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On the Sixth Day – Mancunian Momentos

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Visiting a city you once lived in after a period of years is always a jolting experience – perhaps more so if the visit is fleeting.

The old place is still there. Streets you can walk about by habit. Old haunts that ambush you back into your younger self as though you’ve walked through a portal into forgotten memories that are suddenly alive. But all the new stuff superimposed upon it makes it stranger, a different place. All your memories of what this place is become what this place was in a sudden brutal updating. The Manchester that lives in my head is what it was like in the 1980’s. Manchester as it is is full of personal echoes that, however powerful, are as insubstantial as whispers. Time can’t be held in your hands, only in your head. You remember the North, but the North has moved on and doesn’t remember you.

The pictures here were taken in the darkness of a Northern November evening.

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ON THE SIXTH DAY GOD CREATED MANchester.

These murals are everywhere. A lot of confidence in this, alongside the humour. Clearly, from this picture especially, this is still a work in progress. As we also say of London “It’ll be lovely when it’s finished.”

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75 Piccadilly

This was the street entrance to the silk screen printshop I used to work in, making posters for CND, student unions, factory occupations; and shamelessly ripping off designs from the Ateliers Populaires from Mai 68. Back then this was a very shabby part of the centre of town, with semi abandoned workshop spaces available to rent from The Salvation Army, among other unlikely landlords, for peppercorn rents. Now the whole street is swish and slick and exudes the air of valuable real estate. Piccadilly Gardens is similar. once quiet, contemplative, with a sorrowful dignity, it is now brash, lit up, commercial, lively. Richer but with less gravitas somehow. I’d forgotten about the stone lions carved on either side of the skylight. Their damp, crumbling dignity has a feel of Venice or some forgotten kingdom in Anatolia.

 

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The Midland Hotel

This was Adolf Hitler’s favourite building in Britain and would have been his northern HQ had Operation Sea Lion come off. A definite and in your face building. Not one you could miss. Ponderous, ugly pink sandstone. Empty overstated pomp. Right up Hitler’s street. Easy to mock. But had the occupation occurred it would have been one of those buildings that warps the space around it with the force field of all the terrible things being done or planned inside. Outside is St Peter’s Square – site of the Peterloo massacre in 1819 – commemorated discretely only by a blue plaque – so as not to draw too much attention to it or what it meant (and still does). Many people pass by every day, walk over the space where the Yeomanry cut down democracy protesters, and catch a tram without a second thought.

There is something inspiring about the trams though. Something continental and forward looking. Beyond the London model. More distinctive than red buses. Something greener than cars or buses. Thousands of people travelling on these mighty ships of the street with their friendly hoot as far out as Rochdale, Bury, Eccles, Altringham and Ashton. Someone forgot about Oldham – which isn’t easy to do. Nevertheless, as Ursula Le Guin wrote in The Dispossed, “It was hard to look at the trams of Anarres without wanting to cheer.”(1)

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The way Indian/Pakistani restaurants used to be.

Round where I live now, a lot of the Indian restaurants have gone up market in a modernist sort of way. There’s slick decor, flat screen TVs. mocktails, good food but at higher prices catering for a quite prosperous “aspirational” third or fourth generation. Back in the early 80’s there were several Pakistani run cafes in an Asian textile district at the back of the Arndale Centre. One of them, Yaqub’s, was a shack in the shadow of the multi story car park, with room for about five of us to squeeze in onto a counter along the window, while one of the staff of two took orders and an elderly, skinny guy with a long beard and shy smile grilled kebabs on skewers, where you could get a veg curry and Gulab Jamun for afters for 80p. My kind of place. There was another, the Lahore cafe, that was hidden away in a hole in a wall down a disused side street. Both these are long gone. The Yagdar, which is just opposite where Yaqub’s used to be, has come up in the world in the sense that it is no longer actually dangerous to eat there. The last time I was in Manchester for a union conference in 2008 the Yagdar had steps down to the toilets that you had to step on very carefully so as not to go through them and an internal decor that could best be described as improvised. Bits of decorative moulding that seemed to have been rescued from a skip had been stuck on the walls here and there and someone had brushed some gold paint across some of it. The food, however, was wonderful. Wholesome, home cooked, authentic and seriously inexpensive.  It looked a bit like this.

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The Yagdar. 3 curries, rice and chapati – £5.50. Recommended.

Since then they have cleaned up and sorted out the stairs. Everything is minimalist formica basic. Nothing fancy. But the food is just as good and just as good value. Served up by a friendly but lugubrious guy in Kurta Pajama (what he wears for work not how he dresses up for it) that you can talk to eye to eye. I love these places. I wish a few more of them had survived.

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A relatively honest War Memorial by Piccadilly Station

Most war memorials seek to glorify or to sanctify war. This one, although all the soldiers look far more clean cut and handsome than they can possibly have been, at least shows the damage that was done to so many of them. These were not the “glorious dead” but the shattered living, the Mutilles de Guerre, some of them with wounds that led to them being shunned as an inconvenient reminder of how terrible the war had been. The wounded were far more numerous than the dead. One and a half million in Britain (twice as many as those killed) more than four million in France and Germany. Many more – as with all wars – had wounds that could not be seen.

