Getting Blearsey-Eyed
Dear Editor,
I am a comparatively new member of the Green Party and I would like my vote in local elections to reflect my concern with green issues.
Mrs Hazel Blears, Minister for Communities, regularly appears on TV and ticks me off for failing to turn out on the day, but every time I start to enthuse about local government, Mrs Blears makes it more difficult for my voice to be heard.
I should like to have some say in the enlargement of airports and the siting of nuclear plants. But now there is a law which effectively silences any local reaction.
I should like to protest about the burial of nuclear waste but Mrs Blears is offering inducements to local authorities to provide sites for nuclear waste.
I wrote to Mrs Blears recently to explain why I feel stifled. It has not been acknowledged and now Mrs Blears has gone on her holidays until the autumn, I do not expect to get a reply.
I think it might help if other Green Party members could write to Mrs Blears in similar terms and let her know why only 40% of electors vote locally.
John Gordon
North Yorkshire
Meat Comes First
Dear Editor
I would like to respond to the letter from Councillor Rupert Read of Norwich in Green World 61.
He complains that Tony Wardle of the vegan charity Viva! belittles the contribution made by aircraft to global overheating. Mr. Wardle gives 3% of total warming as the proportion caused by aircraft which, I feel, going on what I have learned, is a realistic estimate.
The fact is, I think, that Mr. Wardle is using the aircraft figures which, of course, he must know are unacceptable, to emphasise the even greater danger of methane from livestock. The danger from methane is greater because methane is 23 times more damaging to the environment than CO2.
To illustrate the true nature and proportion of the damage from animals it should be known that around the world 52 billion farmed animals are slaughtered each year, emitting 2 billion tons of methane which equals forty-six billion tons of CO2.
The following figures should help illustrate the danger from cattle/animal farming:
1. 170,000 Km2 of rainforest is destroyed each year to feed cattle.
2. Rainforest depletion world-wide equals 50 football pitches per minute.
3. At the peak of the Ethiopian famine in 1984 when "Band Aid" was doing its work the country was growing and expanding linseed cake, cotton cake and rapeseed meal to feed European livestock.
4. 90% of agricultural land in the UK is used to grow cattle food.
Philip Hodgetts
London
Education: Outside or In?
The Green World editor placed the headline "Do Schools Need Environmental Education?" at the head of Sue Fenoughty's article, which is perhaps a bit unfortunate, given that the article clearly calls out for more environmental education in schools. Seeing that Rachel Fryer's article, printed alongside, is a bit light on environmental education, perhaps just taking it for granted as a kind of norm, then surely we have to answer Sue with, "Of course they do." Whether we quite accept the National Association for Environmental Education (NAEE)'s recipe for this is another matter.
However, let's start with the positive bits. I have heard Comenius cited before now in Green Party circles. Neither is it just him, but others, too, have maintained that you learn by doing something much more thoroughly than if you merely hear about it. Learning comes about through doing, as they say. Maybe, though, the reference in Issue (3) to the "Heart" bit to caring attitudes might be put more strongly that heart-warmed feeling should come into all school work. And as for the hands, though this implies practical work, which is welcome, this implies a concentration and force of the will, an aspect of education which is too little credited as a reality.
Certainly, I agree that the Government has altered the thrust of environmental education to that of sustainable development, in line with its hopes that the economy can be held on track and that though this country has to do its part in curbing carbon and emissions and to reduce demands on the natural environment, in common with other industrial nations, we can somehow manage to get away with this without damaging our nation's wealth or standard of living. I doubt it. I think that all of us in the Green Party think we have to work at environmentalism much harder.
Where I disagree with NAEE is that by taking children out of the classroom to do projects, this will do much to influence their attitudes - marginally, perhaps, but not much. I don't really think that citing the limitations imposed by Health and Safety for outings is a significant factor at all.
What really matters in my view is the inner attitude and daily manner of the adults, teachers included, in the daily lives of children - of all ages. Children will soon pick up on what has to be done if we lead by example, not by talking about it but by altering our lifestyle.
There is little to be gained by environmental education if we take our children by air on a holiday, using a car instead of walking or cycling, eating more than we need, buying more than is necessary - and so on. Personally, in my private life I am economical in all such areas, and look to ways to reduce my carbon footprint and impact on the natural environment. If we ourselves are green, then our children will get the message.
