Supermarkets must not be allowed to continue their anti-social behaviour

by Natalie Bennett

In a letter in the Ham & High of May 2, 2013, Mr Uys (Drivers faced with trolley jam) expresses eloquently the frustration of  Highgate High Street residents, workers and visitors with the thoroughly anti-social behaviour of the Tesco store there, but the problem is much wider than this one store.
Camden Green Party members talk regularly to residents near Tesco and Sainsbury stores in Kentish Town High Street, Fortess Road and Swain’s Lane, among others, who are plagued by trolleys blocking pavements, HGVs blocking roads, and noisy unloading at all hours of the day and night.
These supermarket chains are simply anti-social and abusive of the power of their size, and are being allowed to get away with behaviour that advantages them against their independent competitors – stores that are of far greater benefit to their local communities and provide far more jobs and business opportunities for suppliers.
Independent stores typically get deliveries by small vans, from a range of independent wholesalers and food manufacturers, and they have storerooms in which stock is held (on which they pay business rates).
By contrast the chains stock the stores straight from HGVs three or four times a day, using the public space of the pavement, and road, without any respect for the rights and needs of others.
When Camden Green Party had a pop-up shop in Fortess Road, the Sainsbury’s Local opposite regularly littered the highway with traffic cones, blocking off an HGV-sized space outside their store. They have no right to do that – only the arrogance of size and sense of entitlement that has infected far too many of our large companies, as demonstrated also by the way they continue to squeeze down staff wages, enforce casualisation on unwilling workers and employ unconsciounable zero-hours contracts.
The Green Party seeks on a national level to ensure that supermarkets pay the true social cost of their way of conducting business, or make major changes. On a local level, our councillors seek to ensure that noise abatement cases are brought by local authorities to address the nuisance that occurs.

Strong support for University of London cleaners’ “3 Cosas” campaign

by Natalie Bennett

There was an excellent turnout and a bouyant mood yesterday at a rally for the University of London cleaners who are campaigning for holiday and sick pay and pensions – following their victory last year in winnning the living wage.

Students, academics and fellow workers were backing the cleaners – as were representatives from the University of Sussex occupation, who made the link between privatisation and poor working conditions. Privatisation needs to be resisted, and the fact that organisations can’t wipe their hands of responsibility for workers’ conditions by outsourcing them were highlighted.

I tweeted about my support for the campaign – and one response was “haven’t they already got sick and holiday pay and pensions?” – well exactly!

I spoke briefly at the rally as it marched around Senate House – incidentally as we stopped opposite the Briitish Museum back entrance. Chinese tourists there were taking photos – I don’t know what they made of it all!

You can show your support on Facebook and follow the campaign on Twitter.

And there are lots of excellent pictures from yesterday here and here.

Highgate Library faces threat to its survival – Labour has no answers

By Cllr Maya de Souza

The recent outcry about plans to slash funding for Highgate Library, reflects the current administration’s lack of openness and transparency about its plans for our libraries.

In mid-2011, a decision was made to radically reform our library provision, taking three libraries out of direct council control and giving them to communities to fund.

Two other libraries, Highgate and Regent’s Park, were also subject to change: the former to lose over 60% of its funding, and the latter to be closed and for a homework club-type arrangement to be set up instead.

I immediately raised questions about the cuts, pointing out that it seemed that if no alternative funds were found for Highgate Library, it was at risk of closure. It was not possible to see how a library already running on a shoe-string could struggle on with such severe cuts – if it did, it could not have anything like the same level of service.

And there was no evidence at all that any of the possible schemes and sources of funding mentioned by officers and Cabinet Members would come to fruition at all.

When Alexis Rowell, our Green candidate, pointed out in by-election material – leading up to the narrow election of Labour councillor Sally Gimson, that Highgate Library was clearly still at risk, Labour denied this strongly. They said that the library was not at risk and that it would stay open.

However, this June – nine months later – the Council held a public meeting led by Cllr Leach where it was stated that almost 75% of funds would be lost and admitted that they had no thought-out plans for ensuring sufficient funding for the library come April 2013 – now only about nine months away.

Cllr Leach admitted that the current funding level involves running a library on a shoestring. Clearly without 75% of its funds the library is at risk!

Residents have now put forward a proposal for a community-led steering group to explore options and guide the council as to the library’s future, and they have asked for the funding cuts to be put on hold until after a solution has been found.

Highgate Greens and I are pushing for funding cuts to be reduced, and in any event put on hold pending a solution.

We will be seeking to ensure that we do not lose this invaluable community resource. We think the library needs to be made even better, NOT starved of funding.

The sums involved are manageable, considering that Camden has cut its budget faster than is necessary.

