“But I also want Britain to tap into new sources of low cost energy like shale gas. So I am introducing a generous new tax regime, including a shale gas field allowance, to promote early investment. And by the summer, new planning guidance will be available alongside specific proposals to allow local communities to benefit. Shale gas is part of the future. And we will make it happen.”

Where to start!! The sheer stubborn stupidity of the man is staggering.

“Low cost energy like shale gas” – who on earth is he trying to kid?

If renewables received similar tax breaks and subsidies as those dished out to the fossil fuel industries and nuclear, the need for these dangerous and expensive technologies would soon disappear. Even as things stand, renewables will beat shale gas to lower power prices in the UK, according to an analysis from bank Citigroup and other moe credible sources than the Oil & Gas industries.
http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/news/news_story.asp?id=198321&title=Renewables+%27beating+shale+gas+in+price+drop+race%27

We could and should be following the example of countries like Germany. The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to about 25 percent in the first half of 2012. In 2010, investments totaling 26 billion euros were made in Germanys renewable energies sector. According to official figures, some 370,000 people in Germany were employed in the renewable energy sector in 2010, especially in small and medium sized companies. This is well over twice the number of jobs in 2004 (160,500). Germany has been called “the world’s first major renewable energy economy”. In 2011 20.5% of Germany’s electricity supply was produced from renewable energy sources, more than the 2010 contribution of gas-fired power plants.

And what about Denmark? It is already the world leader in wind power, getting a fifth of its power from wind turbines. They are committed to “an historical effort to become even better at saving energy and create an even more competitive and energy-effective company culture in Denmark, also for households,” Minister for Climate, Energy and Building Martin Lidegaard has said. The portion of Denmark’s electricity from renewables would rise to 52 percent by 2020 under their plan.
The Danish government’s proposals call for coal-fired power plants and oil-fired heating to be phased out by 2030. Lidegaard explained that they see the plan to phase out fossil fuels amounting to buying an insurance policy “against the risk of the market in the next 10 years.The conclusion being it has a cost to make a green transformation, but it also has a cost not to do it,” Lidegaard said. “I think this will work out to be the best insurance Denmark has ever (bought).”
Under the plan, 100 percent of Denmark’s power and heat would come from renewable energy by 2035, the ministry said. By 2050, the entire energy supply — electricity, heat, industry and transportation — would come from renewables, according to the proposal. The initiatives would cut Denmark’s greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent by 2020 based on 1990 levels.
Lidegaard said that Denmark faced three global crises which will hit it “with a force that is so far absolutely unheard of” — an economic and financial crisis, a climate crisis and a resources crisis. “This proposal will address all three crises.”
The push for renewable energy would position Denmark as a leader in developing climate-friendly technology, he said.

WOULDN’T IT BE REFRESHING TO HAVE SOMEONE WITH LIDEGAARD’S VISION AND COMMONSENSE IN OUR GOVERNMENT?

“Generous new tax regime” – for all the wrong people doing all the wrong things!

Public subsidies for the development of wind power in the UK are dwarfed by the tax breaks enjoyed by fossil fuels, a new Guardian analysis has revealed. Financial support for fledgling renewable energy industries has increasingly come under attack in recent months, but the new data shows that the older industries benefit to a far greater extent. Gas, oil and coal prices were subsidised by £3.63bn in 2010, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development , whereas offshore and onshore wind received £0.7bn in the year from April 2010. All renewables in the UK benefited from just £1.4bn over the same period, according to data from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/27/wind-power-subsidy-fossil-fuels

The boss of a company set to build two nuclear reactors in Somerset has been demanding cuts to renewable energy subsidies and to help for people in fuel poverty while quietly lobbying the European Commission for financial help for new nuclear power stations. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/nuclear-boss-wants-to-cut-family-fuel-aid-8537553.html . The coalition promised no subsidies fro nuclear power, but the following forms of support for the nuclear industry have been recorded in
Hansard as answers by the UK government to parliamentary questions in June 2010 http://www.mng.org.UK/gh/private/nuclear_subsidies1.PDF :

