – killing civilians and calling it ‘collateral damage’, torturing and trampling human rights inside and outside our own borders, violating our own Constitution whenever it seems convenient, lying and stealing right and left, more concerned with sports on television and ring-tones on cell-phones than the future of the world…. half the population is taking medication because they cannot face the daily stress of living in the richest nation in the world.

I too love God and Country, and feel called upon to serve. I can only hope my sacrifice is worth more than those brave lives thrown away when we attacked an Arab nation under the deception of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. Our interference completely destroyed that country, and destabilized the entire region. Everyone who pays taxes has blood on their hands.

I have had one previous opportunity to serve my country in a meaningful way – at 8:05 one morning in 2002 I passed Donald Rumsfeld on Delaware Avenue and I was acutely aware that slashing his throat would spare the lives of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people. I had a knife clenched in my hand, and there were no bodyguards visible; to my deep shame I hesitated, and the moment was past.

The violent turmoil initiated by the United States military invasion of Iraq will beget future centuries of slaughter, if the human race lasts that long. First we spit on the United Nations, then we expect them to clean up our mess. Our elected representatives are supposed to find diplomatic and benevolent solutions to these situations. Anyone can lash out and retaliate, that is not leadership or vision. Where is the wisdom and honor of the people we delegate our trust to?

To the rest of the world we are cowards – demanding Iraq to disarm, and after they comply, we attack with remote-control high-tech video-game weapons. And then lie about our reasons for invading. We the people bear complete responsibility for all that will follow, and it won’t be pretty.

It is strange that most if not all of this destruction is instigated by people who claim to believe in God, or Allah. Many sane people turn away from religion, faced with the insanity of the ‘true believers’. There is a lot of confusion: many people think that God is like Santa Claus, rewarding good little girls with presents and punishing bad little boys with lumps of coal; actually God functions more like the Easter Bunny, hiding surprises in plain sight. God does not choose the Lottery numbers, God does not make the weather, God does not endorse military actions by the self-righteous, God does not sit on a cloud listening to your prayers for prosperity. God does not smite anybody. If God watches the sparrow fall, you notice that it continues to drop, even to its death. Face the truth folks, God doesn’t care, that’s not what God is or does. If the human race drives itself to extinction, God will be there for another couple million years, ‘watching’ as a new species rises and falls to replace us. It is time to let go of primitive and magical beliefs, and enter the age of personal responsibility. Not telling others what is right for them, but making our own choices, and accepting consequences.

“Who would Jesus bomb?” This question is primarily addressing a Christian audience, but the same issues face the Muslims and the Jews: God’s message is tolerance and love, not self-righteousness and hatred. Please consider “Thou shalt not kill” and “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”. Not a lot of ambiguity there.

What is God? God is the force of life – the spark of creation. We each carry it within us, we share it with each other. Whether we are conscious of the life-force is a choice we make, every minute of every day. If you choose to ignore it, nothing will happen – you are just ‘less conscious’. Maybe you are less happy (maybe not). Maybe you grow able to tap into the universal force, and increase the creativity in the universe. Love is anti-entropy. Please notice that ‘conscious’ and ‘conscience’ are related concepts.

Why God – what is the value? Whether committee consensus of a benevolent power that works through humans, or giant fungus under Oregon, the value of opening up to the concept of God is in coming to the realization that we are not alone, establishing a connection to the universe, the experience of finding completion. As individuals we may exist alone, but we are all alone together as a people. Faith is the answer to fear. Fear opposes love. To manipulate through fear is a betrayal of trust.

What does God want? No big mystery – simply that we try to help each other. We decide to make God-like decisions, rescuing falling sparrows, or putting the poor things out of their misery. Tolerance, giving, acceptance, forgiveness.