Camden’s traffic wardens deserve a fair wage

by Natalie Bennett

Defending traffic wardens, speaking up for them, is not always going to be a popular cause, but I’m proud that’s what Camden Green Party has been doing lately, including through letters to the local papers. Yesterday I was pleased to be able to speak at a Unison rally for them at the Town Hall marking the fact that they are now in the middle of a second strike for decent wages.

They’re currently receiving £8.09/hour for a 42.5-hour week – not even the London Living Wage – and certainly not enough for a tough, physical, stressful job in the midst of high-cost central London.

Inevitably, their role has been outsourced (by a Labour council some years ago), and they are employed by NSL (formerly part of NCP), a corporate giant that Unison reports is taking a fee of about £6 for each hour of work from the attendants (remember they’re getting just £8 for the same hour – although their compatriots in Waltham Forest are already getting £10/hour – what the Camden workers are demanding).

The long-term solution is clearly to bring these roles back “in-house” at the council – parking attendants are enforcing our democratically agreed rules for the good of all of us and should be subject to proper democratic oversight – but the contract has three years to run, and until that point, Camden council should be doing everything possible to get their contractor to pay a decent wage.

Here’s a video of what I said yesterday.

More videos from the rally can be found here.

Hiroshima Day commemoration in Tavistock Square

By Natalie Bennett

Yesterday, as every year on August 6, Tavistock Square became a solemn place, a sad place, but also a place of resolution, as London CND held its annual Hiroshima Day commemoration.

The resolve was to continue to fight against these hideous weapons, particularly against Britain’s nuclear weapons.

The high turnout, certainly the biggest I have seen, perhaps in part reflected the fact that the is a feeling that austerity, with all of its social horrors, might at least hold out new hopes of UK disarmament.

When even very traditionalist defence experts are calling for Britain to abandon nuclear weapons, if only on cost grounds, the political ground is certainly shifting.

There were two participants who held more memories than most people present.

The veteran peace campaigner Hetty Bower, aged 106, pictured in the crowd right, said: “We have got to grow up and stop killing each other.”

MP Tony Benn said nuclear weapons are no use, we can’t afford them, and they not really independent of US. “We must get rid of them.”

 

Green MEP Jean Lambert,  pictured right, highlighted the almost casual acceptance of India’s nuclear weapons (with real politic proponents saying “we need a bulwark against China), contrasting it with the view of Pakistan.

She said that existing weapons states need to break the stalemate on non-proliferation. It was time we put down bombs and worked for peace, she said.

Frack-Off, an innovative, exciting group to work with

by Natalie Bennett

We had at our members’ meeting this week a great speaker from Frack-Off, the fast-growing campaign against “extreme energy”. They’re best-known for their work, as the name suggests, against fracking – yes that strange and destructive method of shale gas extraction that caused an earthquake in Blackpool, but also covering a whole range of other, possibly even worse, technologies, ranging from coal-bed methane and underground coal gasification (effectively setting fire to coal underground) -  and also including tar sands, mountain top removal and deep water drilling (of the type for which the UK has just provided a $1bn line-of-credit to the Brazilian state oil company).

This map shows the sites where activity is under way or with licences likely to be let  in the UK, but a map supplied on the night shows how a majority of the UK is under threat (the “under review” areas are where licences are being considered) ….

(Map by Paul Mobbs)

We did an interesting, if depressing, exercise, trying to rank the most significant negative impacts of fracking. These ranged from climate change to methane, heavy metals and other contaminants in underground water, to the industrialisation of the countryside and an average of 30,000 lorry movements for each well.

There is, however, a strong fightback going on, with Frack-Off providing help and support to strong local groups – and some of those who have been fighting back are now on trial (Follow #frackingontrial  on Twitter for the latest on that.) It’s pleasing to know that Caroline Lucas has made representations to the trial, saying non-violent protest should not be criminalised.

How environmental behavioural changes affect women and men differently

by Natalie Bennett

At the Green Party women’s day in Cambridge yesterday, we heard a very interesting talk from Ro Randall, developer of the Carbon Conversations project, on “Feminism and the politics of pro-environmental behaviour change”.

She noted that there was a huge emphasis from government now on programmes to encourage behaviour change. “This is something to be quite cautious about. It removes attention from politics to personal situations.”

And speaking as a psychotherapist, she said the theories behind the government’s actions saw people in a rather mechanical way, and had a simplistic sense of behaviour change.

Participants at the Green Party women’s day in Cambridge (outside the lovely Trumptington Pavilion where the event was held)

Ro said the the average carbon emissions for each Briton are about 12 tonnes, while sustainability demanded 1.5-2 tonnes – the basis of the aim of an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050. (In the US and Australia the individual average is around 24 tonnes, in India 1 tonne, Tanzania mayb e 100kg.) Acting individually, a single Briton was unlikely to get below 6 tonnes. “The rest has to come through decarbonisation of our energy supply.”