Selling people is wrong

This is a short email exchange about this issue:

Dear Liz

Thanks for this.  I would say that the things she is concerned about are directly related to the consumerist culture created by the growth paradigm - which is espoused by all 3 of the grey parties.  ‘Growth’  (measured only in terms of traditional GDP) is simply an endless race between nation states , which sets up the culture which turns everything into a commodity, including human beings.  Hence the term – ‘he would sell his own grannie’.  The rise in exploitation of humans (along with everything else) is astronomical at the moment – and trafficking, particularly of young women for sex slavery is on the increase  all over the world.  See the 2010  film   ‘The Whistleblower’ which is the story of a young woman working for the UN (as part of a UK-based security firm)  in post-war Bosnia  who discovers that most of her  colleagues are actually encouraging  sex slavery !

Of course, advertising is an obvious and  inextricable part of the growth paradigm, and it too uses sex as much as it is allowed, and of course children see a lot of this.  Computer games also express  the dominant paradigm and, again, they use sex and violence as much as they can.  Young people now are far more likely to spend time watching TV or playing computer games than, say, playing in the woods or helping on the farm  as they used to do just a couple of generations ago.

We are all (depending on how much we engage with television etc)  immersed in consumerist values at the moment.  The opposite of the growth paradigm is a value system based on  respect for people and planet.  This is what the Greens promote.

The young woman's very understandable concerns are about a particularly serious manifestation of the consumerist paradigm…and this is where the Greens and the LDs are completely different as we challenge that paradigm fundamentally - through all our policies -  and they don’t.

Hope this is helpful.

Best

Shan Oakes

Equalities and Diversity Coordinator

Green Party of England and Wales

01482 862085 07769 607710

http://shanoakes.blogspot.com/

Hi There

I've just received the following enquiry from a very engaged young woman who I met while taking part in a Question Time event at a local grammar school on Friday.  As you can see she's pitting me directly against our local (high profile and elected councillor) Lib Dem so I'd like to give her a solid response.         best Liz

Hello 

 I am a year 12 at ...Grammar School 6th form.  I am interested in both of your parties, however I am curious as to whether you have any policies or ideas on the sexualisation of children and the increase or increase in awareness of sexual violence, particularly against girls and women? Because these are important issues for me and seem to be prominent in the community at the moment. 

Access to public office for people with disabilities

The beleaguered Government Equalities Office (GEO) is trying to set up some e-learning to encourage people with disabilities to stand for elected office.  It's a very tight time-scale with a launch expected in June.  Political parties have been invited to send representatives to the planning meetings.  I was the only rep from a political party at this third meeting.  The other attendees were from 3 NGOs (non-governmental organisations), the electoral commission, House of Commons, and BYG (the training providers).   Ulrike Zeshan (Professor of linguistics)  had represented the Green Party at the last meeting and had emailed her recommendations to the group.  The NGOs seemed to be in full agreement with them.   I emphasised that expenses at least should be paid for consultation, especially as people with disabilities are not usually the richest people in the world.     The Green Party has sent reps to all 3 meetings  so we are doing our bit, but, at the same time,  we are very aware that  any amount of  'encouragement'  for people with disabilities is a drop in the ocean in the context of the government's attack on disabled people as a group  and on disabled people's standards of living.  This is likely to keep people permanently excluded - making the GEO efforts laughable. 

Most of us said that the draft e-training was too general and not focused on the specifics for those with disabilities.  I reiterated Prof Zeshan's rec. of a special meeting for sensory organisations with BYG.   BYG would like case studies (real experience of challenges and how to overcome them). Anyone  with disabilities who may consider standing as a candidate needs to know there will be funding to assist individuals.   I commiserated with the GEO staff on having to do such a complex task  in such a rush. 

There was an ugly  English Defence League (and anti-EDL)  demo outside the Home Office as I arrived.

War brutalises,  so this latest terrible event is not surprising at all.  We have to stop it - ALL..NOW...  Stop weapons production, stop Trident, stop our taxes being used for conflict, stop recruitment of troops. It's not about waiting for others to stop first.  WE have to just stop. 

Why vote Green?

Just unearthed this interview by Winkball a couple of years ago. Of course today the main issues would be casino banking, cuts to jobs, pensions and services - and yet more devastation of the planet.