• £11 million on research expenditure to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) in 2010
• £10.2 million for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) current nuclear research portfolio since 2008-09 on eight projects directly relevant to long term nuclear waste management and facility decommissioning.
• £3.553 million for the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) for nuclear decommissioning and radioactive waste management research
• £180,000 For the Environment Agency for grant in aid on regulatory research relevant to nuclear waste and decommissioning in 2009-10
• £0.95 million annual subscription to the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) & the NEA’s Data Bank, which contains technical information from other NEA members.
• £5 million provided by the NDA in 2007-08 million to support the establishment of Energus (formerly referred to as The Nuclear Academy) as a centre of excellence for skills, training and business support.
• US$ 9.3 million and 16.4 million respectively to the United Nations Atomic watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for 2010, With a similar sum, but allowing for inflation, exchange rate differences, and the likely outcome of current ongoing budget negotiations among member states and the agency, has been set aside for 2011.
• 116.95 million and US$ 84.42 million paid by UK to the IAEA over the past 10 years.
• £3 million DECCs Office for Nuclear Development, total budget for 2010-11. This does not include the cost of DECC’s wider work on policy associated with nuclear security, safety and non-proliferation.

“New planning guidance” – this is likely to mean that the largest projects could have the option to apply for the go-ahead through a central Government process rather than via local authorities. They thereby hope to bypass any possibility of grassroots local groups of concerned residents (like the Vale Says NO! and Frack-Free Wales) having any real say over the decimation of their futures. As Neil Sinden, The Campaign to Protect Rural England’s director of policy, said today: “We will make sure communities are not sidelined in the decision-making process.” We will take to the streets and ensure our voices are heard and the frackers are held to account every step of the way!

As for “Allow local communities to benefit” – perhaps Osborne would like to explain how they will benefit from:

• Loss of property/house value
• Loss of jobs in existing sectors like tourism and agriculture
• Adverse impacts on local agriculture, such as loss of land and loss of organic status
• Huge amounts of HGV traffic negotiating their lanes
• Influx of very short-term migrant workers
• Air pollution from pressure release of frack jobs, fugitive emissions of shale gas, diesel fumes from trucks and heavy machinery
• Noise from drilling, trucks and machinery
• Sending every single one of us, local communities everywhere, over the precipice of calamitous climate change, at the behest of greedy capitalist, corporate frackers .

These are amongst the certain impacts everywhere the frackers pitch up. On top of this is the absolute lottery of when and where things will go wrong. Not if, but when and where there will be:

• Contamination of aquifers
• Surface spillages of chemicals and heavily polluted ‘produced’ water
• Serious health issues such as endocrine disruption – causing hormone imbalances, cancers, birth defects and developmental problems in children (http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php)
• Increased seismic activity

Finally, the sheer arrogance of “we will make it happen” – quite simply, not if I have anything to do with it, George!. Me and whose army? The ever growing legions of fractivists around the country, indeed around the globe, who will not stand by and watch the rape of the countryside and the destruction of our futures.

THERE IS A STAGGERING AMOUNT OF THIS GOING ON IN BRIDGEND

Green MP Caroline Lucas in the Huffington Post today:

The Labour ‘Opposition’ may be backing the Government, but some MPs are outraged by its desperate bid to change the law to avoid pay-outs after the Poundland ruling.

Anyone who has ever lost a case in court may well have wished that they had the power to change the law to avoid having to deal with the consequences. Unlike individuals, who are expected to respect the rule of law, the UK government does have that power – and this administration is all too ready to use it.

Last month, the Court of Appeal ruled against the Government on its controversial welfare-to-work scheme, under which more than 230,000 jobseekers had been forced into work placements at below minimum wage levels and with scant information about what was happening and why. It now faces a huge bill of £130m in benefit rebates to all those who had their welfare payments docked.

One of those caught up in this shambolic forced labour programme – condemned by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee as “extremely poor” – was Cait Reilly, a science graduate who successfully took the Government to court after being made to work without a salary in a Poundland store.

In my own constituency, I’ve seen the real-life impact of this flawed initiative. A 58-year-old constituent with secretarial skills, unemployed for seven months, was told she had to travel miles to work in a charity shop or lose her benefits. Unable to afford the travel costs, she found a job in a similar shop closer to home, but the Job Centre would not allow it.

