Kent at further risk of fracking says Fallon

I hope to get down to Balcombe soon but may not have to after the Michael Fallon let slip that fracking is likely to come to Kent for a second time. His comments in the Mail on Sunday (I don't read it unless I have to and then only on-line): "The second area being studied is the Weald. It’s from Dorset all the way along through Hampshire, Sussex, East Sussex, West Sussex, all the way perhaps a bit into Surrey and even into my county of Kent".

Of course there is already exploration of the shale in Sandwich, near Deal but it is clear from the Energy Minister's comment that we can expect many more applications in Kent.

Once again, the Tories and Lib Dems have failed the country. Their backing of shale gas with tax breaks spelled disaster for our countryside and for the environment last month was disgusting.They should be ashamed of themselves.

Meanwhile people power in West Sussex is taking a good stand - I intend to get down to Balcombe soon!

On balance, the EU is a positive force in our lives

Letter to various papers in Kent:

David Cameron has only published legislation on an EU referendum because of campaigning by his own unruly backbenchers. However, ultimately, it is right to give people a say on the UK remaining in the EU. Indeed anyone in Kent under the age of 55 has never had a say on our place in Europe.
The EU is far from perfect. All too often it serves the interests of business, rather than people and in some policy areas it holds power which should be devolved to local communities.
But, on balance, the EU is a positive force in our lives. European legislation is vital in protecting workers’ rights, improving our environment and regulating our out of control banking sector. It brings countries together to work on the issues that cross our borders and can’t be dealt with unilaterally.
Recent research by Friends of the Earth shows us that without EU action we’d have dirtier beaches, more polluted rivers and even higher levels of air pollution.
Over the next twelve months Keith Taylor, Green Party Member of the European Parliament will be touring the South East making the case for a European Union that stands up for people’s rights and protects our environment. The time has now come for us to cut through the Europhobic rhetoric and have an adult debate about our place in the European Union.

Stuart Jeffery Chair Kent Green Party

Leave Our Kids Alone

The 'Leave Our Kids Alone' campaign has been started by my good friends Rupert Read and Jonathan Kent. Please sign their petition. This is their letter to the Telegraph:

We want to see an immediate end to all advertising aimed at children of primary school age and younger.

As a society we are broadly agreed that we should protect our children from the worst of the adult world.  Teachers, child minders and pretty much all those who wish to work with children are heavily vetted to ensure that they’re both safe and qualified to be trusted with their care.

Yet we have sleepwalked into a situation where the advertising industry, worth £12Bn a year in the UK alone, is allowed to turn techniques designed to manipulate adult emotions and desires onto children as young as two or three. It is iniquitous; it is plain wrong.

Almost all children under 11 depend on their parents for money.  So advertising makes heavy use of ‘pester power’ – enlisting children to make demands of their parents – because it is more effective than targeting parents directly.

Yet that is exactly what a civilised society should require advertisers to do – to sell to parents, not to little children.  When young children are learning about the cost of material things, and about managing small quantities of money, they should be free to do so without the pressures put on them by advertising.

As things stand we are in danger of turning out generation after generation of young consumers rather than young citizens, people who define themselves more by what they buy and the objects they display rather than by what they can contribute to the society in which they live.

Rather than raise children obsessed with stuff let’s free them to channel their energies into forming friendships, discovering their talents, exploring our extraordinary world and unleashing their imaginations; things that cost little but whose value is immeasurable.

Bans on advertising aimed at young children are already working in places such as Sweden, Quebec and Greece. It’s time for a similar ban here.

Yours faithfully

Jonathan Kent, writer, broadcaster, co-Founder ‘Leave Our Kids Alone’

Rupert Read, Chair of Green House, co-Founder ‘Leave Our Kids Alone’

Bel Mooney, writer and Daily Mail columnist

Susie Orbach, author

George Monbiot, author, journalist and campaigner

Oliver James, Psychologist, author

Martin Kirk, Global Campaigns Director, The Rules

Natalie Bennett, Leader, Green Party of England and Wales

Caroline Lucas MP

Dr Ian Gibson, former MP

John Hilary, Executive Director of WAR ON WANT

Tony Juniper, sustainability advisor and writer

Ed Gillespie, Co-Director, Futerra

George Marshall, Climate Outreach and Information Network

Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass

Linda Jack, Chair of Liberal Left.