  1. This quotation is from memory. The book is well worth a read.

Something in the Air

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

When my grandfather was a soldier in India, 100 years ago; he said that whenever there was trouble in a village – as there increasingly was as the Raj began to slip in the 1920s  -they would send a detachment of troops to march through it to intimidate the villagers – flags flying, band playing, fixed bayonets, loads of shouting from NCOs and “bags of swank”. Gunboat diplomacy worked the same way. Send a battleship with huge guns capable of smashing buildings like eggshells into the principal port of any country not toeing the line of the Pax Britannica and the implied threat was often enough for a peaceful solution; that allowed the everyday violence of colonial exploitation to continue to run smoothly.

On December 1st six military helicopters – three twin engined heavy duty Chinooks at the rear with three lighter dragonfly looking types ahead of them – were circling in London’s airspace just ahead of Trump’s visit; noisily and often enough to be noticeable and noticed. There was something edgy and nervy about it. On December 4th, at the end of it, a low flying olive drab monstrosity of a Hercules transport aircraft cruised with almost impossible slowness over my head while I was leafleting on Wakeman’s Hill – heading, no doubt, for Northolt to pick up his enormous armoured motorcade – those 12 black vehicles that filled the Mall from one end to the other at self important speed. The Sopranos with state power. The last time Donald Trump came, we were similarly buzzed by evil looking Osprey helicopters sending the same message. The boss had come to case the place and inspect his future province – an overt display of a significant shift in power from here to there, that Boris Johnson is conniving at and Jeremy Corbyn is resisting.

 

 

Litter leafletting and other campaign oddities.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

There are moments when wearing a badge matters. Sometimes you don’t want someone to prejudge you; and a badge puts you in a pigeon hole before you start. Unlabelled, anyone you are talking to is listening first to your thoughts and ideas without a preset filter set to dismiss. But sometimes a declaration of allegiance makes a difference. There was such a moment in 1977 outside Woolworths in Coney Street in York – which was the main pitch for the left to sell newspapers at the time (much to the annoyance of the Woolies management). For some weeks there had been small grumbling, gatherings of National Front supporters that had been getting increasingly threatening but the week after the Anti Nazi League’s bright yellow and red arrow badges went on sale there was a sudden flooding of them from one end of the street to the other. It seemed as though nearly everyone was wearing one; recognising each other as a new collective strength in an impromptu carnival of defiance and exuberation. It was like spring after winter, the sun breaking through an overcast sky.

So it is now. I have taken to wearing my Vote Labour sticker when I am not canvassing. This leads to people grinning at me on the tube and the bus, leaning across in the supermarket and saying “Good. Yes. I agree,” people in the choir in Kilburn pulling out Labour leaflets to talk about, a barmaid in the pub opposite the Kiln asking enthusiastically how the canvas is going, a lengthy friendly explorative discussion in an equally lengthy queue at Aldi, with other people listening in – and no hostility at all. In an election in which part of the campaign the right is waging is to make Labour seem a pariah, wearing the badge in public and just going about your everyday business is a statement in itself – and gives heart to others.

The Tories and Lib Dems locally seem to be unsure where one constituency starts and another ends. Harrow West Tory leaflets have been posted through doors in Brent North. Brent North Lib Dem leaflets have turned up in Brent Central. The importance of local knowledge? Another feature of their leafleting effort is that they are so stretched for supporters on the ground that they don’t go up steps to flats to actually put the leaflets through the letterboxes; leaving them in a pile at the bottom of the steps instead. They then get blown all over the place by the wind and pile up with the general street mulch of squashed plastic bottles and crushed Kronenburg cans that so enhances the aesthetic quality of our lives round here. There were something like thirty dull orange Lib Dem ones scattered on the pavement in front of the shops like fallen autumn leaves and people were walking all over them without a second glance. Given that litter has become a growing problem scumming up our streets locally this is not a good look for them.

 

Tory manifesto on climate change; as much of a no show as Boris Johnson.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The Conservative Manifesto – written by a consultant for a fracking company – tucks climate change away on p 58 of a 63 page document to show how important they think it is – and starts with a self soothing pat on the back for achievements they have not made.

“Our Government’s stewardship of the natural environment, its focus on protecting the countryside and reducing plastic waste, is a source of immense pride.”  Really? Walk down any urban street and check out how successful they have been at “reducing plastic waste”. Take a deep breath and savour the air that has led them to being taken to court – twice – by the European Union for failing to clear up dangerous levels of air pollution. Bear in mind that this was the government that wanted to sell off National Parks and – for a while – was prepared to contemplate fracking within them.

“But today, the climate emergency means that the challenges we face stretch far beyond our borders.”

This would be the climate emergency that was introduced into parliament by Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party and on which most Conservative MPs abstained. Note that the challenge that stretches beyond our borders is one that “we” face. Not a global problem that has to be faced together, but one that has to be seen through the distorting lens of nation. The challenges being faced now under the impact of climate change in the developing world are seen in the framework of a possibly threatened cosy domesticity.

“Thanks to the efforts of successive Governments, the UK has cut carbon emissions by more than any similar developed country. We are now the world’s leader in offshore wind – a fantastic success story of Government and the private sector working hand in hand to cut costs and deliver ever more electricity at plummeting costs.” 

This sentence stands boldly and four square on the thinnest of thin ice.