Now, instead of respecting the British justice system and accepting the fundamental principle that workers should be paid the minimum wage, ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions are trying to push a retroactive law through Parliament that will overturn the ruling and prevent people from claiming what they are owed.

As one of a group of MPs to push this shameful legislation to a vote on Tuesday so that Members would have the opportunity to register opposition to the Bill, I was hugely disappointed when the official ‘Opposition’ refused to join us.

In fact, the Labour front bench’s opposition to these proposals has amounted to nothing more than seeking very minor ‘concessions’ that completely fail to address the core principles at stake. A meek call for a review of the regulations in a year’s time is frankly no ‘Opposition’ at all.

By failing to vote against this Bill, Labour is effectively supporting the Government and indicating that it, like David Cameron’s administration, sees no problem in bringing in emergency legislation to overturn a court’s findings when it goes against them.

In a fair society, the solution to unemployment is not to force people into workfare programmes which do little more than supply big companies with free labour. It’s to create jobs that pay a living wage, for example, by investing in new sustainable infrastructure projects and boosting the jobs-rich low carbon economy.

Tuesday’s vote was about sending a signal to all of those people being hit by this Government’s cuts and thinly-veiled attacks on the poor that there is an effective Opposition in this Parliament willing to stand up for these principles – even if Labour won’t.

Follow Caroline Lucas on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarolineLucas

Labour is happy to promote the economically extortionate, environmentally insane option of nuclear power.
£14 Billion on a 30 years of baseload only electricity.
If renewables received such investment and subsidy we could forget nuclear and extreme fossil fuels like fracked gas FOREVER!

New Hinkley Point C will be built by the French company EDF. It is a mere 15 miles from Cardiff and 25 miles from Bridgend – in a straight line – half way between Weston-Super-Mare and Minehead (about 100 mins away by car over the French owned Severn Bridge!!)

Pick out the pitfalls, myths and deceits in these MP press statements:

Mar 19, 2013 3:05 PM
By Theo Usherwood and Elizabeth Barrett, Press Association Political Staff

Labour today welcomed the Government’s decision to give the go-ahead for the first of a planned new generation of nuclear power plants in the UK.
[Lib Dem] Energy Secretary Ed Davey said the proposed 3,260 megawatt nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset would be built by French company EDF.
The decision also means EDF will be allowed to build rail and road networks to support the power station, as well as issue compulsory purchase orders on land needed for the project.
The news is a boost to the nuclear industry following a series of setbacks in plans to construct a new generation of reactors in the UK, which ministers say are needed to cut carbon and keep the lights on.
Shadow energy secretary Caroline Flint said she welcomed the decision.
She said: “Today’s announcement is an important milestone in the development of new nuclear build in the UK. There is no doubt about that.
“On behalf of the Opposition, I am pleased to welcome it and reiterate our support for nuclear power alongside an expansion of renewable energy and investment in carbon capture and storage as part of a clean, secure and affordable energy supply for the future.”
In his statement to the House of Commons, Mr Davey said the project would play an important role in ensuring a diverse supply of energy in the UK.
He said: “Affordable new nuclear will play a critical role and secure a diverse electricity supply for Britain and make a significant contribution to the transition to the low-carbon economy needed to tackle climate change.
“Therefore, this decision on planning aspects on the first new nuclear power station in a generation represents an important milestone in that process to decarbonise our electricity supply and economy.”

Mr Davey said the project would create a workforce of up to 5,600 during construction, and contract opportunities in the supply chain.
There would also be a new by-pass road as well as a community package to compensate to people living in the area, he said.
Mr Davey told MPs: “I also recognise that as these works are carried out, those who live in the area may have their daily lives disrupted one way or another.
“This disruption is in my view outweighed in the final analysis by the benefits the project will bring – chief among these is the very significant contribution it will make to the achievement of energy and climate change policy objectives.”
The new plant’s two nuclear reactors would be capable of producing 7% of the UK’s electricity, enough to power five million homes, EDF has said. It is thought the costs of the new power station would run to around £14 billion.
A final investment decision by EDF to go ahead with construction still depends on the deal being negotiated with the Government on the “strike” price paid for electricity generated by the plant.
Under electricity market reforms, low-carbon power such as nuclear reactors and offshore wind farms will have long-term contracts with a guaranteed price for their electricity, to give investors certainty to invest in projects with high capital costs.
Mr Davey said discussions on the strike price were ongoing, but he expected them to be concluded shortly.

