Write your own news

This week has once again demonstrated how much of an agenda there is in the media. Only a matter of days in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party and the press has stepped up the misinformation that it was forking out during the leadership campaign. This was identified by another article on this blog on 16^th September.

We need to make a change in how we consume the news and current affairs and we need to write our own news.

Another Angry Voice - click image for link to article

What’s good about this week’s spin?

In some ways I think the spin this week has been useful because normally the slant of the right wing media is hard to identify. Thomas G Clark has dedicated a whole section of his phenomenal blog ‘Another Angry Voice’ to Political Myth Busting. AAV digs directly at the myths that are pedalled out by the right wing media. There are lies in there that many of us just take for granted as true which are skillfully dissected, for example;

·         The “maxed out national credit card” fallacy; through which we have all been made to think, incorrectly, of the national economy like a household budget

·         The spending cuts vs tax increases false dichotomy; in which we are told that the only two options available are to either have cuts in spending or rises in taxes

·         The unpatriotic left fallacy; as it says, it is something we have seen directed at Corbyn and his new Shadow Chancellor this week

So this week it has been refreshing if only in the sense that the spin and propaganda has been so obvious. Even Tory supporters, maybe even Mr Cameron himself, must have cringed at the anti-Corbyn video that the Tory press office put out at the beginning of the week. This video, if you didn’t catch it before it was taken down for copyright infringement, heavily edited to be made grainy, black and white with eerie music, stated that the new Labour leader was a threat to national security and had referred to Osama Bin Laden’s death as a tragedy.

Only it is not quite what he said.

I agree completely with Corbyn, and I think most people would ; that Bin Laden’s death actually was a tragedy. I remember TV footage of Americans celebrating in the street because Bin Laden had been assassinated and felt very uneasy. Cheering in the street about anyone’s death can’t be right. Although we might feel that revenge is sweet and certainly many of us wanted Bin Laden to pay for what he had done; should you have a death sentence without a trial? Dispense with public accountability? This is why we have established the systems we have in society; it is part of why we are proud to be British. You can’t just kill people; you can’t do to someone the act that you have condemned them for.

It is glaringly obvious that the media is swamped by right-wing bias. We have begun to ask “hang on a minute, whilst I look at this grainy horror spin-off rubbish, what am I missing?”

Well whilst we were listening to the various reports about how Corbyn had “snubbed the Queen” by not singing the national anthem, we were not paying attention as the government voted through £4.4bn in cuts to tax credits; a loss of around £1,300 to the poorest, working families even after any other measures like an increase in minimum wage.

What a kick to working people in Britain. Hang on! Didn’t the Tories say that Labour were now a threat to working people? That’s weird.

Write your own news!

It has been clear for some time that we need to find alternative sources of news, or at the very least, multiple sources of the news. But also, we need to create and participate in our own news.

This blog is not about supporting Jeremy Corbyn, but I wanted to use his treatment this week, which is the same that Green Party suffers often when it is thrown in to the media’s eye, to highlight the point. Also, Corbyn’s success highlights the importance of social media which Corbyn’s campaign team used to their enormous advantage creating an alternative narrative to the one put out by the mainstream press of the “radical left wing rebel”. For Corbyn’s team, social media and online campaigns got out the message that they wanted to get out. This is much like the success we saw with the #GreenSurge .

So take to facebook, litter your friends newsfeeds with things you care about, ‘hashtag’ the crap out of everything you hold dear on twitter, comment on and challenge ridiculous propaganda posts, write a blog, step out on a protest march, attend a Calais refugee coffee morning, change someone’s mind over the water cooler at work, read different newspapers.

What follows is not non-bias news or blog; it is simply what I would call an alternative to the mainstream narrative. But given that none of the following are bankrolled by billionaires who also happen to be mates with the Tory Prime Minister, they certainly feel more authentic. Try some of these and please suggest your own in the comments section;

Stroud Against the Cuts http://stroudagainstcuts.co.uk/

Another Angry Voice http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/

Molly Scott Cato MEP http://mollymep.org.uk/

Vox Political https://mikesivier.wordpress.com/

Community R4C (alternative to the incinerator at Javelin Park, Gloucestershire) http://communityr4c.com/

The Void https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/

The Green Benches http://www.greenbenchesuk.com/

Verbal Attacks on Jeremy Corbyn

The last blog I wrote was entitled 'The Power of Words' and Jeremy Corbyn is definitely feeling the full force of a verbal attack from the right wing tories & their press and tory-lite Labour MPs as he is an anti-establishment figure.

