It is clear that Oxford Labour believed that they could decimate the troublesome Greens in this election. That by weakening the Greens so much that there won’t be so many awkward questions asked of them on the Council. Labour threw everything it had at St Mary’s, Iffley Fields, and St Clements and though dissapointingly we lost St Clements, we didn’t lose by much and we held St Mary’s and Iffley Fields. We also gained a seat. We didn’t do as well as we had hoped but we held back the tide.

We increased our total share of the vote in Oxford and we are now second place, ahead of the Liberal Democrats. In twelve wards the Greens are in second place. If the Lib Dems continue with their suicide pact with the Tories they will soon be irrelevant in Oxford.

Oxford Greens have done wonderfully holding back the Labour surge, providing a platform to build on to move forward at the next election. Well done all.

On Wednesday 26 January 2012 around 11 am, Oxford Labour tweeted that they were planning to go out on the doorstep, canvassing in St Clements Ward with Tom Watson MP. Later that day they proudly tweeted a photo of the canvassers which included Tom Watson and Labour’s local MP Andrew Smith.

What concerned me was that this was at the same time that Parliament was in session, and included Prime Ministers Questions. Now I’m sure that being in Parliament is not always the best of use of an MP’s time when their is research to be done for select committees, or work to be done for constituents. But for an MP to be electioneering whilst Parliament is in session seems inappropriate, this is clearly one of the times when they should be doing what they are paid to do.

The first argument is that the the unemployed should give something back to society as payment for the benefits that they receive. The second argument is that by doing workfare they maintain skills that are useful for a future employer.

For the first argument, if an unemployed person is doing something that is worthwhile, and worth doing, or a role that is normally a job that someone is paid to do then surely they should be paid to do that job. If poundland needs the job done then they should pay someone to do it, or if they can’t afford to then what is the tax payer doing subsidizing a failed business.

For the second argument, if it was actually the case that the placements were in positions that were appropriate to help enhance the skills of the person in question there might be an argument for it. Still wrong but it certainly would make a lot more sense than the large number of placements doing dead end jobs in retail multinationals like Tescos, Asda, Sainsburys etc.. To pull an unemployed Geology graduate out of a volunteer role in a museum which helps maintain her skills and force her into a job stacking shelves at Asda is madness.

What is the point in going to University and racking up all that debt if the result is a minimum wage job where there is little scope for career progression. Most of the workfare roles can be done by someone who left school at 16 without any qualifications. There is no point in making the UK a high skills society if there are no high skilled jobs for graduates to progress into. I thought the tory solution was to create a dynamic high skill economy, but instead we’ve got a low skill economy with high skilled graduates. We then force the graduates to do unpaid work in roles that should be paid position performed by the unskilled. We don’t have a shortage of unskilled unemployed people.

The whole system is perverse. Students are encouraged to study technical subjects like engineering, mathematics, and science because these are believed to be the skills the country needs to have a productive economy. But apart from the some of the mathematics graduates who end up working in the City, studying any of these subjects is pointless when the only jobs the economy is generating is casual, part time minimum wage jobs in retail. Because of the lack of ambition of successive governments the government is now actively destroying the ambition of the youth of today.

The reason the tories keep repeating these arguments is because they need to hide the fact that it is their policies that are destroying large number of jobs and the unemployed are the easiest scapegoat.

Temple Cowley Pool and leisure centre has multiple pools, a gym, a sauna, a steam room and an exercise studio whilst the proposed Blackbird Leys centre contains only pools, pools that are not significantly different in capacity to the ones at Temple Cowley.

Comparing the energy consumption of both centres without taking into account the differences in facilities provided is necessary for him to help justify his support for closure of the pool.

The proposed new facility in Blackbird Leys will produce less carbon, but not because the facility is more energy efficient but because Oxford residents will lose a gym, a sauna, a steam room and an exercise studio.

Sir, I am concerned about the lack of transparency in decision making at Oxford City Council. The Council meetings are published here: Oxford City Council committees but if you click on the pdf link you can see we have a large number of Single Member Decision Meetings (A link to a pdf file).

We are informed of the dates on which these Single Member Decision Meetings happen, however, we are not informed what these meetings are about or who the Single Member is that attends the meeting. Furthermore, why do we have meetings with only a single member?