Conservative Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) declared it a “very good day for Britain” and a “phenomenally good day” for his constituency.
The decision, he said, meant the UK could “kick-start the civil nuclear programme”.
He said: “The innovation, the jobs and the input that we’re getting from across the industry is staggering.”
Mr Davey responded: “He is right that there will be some pain for some local members of the community during what will be a long construction phase, but I hope they and he feels that the recommendations of the panel and the decisions I’ve taken in addition to those will try to mitigate that as much as possible.”
Labour’s Paul Flynn (Newport West) raised concerns about the long-term costs to taxpayers of the project.
He said: “Does the minister agree with himself as the Lib Dem spokesman when he said that nuclear power is only possible with a vast – his word – taxpayer subsidy or a rigged market?
“Does he agree with himself as a supporter of the Coalition Agreement that said there would be no subsidy on nuclear power?
“Can he now deny the claims that the strike price, originally £50 per megawatt-hour (MWh), is now being negotiated at £97 and the view that what we will be doing is giving a subsidy in the short term of £30 billion to a near-bankrupt French company that could turn out to be £150 billion in 35 years?”
Mr Davey said his concerns on nuclear power had related to price, acknowledging that the history of nuclear power showed it “has turned out to be expensive”.
He said: “That’s why this coalition Government and indeed the previous Labour government have gone about this third-generation nuclear power station in a very different way from the past, to make sure that the consumer, business and taxpayer are protected.”
The figures quoted, he added, “I just simply do not recognise.”
Mfl
Page 4
Tory former defence secretary Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) said: “I congratulate the Government in finally getting the civil nuclear programme moving after too long a period of paralysis in this country, it is vital for our energy security and our low carbon generation.”
But he raised the issue of transmission from Hinkley through 450 kV cables, as opposed to the current 132, saying it would require electricity pylons more than twice the height of current ones.
He said: “Where is the overall green gain if we get green generation but the transmission results in a blight on our environment in some of prettiest parts of the country?”
Mr Davey replied he previously undertook to look into this issue during a meeting with Dr Fox.
Lib Dem Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) also raised the issue of costs and asked for confirmation that the planning decision did not actually represent a decision to go ahead with Hinkley C.
He said: “In which respect it pales into insignificance beside the strike price negotiation, which if he’ll accept my figures as hypothetical, but if the maths add up, at £97 megawatt-hour (MWh) for 35 years, would guarantee an uncompetitive French nationalised energy company nearly £90 billion over time from British bill payers.”
Mr Davey said the decision today was purely about planning, but he said he did not recognise the figures.
Former Tory DECC minister Charles Hendry (Wealden) said: “Can I say how delighted I am that the Secretary of State as a Liberal Democrat has now consented more new nuclear capacity than any minister I think since Tony Benn.”
He paid tribute to officials in helping to bring a “nuclear renaissance in the UK one big step closer”.
Green MP Dr Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) warned of the potential repercussions on energy prices.
She said: “There are much faster, cheaper, more affordable ways of tackling climate change than nuclear.”
She added: “The only two nuclear power stations under construction in Europe today are billions of pounds over budget and delayed by an ever increasing number of years.
“Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Denmark are all rejecting new nuclear, even France is aiming to reduce its reliance by 25%.
“What do all of these countries know that we don’t and why is he locking consumers in the UK into artificially high energy prices for years to come to the benefit of the French government and not to the UK taxpayer?”
Mr Davey said when it came to tackling climate change the country needed “every form of low carbon generation possible”, adding: “The risk is so great, the challenge is so great, I think it is wrong for people who are worried about climate change to turn their back on this issue.”
Around the world he argued there were many countries who were looking again at new nuclear.
He said: “That is why we in our approach to these negotiations and our whole approach to the new nuclear programme are being extremely careful, learning the lessons of the past, learning the lessons from other countries so we do not repeat those mistakes.”