Baroness Ruth Lister, Professor of Social Policy at Loughborough University

Tom Crompton, author, ‘Common Cause’

Adrian Ramsay, Green Party Home Affairs spokesman

Dr Richard House, Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies, Uni of Winchester

Professor Michael M. Patte, Bloomsburg University

Dr. David Whitebread, University of Cambridge

Dr Teresa Belton, Uni of East Anglia School of Education & Lifelong Learning

Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood

Professor Andrew Samuels, Essex University

Professor Guy Claxton, author and educationalist

Susanna Abse, CEO, Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships

Tanith Carey, author, Where Has My Little Girl Gone? How to Protect Your Daughter From Growing Up Too Soon.

Dr Jennifer Gidley, President, World Futures Studies Federation

Professor Kevin J. Brehony, Froebel Professor of Early Childhood Studies,
Froebel College, Roehampton University

Rev Paul Nicolson, Taxpayers Against Poverty

Dr Lindsay Peer CBE, Psychologist

Claude Knights FRSA, Director of Kidscape
Sue Gerhardt, author and psychotherapist

Greg Brooks, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sheffield

Fiona Danks, co-author of Going Wild books

Patrick Holford, author and founder of Food for the Brain Foundation

Paul Cooper, National Projects Director, National Children’s Football Alliance

Fiona Carnie, educationalist and writer

Linda Pound, early years consultant

Dr Maria Robinson, Educational Consultant

Dr Gillian Proctor, Clinical Psychologist and author

Prof. Iain McGilchrist, author, The Master and his emissary

Dr Robert Snell, psychotherapist & Kim Crewe, Head of Therapeutic Services, The Dialogue Centre

Sami Timimi, Director of Medical Education, Lincolnshire Partnership Foundation NHS Trust

Dr. Maria Robinson, early years adviser

Dr. Lindsay Peer, CBE

Sir Tim Brighouse, former Schools Commissioner for London

Pippa Smith, Co Chairman, Safermedia

Miranda Suit, Co Chairman, Safermedia

Colin Richards, Emeritus Professor, University of Cumbria

Prof Del Loewenthal, University of Roehampton

Saci Lloyd, author of The Carbon Diaries and Momentum

Dr Bronwen Rees, Director of Centre for Transformational Management Practice, Anglia Ruskin University

Martin Large, author, lecturer, Stroud Common Wealth

Christopher Clouder, International Director, Alliance for Childhood

Osborne: benefits crime?

Like many, I was appalled by Osborne's attempt to link Philpot's crimes to the benefit system but his actions speak louder than words.

The Daily Mirror who last year exposed Osborne for making £450k on a house funded by taxpayers have now discovered that he is quite happy to park in a space restricted for disabled people.

Of course Osborne might be right to link benefits to crimes: maybe parking in a disabled space should be a criminal offence? Osborne has certainly benefited from a scheme designed to help disabled people.

The chancellor is a man who is happy to steal support from disabled people every which way he can. No wonder that there is now a petition to dissolve government and have a general election.

Welfare reforms start today

Today sees the Lib Dems / Tory government really biting hard on people on the lowest incomes with the start of the Welfare Reform Act. The two key parts seem to be the introduction of Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax.

The bedroom tax is truly appalling. Despite the concept of encouraging people to live in a house that is reasonably sized being a fairly worthy goal, the bedroom tax will hit families, disabled people, single workers and older people in equal measure. It will push thousands into poverty and rip apart communities.

IDS's Universal Credit seems equally bad, making it even harder to escape the benefits trap according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. His claim this morning that he can live on £57 per week is beyond laughable - I'd like to see him do that for a year, perhaps then we will see some understanding of what it really means to be on a low income.