  • The UK has cut its carbon emissions by a sharp shift away from coal for energy generation and by offshoring significant parts of manufacturing industry to China and other developing countries.  The goods that are consumed in the UK are not counted towards its carbon emissions. If they were, UK carbon emissions from consumption would almost double.
  • There is no mention here of onshore wind – which the Conservatives have hobbled. Onshore wind installation – now the cheapest form of energy generation – fell by 80% in 2018 because of planning restrictions brought in by the Conservative government.
  • Nor is there a reference to solar. The removal of the solar subsidy – on the grounds that a “mature industry” should stand on its own two feet in an open market – led to new solar installation falling by half in 2016 and again in 2017.
  • Fossil fuel subsidy in UK in 2018 was running at £12 billion – the highest level in the EU. So much for mature industries competing on a level playing field.

These decisions are perverse and suicidal – not something anyone could be proud of. We should also note that without the colossal Chinese investment in wind technology which have reduced its costs to below those of fossil fuel equivalents, there would be no expansion even of offshore wind. Freeloading of the efforts of others while taking credit for them is ever the Conservative way.

“Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, we believe that free markets, innovation and prosperity can protect the planet.”

This translates as, leave it to the good old boys in charge- when have they ever let you down? Such complacency in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. How far have “free markets, innovation and prosperity” reduced carbon emissions so far? Innovation requires a level of investment that the private sector is proving remarkably resistant to making. Prosperity is an odd word to lay claim to after ten years of austerity. More urgently, business as usual free market investment decisions, already taken and in the pipeline, threaten the world with a 4C temperature rise. That is not according to Jeremy Corbyn. That is according to the Governor of the Bank of England. The fossil fuel companies spend millions on subverting any decisions that might affect their profits in the short term – in the same way that the tobacco companies and the asbestos companies did. Left to itself the “free market” is knowingly pushing us to hell in a handcart.

Lets look at what the Conservatives propose to do if re-elected.

“We will lead the global fight against climate change by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as advised by the independent
Committee on Climate Change.”

2050 is better than many but not world leading. Sweden is aiming for 2045, Finland 2035 and Norway by 2030. But more significant than the date is the action taken to meet it. The Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee pointed out in August that “Fundamental change is required, but government keeps papering the cracks instead of fixing the foundations.” Current plans, none of them revised by this Manifesto, mean the UK will miss its existing targets and increasingly fall behind in the next ten crucial years – which, as Labour rightly points out – have to be front loaded with initiatives if we are to have a chance of keeping temperature rises below 2C, let alone 1.5C. The Conservatives seem content to keep playing chicken with physics. We really can’t afford to let them keep doing that.

“We have doubled International Climate Finance. And we will use our position hosting the UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow in 2020 to ask our global partners to match
our ambition.”

“Doubled” sounds impressive, but the actual quantity of International climate Finance coming from the UK is £5.8 billion over 5 years (2016-21); about a billion a year. Developed countries – acting under the Paris Agreement – are supposed to be transferring £100 billion a year to developing countries to allow development without carbon emissions, but the actual transfer is running at between a tenth and a fifth of that. Meanwhile the UK continues to use development funding through UK Export Finance to finance fossil fuel developments (amounting to 96% of UKEF funding over five years of £2.4 billion to developing countries). The ambition we need from Glasgow is an awful long way beyond the compromised, hesitant half steps taken by the UK so far.

We will set up new international partnerships to tackle deforestation and protect vital landscapes and wildlife corridors. We will establish a new £500 million Blue Planet Fund to
help protect our oceans from plastic pollution, warming sea temperatures and overfishing, and extend the Blue Belt programme to preserve the maritime environment. We will continue to lead diplomatic efforts to protect 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030.

Half a billion pounds – to “protect our oceans from plastic pollution, warming sea temperatures and overfishing”.  Very grandiose ambitions for such a tiny amount of money. This is a quarter of what they propose to spend on filling in potholes in roads. The phrase “drop in the ocean” comes to mind. No budget for the “international partnerships to tackle deforestation.” It should be noted that planting lots of trees has recently been adopted by sections of the right internationally as an alternative to taking any other action on climate change.

Our first Budget will prioritise the environment: investing in R&D ; decarbonisation schemes ; new flood defences, which will receive £4 billion in new funding over the coming
years; electric vehicle infrastructure including a national plug-in network , and gigafactory; and clean energy. In the next decade, we will work with the market to deliver two million new high quality jobs in clean growth. We have ambitious targets:

All this is what might be called feelgood broad brush. There are no budgets or timescales.  “We will invest” an unspecified amount in all sorts of things that sound terribly good but we’re not going to say what they are or how much or what results we expect nor by when. “I shall do such things. what they are I know not.” *The key phrase is “we will work with the market”. Working with the market means that the interests of private sector profit trumps everything else and the state will help it along. This has not worked out well so far and there is little reason to suppose there will be any change in the immediate future. And we don’t have long.

Their record on this is not good. Once David Cameron decided to “clear out the green crap” Conservative policies in the renewable energy sector led to a third of the jobs being lost between 2014 and 2017. There is no sign in this manifesto of the either the policies required to reverse this nor the scale of investment that would be needed to get anywhere near the figure of two million jobs; which they seem to have sucked out of their thumbs by taking Labour’s promise and doubling it but with neither the required level of investment nor the sector by sector analysis of where these jobs would come from (or be). Labour’s plan has more precise and credible projections – 98,000 jobs building an additional 7,000 offshore and 2,000 onshore wind turbines. 450,000 jobs by upgrading every home in Britain by 2030 to cut emissions. 26,500 jobs in Hydrogen production in Yorkshire, the Humber and the north-east. 195,000 jobs in electric car production. 25,000 in nine new recycling sites.