The thing about the curriculum is really that it should be relative to children's actual stage of development. Young children like playing (working) with sand, experiencing the wind, waves and the elements, coming to love the sun, the moon and the stars, being with animals, climbing hills and jumping fires and puddles. They feel the worlds as an extension of themselves, watching butterflies and beetles, experiencing the beauty of the world. This is green education, whether propounded by schools or not - as things stand, more likely not.
I have worked along such lines with children for many years, at least 35 years, and before that I worked in organic husbandry for 15 years. We can afford to be a good deal less schematic in our approach to environmental education. There are many opportunities that can be created, in and out of the classroom, for healthy environmental attitudes in schools and for these to be coupled with opportunities for children to engage their wills, to have less of a stand-back approach to life.
Peter Reeve
Norfolk
Burn those Ballots
Dear Editor
The forthcoming General Election presents special difficulties to members of the Green Party and its supporters. One reason is that in most constituencies we will not have the chance to vote for a Green candidate. The party is simply too small and too poor to mobilise a mass participation in the electoral process, at least until proportional representation becomes a reality.
But there are other reasons why we face painful choices. Obviously we cannot vote Labour with a clear conscience. A Government which has fought illegal wars, abolished wide areas of civil liberties and created greater inequality cannot be let off the hook just because there is nothing better on offer. Labour is a tainted brand and we can't erase our memories and moral scruples for the duration of the single day of a General Election.
Of course to vote Conservative would be simply unthinkable. Even the plausible Mr Cameron can't suspend our suspicion of the unreformed party which lurks behind his bland and innocuous facade. As for the Liberal Democrats, they still have to learn the difference between left and right.
Spoiling ballot papers is another choice but it has no chance of reaching the headlines. Somehow we need to convey the message that our ballot papers are worthless and that we live in an undemocratic state. So what could we do?
May I make a modest suggestion? We need to create a visual symbol of our rejection of the false choices that are offered to voters. One way of doing this would be for Green Party members nationwide to simultaneously burn our (postal) ballot papers. In this way we opt out of the pseudo-democratic voting process and show our radical credentials. Hopefully a few thousand non-members might be inspired by our example. And if anyone says that it's 'only a gesture', would they please offer a better idea.
Sincerely,
Maurice George
West Lancashire
Poison in Your Mouth
Dear Editor
Firstly could I congratulate Caroline Lucas on becoming Party Leader. I did not vote for her, however she seems to be a terrific personality. We must unite behind her and show we are an exciting alternative to the other political parties.
Now could I bring to everyone's attention the ban on mercury in Norway, Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal which is used to bind other metals together in dental fillings (amalgam). There has been controversy over its use since the 19th Century.
Fact! President Lincoln suffered mercury poisoning. Millions of dental amalgams are implanted every year into around 80% of people in the industrial nations. Now scientists are starting to prove mercury is slowly released into the body, accumulating in vital organs including the brain, and causing serious damage over a long period of time. Mercury is also suspected of causing everything from migraine and memory loss through to alzheimers and cancer. Low sex-drive, still-birth and infertility too.
I urge everyone to write, lobby and get involved in our campaign for a worldwide ban on mercury. Don't believe everything your dentist says!
amalgam.se, toxicteeth.org, mercurypoisoned.org
Yours,
Gary Riley
Huddersfield
Dear Disciple
Dear Editor
Whilst valuing Chris Haine's 'A Green Disciple's Legacy' obituary appreciation of the Greens' first ever "mp" (small cases) in the Lords, Tim Beaumont of Whitley (GW61) as, indeed, more truthful than even a carping, snide fraction of similar pieces I've read in The Guardian and The Liberal Democrat News, I was a little aghast or bit disturbed by one thing, and feel the need for a crucial supplement. Before he is unfairly forgotten altogether in, alas, our instant, American mis-style capitalistic gratification culture. May I so urgently do in redress instance as no-one else will spare Tim the print!?
Why be so disturbance occasioned by Tim's "eccentricities", so much so, to three largely moaning repetitions of the word. Often these were facts of Beaumont's character that were not merely "endearing" as Chris would have us homily so acknowledge. But, also, examples of his insistence on his adding a touch or two of corrective, even sobering dissent, lest we all, as reformers, become carried idly away with our own zealous 'perfectionist' tendencies!!