Will IDS try living on £53 a week?

I love this petition from change.org!

This petition calls for Iain Duncan Smith, the current The Work and Pensions Secretary, to prove his claim of being able to live on £7.57 a day, or £53 a week.
Iain Duncan Smith would be called upon to live on this budget for at least one year. This would help realise the conservative party's current mantra that "We are all in this together".
This would mean a 97% reduction in his current income, which is £1,581.02 a week or £225 a day after tax.

FTSE back to Aug 2010

Unless you have been asleep for the past week you will be aware of the panic in stockmarkets across the world. The FTSE 100 fell another 146 points today making around 10% fall in the past week (5817 to 5247). This puts the FTSE back to Aug 2010 levels which are still much higher that the 2009 levels but nowhere near 2007.

Global capitalism was always going to go this way. The economy will swing to where the resources and fuel are, i.e. China and the stable parts of the Middle East. The US and European economies are built on fragile foundations and no amount of knowledge / high tech / banking industries will be able to keep them afloat for ever, just as unsustainable argiculture or manufacturing can't. Unsustainable agriculture is er... unsustainable - damaging the soil and wildlife needed to support the industry. Manufacturing is only sustainable if it has a constant flow of resources from which to manufacture and a constant flow of energy to run the facturies. None of this looks likely over the coming years with the current direction of our governments.

What is needed is a fundemental rethink of where to base our economy and how to fund it. We have to concentrate on local resources, local goods and local economies.

Charity cuts in Kent

This data are from False Economy. Across just 5 boroughs in Kent (out of 13), £866k has been wiped from charity funding. Assuming the other boroughs do the same we can expect around £2.2m to be slashed. A devasting blow to Cameron's big society.

Looking more closely at the type of charity:

Type	Cut
Adult care	£294892
Amenities	£115000
Arts	£7613
CAB	£45000
Children and young people	£38876
Community	£32660
Crime	£18548
Disability	£96372
Elderly	£6971
Environment	£2515
Homelessness and housing	£92286
Information, advice and counselling	£62472
Other	£3750
Sports	£43520
Volunteering	£5070
Grand Total	865544

It looks like adult care, the disabled and the elderly are the biggest losers. Looking by borough:

Borough	Sum of Funding cut
Ashford	£104750
Canterbury	£28370
Dover	£147800
Maidstone	£10273
Medway	£574352
Grand Total	£865544

Of course Medway are going to show the most significant numbers as they are a unitary authority whereas the other four are borough / district levels. Kent County Council doesn't feature on the list, which means they have either not replied or not made their decisions yet.

The full list for Kent is below and the rest of the country is here.