Nor is there any reason to suppose that – if re-elected “the green crap” would sit around very long before being cleared out again. This is quite evident in their section on fracking – which they completely reversed before the manifesto even went out.

We placed a moratorium on fracking in England with immediate effect.
Having listened to local communities, we have ruled out changes to the planning system. We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.

This is quite outrageous. Just two days after announcing their “ban”, not only did they re-designate it a “moratorium”, but government documents were released that foreshadowed proposals to allow fracking “at will” with no planning permission, making fracking “as easy as building a conservatory.” The shape of things to come if we allow them back in.

It is also indicated by their approach to transport.

We will support clean transport to ensure clean air, as well as setting strict new laws on air quality. We will consult on the earliest date by which we can phase out the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars.

Its tempting to say that this is “breathtaking”. They have been taken to court TWICE by the EU on air quality. They have been in government for TEN YEARS. Where have the “strict new laws” been all that time? More to the point – what will they say? Given that Conservative candidates often make opposition to clean air zones one of the points in their campaigns “strict” should not be taken at face value. “Support” for clean transport can mean anything from being pleased that there is a bit of it coming on stream to actually taking steps to ensure that there is. There is a definite big budget for building roads. Building new roads tends to increase motor traffic; the opposite of what we need. No budget for bus services, reopening or electrifying rail lines nor for making sure that the vehicles running on these roads are actually “clean”. The consultation on the earliest date to phase out sale of new petrol/diesel vehicles gives the game away. If you consider whose interests have been prioritised every time the Conservatives launch a consultation its clear that they will dance to the tune of the motor manufacturers, not set them the tough targets we need to actually make the transition.

This graphic summary of the financial projections for these “ambitious targets” listed here, alongside what they plan to spend on building roads and filling in potholes illustrates just how lacking in ambition they are. This is a deeply perverse set of priorities.

Conservative investment in Environment priorities

Their one relatively substantial commitment is this.

We will help lower energy bills by investing £9.2 billion in the energy efficiency of homes, schools and hospitals.

This is one twenty fifth of what Labour would do and would barely scratch the surface; so, by 2030 we’d still have the overwhelming majority of our homes leaking carbon at a ludicrous rate with people paying the energy companies through the nose for the privilege. Labour would fix that problem in both respects.

Home insulation investment

This graphic is a suitable illustration of the different scale of Party ambition. What we have with the Conservative manifesto is muddling on with business as usual, kicking the can further down a road that we are about to run out of, a little tweak here, a little tweak there, but nothing that recognises either the scale of the crisis nor the level of urgency with which it has to be tackled because of its deep seated aversion to the necessary state action.

*Shakespeare. King Lear.

Climate Change. The Conservative Manifesto is playing chicken with Physics.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

Reading the section of the Conservative Manifesto on climate change- one page tucked away as a sort of afterthought – one item among so many – on page 55 (out of 64) to show just how important they think it is – I can’t help but be reminded of a 1971 meeting between Thurrock Friends of the Earth and the local Young Tories. We were from different planets of course. Thurrock FOE – like a foretaste of the UKSCN -was made up entirely of school students. Mostly working class high flyers from Grays and Aveley Tech and the Convent Girls School living on estates in Grays, Stifford Clays and Tilbury. In the Conservative Party it was possible at that time to be considered “young” at the age of 35, but the two brittly over confident chaps who came to talk with us weren’t much older than we were. They were also from Orsett, a well to do rural enclave that could double for Ambridge on a good day.

Our concerns were global, systemic. Even before climate change was recognised as the threat that it is, there was a sense that we were using resources in a way that was reckless for our own survival. We picketed Tescos because of overpackaging and worried about the built in obsolescence of so much of the tat that was being produced – the philosophy at the time being neatly skewered in Tom Stoppard’s play “Jumpers” as “no problem is insoluble; given a large enough plastic bag.” We picketed the motor show over safety and pollution. We worried about the air we were breathing. With the huge cement works by the Dartford Tunnel, where Lakeside is now, and the predominantly westerly winds, everyone between there and the Estuary was breathing solid lungfuls of cement dust on a daily basis. That then blew across the North Sea and contributed to the acid rain that was killing European forests at the time. We worried about Dutch elm disease as the local variant of deforestation – all the magnificent elms in Dell Woods, Alfred Russel Wallis’s* abandoned arboretum, were dying- and we were beginning to see all this as a manifestation of a system driven by profit.

The Young Conservatives saw the fundamental issue with “the environment” as being litter. More to the point, litter and fly tipping being brought in by people from Basildon – at that time a relatively new New Town full of decanted Londoners and therefore deeply suspect. It struck me at the time that this missed the point on every level that it was possible to miss it on.

Today’s Conservative Manifesto – written as it is by a consultant for a fracking company – does much the same. It starts with a self soothing pat on the back for achievements they have not made.

“Our Government’s stewardship of the natural environment, its focus on protecting the countryside and reducing plastic waste, is a source of immense pride.”  Really? Walk down any urban street and check out how successful they have been at “reducing plastic waste”. Take a deep breath and savour the air that has led them to being taken to court – twice – by the European Union for failing to clear up dangerous levels of air pollution. Bear in mind that this was the government that wanted to sell off National Parks and – for a while – was prepared to contemplate fracking within them.

