Party conferences: less democracy, more glitz

Its rather saddening to be reading a report about the upcoming Labour party conference that makes the whole affair sound more like a pop-show than a real chance for grassroots members to intervene in deciding the direction of their party. We are now firmly in the age of closed committees deciding how parties should run, and stage management of conferences with glitzy show piece addresses and little real debate is becoming the most common denominator in all of this.

5 Reasons Real Ale is Political

I’m getting annoyed at people who try to depoliticise life. Not that life should be about boring politics, just that trying to make out that there is nothing political about mundane stuff is really dangerous, because it leads us to forget the impacts we’re having. Well, it slightly randomly occurred to me that, if beer is the cause and solution to all life’s problems, perhaps I should think about the politics of it. This is either 5 reasons to drink Real Ale, or 5 things that, if you don’t agree with them, you probably shouldn’t be drinking it.

Activist Dead in Argentina

In Memory of Carlos Fuentealba, Teacher and Activist, killed in action Wednesday 4th April 2007.

There’s been some very tense protests surrounding a local teachers strike in Argentina over the last week.  A protester died from injuries sustained when they were hit by a tear gas canister while protesting the state’s decision not to substantially raise the wages it pays teachers.  News of the death has brought protesters nationwide to the streets and the whole country to a standstill, and may perhaps even affect the national elections due in just a few weeks…

FairTrade for British Milk Farmers

Tesco have announced two new schemes to make trade fairer for British farmers, though neither deals with the extortionate amount they are pocketing from our milk consumption.  This is excellent news, and unless I’ve missed something, its the first time a FairTrade-esque system has been announced for UK farmers, who are often just as badly effected by supermarket bullying as ThirdWorld farmers.  Thankfully, for once, Tesco have been listening to the protests and this time they’re working round the problem in two ways.

Is Consensus just a rural thing?

I’ve been meaning to address this for a while. I’ve been finding lately that, with the exception of activist groups which are bringing Consensus into urban contexts, often with large difficulties, that Urban/Industrial-Worker groups will go for majority vote based decision making and Rural/Indigenous groups will go for consensus based decision making. While many claim consensus to be morally superior, is there a different factor in when it is and isn’t used?

The Budget

Well, I expect I’m not the only person in the blogosphere right now sat writing an analysis of Gordon Brown’s tome of economic policy changes.  I apologise for relying, as ever, on a BBC account of the event.   Part 1, the environment and income tax…

Caring for those who care

Last week I had the chance to meet a fair number of students from the University of Bradford School of Health, and my girlfriend a whole lot more (how many Union hacks meet 600 of their students in 4 hours, even if it is a succession of lecture shouts!).  Their campus is separate from the main one, and I have hardly made it up there, usually too late in the afternoon to meet anyone.  There’s no excuse for my lack of previous contact with those students, especially given the number of issues they managed to raise during the time I was there.

A Collision of Movements?

I’m quite a fan of the idea of a Movement of Movements, hence my dissertation is basically all about it.  The idea being that most progressive/leftist movements eventually tie together as one big movement for a better world.  As an old Seattle protest slogan “Teamsters and Turtles Unite” reminds me, these days totally different causes can often trace connections between themselves.

But today, I’m finding myself tugged between the teamsters on one hand and the ‘turtles’ on the other, because Airbus are about to cut 10,000 jobs.  This is terrible news for manufacturing and engineering, except that the job cuts an aspect of otherwise good news: plane orders are down.  Why is this good? Because the less planes there are, the less people can fly.  Environment 1 – Workers 0: Unity between diverse movements – forget it.

I guess you could say that this is tough luck for the workers, who are victims to capitalism, or that we should be finding them new jobs (this I agree with), but it still creates a situation where I naturally want to support workers despite the immense damage their jobs will cause to the environment.  How can ‘we’ win when such collisions of interests arise?