Local Authority	Charity	Category	Funding cut (overall)	Percentage cut (2011/12)
Ashford	Ashford & District Volunteer Centre	Volunteering	£5,070.00	100
Ashford	Ashford Community Network	Community	£2,000.00	100
Ashford	Ashford Leisure Trust	Sports	£26,970.00	21.2
Ashford	Ashford Mediation Service	Information, advice and counselling	£6,000.00	30
Ashford	Bockhanger Community Association	Community	£27,660.00	100
Ashford	Charlton Athletic Community Trust	Sports	£5,250.00	100
Ashford	Citizens Advice Bureau	CAB	£25,000.00	20
Ashford	Relate	Information, advice and counselling	£2,800.00	100
Ashford	Stour Valley Arts	Arts	£4,000.00	100
Canterbury	Canterbury & Herne Bay Shopmobility	Disability	£4,000.00	50
Canterbury	Canterbury Arts Council	Arts	£1,000.00	33.3
Canterbury	Canterbury District Watch	Crime	£2,500.00	100
Canterbury	District of Canterbury Credit Union	Other	£3,750.00	100
Canterbury	Hersden Neighbourhood Centre Association	Community	£3,000.00	20
Canterbury	Prince of Wales Youth Club	Children and young people	£10,000.00	66.7
Canterbury	The Mediation Service	Information, advice and counselling	£4,120.00	100
Dover	Dover, Deal and District Citizens Advice Bureau	CAB	£20,000.00	15.3
Dover	Gazen Salts Nature Reserve	Environment	£1,500.00	25
Dover	Sandwich Sports & Leisure Trust	Sports	£4,000.00	50
Dover	Sandwich Town Cricket Club	Sports	£3,000.00	23.1
Dover	Victoria Park Bowling Club	Sports	£4,300.00	100
Dover	Vista Leisure Trust	Amenities	£115,000.00	36.5
Maidstone	Age Concern Maidstone	Elderly	£1,569.73	34.4
Maidstone	BTCV	Environment	£1,015.00	33.7
Maidstone	Maidstone Area Arts Council	Arts	£2,613.00	100
Maidstone	Maidstone Mediation Scheme	Information, advice and counselling	£5,075.00	33.7
Medway	Action for Borstal Community (ABC Project)	Children and young people	£4,807.00	11.3
Medway	Ashdown Medway Accommodation Trust (AMAT)	Homelessness and housing	£16,419.98	11.8
Medway	Avante - Step Ahead (Crisis 10)	Homelessness and housing	£1,951.00	7
Medway	Avenues Trust	Disability	£10,000.00	40
Medway	Borden Riding School	Disability	£1,160.00	10.4
Medway	Casa Support	Disability	£29,912.38	18.3
Medway	Crime Stoppers	Crime	£5,000.00	100
Medway	Crossroads	Disability	£36,700.00	25.9
Medway	Demelza Hospice	Disability	£14,600.00	36.9
Medway	Home-Start Medway	Children and young people	£11,377.50	8.4
Medway	Hope (Kent) Ltd	Crime	£6,048.19	5.7
Medway	In Touch	Adult care	£294,891.70	32.8
Medway	Kent People's Trust	Crime	£5,000.00	100
Medway	Medway Cyrenians	Homelessness and housing	£17,979.98	5.7
Medway	Medway Mediation	Information, advice and counselling	£44,477.00	57.1
Medway	Orbit Housing Association	Elderly	£5,401.06	17.2
Medway	West Kent Housing	Homelessness and housing	£55,934.81	5.3
Medway	Young Lives Foundation	Children and young people	£12,691.00	16.1

Right wing onslaught

The right wing onslaught is in full flow, and not just from extremists in Norway:

The Republican Tea Party are unwavering in their desire to destroy the world economy for the sack of tax and spending cuts targetted at the rich and poor respectively (if respectively is the right word to use).

Oil companies are poised to make record profits as supply stalls while demand grows. I wonder how much profit will go in taxes?

Gollys are on sale in East Kent amid Daily Mail style comments on the Kent Messenger website claiming that they are not racist.

Homelessness has risen 40% in one year in Kent. This from BBC and this is on the KM website. Again some of the comments are appalling - this time quite racist.

Depressing stuff. The future has to be cooperation and compassion, not cuts and competition. It's an easy narrative and the only one that holds any promise.

Grapes of Wrath: 2011 sequel?

The US predicament is looking increasingly like the dust bowl / poverty sceanrio that was the setting for John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath.

There is a monster heatwave and drought raging across the country and while there is little talk of a return of the 1930's dust bowl, the weather pattern is certainly impacting on the country.

Alongside the weather, the US economy seems on the brink of collapse. The budget talks are in difficulty with a breakdown on Friday although they seem to have restarted yesterday. They are still discussing how to handle $14 trillion of debt with an assumption that this needs to be reduced and of course the Republicans want to cut benefits and taxes to do so.

It is worth remembering that in general terms the size of the money supply is defined by the totality of debt, so reducing the government's debt can only be achieved by either shrinking the money supply or shifting the debt to someone else. I doubt neither option would be palatable to them.

The real impact is being shown on the streets. Unemployment has been running between 9% and 10% for last two years and there are stories about the displaced people with no jobs and no homes. Worse still are the actions by authorities to confiscate and destroy the vehicles and tents that people are living in. If you haven't read Grapes of Wrath, I would recommend it.

