Pickles’s bribe to councils is a white elephant
Rupert Read discusses the flaws, in both aim and execution, of Eric Pickles’s plan to return to weekly bin collections.
Rupert Read
Website Rupert is a Green Party councillor in Norwich and a Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia where he specialises in environmental and political philosophy and analysis of propaganda. He writes on environmental and social policy, and democratic renewal and reform; he blogs at Rupert’s Read.
Vote 2011: Green campaign diary
Green Party councillor Rupert Read kicks off Left Foot Forward’s dispatches from the front: the campaign diaries of party activists on the election trail.
AV keeps the BNP in their cage
The official briefing paper on AV has flaws but makes the point well that the BNP will suffer from a Yes vote on May 5th, reports the Green Party’s Rupert Read.
There’s much more to recycling than the headline rate
Green politicians, just as they have always led on recycling, on Zero Waste, etc., need to take a lead in weaning the media, the political class and the electorate off the drug of purely quantitative ‘rising recycling rates’.
Hague now has a whole series of questions to answer
William Hague has come under increasing pressure in the last few weeks, criticised for a series of blunders over Libya, Egypt and the whole Middle East, culminating in the disastrous SAS mission.
Green challenges on transport policy
When Labour came to power in 1997, it promised to reverse the remorseless growth in road traffic. Within a few years, Labour’s first transport secretary, John Prescott, had self-admittedly failed in this ambition, and indeed Labour had almost been sunk by the fuel-price protests. If the Left is to achieve real change in the all-important area of ‘transport policy’, then it is going to have to be both much more ambitious and much more savvy than was the Blair government.
Compass must practice what it preaches on pluralism
There remains a contradiction at the heart of Compass’s pluralist mission. Compass, while not formally affiliated to the Labour Party, is registered with the Party, and has a rule that forbids members of other parties from being full members.
A green perspective on Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband spoke in Norwich last night. Local Green party councillor Rupert Read attended and was impressed by the performance.
‘Nasty’ party let off the leash with latest batch of presentation bills
Here are some highlights from the latest batch of ‘Presentation Bills’, bills put by MPs before the House of Commons without any serious chance of their becoming law, to make a political point.
AV referendum to be announced next week & held in May
Left Foot Forward understands from a source close to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that the timetable for the promised referendum on AV will be announced next week, and that the referendum itself is most likely to be scheduled to coincide with the May 2011 Local Elections.