“But today, the climate emergency means that the challenges we face stretch far beyond our borders.”

This would be the climate emergency that was introduced into parliament by Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party and on which most Conservative MPs abstained. Note that the challenge that stretches beyond our borders is one that “we” face. Not a global problem that has to be faced together, but one that has to be seen through the distorting lens of nation. The challenges being faced now under the impact of climate change in the developing world are seen in the framework of a possibly threatened cosy domesticity.

“Thanks to the efforts of successive Governments, the UK has cut carbon emissions by more than any similar developed country. We are now the world’s leader in offshore wind – a fantastic success story of Government and the private sector working hand in hand to cut costs and deliver ever more electricity at plummeting costs.” 

This sentence stands boldly and four square on the thinnest of thin ice.

  • The UK has cut its carbon emissions by a sharp shift away from coal for energy generation and by offshoring significant parts of manufacturing industry to China and other developing countries. The cement dust in the air I grew up with is no longer in Thurrock, but in Chongking. The goods that are consumed in the UK are not counted towards its carbon emissions. If they were, UK carbon emissions from consumption would almost double.
  • There is no mention here of onshore wind – which the Conservatives have hobbled. Onshore wind installation – now the cheapest form of energy generation – fell by 80% in 2018 because of planning restrictions brought in by the Conservative government.
  • Nor is there a reference to solar. The removal of the solar subsidy – on the grounds that a “mature industry” should stand on its own two feet in an open market – led to new solar installation falling by half in 2016 and again in 2017.
  • Fossil fuel subsidy in UK in 2018 was running at £12 billion – the highest level in the EU. So much for mature industries competing on a level playing field.

These decisions are perverse and suicidal – not something anyone could be proud of. We should also note that without the colossal Chinese investment in wind technology which have reduced its costs to below those of fossil fuel equivalents, there would be no expansion even of offshore wind. Freeloading of the efforts of others while taking credit for them is ever the Conservative way.

“Unlike Jeremy Corbyn, we believe that free markets, innovation and prosperity can protect the planet.”

This translates as, leave it to the good old boys in charge- when have they ever let you down? Such complacency in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. How far have “free markets, innovation and prosperity” reduced carbon emissions so far? Innovation requires a level of investment that the private sector is proving remarkably resistant to making. Prosperity is an odd word to lay claim to after ten years of austerity. More urgently, business as usual free market investment decisions, already taken and in the pipeline, threaten the world with a 4C temperature rise. That is not according to Jeremy Corbyn. That is according to the Governor of the Bank of England. The fossil fuel companies spend millions on subverting any decisions that might affect their profits in the short term – in the same way that the tobacco companies and the asbestos companies did. Left to itself the “free market” is knowingly pushing us to hell in a handcart.

Lets look at what the Conservatives propose to do if re-elected.

“We will lead the global fight against climate change by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as advised by the independent
Committee on Climate Change.”

2050 is better than many but not world leading. Sweden is aiming for 2045, Finland 2035 and Norway by 2030. But more significant than the date is the action taken to meet it. The Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee pointed out in August that “Fundamental change is required, but government keeps papering the cracks instead of fixing the foundations.” Current plans, none of them revised by this Manifesto, mean the UK will miss its existing targets and increasingly fall behind in the next ten crucial years – which, as Labour rightly points out – have to be front loaded with initiatives if we are to have a chance of keeping temperature rises below 2C, let alone 1.5C. The Conservatives seem content to keep playing chicken with physics. We really can’t afford to let them keep doing that.

“We have doubled International Climate Finance. And we will use our position hosting the UN Climate Change Summit in Glasgow in 2020 to ask our global partners to match
our ambition.”

“Doubled” sounds impressive, but the actual quantity of International climate Finance coming from the UK is £5.8 billion over 5 years (2016-21); about a billion a year. Developed countries – acting under the Paris Agreement – are supposed to be transferring £100 billion a year to developing countries to allow development without carbon emissions, but the actual transfer is running at between a tenth and a fifth of that. Meanwhile the UK continues to use development funding through UK Export Finance to finance fossil fuel developments (amounting to 96% of UKEF funding over five years of £2.4 billion to developing countries). The ambition we need from Glasgow is an awful long way beyond the compromised, hesitant half steps taken by the UK so far.

We will set up new international partnerships to tackle deforestation and protect vital landscapes and wildlife corridors. We will establish a new £500 million Blue Planet Fund to
help protect our oceans from plastic pollution, warming sea temperatures and overfishing, and extend the Blue Belt programme to preserve the maritime environment. We will continue to lead diplomatic efforts to protect 30 per cent of the world’s oceans by 2030.

Half a billion pounds – to “protect our oceans from plastic pollution, warming sea temperatures and overfishing”.  Very grandiose ambitions for such a tiny amount of money. This is a quarter of what they propose to spend on filling in potholes in roads. The phrase “drop in the ocean” comes to mind. No budget for the “international partnerships to tackle deforestation.” It should be noted that planting lots of trees has recently been adopted by sections of the right internationally as an alternative to taking any other action on climate change.