How can this be right and where is the oversight? If a member of the public asks a question, how is it responded to? Could a member of the public observing the meeting actually learn anything about the questions and issues raised, decisions made etc?

I am not saying that the Councillors on the Single Member Committees are corrupt, but it seems to me that making decisions in this way makes it easy for corruption to happen.

Our democratic decision making processes need to be open and transparent at all times and at the moment Oxford City Council clearly fails in this regard.

I received a comment on my blog today from someone who I used to have many arguments on Left Foot Forward in relation to climate change. He is a climate skeptic. I responded by e-mail but he didn’t supply a valid e-mail address so it bounced. I’ve decided to post my response here.

The article he linked to is here and somehow he thinks that this new data is meant to make me doubt all the evidence that climate change is happening and that it was somewhat warmer during the medieval period. Actually whether it was warmer then than now is not even the point, physics doesn’t distinguish between natural or human drivers of climate.

Here is my response:

I’m not quite sure what you are trying to say by referencing this piece of work. First up there have been so many supposed silver bullets that bounce around the internet, so many pieces of work that are represented as bringing down the edifice of climate science but in the end they are proven to be wrong, or that it has been a matter of interpretation of the work, often in a way that the authors completely disagree with. The piece you have linked to seems to be focussed on the climatology of changes in monsoon weather patterns rather than temperature itself. I’ve never disputed the existence of the MWP, I just think that the evidence suggests that sometime during the last 30 years we have surpassed the temperature from the peak of the MWP. Even if we did use changes in monsoon weather patterns as a proxy for temperature change I don’t think this piece of work could be used to suggest that temperatures then were higher than they are now. Specifically that the modern temperature rise has been so rapid that changes in climate like monsoon patterns will be playing catch up. We’ve heard a lot about floods and tornados in the US recently but what has been less in the news is one of the worst droughts on record in the South and South West USA with Texas being the most affected. This is a change in climate that has been expected as part of AGW and from my quick read of the work you referred to it would be consistent. Other very recent events include the record drought in the Amazon in 2005, thought to be a 1 in 100 year events only to be followed by a more extensive and extreme drought in 2010, once again an expected result of AGW and consistent with the discussion in the paper your refer to. These are one off events, they don’t prove anything but they do add to the evidence that is piling up that AGW is real, happening now and happening fast.

Drought in Texas and more on Texas

Drought in the Amazon and more on Amazon drought with a brill rapture comment at end.

Modern day temperatures climbing rapidly

NASA Giss Temperature series

Sunday was a total day of relaxation, a late start, breakfast was good, a short bike ride to return the soup pot from the Seedy Saturday event, and then a walk to the Isis Farmhouse on the Thames for beer and cake and the accidental running into friends, followed by a walk to a Fairtrade tea party where more cakes were eaten and the intentional catching up with friends, and then the long walk home. Weather was perfect.

I am concerned about your fundamentalist adherence to austerity economics and what that means for this country. You are concerned about Government budget deficits and you are concerned that we will follow down the path of countries like Ireland and Spain, both of which ran budget surpluses prior to the great recession. For these countries having a budget surplus was clearly no help and yet Germany which has demonstrably weathered the economic storm better than any other European country has had higher government debt than the UK compared to GDP during all the years of the Labour Government, so clearly high levels of government debt and deficits isn’t everything.

The Labour Government certainly isn’t innocent in any of this. They ignored the high and increasing levels of tax avoidance by large corporations and the wealthy of this country. Labour only attempted band aid solutions to mitigate the worst affects of a country with high levels of inequality. These types of band-aid solutions are costly, and Labour avoided dealing with the real issues created by a dysfunctional economy dependent on an oversized financial sector. Instead Labour should have been developing an industrial policy to provide productive and worthwhile jobs for the people of this country, investing in green jobs for improving energy efficiency and supporting the development of a sustainable energy industry so that Britain could have been a leader in the field instead of having to buy in the technology from others.

Government deficit spending during recessions to pump prime an economy has a good economic pedigree. It was John Maynard Keynes’ economic insights that were used to get most major economies out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Keynes would recognise our current economic problems and know that the answer is not austerity. Capacity utilisation is low, business is hoarding cash because it sees little in the way of investment opportunities and he understood that when interest rates are low and the economy isn’t moving the only way to get the economy creating jobs is for large scale deficit spending. Because interest rates are low governments can afford to pump prime the economy.