Job losses in Yorkshire - letter to Yorkshire Post

I write further to your article, ‘ Recession fears grow with wave of job cuts in region’ (8^th Feb).  The loss of bank jobs is, of course,  very sad for the employees concerned, but unsurprising in the current climate of takeovers and megacorporate rule.   Ethical banks, on the other hand,  such as Triodos,  the Cooperative  Bank  and the Ecology Building Society in Baildon are doing very well.  More and more people are looking for ‘good’ banking.  Perhaps redundant bank staff could consider starting up or supporting  the growth of local credit unions which will deal transparently and fairly with local people’s money. 

Local authority cuts are due to misguided government policy which  results in cuts to services for the most vulnerable, as well as a reduction in tax receipts and spending – a lose lose situation.

 Regarding a traditional firm such as Oakworth,   no doubt they make good quality products which could be used to improve energy efficiency , such as double and secondary glazing.  A shame that they were trading with one major customer rather than lots of smaller clients.  All these job losses boil down to the need to start rebuilding relationships in communities instead of allowing ourselves to be run by  corporates and multinationals.  

Now the Bank of England has announced a new batch of quantitative easing (£50bn or so),  and the Green New Deal Group  is calling for such cash to be injected into a programme of green investment to support badly needed renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Rather than handing the money over to the banks, who then sit on it and refuse to lend, green QE would put money into the wider economy - creating thousands of new jobs, improving energy security and tackling climate change at the same time.

Shan Oakes

Green Party (Hull and East Riding)

Turbines versus oil wells on the Wolds

I 've been asked by BBC Radio Humberside to discuss the issue of wind turbines – again  (we Greens get a little bit annoyed when we are asked only about environmental issues when we have the full range of economic and social policies).  Anyway, to get to the point -  East Yorks Council (ERYC) is wanting to make the Wolds an area of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) in order to stop wind farm applications there.  I find this incredible.  Not that I don’t think the Wolds are beautiful because I do.  It’s the fact that ERYC doesn’t want wind turbines, but they don’t mind oil drilling!  They have agreed to let a Canadian oil firm start exploratory drilling near Walkington!   It’s ironic because wind turbines harness free clean energy, and polls tell us that most people approve of them and  like how they look, whereas  oil is a fossil fuel (carbon laid down millions of years ago) which produces CO2 when burned, which  is responsible for  climate change  - which is killing 150,000 people a year (World Health Organisation).  How crazy is that?  Or don’t they/we mind because the people dying are a long way away ?

Oil drilling : Yorkshire Wolds

Letter to Beverley Guardian:      ' Oil's not well on the Wolds '

We wrote  to object in the strongest possible terms to East Riding Council regarding proposals for oil prospecting on the Yorkshire Wolds.  The Green Party,  along with  Friends of the Earth (FOE) and other well-respected organisations,   campaign, on the basis of careful research,  for  development and  use of renewable energy and fuel conservation instead of the further exploitation of fossil fuels.   We have had a century’s addiction to oil  - and we must now wean ourselves off this addiction, as oil becomes harder and harder to find and to extract.  There are excellent alternatives which must be embraced instead of resisted.

Since the use of oil is clearly contradictory to CO2 reduction,  permission for exploratory drilling should never be granted on those grounds alone.  In addition,  the Wolds are and should be considered  an area of outstanding natural  beauty, and should not be subjected to blots on the landscape such as filthy, noisy, smelly, toxic  and brightly  lit oil extraction plants.  Wind turbines would be far preferable in all respects...and at least, with those, you can SEE what is going on.  Mining and drilling underground is particularly dangerous because it can have unexpected consequences:    ‘ fracking’  was apparently responsible for an earth tremor in the Blackpool area.  Underground water courses can become adulterated .  If this exploration were to be  ‘successful’  the resource would be drained and then the company would move on to despoil other sites, leaving a wasteland behind.  Unfortunately, the lure of the huge profits for the companies and their partners leads to them working very hard to get agreement for this appalling activity.  Think of  mountain top removal for coal  in the United States.   Where will it end?  How can industrial activity of this kind be contemplated in the Wolds?  There ARE alternatives – as usual, we have to choose.

The ludicrously short timescale of ‘consultation’ in this case is yet another cause for concern.  It suggests that both the Council and  the company concerned have little regard for local residents’ views.   Residents in nearby villages received letters only two or three days before the initial planning meeting (at which the decision was deferred). 

To allow this proposal for oil prospecting to go ahead would be a gross abnegation of responsibility on the part of ERY Council, both in relation to current citizens and to future generations, so please let your elected representatives (both in the Council and Parliament) know your feelings on this issue.

Shan Oakes

Green Party

Hull and East Riding