Our first Budget will prioritise the environment: investing in R&D ; decarbonisation schemes ; new flood defences, which will receive £4 billion in new funding over the coming
years; electric vehicle infrastructure including a national plug-in network , and gigafactory; and clean energy. In the next decade, we will work with the market to deliver two million new high quality jobs in clean growth. We have ambitious targets:

All this is what might be called feelgood broad brush. There are no budgets or timescales.  “We will invest” an unspecified amount in all sorts of things that sound terribly good but we’re not going to say what they are or how much or what results we expect nor by when. “I shall do such things. what they are I know not.” *The key phrase is “we will work with the market”. Working with the market means that the interests of private sector profit trumps everything else and the state will help it along. This has not worked out well so far and there is little reason to suppose there will be any change in the immediate future. And we don’t have long.

Their record on this is not good. Once David Cameron decided to “clear out the green crap” Conservative policies in the renewable energy sector led to a third of the jobs being lost between 2014 and 2017. There is no sign in this manifesto of the either the policies required to reverse this nor the scale of investment that would be needed to get anywhere near the figure of two million jobs; which they seem to have sucked out of their thumbs by taking Labour’s promise and doubling it but with neither the required level of investment nor the sector by sector analysis of where these jobs would come from (or be). Labour’s plan has more precise and credible projections – 98,000 jobs building an additional 7,000 offshore and 2,000 onshore wind turbines. 450,000 jobs by upgrading every home in Britain by 2030 to cut emissions. 26,500 jobs in Hydrogen production in Yorkshire, the Humber and the north-east. 195,000 jobs in electric car production. 25,000 in nine new recycling sites.

Nor is there any reason to suppose that – if re-elected “the green crap” would sit around very long before being cleared out again. This is quite evident in their section on fracking – which they completely reversed before the manifesto even went out.

We placed a moratorium on fracking in England with immediate effect.
Having listened to local communities, we have ruled out changes to the planning system. We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.

This is quite outrageous. Just two days after announcing their “ban”, not only did they re-designate it a “moratorium”, but government documents were released that foreshadowed proposals to allow fracking “at will” with no planning permission, making fracking “as easy as building a conservatory.” The shape of things to come if we allow them back in.

It is also indicated by their approach to transport.

We will support clean transport to ensure clean air, as well as setting strict new laws on air quality. We will consult on the earliest date by which we can phase out the sale of new conventional petrol and diesel cars.

Its tempting to say that this is “breathtaking”. They have been taken to court TWICE by the EU on air quality. They have been in government for TEN YEARS. Where have the “strict new laws” been all that time? More to the point – what will they say? Given that Conservative candidates often make opposition to clean air zones one of the points in their campaigns “strict” should not be taken at face value. “Support” for clean transport can mean anything from being pleased that there is a bit of it coming on stream to actually taking steps to ensure that there is. There is a definite big budget for building roads. Building new roads tends to increase motor traffic; the opposite of what we need. No budget for bus services, reopening or electrifying rail lines nor for making sure that the vehicles running on these roads are actually “clean”. The consultation on the earliest date to phase out sale of new petrol/diesel vehicles gives the game away. If you consider whose interests have been prioritised every time the Conservatives launch a consultation its clear that they will dance to the tune of the motor manufacturers, not set them the tough targets we need to actually make the transition.

This graphic summary of the financial projections for these “ambitious targets” listed here, alongside what they plan to spend on building roads and filling in potholes illustrates just how lacking in ambition they are. This is a deeply perverse set of priorities.

Conservative investment in Environment priorities

Their one relatively substantial commitment is this.

We will help lower energy bills by investing £9.2 billion in the energy efficiency of homes, schools and hospitals.

This is one twenty fifth of what Labour would do and would barely scratch the surface; so, by 2030 we’d still have the overwhelming majority of our homes leaking carbon at a ludicrous rate with people paying the energy companies through the nose for the privilege. Labour would fix that problem in both respects.

Home insulation investment

This graphic is a suitable illustration of the different scale of Party ambition. What we have with the Conservative manifesto is muddling on with business as usual, kicking the can further down a road that we are about to run out of, a little tweak here, a little tweak there, but nothing that recognises either the scale of the crisis nor the level of urgency with which it has to be tackled because of its deep seated aversion to the necessary state action.

*Alfred Russel Wallace came up with the theory of evolution at the same time as Darwin. In fact, it was a letter from Russel Wallace that persuaded Darwin to publish, out of fear that Russel Wallace would do it first. He lived for a while in Grays in the early 1870s building one of the world’s first concrete houses, later used as a convent (!) and now converted into flats. The grounds of the house included a 16 acre walled arboretum along a steep hill which has been disused and run wild for over a hundred years – a place of mystery and darkness for generations of local children.

*Shakespeare. King Lear.

Conservative Environment Policy – a Manifesto for Mr Toad.

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This graph speaks for itself. The spending commitments are all taken from the Conservative Manifesto. Conservative investment in Environment priorities

So road building is 58 times more important than saving the oceans and filling pot holes in roads is four times more important than carbon capture and storage. The commitment to homes and public building insulation is roughly 1:25th of Labour’s.

As Mr Toad might say “Poop poop!”

Why the caged bird sings in Colindale

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Leafletting the flats above the shops on the main drag in Colindale, along one of those unloved back alley roads that requires constant effort to stop it becoming a casual land fill site; unsurfaced, pitted with puddles, cars randomly parked amidst the mud under the shadow of what used to be a small local cinema, but is now graffitied across its redbrick hulk round the back and fitfully used as a snooker hall round the front.

