Green Party Trade Union Group Fundraising Quiz this Wednesday

FUNDRAISING QUIZ:

GPTU Group are hosting a fundraising quiz on this coming Wednesday, August 31st. 7.30pm at Development House, Leonard Street (next to Old Street Tube) Admission £5 (£3 benefits etc). Expect a great night with fascinating, unusual and amusing questions. It is also the birthday of a prominent GPTU activist, so expect several toasts:-) By-the-way, you have to bring your own drink (there is an off-license by the tube - exit 4)

Ring quizmaster, Noel Lynch, for further details 07961 44 1722.

US hypocrisy over Libya and the role of NATO in Libya

Have not blogged for a week, having been in Dublin and busy seeing family and friends there, plus being very busy at work on my return. However, like everyone else I have been following events in Libya closely since the weekend. As the Green Party's representative on Stop the War Coalition, I stand by the statement which the Coalition released on Libya a few days ago.

I also totally agree with the excellent Seamus Milne's article in the Guardian yesterday re the significance of the NATO involvement in Libya.

And today comes some fascinating news from the ever reliable Wikileaks around the shenanigans of the warmongering Senator Mc Cain and his links with the Libyan regime. I am sure that the spooks from CIA and MI5 will be busily shredding any incriminating documents found in the Gaddafi compounds.

Off to Dublin!

I am tryng to get unfinished business completed in the middle of also working this week as I am off to Dublin tomorrow for a few days. I wrote a short article today for 'The Watermelon' the newsletter of Green Left which will be available at the Green Party conference in Sheffield next month. I also completed some fliers for the next meeting of the London Ambulance Service Patients Forum which will meet on September 12th and will be discussing how the London Ambulance Service has responded to the recommendations of the 7/7 bombing inquest.

I also met Chris Levick from the Small Parties Unit of the Westminster Fund for Democracy on Monday to discuss progressing the Moldova project which we kicked off with our visit to Moldova in late June. We are now looking for several Green Party councillors to travel to Moldova over the next few months to meet elected Green councillors there. And I also attended the London Federation of Green Parties meeting on Monday night where I was re-elected as the party's delegate to the Stop the War Coalition and thanked for my efforts there over the last two years.

I am off to Dublin for a few days to visit my brothers and see some of my good friends there. It is the city of my birth and where I spent most of the first 25 years of my life and I always enjoying returning there. I am going to go and visit a small museum in Dublin Castle which I have not yet managed to get to - the Irish Police Museum, which recounts the history of both the first police force in the world, the RIC (Royal Irish Constabulary) formed in 1822 as a paramilitary police force to control the restive Irish and the police force of the new independent Ireland, formed in 1922, where my grand uncle was one of the first commanders.

I am also hoping to go to a theatrical performance in the Irish Writers Centre based around the wit of Dublin writers from Shaw to Beckett. The spirit and wit of Dublin is always infectious and " the gift of the gab"as the Irish call it, is never in short supply.

For a feel of the city's spirit here are 'The Dubliners' with a classic Dublin ballad 'Finnegan's Wake'. Looking forward to sampling the Guinness and the craic!

ATOS Medical Services - A Dickensian Tale

The news that ATOS Medical Services doctors are threatened with being struck off by the General Medical Council should surprise nobody. Disabled people and disability organisations have for some time being warning about this organisation and the draconian powers, not to mention the vast amounts of money, which  it has been handed by this government over the lives of disabled people. It would be interesting to find out if it is a donor to the Conservative party.

It is already carrying out appalling tests on all those people living on Incapacity Benefit and there have been lurid headlines in the tabloids trumpeting the fact that their tests have found a large percentage of those being put throught the process ineligible. Terms such as "workshy" and "scroungers" have been bandied about with callous and wanton abandon. The next group of people to be handed over to the tender mercies of this piratical outfit are those on Disability Living Allowance - they will be handed over to ATOS in 2013, after which we can expect thousands more disabled people to be thrown into penury and more headlines screaming about "benefit cheats" etc.

Truly it is worth reflecting in this the year of the bicentenary of the birth of that great writer and humanist, Charles Dickens, that the same turgid and loathsome views which he used his pen and all his wit to protest against, are still abroad and nowhere more than in the minds of members of the current government such as Ian Duncan Smith. What would the great scribe have thought of those intellectual descendants of Mr Bumble and Uriah Heep? The poor must be made to suffer and the indigent and disabled should go to their beds at night feeling crushed and in a constant state of fear and hysteria about their future. Such is the world being planned for us by these sanctimonious politicians and their Blue Labour counterparts. Was there ever a more obnoxious and festering hypocrite as James Purnell the architect of the Welfare Reform Bill who now masquerades as a social reformer. Many of these characters have truly Victorian attributes and Dickens would have seen through them in a flash.