Even before he has had the chance to do anything he is being lambasted from all sides.  Half way through his shadow cabinet appointments, he was slated for not giving women the top jobs although by the end of all the appointments there were 16 women in his shadow cabinet - a record.

The Tories have started saying that Corbyn represents a threat to this country:
our national security, our economic security and your family's security. They seem to think (unfortunately correctly) that by saying things like this enough times it will become 'the truth' and people will believe them.

For some reason I am on the Tory emailing list and I am being exhorted to donate to the Tory party now to help combat the threat that Corbyn poses - I can quickly donate £20, £50, £100 or another amount, presumably not so quickly. Why would donating to the Tory party help the UK?  Surely donating would just enrich Tory coffers so that they can afford more despicable advertising. In the email they attribute quotes to Corbyn and give references, but when you click on the screen it takes you to the Tory Party donation page so that it is not easy to check the context of the quotes to find out their real meaning.

Today in the press and elsewhere, Corbyn is being vilified for not singing the national anthem.  But he believes in the abolition of the monarchy and stands by what he believes.  He is not a fair weather politician like Cameron who changes position to keep in with whatever is flavour of the month. Corbyn was at the Battle of Britain Memorial Service to show his respect for all those who gave their lives for their country.

As a balance to the first image, here is a picture circulating on FaceBook:

Let us give Corbyn time before judging his leadership of the Labour Party.

The great distractions; Corbyn, the Left or Right debate and the anti-capitalist question

Corbynmania has struck the country and it has certainly pierced hard in to the conscious of all groups on the political left. The prospect of having a leader of the Labour Party with apparently true socialist ideals is very interesting and exciting.

Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign to become Labour leader makes a striding and refreshing change to mainstream politics. With his anti-austerity focus, calls for nuclear disarmament and commentary on peace, among other things, Corbyn seems almost so good he could be Green Party!

From what I can see, the excitement around Corbyn has sown confusion in to the ranks of the Green Party and other non-right wing parties. After years of it being abundantly clear that Labour are no longer left wing, socialist or a party for working people there appears to be a chance to restore the Labour Party to what it once was.

In a previous piece I wrote about ‘progressives must work together’ and this is something I still believe to be true. I think all parties and political groups that want to see real change in the very limited democratic system that we have need to find common ground and make a true opposition to the awful Tory government. I would much rather see Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party than any of the other candidates and would be far happier with Corbyn as Prime Minister than Cameron.

But I for one will not be rushing out joining Labour and paying £3 in the hope that I can help Corbyn to victory.

As good as Corbyn may seem now, he is not green; Corbyn is not a member of the Green Party. Instead Corbyn has remained glued to party that has been increasingly centre-right and playing catch-up with the Tories. Labour, like the Tories, have a very poor record when it comes to the environment. This I believe is precisely because the Labour Party are not green; they are not informed from an ecological perspective.

I don’t want to discourage anyone who feels galvanised by the Corbyn sensation and it is a great thing that the prevalent discourse that the ‘country is apathetic towards politics’ is being challenged. Of course it has been challenged for a long time by a lot of quarters but in our very limited democracy the media is only really interested in a couple of players.

So if you feel inspired by Corbyn to take any kind of political action get out there and do it! And damn well good for you.

Left wing, right wing and anti-capitalism

There have been other debates floating around within in green circles that I would like to take a quit look at. The first of those is the debate about whether or not the Green Party is ‘left wing’.

To be ‘green’ is to put the environment first. As well as being a practical political option, the concept of being ‘green’ also means to share in a philosophy.