OFFICE OF CAROLINE LUCAS, MP FOR BRIGHTON PAVILION

Responding to the announcement [1] by Energy Secretary Ed Davey today
that he has given planning consent to EDF to build a new nuclear
facility at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, Caroline Lucas (Green Party)
said:

“Ed Davey rightly warned in 2006 that “a new generation of nuclear
power stations will cost taxpayers and consumers tens of billions of
pounds” and that, “in addition to posing safety and environmental risks,
nuclear power will only be possible with vast taxpayer subsidies or a
rigged market” – so it’s astonishing that, in a deplorable departure
from his party’s policy, he has today given the green light to EDF to
build the UK’s first new nuclear plant for a generation.

“That the Government is willing to sign off on Hinkley even before an
agreement has been reached on how much the taxpayer will have to hand
over to the French state-owned energy giant, and before a new facility
to deal with the toxic waste has been agreed, is misguided in the
extreme.

“Despite the energy department’s attempts to rewrite the dictionary on
the definition of a subsidy, it’s now blindingly obvious that billions
of pounds of public money will be thrown at new nuclear in the form of a
strike price and the underwriting of costs including accident liability
and construction – in direct breach of the Coalition agreement.

“The only two nuclear power stations under construction in Europe today
are billions of pounds over budget and facing increasing delays. With
Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Sweden and Denmark
all rejecting new nuclear, why is the UK still obsessed with keeping
this expensive and unnecessary technology alive?”

The Brighton Pavilion MP concluded: “Nuclear is a dangerous distraction
from the truly ambitious energy policy we need – one which focuses on
renewable energy and energy efficiency, and which would deliver more
jobs, faster carbon reductions and a fundamentally more democratic
energy system fit for the future.”

Links:

I would especially recommend the following:

CHAPTER ARTS CENTRE – CARDIFF

• Wadjda (PG tbc) -16th March

  Director: Haifaa Al Mansour
  Starring: Reem Abdullah, Waad Mohammed, Abdullrahman Al Gohani
  Saudi Arabia/Germany, 2012, 1 hour 37 minutes, subtitles

  A hugely appealing, heartfelt gem that will give you a rare glimpse into everyday Saudi society. Smart, strong-willed, tomboy Wadjda is often in trouble as she chafes at her lifes restrictions, but shell stop at nothing to earn the money to buy a bike. To shoot a film in a country where cinemas themselves have been banned for over thirty years is some kind achievement for any director. When that filmmaker also happens to be a woman, in a country where it is illegal for women to drive, let alone direct, is all the more impressive.

• The Sun Beaten Path (PG) – 19th/20th March

  Director: Sonthar Gyal
  Starring: Yeshe Lhadruk, Lo Kyu
  Tibet, 2011, 1 hour 29 minutes, subtitles

  With vast, desolate landscapes and often dream-like sequences, this cinematic gem is a really authentic portrait of contemporary Tibet. Walking home to a remote part of Tibet through barren mountains and dusty wind-swept plains, the troubled Nyma is joined by an old man whose gently persistent good sense allows Nyma to gradually unburden himself. A simple tale, elliptically told that really shows how Tibet is now with smart Chinese buses speeding past Tibetan couples prostrating themselves on the hard shoulder all the way to Lhasa.

TALIESIN ARTS CENTRE – SWANSEA

• 5 Broken Cameras (15) – 18th March

  Director: Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi
  Israel, 2012, 1 hour 30 minutes, Arabic with subtitles

  A powerful personal testimony that shows exactly what life is like in occupied Palestine. Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, bought his first camera to record the birth of his youngest son. Over five years of village turmoil, Emad records as olive trees are bulldozed, protests intensify, Israeli settlers take their land, his cameras are smashed, and lives are lost. With overwhelming power it gives us a direct experience of what its like to be on the receiving end of oppression and dispossession. A defiant, hopeful, incredibly moving, hugely revealing film about how people struggle and survive such a life.

• Chasing Ice (PG) – 19th March

  Director: Jeff Orlowski
  Starring: James Balog
  USA, 2012, 1 hour 19 minutes

  Winner of the Excellence in Cinematography Award Sundance Film Festival 2012

  A phenomenal, passionate, unpreachy doc this provides insanely beautiful evidence of man-made climate change through time-lapse photography of the rapid retreat of the worlds glaciers. Twenty years ago National Geographic photographer James Balog was skeptical about climate change, then he started photographing ice. Now hes a man on a mission, setting up the Extreme Ice Survey a huge global project to remotely film the glaciers rapid disappearance using custom-built cameras designed to withstand 200mph winds and temperatures of minus 40 degrees. Thanks to the fabulous photography of the ice in all its glorious shapes and colours melting and constantly changing shape this is both extremely beautiful and extremely scary bringing home the reality of climate change like nothing Ive ever seen. If a single picture is worth a thousand words then Chasing Ice tells volumes.