A small rat darts between rubbish bins – a quick, furtive shadow of movement. The flats have to be approached across the back ends of the shops through swinging gates mostly worn right away like ghosts of themselves, along improvised systems of steps and that look temporary, but have nevertheless survived far longer than is fair on them. No one approaches these places by chance.

A youth, sitting at the top of the stairs having a cigarette thanks me for the leaflet and immediately starts canvassing on our behalf to whoever he is talking to on his hands free phone. He gives me a grin and a thumbs up when I pass him on the way down.

People have responded to the public neglect either by making extreme efforts to smarten up with little fragments of care or gentility – flower planters, blue pottery nameplates, engraved, patterned glass in front doors – or gave up on all that years ago – leaving piles of leaves choking the pathways, crumbling sheds – one with a sleepy tabby cat in full possession – jumbles of dead plant pots and rubbish that hasn’t quite been thrown away.

One patriotic soul – apparently immune to the ambiguity of the symbolism – has displayed his loyal pride by sticking an England flag on his wheely bin.

On the opposite side of the alley is a row of garages. As I pass one of them is open showing fat comfortable leather sofas in a clean spare space; a man startled by my glance, standing alone in front of a back wall full of caged birds; all singing wildly in their tiny wire prisons. There are no windows.

The things you see while leafleting.

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It is very apparent, when you spend any time pounding the pavements with leaflets or canvas sheets, that the 1980’s Conservative dream of home ownership in “invincible suburbs” is turning a bit sour even for many of the people who bought into it and into one of them.

Flaking paint, sagging roofs, crumbling garden walls, paved over forecourts sprouting half sprayed weeds, discarded and broken furniture stacked outside the front door for now (in one case a toilet) are all signs of people with neither the income nor the capital to do serious repairs, nor even freshen the place up a bit. Thereby the home becomes a burden and a worry.

Ten years of austerity and fewer people can afford to “keep up appearances.”  A row of homes like this and there’s a slum like appearance to the street. Renting from Councils with a proper maintenance department would collectivise the cost of maintenance, not to mention the essential retrofits that we need to hold back climate change.

On one estate I carefully close all the gates that had been left open. Which was almost all of them. The sign of people in a hurry, the casually swinging gates indicating precariousness and vulnerability: lives lived faster than they should be because there’s no time to take care. One swings back a bit hard and the woman comes out to complain that I have slammed her gate. As I apologise she notices the leaflet, beams and says -“Oh. Your from the Labour. Have a good day” and smiles again because the leaflet gives her hope.

When you are leafleting and a householder comes out and puts your leaflet straight into recycling while giving you a hard stare- as happened to me a couple of weeks ago -it can be a bit of a downer. When they come out and avidly read the leaflet as they walk down the street it makes you feel worthwhile.

In the flats, a letterbox with a No Junk Mail sticker is full of junk mail.

Some houses are not very welcoming. Some park cars across their forecourt in a way that makes it almost impossible to get to the front door. Some threaten with dogs. One house had a discarded mattress across the path, that looked as though it had been there for some time. Some take the opposite tack. A doormat reads “We welcome everyone with Proseco.” It is unclear whether this means that to be sure of a welcome you need to bring some, or, my assumption at the time, that everyone who turns up is welcomed with a glass. I was tempted to knock.

Seen in the downpour.

On the road between Drummond Street and Euston Road a youth is walking on the pavement so engrossed in reading his book that he is paying  attention neither to where he is going nor the heavy raindrops that are turning his pages into papier mache.

Outside Paddington, sleek modern trains, all ready for Crossrail with “Elizabeth Line” painted on their side, sit in the rain waiting patiently for 2021.

Lighting a candle in the darkness

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Down outside Wembley Central on that strangely soulless piazza with the station at one end and “Brighthouse” at the other launching Brent North’s election campaign.

Passers by stop off for a handshake, photo and chat with Barry Gardiner, who lives round the corner and is one of those MPs that really works his constituency and is available to everyone in it for a helping hand.

Most people are friendly – or at least relaxed about taking a leaflet.

Some stop for a chat. One elderly Indian bloke tells me he’s voted for every Labour Prime Minister since “that man with the cigars”. “Harold Wilson?” “That’s him.”

A few are hostile. It is only a few, but there’s more of an edge to it than previously.

Another guy says that Wembley High Street has gone “downhill under Labour – not like Harrow.” “Harrow is Labour too.” “Ah.” The same guy sees climate change as the end of days. “Its all in the book” (of Revelations) so he is not convinced that doing anything about it is worthwhile; a betrayal of posterity wrapped up in religious fatalism.

As we are packing up a muscly bald guy leans out of a powerful motor stuck in traffic and yells “scum!”

I know I shouldn’t react to things like that but I’ve always had a barely suppressed death wish and call back, arms outstretched, questioning look,  “That was articulate. Could we have a sentence please?”

Him going a bit red “Scum!”

Me, arching eyebrows a bit more. “Sentence?”

Him, looking around to see if he can jump out of the car and run across and start belting us. “Absolute scum!”

Me, cocked head, smile, hands open. “Two words! Sentence?”

He drives on with his jaw working…This is not a characteristic response. Most people were friendly, but this is a dark election in more ways than one.

Climate crisis -The stakes in the UK election.

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The key task for the climate change movement in the UK between now and the end of the year is to get rid of Boris Johnson’s government.