As Mr Bumble, the Parish Beadle says in Oliver Twist:

""Out-of-door relief, properly managed,-- properly managed, ma’am,-- is the porochial safe-guard. The great principle of out-of-door relief is to give the paupers exactly what they don’t want, and then they get tired of coming."

A quote which would fit snugly with the attitudes of Messrs Duncan Smith and Osborne regarding the poor and disabled in this country.

A profoundly moving play - 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane'

I firmly believe that those involved in politics or in any attempt to change society should always have a connection to culture. In my case I have tried my hand at poetry and gave several public poetry readings in my younger days. I also tried writing plays and had a one act play performed at a theatre in London. Being a Dubliner I also have always had a strong connection with literature and the theatre. Dublin is after all the city of Joyce, Shaw, Wilde and Beckett as well as a host of other writers.

I had wanted for some time to see the Irish writer Martin Mc Donagh's play 'The Beauty Queen of Leenane' which is currently running at the Young Vic theatre in London. Last year I tried for tickets but all performances were booked out. The play has already toured Broadway, London and, of course, the main theatres in Ireland such as the Abbey (Ireland's national theatre) in Dublin. Everywhere it has received rave reviews and I was really desperate to see it. As luck would have it the charity I work for received some free tickets for carers and a trip to the Young Vic was organised. At the last minute some tickets were left free and I was able to go and see the play, which I did on Wednesday.

It was appropriate that the carers group went to see the play for the play deals essentially with the role of a carer and her mother. The daughter (who is the beauty queen) and her mother live in a remote rural area of Connemara on the west coast of Ireland. I would imagine that the play is set in the 1980s for it seems an Ireland which predates the Celtic Tiger years. The mother who claims to be ill and unable to look after herself is scheming, selfish and manipulative and is one of the most unsympathetic characters imaginable. The daughter who is already 40 sees herself trapped forever alone with her mother with no emotional life outside of this smothering relationship. Suddenly a means of escape appears in the person of neighbour's son who is working on the building sites in London but comes back to the village on holiday. The play revolves around the mother's attempt to smash the relationship and to ensure that the daughter will remain with her until her death.

But the play also deals with issues common to many Irish writers and which still impinge deeply on the consciousness and memory of Irish people. These include emigration and social isolation in the new country, images of Britain and America, the grinding loneliness and isolation in rural areas and the innate conservatism, along with expectations on daughters especially to care for elderly parents, as well as mental illness which often results from such conditions. All of these are dealt with in both a profoundly moving as well as a somtimes comical manner and there are some great one liners and ripostes in the play. Not for nothing has this been described as one of the best contemporary Irish plays. The ending is both shocking and heart rending and I would recommend anyone who can, particularly anyone with an interest in Ireland, to go and see it.

I include here a trailer for the play from a production at the Lyceum Theater in Edinburgh. The Young Vic production has a different cast and the mother is played by the fantastic actress, Rosaleen Linehan.

Riots, Recession, Resistance - Public Meeting on Thursday night

Riots, Recession, Resistance

Public meeting

7pm, Thursday 11 August,

University of London Union,

Malet Street, WC1E 7HY

Speakers include:

John McDonnell MP, Lee Jasper Black Activists Rising Against Cuts, Symeon Brown Youth Worker in Tottenham and SOAS Black Students Officer 2009, Andrew Murray Unite the union, Clare Solomon Springtime: The New Student Rebellion, Zita Holbourne Black Activists Rising Against Cuts, Viv Ahmun Black Men in the Community, Josie Fraser mother of Demetre Fraser death in custody, Merlin Emmanuel nephew of Smiley Culture, Aaron Kiely NUS BLack Students Committee

Riots spread in a matter of hours across the country for the third night in a row. This, although sparked by the death of Mark Duggan by police, has been building up for many months. Brutal austerity measures, spending cuts to every public service, rising unemployment, attacks on education, police tactics on demonstrations and the increased use of stop and search has meant that anger towards this government has heated up to boiling point.

It's no surprise events have played out like they have. The government cannot continue with their spending cuts and expect people to sit back and take it. In fact even Nick Clegg predicted riots if Cameron's planned spending cuts took place! Click here to watch video.

Coalition of Resistance along with Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts have organised a public meeting to discuss the connection between recession and the riots and what we can do about it.

Please spread the word about this important meeting. Click here for the Facebook event.

Statement on riots from London Ambulance Service Patients Forum

I have sent the following statement this morning to the London Ambulance Service on behalf of the London Ambulance Service Patients Forum. There are many reasons for what is happening in London and these need to be analysed but presently the lives of people and their homes are being put at risk and the situation needs to be brought under control urgently.

Statement from London Ambulance Service Patients Forum

Please convey our support as the Patients Forum to all LAS staff who have put their lives and safety at risk last night and over the last few nights to try and serve members of the public in London. The reports of LAS staff being threatened are particularly concerning. I would be grateful if you could give them the Forum’s support and appreciation for their hard work for all of London’s communities.

Best regards

Dr Joseph Healy

Patients Forum Chair