Many Oxfordshire residents protesting your budget know this, they understand that the cuts are ideological, that the structural deficit could easily be solved by chasing the tax avoiders. Your description of the protesters as deficit denier lefties is insulting. You may disagree with their knowledge and understanding of economic history but your deficit denier soundbite is not helpful when discussing solutions to our economic problems.

Tony Brett, a Liberal Democrat Councillor for the Carfax ward, an inner city ward for Oxford City Council attacked the Oxfordshire Green Party on his blog and then promoted his blog via a tweet which is where I noticed it. His attack on the local Green Party annoyed me because I am a Oxfordshire Green Party member. However his smearing of the students in order to make his attack made me angry.

His attack was in relation to a statement put out by the Oxfordshire Green Party in support of the students who occupied the Radcliffe Camera as part of their protest against the cuts, the cutting of the Education Maintenance Allowance, and the tripling of tuition fees.

Tony Brett was horrified to find that the “Oxford Green Party was proud to stand alongside those Oxford students who … undertook the occupation in Oxford.”.

He was horrified because “I am much more ashamed of all those who think it’s OK to practically vandalise one of Oxford’s most historic buildings”. The problem is there has not been any reports or evidence of vandalism or damage done to the Radcliffe Camera by the students.

He was horrified to find that the students had danced on the desks during the occupation thus practically vandalising the historical fabric of the building. Problem is that the desks aren’t part of the historical fabric of the building and they weren’t damaged.

He was horrified that the students occupying the library prevented other students from doing their necessary study. Problem is that it wasn’t the occupying students who prevented the other students from studying in the Radcliffe Camera. The occupying students were happy to work with the Librarians who had suggested that students needing to study could do so on the upper level and that access to books on all levels be made available. Instead it was the University authorities who banned access for other students to the Radcliffe Camera.

Lastly Tony Brett assumed that it was the occupying students rowdy behaviour that caused the closure of the Radcliffe Camera thus stopping other students from being able to study. Problem is that the rowdy activity of the dancing which clearly disturbs Mr Brett so much was only for approximately 10 minutes out of 30 hours of occupation and happened long after the University Authorities had already banned access for users to the Radcliffe Camera.

Because Tony Brett did not notice my comment that was held up in moderation on his blog, I was unable to correct his misapprehensions. Even so I am disappointed that he would choose to interpret events in this way and assume the worst of people.

A reminder that this is my personal blog, and anything written here is my personal opinion and does not represent the views of the Oxfordshire Green Party or the Green Party.

The final result for the Victorian State election is still to come in, but the results don’t look good for the Greens in the lower house compared to their hopes early on in the election campaign. Their first preferences votes were close to expected, but the problem for the Greens was the changes in the preferences distribution by the Conservatives (The Liberals) from the Greens to Labor. This change meant that what looked like a realistic chance for 3 lower house seats will probably end up being none. The reason The Liberals decided to change how their second preferences are distributed is because they understand that after the election of the first Green MP to the national Parliament The Greens are a real political force in Australia and preferencing a party to the left of Labor was not in their interests. They may have made this decision anyway but the Greens didn’t help themselves by their cockiness in relation to the inner Melbourne seats where it looked like they were going to win their first lower house seats in the State Parliament. But if they had not been so cocky the Liberals might not have taken notice, because in the seats involved the Liberals are not in the contest and were probably not paying much attention.

This is a significant blow for The Greens because in the seats where they have the strongest support it is likely that they will have to win on first preference votes alone because they can’t rely on any significant second preference votes when the contest is predominantly between them and Labor.

For The Greens to win where they haven’t won on first preferences they need Labor to come third in a three way race with the hope that Labor second preferences give The Greens enough votes to beat The Liberals.

If this happens too often though dont be surprised if Labor decides to do a preference deal with The Liberals in an attempt to keep the third party from getting any significant representation in Parliament.

The upshot is that for a minor party like The Greens the Alternative Voting System can mean that in the seats with the strongest green support they can win the largest number of first preferences votes but still lose the election.