If this sounds a lot like pop psychology, that is my exact goal. Never underestimate the value of a pep-talk and a pat on the ass. That is basically all we give to our brave soldiers heading over to Iraq, and more than they receive when they return. I want to state these ideas in their simplest form, reducing all complexity, because each of us has to find our own answers anyway. Start from here…

I am amazed how many people think they know me, even people who I have never talked with. Many people will think that I should not be able to choose the time and manner of my own death. My position is that I only get one death, I want it to be a good one. Wouldn’t it be better to stand for something or make a statement, rather than a fiery collision with some drunk driver? Are not smokers choosing death by lung cancer? Where is the dignity there? Are not the people the people who disregard the environment killing themselves and future generations? Here is the statement I want to make: if I am required to pay for your barbaric war, I choose not to live in your world. I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent civilians, who did nothing to threaten our country. I will not participate in your charade – my conscience will not allow me to be a part of your crusade. There might be some who say “it’s a coward’s way out” – that opinion is so idiotic that it requires no response. From my point of view, I am opening a new door.

What is one more life thrown away in this sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my country. I was alive when John F. Kennedy instilled hope into a generation, and I was a sorry witness to the final crushing of hope by Dick Cheney’s puppet, himself a pawn of the real rulers, the financial plunderers and looters who profit from every calamity; following the template of Reagan’s idiocracy.

The upcoming elections are not a solution – our two party system is a failure of democracy. Our government has lost its way since our founders tried to build a structure which allowed people to practice their own beliefs, as far as it did not negatively affect others. In this regard, the separation of church and state needs to be reviewed. This is a large part of the way that the world has gone wrong, the endless defining and dividing of things, micro-sub-categorization, sectarianism. The direction we need is a process of unification, integrating all people into a world body, respecting each individual. Business and industry have more power than ever before, and individuals have less. Clearly, the function of government is to protect the individual, from hardship and disease, from zealots, from the exploitation, from monopoly, even from itself. Our leaders are not wise persons with integrity and vision – they are actors reading from teleprompters, whose highest goal is to stir up the mob. Our country slaughters Arabs, abandons New Orleaneans, and ignores the dieing environment. Our economy is a house of cards, as hollow and fragile as our reputation around the world. We as a nation face the abyss of our own design.

A coalition system which includes a Green Party would be an obvious better approach than our winner-take-all system. Direct electronic debate and balloting would be an improvement over our non-representative congress. Consider that the French people actually have a voice, because they are willing to riot when the government doesn’t listen to them.

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government… ” – Abraham Lincoln

With regard to those few who crossed my path carrying the extreme and unnecessary weight of animosity: they seemed by their efforts to be punishing themselves. As they acted out the misery of their lives it is now difficult to feel anything other than pity for them.

Without fear I go now to God – your future is what you will choose today.”

Obituary written by himself found here.

Another Interesting Election

Ecuador, another state in South America currently making the decision about its future direction: to become a banana republic (believe it or not the right wing candidate is a banana magnate!) or a socialist republic; to accept or reject neo-liberal economics. Yep, the second round of the presidential election is happening today with the businessman Noboa standing against Correa, a former finance minister who is challenging neo-liberal policies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6184854.stm

http://www.socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/news/equador01.htm (Re: the first round)

Alvaro Noboa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81lvaro_Noboa

Rafael Correa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Correa

NGN

I seem to have caught onto this quite late but I have to give a brief mention of the New Generation Network and its new manifesto on Race and Faith. At first looks it appears to be a good synthesis of a few important ideas about society and the nature of debate. There is also a good discussion at the end of it from quite a varied group of people!

It is a shame that it implicity supports faith schools with the statement: “We would like a debate on what initiatives can be taken to enable faith schools to foster community cohesion.” Although I could accept that it might just be pragmatism, I hope that the authors don’t believe that faith schools are really a good idea when it comes to schooling.