• Wadjda (PG tbc) -20th March – see above

Two performances are to be given by Bridgend Green Party member, Robert Minhinnick, and Tracy Evans – one in Porthcawl (5th April) and one in Swansea (11th April)

An Opera in Baghdad is a long poem, published in Minhinnicks recent New Selected Poems (Carcanet). It concerns a visit he made to Iraq in 1997, between the first and second Gulf Wars.

This opera is a lively and very musical dramatic poem, says Robert Minhinnick. It commemorates some of the extraordinary people I met on the visit.

Entering and leaving Iraq meant arduous journeys across implacable desert. The experience has had a major effect on my writing, especially the visit to a deserted Babylon.

I was helping make a film about uranium, and hope scenes might be screened during the performances.

Details:

Friday, April 5, 2013, 8pm.

Robert Minhinnick & Tracy Evans perform An Opera in Baghdad at the Green Room, Sustainable Wales, 5, James St., Porthcawl, CF36 3BG. £3. Open mic follows. Details: 01656 783962 robertm

Thursday, April 11, 2013, 7.30pm.

Robert Minhinnick & Tracy Evans perform An Opera in Baghdad, Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea SA1 1RR Details 01792 463980.

Letter sent to the Guardian today.

18 March 2013

Dear Editor,

The depth of Douglas Alexander’s denial over the real reasons for his
government taking the UK to war in Iraq in 2003 is truly breathtaking
(‘Iraq war was national disgrace, say military chiefs’, 18 March,
Guardian).

The evidence is clear [1] that the war had nothing to do with finding
non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction, and everything to do with the
Fact that the then Prime Minister Tony Blair had already promised
President Bush in March 2002 that he would support a war for regime
change.

The legal and political distinction between finding WMD and regime
change was essential for Blair to secure a majority of the parliamentary
Labour party’s support for war, without which he could not have gone
ahead. However, the now infamous Downing St memo told Blair in 2002 that
in the US “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”.

If WMD were really the focus of the war, Blair would have granted the
Weapons Inspectors’ call for more time. Moreover, Blair blatantly
misrepresented the evidence available. For example, in his speech to the
House on the resolution to go to war, he suggested that soon after
Saddam Hussein’s son in law, Hussein Kamal, defected to the West in the
mid 1990s, he disclosed that Iraq had an extensive WMD programme.

In fact, the transcript of the interview with UNSCOM/IAEA records
Hussein Kamal’s statements that Iraq’s WMD programme had been destroyed
and nothing remained. The details of the interview were public knowledge
in February 2003, well before the vote for war.

The parliamentary failure to hold Blair to account at the time of the
vote makes it all the more essential that we have a debate in parliament
now. We must formally record how such a flimsy case for war was able to
get through our parliamentary process.

Unwavering Tory support for the vote was obviously critical. How
convenient, then, that soon after William Hague writes to his Cabinet
colleagues to tell them not to mention the war, David Cameron’s
government has failed to find time for a Parliamentary debate, requested
by myself and a cross-party group of MPs, to coincide with the 10th
anniversary of that vote.

Whatever position this Government now takes on Iraq and the Chilcot
Inquiry, it is crucial that the public does not see Parliament just
sitting back and ignoring the 10th anniversary of these lies and
distortions. We owe it to the servicemen and women and all those who
have lost their lives in Iraq to carefully examine what happened, in
order to learn the lessons of the most damaging foreign policy decision
of recent times.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton Pavilion

Links:

Saturday 22 June 2013, 9:30am 5pm,

Central Hall Westminster, Storeys Gate, London, Westminster, London SW1H 9NH

The Peoples Assembly Against Austerity was launched with a letter to the Guardian by the initial signatories below:

This is a call to all those millions of people in Britain who face an impoverished and uncertain year as their wages, jobs, conditions and welfare provision come under renewed attack by the government. With some 80% of austerity measures still to come, and with the government lengthening the time they expect cuts to last, we are calling a Peoples Assembly Against Austerity to bring together campaigns against cuts and privatisation with trade unionists in a movement for social justice. We aim to develop a strategy for resistance to mobilise millions of people against the Con Dem government.