Reply from Helen Grant on Maidstone Museum

Last week I emailed Helen Grant, MP for Maidstone and President of the Board of Trustees for Maidstone Museum to ask for her support to stop the redundancies at the museum. Clearly I didn't hold out much hope - this is her reply:

Dear Stuart


Many thanks indeed for your email.


I recognise the fantastic work and expertise Dr Ed Jarzembowski has brought to Maidstone Museum, but leave all decisions relation to staffing to the management team in place. It would be improper for me to involve myself in the day to day workings of Maidstone Museum.


My office has been assured by Simon Lace, Museums and Heritage Manager at Maidstone Borough Council, that Maidstone Museum will continue to flourish following a necessary restructuring. There will be a new focus on display and interpretation of artefacts, and I am sure the 60 years or so of combined experience the curators and Simon have will ensure our fantastic museum continues to thrive in the years to come.

As you know, the Government has to get a tight grip on the public finances –paying £120 million a day in debt interest alone is clearly unsustainable. To say cuts to public spending is politically motivated and based on poor economics is not true. The last Government’s legacy to Britain is the largest budget deficit in the EU aside from Ireland. Thanks to its recklessness, the nation's deficit is running at £155bn. We are now borrowing one pound for every four we spend – increasing our national debt by £3 billion a week. If we carry on at that pace, in five years’ time the interest we will pay on our debt could be around £70 billion. This means we could be paying more on debt interest than on educating our children, protecting our planet, and transporting people around Britain.

Yours sincerely

Helen Grant MP

Daddy, can I have my pocket money?

From the great people at False Economy - We're all in this together...

Maidstone Coalition of Resistance - meeting reminder

Quick reminder of the Coalition of Resistance meeting in Maidstone tomorrow. I've been asked to speak, which I'm really pleased about. Looks like there should be a good turnout too.

Consumerism thrives in Kent, sadly

Consumerism seems to be alive and kicking in Kent with almost 200,000 people visiting the shopping center last Monday. It also claims that 28 million people visited in 2010, which would equate to the entire population of Kent turning up there every 3 weeks.

Bluewater was the largest shopping centre in Europe when it opened in 1999, but has been relegated to fourth in Europe and second in the UK. Of course it is probably most famous for banning hoodies in 2005.

At some point consumerism will have to give way to the needs of the environment, out of town shopping centres will need to give way to shops being in towns for the sake of local economies and reducing congestion. Sadly, Kent has a way to go yet.

False Economy

Good site debunking some of the myths surrounding the ideological need to cut public spending, False Economy:

Yes, our debt is going up and is higher than it was before the election.
But it's still lower than it's been for many years this century, and is lower than in many other similar countries.
Yes, it's costing more to pay back our debt and it's going up.
But it's lower than most years since the second world war. Just 6p in every pound of spending went on paying off debt last year, compared to 8p in 1996.

Week off and the world collapses

Took a week off blogging and chose the week when so much happened locally.

Kent County Council announced 1500 job cuts. Kent Fire and Rescue are to make £16m in cuts over four years - I reckon that must be around 300 jobs to go. Kent Police are also facing around 1500 job cuts. All three of these public sector organisations have the HQ's in Maidstone, so we will be particularly badly hit. The Royal Mail sorting office in Maidstone is also set to close with about 100 jobs going.

The KM suggested that we will see 2400 jobs across the town go. This could double unemployment in Maidstone (currently at around 2100) and devastate families and the local economy.

I have signed up to the Coalition of Resistance and urge others to as well.

Our national debt as a proportion of GDP is lower than France, Germany and the US. These ridiculous cuts are not needed and will destroy lives and the economy.

George Osborne is avoiding paying his taxes, Vodafone have been let of £6bn of taxes, banks are raking it in while Clegg and Cameron have no idea what it is like to be poor.

Growth, jobs and debt

A couple of years on, 23,000 job losses, 84% stake by taxpayers has provided a modest £1.1bn profit for RBS. Other banks are returning to their modest profits, Barclays: £4bn; Lloyds: £1.6bn; and so on.