As usual, the discussion about islam and homosexuality (see the comments bit) is also an interesting one…

Sell out

Interesting post about ‘Health Tescopolism‘ at Green the Health Service. How are people supposed to have confidence in their GPs when they are just employees of faceless corporations interested, not in improving peoples’ wellbeing, but in making a quick buck? In the end, it will mean that those in charge of our health surgeries are not concerned about how well they perform for society, but instead about how well they perform for their shareholders. The old small-business model, with all its faults, at least links the practice owner/manager to the patients on a regular basis instilling a greater sense of social responsibility and accountabilty.

Relevant Green Party Policy:

H336 The creation of NHS Trusts erased the democratic accountability of local NHS services. The rights of those who work in the NHS, especially to participate in its development and improvement, were widely undermined. Market forces cannot allocate healthcare fairly, nor even efficiently. The internal market has wasted badly needed resources on administration, and reduced the efficiency and morale of the whole system. The internal market opens the long term possibility of further privatisation of the NHS. The internal market should be wound up and replaced with clear financial and service accountability of decentralised service units to regional assemblies within a single corporate whole.

and

H332 Health spending in the UK has fallen well below the European average. It is recognised that this is in part due to the efficiencies of a large-scale, national, public service paid for by taxation. However, the NHS has been under-funded for many years and the Green Party believes it requires a sustained increase in resources. The party will continue to support the principle that the NHS is a national service, free at the point of entry and fully funded by taxation.

H333 An NHS Tax, earmarked to increase direct funding of the NHS, shall be introduced as part of general income and other taxation. We believe this will have wide support.

H334 The Green Party seeks to devolve more decision-making to local level, and widen local tax-raising powers. As those proceed, local choice and accountability will be increased by part of the NHS Tax being raised by Local Government for NHS provision for the local area.

H335 Health Service spending will be reviewed regularly, with a view to increasing the resources invested in health promotion, illness prevention, community care and community development, relative to spending on curative interventions.

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Also, a truly odd and quite twisted article on CiF by Mick Hucknall supporting copyright on the grounds that is radical and redistributive (!?!?). I don’t know what more to say really: read it.

Derek Wall: New Male Principal Speaker

The results for the postal ballot to decide upon the Male Principal Speaker of the Green Party are finally out and Derek Wall (who blogs at Another Green World) has won the election. This adds to the recent election of Sian Berry as female principal speaker meaning that we have a completely new team of speakers. I am sure that both will make excellent speakers and get the party’s message to even more people up and down the country. I am pleased to see that it was a close vote for the Male PS position- it shows how high the calibre of the other two candidates was in this election.  Well done to both Derek and Sian!

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All of this has got me to think about the issue of leadership. The Green Party (for those who don’t know) does not have a leader. Instead it elects two principal speakers (one male and one female) who are non-voting members of the executive committee (GPEx). This ensures that too much power is not concentrated in a single person’s hands.  Whilst I can see the possible advantage of having a single speaker in order to make it more attractive for the media, and perhaps even going so far as calling the speaker a ‘leader’, I am very against any suggestion that such a ‘leader’ should have any additional powers and I strongly believe that s/he should remain a non-voting member of GPEx. Two change that would be to alter something which I value very much in the party: our egalitarian nature and the open nature of discussion and debate within the party. It would be a massive shame to lose that.

Oooh the excitement. This blog is apparently the 8th best Green blog out there. Well done to Jim for completing the list, which must have taken many hours of hard work with 100 blogs to be ranked. Alas, I shall have to move on from the excitement and return to blogging as usual.

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Several things have caught my attention on the blogosphere lately. Firstly, a really interesting post at Earthquake Cove. I will have to do a post on a few policies which I think require a radical rethink. I suppose it is something which any party which comes up with radical policies needs to be aware of – just because a policy is radical does not mean it will work! Was particularly interested in the policy banning dissection of animal parts as this was something I had read before and had found more than a little inconsistent for a party which is not proposing to ban carnivorism.

Also interesting was this post  in ‘the void’. I had no idea that Sanders had been up to no good! I have to say I felt disappointed, despite not being particularly surprised.