The assembly will provide a national forum for anti-austerity views which, while increasingly popular, are barely represented in parliament. A Peoples Assembly can play a key role in ensuring that this uncaring government faces a movement of opposition broad enough and powerful enough to generate successful co-ordinated action, including strike action. The assembly will be ready to support co-ordinated industrial action and national demonstrations against austerity, if possible synchronising with mobilisations across Europe. The Peoples Assembly Against Austerity will meet at Central Hall, Westminster, on 22 June.

Tony Benn President, Coalition of Resistance

Len McCluskey General secretary, Unite the Union
Mark Serwotka General secretary, PCS
Christine Blower General secretary, NUT
Michelle Stanistreet General secretary, NUJ
Manuel Cortez General secretary, TSSA
Billy Hayes General secretary, CWU
Bob Crow General secretary, RMT
Mick Whelan General secretary, Aslef
Kevin Courtney Deputy general secretary, NUT
Paul Mackney Former general secretary Natfhe (now UCU)
Vicky Baars NUS union development
Kevin Donnelly Trade Union Council JCC

Caroline Lucas MP

Katy Clark MP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
John McDonnell MP
Murad Qureshi London assembly member
Dawn Butler Former Labour minister for young citizens and youth engagement

Tariq Ali Author
John Pilger Journalist
Ken Loach Filmmaker
Owen Jones Writer
James Meadway Senior economist, New Economics Foundation

Wendy Savage & John Lipetz Keep our NHS Public
Merry Cross Disabled People Against the Cuts
John Hendy QC Co-chair, Peoples Charter
John Hilary Director, War on Want
Sam Fairbairn National secretary, Coalition of Resistance
Imran Khan Solicitor, co-chair, Peoples Charter
Rachael Newton Peoples Charter
Romayne Phoenix Chair, Coalition of Resistance, Co-Covenor of Green Left, Green Party

Zita Holbourne Co-chair, Black activists rising against the cuts
Clare Solomon Vice-chair, Coalition of Resistance
Andrew Burgin Vice-chair, Coalition of Resistance
Colin Hampton Co-ordinator, National Unemployed Workers Centres Combine
Anita Wright Secretary, National Association of Women
Joginder Bains Association of Indian Women
Shang Gahonia Indian Workers Association
Carolyn Jones Director, Institute of Employment Rights

Lindsey German Convenor, Stop the War Coalition
Kate Hudson General secretary, CND
Bruce Kent Peace campaigner

Lee Hall Playwright
Roger Lloyd Pack Actor
Josie Long Comedian
Iain Banks Author
Arthur Smith Comedian
Roy Bailey Folk singer
Francesca Martinez Comedian

John Rees Counterfire editorial board
Natalie Bennett Leader of the Green Party England and Wales

Fred Leplat Socialist Resistance
Robert Griffiths General secretary, Communist Party of Britain
Bill Greenshields Chair, Communist Party of Britain
Richard Bagley Editor, Morning Star

TICKETS = £4 for the unwaged – £8 others: http://www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk/2013/02/peoples-assembly-against-austerity-saturday-22-june/

We co-exist within the Green Party because we largely share a concern for environmental and social justice. As a Jesuit, Bergoglio has a pretty good track record of championing the poor, but I do wonder how Green Party members happily remain within churches where their purported ‘infallible’ leader – God’s supposed representative here on Earth – spouts this sort of appalling nonsense.

Intolerant of these attitudes? Guilty as charged!

Part of a speech against Argentina presidential candidate Cristina Kirchner given in 2007, during the electoral campaign.

From a private letter to some nuns that became public.

Until he at least starts sorting out the child abusers within his ranks, and getting them prosecuted in courts of (worldly) law, he can have no moral authority whatsoever. It may be week one, but it has to be his number one priority. It will be interesting to see if his ‘elevation’ to the Holy See leads to actions on this front that we could all applaud.

Andy Chyba