Movements like XR argue that they are “above politics” and its quite right to aim to mobilise everyone regardless of existing affiliations or leanings. However this election offers a stark choice that can’t be ducked because the resulting government will either be one that will push ahead with the most ambitious green investment strategy in any developed country, or be one that will be trailing in the wake of Donald Trump’s denialist international.

The movement will either have a government it can work with – or one that it will have to keep mobilising against.

And we don’t have a lot of time.

Boris Johnson himself has not voted for any practical measure to reduce carbon emissions since he has been in parliament. By contrast Jeremy Corbyn and Caroline Lucas have voted for 92% of them. Conservative MPs have on average voted for less than half of these measures; Labour for more than half. The Guardian has a useful graph on this which shows the 50% mark mostly red above and blue below (1). Jo Swinson is on 50% and the Lib Dem record is wildly inconsistent.

Johnson is in an explicit alignment with Donald Trump.

If elected we can be sure that he would move Conservative government rhetoric away from current greenwash into line with his voting record.

The Conservative manifesto is being written by a lobbyist for a fracking company (2).

By contrast Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution pledges the following; and its worth reading all of this. What follows is a lightly updated and edited version of the full document from earlier in the year to take account of conference decisions. If there are significant alterations in the Manifesto I will update this blog accordingly.

ENERGY

 Decarbonise the energy grid by the 2030s. Fracking banned.
 Support the development of tidal lagoons,
 Upgrade and invest in flexible energy networks capable of supporting a transition to decentralised renewable energy
 Remove the barriers to onshore wind put in place by the Conservative government…invest in wind, solar and other renewable projects. Five times as much offshore and three times as much onshore wind.
 Work closely with energy unions to support energy workers and communities through transition

HOUSING
 Upgrade 4 million homes to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) band C in five years, investing £2.3bn per year to provide financial support for households to insulate their homes, with a zero carbon standard for new-build homes introduced as soon as possible.
 Insulation schemes to be done by local authorities working street to street to save at least £275 per year for affected households, improve the health and well being of families, reduce costs to the NHS and create thousands of new skilled jobs.

 Prioritise affordable homes in the new zero carbon homes programme,  provide funding to support councils and housing associations to build new homes to Passivhaus standards
 Tighten regulation of privately rented homes, blocking poorly insulated homes
from being rented out
 Introduce new legal minimum standards to ensure properties are fit for human habitation and empower tenants to take action if their rented homes are sub-standard

TRANSPORT
 Introduce a new Clean Air Act.
 Expand public transport, bring our railways back into public ownership, cap fares, and support the creation of municipal bus companies run for passengers not profit.

 Expand and electrify the railway network across the whole country, including in Wales and the South West and build Crossrail for the North linked to HS2
 Encourage greater use of public transport, introducing free bus travel for under
25s where local authorities regulate or own local bus services – paid
for with money ring-fenced from Vehicle Excise Duty

INVESTMENT
 Position the UK at the forefront of the development, manufacture and use of ultra-low emission vehicles
 Retrofit thousands of diesel buses in areas with the most severe air quality problems to
Euro 6 standards
 Airport expansion must adhere to our tests  to address, noise levels, air quality and the UK’s climate change obligations.

WATER
 Establish new democratic public water companies which will be mandated by
DEFRA to meet environmental and social objectives

FARMING, FISHING, HABITATS AND WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT
 Funds for farming and fishing to support sustainable practices,
 Embed and enhance in policy the responsibility for farmers to conserve, enhance and create safe habitats for birds, insects and other wild animals, and encourage the growth of wildflowers.

 New guidance to end the use of antibiotics for routine, preventative purposes with farm animals.
 A science innovation fund to promote the most sustainable forms of farming and fishing, with support earmarked for our small-scale fishing fleet
 Review the allocation of UK fishing quota to promote the most sustainable fishing
practices
 Protect habitats and species in the ‘blue belts’ of the seas and oceans surrounding
the United Kingdom and its overseas territories,
 Set targets for plastic bottle deposit schemes,
 Strengthen the Hunting Act, end the badger cull, make illegal hunting and all wildlife crime a reportable offence,
 Initiate a large tree planting programme, working with farmers and foresters to
promote biodiversity and better flood prevention
 End rotational heather burning and launch a review into the economic, environmental and wildlife impacts of grouse shooting
 Ban wild animals in circuses

INTERNATIONAL
 Put the environment and human rights at the heart of our foreign policy,  drive forward new multilateral environmental agreements,  direct our armed forces to devote more resources to tackle humanitarian emergencies
 Negotiate a future relationship with the EU that maintains and extends all environmental rights, standards and protections as a baseline, while introducing more ambitious domestic environmental policy than that guaranteed at the European level
 Develop a cross-government strategy to ensure UN Sustainable Development
Goals are implemented and reported on annually to Parliament
 Commit to supporting climate mitigation and adaptation in the Global South, and to support countries severely affected
 Oppose investor-state dispute systems in international trade and investment agreements, and other trade rules that can be used to undermine domestic or international environmental protections
 Ensure UK aid does not support fossil fuel projects, divesting DFID away from fossil
fuels towards renewable energy sources
 Promote UK Export Finance support for the energy sector towards low-carbon projects
in place of its overwhelming support for fossil fuel projects in previous years

This programme cannot be left to government ministers to get on with. Its not a matter of voting for it and sitting back. It will only happen if the whole movement engages with it and mobilises support for it and works on its implementation at every level and through every lever available to us.