Meanwhile unemplyement has soared by 3% (to 8%, i.e. risen by 60%) and the country's total debt is around £4 trillion. £1.5 trillion is in personal debt - money that you and I owe to the banks most mortagages (£1.2 trillion).

This is from Credit Action: "Average household debt in the UK is ~ £8,650 (excluding mortgages). This figure increases to £18,021 if the average is based on the number of households who actually have some form of unsecured loan."

GDP has increased by around 50% in the past 10 years and our ConDemLab parties all want it to continue to rise for ever. For GDP to rise we need to consume more, spend more and borrow more. Our UK consumption levels already mean that if the whole world consumed the way we do, we would need a couple more planets to live on.


The solution will have to be radical.

Personal debt is crippling but driven by our perceived needs and the way that the economy is structured. Capitalism continues to drive the wealth to the few and provide bail outs when necessary. The austerity cuts are driving inequality upwards and moving us towards a double dip recession which will push unemployment higher. And of course consumption is slowly killing us all.

There are good groups of people with the right type of ideas. This is from the people at the climate camp who are outside RBS this month:

Economics, society and oil

Been catching up on a couple of US peak oil blogs. Take a look at James Howard Kunstler, who wrote The Long Emergency and John Michael Greer. Both take a fairly depressing view of society and its refusal to face the fact that oil is becoming a bit of a problem...

We have built the last 150 years of Western civilisation on and un-endless supply of cheap oil. Ignoring the impact that this is having on our climate and currently the Gulf of Mexico, cheap oil will end soon and the key question is what will happen?

A cursory understanding of our economy will show the deep connection between economics and oil. Looking at the FTSE 100 and the Dow Jones over the last 5 years and the price of oil shows a remarkable correlation and we need to begin to understand what the causal relationship between these two is.

FTSE 100 last 5 years:

Dow Jones last 5 years:

Oil Price last 5 years:

Inflation hits 5.3%

Dear George,

Bit of a confession. Bloody inflation's going thru the roof and I have to let you know what I plan to do 'bout it. First off, it's not a good sign, sorry. As I said, the party that is in power in this parliament will be out of power for a generation anyway so I suggest you invest in property (house prices seem to be rising again but avoid flood plains as I don't think your planning on tackling climate change) and oil (might be worth avoiding BP ftb). I reckon they are both going to rise faster than inflation so should be a good bet. This is what I intend to do about inflation anyway.

Cheers,

Merv

Exploiting the workers

Our monetary system simply serves as a means of exploitation not a means of barter.

This is the strap line in today's Indy: "Bulgarians are flown to Britain, live in packed caravan compounds and pocket just £45 a week to pick fruit for Britain's biggest retailers". This is a story that we have all heard many times. The British don't want to work for peanuts, farms want to make a profit, supermarkets force prices down, shoppers want to pay the least amount for their food... so the only answer is to find someone else to exploit, and Bulgarians and Romanians are the target this time.

When I visited Marden a few weeks back at the start of their barter scheme there was a discussion on whether to charge for goods based on an arbitary price similar to shops or whether to pay on how much time an activity took. This led to the question of whether one person's time is more valuable than another.

Should a solicitor exchange their time on the barter scheme at the same rate as a cake maker? Should a gardener charge the same rate as an architect? For me the simple answer is yes, we should all have equal value. People claim that their skills and expertise, acquired through years of training mean that they are in demand and this justifies their high prices. I suggest not. I suggest that over time people could enter these professions to ensure job security rather than to make a handsome profit.

Of course this is utopian dreaming, but there is a very real case for limiting maximum and minimum wages to help prevent exploitation. There is also a very real case for having these maximum and minimums applied globally because most of our exploitation is with foreign workers.

We also need to keep thinking about the stuff we buy in human (and oil terms). How many hours labour did it take to produce the T Shirt that costs £1? And how are we replacing labour with buried, non-renewable, energy when we automate production and what effect does that have on the factor owners and workers?