Let me give just two examples. My first-ever UK national publication as a radical historian prolifically since was, indeed, in Beaumont's founded-subsidised magazine New Outlook (much more, Chris, than its original parochial "parish magazine" prototype!) on 'Political morality'. Whilst I stand by its, then, rare plea for an enhanced European national minimum wage (what a contrast with our UK derisory present one, eh?), Beaumont ran beneath my lengthy article a cautionary extract from the Conservative Professor Maurice Cranston! To devise effect, that in progressive politics of the future on often should not expect, unpragmatically, 'perfection' Because one risked dangerous dystopian disillusion too early than my then teenage-self perceived! A sense of Radical constancy and pacing myself for the left-centre was thus it obliquely inculcated I've tried to keep to ever since in valuable personal lesson garnered against what all radicals feel "burn-out"!
Similarly, whilst Haine mentioned Beaumont's "sexual law reform" activities he was always careful to give the other side a fair airing in such vehicles as New Outlook, even at the height of the so-called 'permissive society' when its admittedly, to our unattracted eyes, 'moralistic' dissenter views were puritanically reprehensible. Indeed, after printing a public long correspondence between himself and the Marquessate of Lothian out of Mary Whitehouse's moral majority cohorts in NO, Beaumont even conceded he was only himself in favour of such a 'PS' if women were respected as not just passives, in THEIR SEXUALITY too! (My paraphrasing). So the very 'eccentricities' Haine joins The Guardian and Liberal Democrat obituaries in heavily over-critiquing too besmirchingly in Beaumont were often safe balances. By his sage whiggish forebeared self in wise inheritance I feel that ought to be defended by a maturing movement like the Green one: be intolerant and you end up messiah-like like alas the Blair creature in crusader formation.
Finally, I was a little perplexed, too, by two caveats or other Chris points, that, again, partake for me of too overmuch English establishment orthodoxies ill-befitting your own radical magazine. Chris, rightly, emphasises Beaumont's vast political personal activity, hinting that not only was it an encumbrance in making him a, somewhat too careless a spendthrift, if ultimately, dissolved millionaire (from fortunes of a vast shipping magnate stock), but also it made him in left reactionist mode rebellious politically! But the surprise should be, surely, that it so did, as things were a lot worse than Chris apparently knows. For instance, his father, Michael, was not just, oddly, "a notable right wing Tory MP'' but an avowed UK 'Fascist' publicly: so much so that when his 'Fascist' diatribes in favour of Mussolini inside the 1930s UK Commons extended to open admiration for 'Hitlerism' and contempt for 'parliamentary democracy' altogether as allegedly inherently 'socialistic', even the Aylesbury Buckinghamshire Conservative constituency association fast deselected him in outrage by 1938, entailing a by-election!
Last of all, Chris omits, as he should not surely have done, all mention, altogether, of the THIRD pungent reason, as Beaumont often reiterated it, as to the culmination of why he became our Britain's first-ever Green figure, or Bernard Shaw-bearded type Green Parliamentarian. Besides Haine's mention of Beaumont's anger with the Lib Dems still over - dogmatic adherence to 'Free Trade' and their cynicism (Manchester Airport construction!) about the environment in dereliction PRACTICE where they have authentic local municipal power.
It was disillusionment with the Lib Dems refusal, again in dismal malpractice, by them at their grass-roots power-level to campaign for 'European greater unity' on a decentralised basis, as he would put it blisteringly, in their huge to our day LD peer group in the copious Lords HANESARD reports of proceeding. In Eastbourne here, for instance, neither of the LD's two successive PPC ex-Councilors, Chris Berry and Steven Lloyd, have inertly bothered EVEN with any reported pro-Europe speeches at all or 'letters to the editors' in OVER TEN YEARS Despite, that is, our having a turncoat Eurosceptic, Eurpohobic, and indeed, homophobic, rich lawyer Tory MP in Nigel Waterson here. By contrast, Beaumont could, always, take legitimate pride, that Green MEPs I voted for last time like indeed our South East's one, Caroline Lucas, PhD, work and act in unison as a truly European group at Strasbourg and Brussels alike in principled pan-European 'Britishness', no such petty nationalistic championism.
Thank you for space to put down some perspectives here on the great Tim others have grievously lacunaed on in the overall record's bad omission in cost.
Yours
Lawrence Irvine Iles
Eastbourne