For an interesting health related issue, Stuart Jeffery’s blog throws out this post which is really about business as usual in New Labour. More of the same, more back-door influence from private companies. This government has truly lost all of the little faith people had. It has eroded trust away to such an extent where it really feels futile to even comment about it anymore! Sleaze is the norm rather than the exception.

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Bussing London.

London’s bus service, unlike the services in almost every other area of the UK, is going through a massive boom at the moment. This is mostly due to the namby pamby, protectionist policies of Ken Livingstone. It is truly disgusting how people are *leaving their cars* as they are finding a suitable alternative. What will we do? – nobody wants streets without cars and full of people walking to the nearest bus stop. People walking, on the street, is far too social an activity for the modern world. It is a slippery slope: next thing you know people might start *talking*. If they talk, they might discuss *issues*. What kind of a world would it be if people discussed issues???

I think I saw a bat outside.

I spent my first ever night on call last night. This meant I got about an hour of rest in 28-ish hours. The hospital was deadly quiet except for two key areas, the A&E and the MAU (Medical Admissions Unit, where all the patients to be admitted are sent after they have left A&E, ideally within the 4 hour target for waiting). It was definately a great experience, and a chance to get to speak to a number of patients I wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise. Reading up about Heparin and having teaching on X-Rays and ECGs at 2am was… different!

Presenting patients to the cousultant when that tired was an interesting experience – never had to do anything resembling logical thinking while that tired before!  I can’t help thinking what a priveledge it is to speak to patients during what is, in essence, a major life experience and then watch them being assisted on the road to recovery. (This is true about my whole experience of clinical medicine so far, but even more true when you get to see the patients at the moment they enter hospital.

I discovered an interesting blog after I woke up from my post-’on call’ slumber. the void is well worth a read and good fun too!

Climate Denial

An interesting blog to read at http://climatedenial.org. I guess the latest post just reiterates (as has been done time and time again) why capitalism cannot be made to be sustainable. A central tenet of the capitalist system is consumption regardless of social and environmental cost.

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The attorney general has now come out against 90 day detention for people suspected of terrorism. Even he thinks there isn’t enough evidence for using this approach! How can Blair and Co. still keep insisting on it?!

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Busy Busy Busy. So much work to do, I don’t all that much time to write decent posts. I am hoping to do a series of posts on HIV/AIDS for December 1st (World AIDS day). I’m planning on writing a bit more on healthcare issues here, given that I have some direct experience in that area! Went leafletting for Sian Berry’s campaign to get elected as a councillor yesterday. An ex-labour councillor is supporting the Greens which is fantastic news – each and every good elected green voice is good news for the local community it is elected from as well as nationally.

My mind has been a bit devoid of interesting things to blog about recently, so generally I havn’t blogged.

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Ballot papers are out for the male principal speaker race. Lots of interesting posts and comments at JimJay’s Blog and at Earthquake Cove. I think the outcome of the vote could be interesting, but I guess it is important to remember that the principal speaker is a non-voting member of the executive and so, unlike the leaders that other political parties have has very very limited power. A great mechanism for ensuring that people are not corrupted by power.

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Tomorrow I shall be going to Kentish Town to help with Sian Berry’s campaign to be elected as a councillor in that ward. Her being elected would put a third Green voice in Camden Council, which would be great news for the people of Camden as well as for Londoners in general. Hopefully I’ll be able to help out once more between now and the election on December 7th. It is a good campaign focussing on local issues with the aim of making Camden better for all.

Another important feature of campaigning like this is that it increases awareness of the party and gives people the opportunity to become interested.  Hopefully people will be convinced to think Green as well as vote Green.

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I have been following John McDonnell’s campaign to be elected as the next leader of the Labour Party with interest. At the very least, I hope it will show that there are a large number of people who have been completely disenchanted by Tony Blair’s leadership of that party. It feels like a last ditch attempt to reclaim Labour by the activists of the left. I wish it every success, even though I feel that the Green Party is now the true home for progressives within the UK – we have the most wholesome policy, aimed at a truly sustainable society.