While the Labour Party have been drifting up the political stream, so that they are sailing very comfortably just behind the Conservative Party, there are questions among greens about whether we can take up Labour’s space in the race. Unfortunately, everyone participating in that particular race is heading in the same direction. It is an end goal where the environment will never be the first consideration; a destination in which the environment will only be considered if it does not distract from the endless march of business and industry.

This is simply not an option that can coincide with a green philosophy.

The domination of the ‘left wing vs right wing’ in political commentary has created a false dichotomy. That there is only left or right to choose from. It would be silly to say that greens do not share common ground with the left and that they would not often be allies with the left over the right.

For a long time I believed  that I was left wing and anti-capitalist. Nothing on the right has ever attracted me. I searched for an answer from the examples of left wing societies that we have seen come in to being but found for me that there was no answer there. Communist and socialist regimes that we have seen have been tyrannical, oppressive, dictatorial, grey and unrelentingly industrial.

Both left and right as we know them have been contained within ‘industrialism’; it’s devouring of resources and it’s constant expansion and growth.  As Jonathon Poritt explained in his book ‘Seeing Green’ “industrialism and sustainability are mutually exclusive”. Simply you cannot be involved in the constant expansion of industry and be sustainable at the same time. Porritt explained;

“Socialisation of the means of production makes little difference; what are vices under capitalism do not become virtues under communism. A filthy smokestack is still a filthy smoke stack whether or not it is owned by the state or by a private corporation”

This would lead many greens to say that ‘capitalism’ is the problem. That capitalism and the consumer culture are driving this swallowing up of finite resources. That capitalist societies will never put the needs o the environment first. Capitalism is the problem and so we should be anti-capitalist.

But I think this is too simplistic.

What does ‘capitalism’ mean?

“an economic, political, and social system in which property,business, and industry are privately owned, directed towards making the greatest possible profits for successful organisations and people”

Cambridge Dictionary

The above definition does not include what most anti-capitalists despise about the capitalism that we have. I think for most anti-capitalists our capitalism would actually be defined like this;

Capitalism (as we know it) ; an economic, political, and social system in which property,business, and industry are privately owned, directed towards making the greatest possible profits for successful organisations and people, where profits are put first at the expense of society, it’s people and without recognition of the undeniable truth that all wealth is ultimately drawn from the finite resources of the planet.

Perhaps the elite that are responsible for the Cambridge Dictionary have their own reason for not carrying my extended definition of capitalism, but either way it is not in there.

But if you think about it we all know that capitalism can fit the Cambridge definition and does not have to fall in to my extended definition; we can think about our own local situation and consider the Stroud famer’s market. Here is capitalism in full swing as local organisations and people benefit from directing the greatest possible profits for their wares from our pockets. We love our Stroud farmer’s market; the smells, the interesting items, the warm characters. What a pleasure.

The important thing here is that, to my knowledge, the local businesses that operate from the Stroud farmer’s market are not generating their profits at anyone else’s, or the environment’s, expense.

We can be green

We need to put to one side the discussions of being anti-capitalist, left wing or right wing; we can be altogether different. We can be green. To be green is to put the environment first because there is no other option; all other things that might be important to you depend on this planet we call home.

There is another incredibly important reason to put down the argument of left vs right and anti-capitalism; because most people don’t care. Greens have had a difficult time reaching out to the type of people who live on the council estate where I grew up. All of this academic debate about ideology ultimately gets nowhere when you are facing the practicalities of everyday living on the breadline. This is where the ideology of the right dangerously dominates with ease because the lies are well spread if not actually made material; the wealth of the richest will trickle down, we need a strong economy, watch out for those migrants they are taking your job, that sick person isn’t working as hard as you are, we need to free up trade (and step on your rights)…

We greens need talk of the real things that greens strive for in power and how our policies make a real difference to people’s lives.

• ·         Creating a fair economy; ending austerity, restoring the public sector, paying a real living wage, a Robin Hood tax on banks and increasing the minimum wage to £10ph by 2020
•  
• ·         A public NHS; Fighting  for a publicly funded, publicly provided health service free at the point of use. Ending the creeping privatisation of the NHS and repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Making mental health a much higher priority with resources to match this
•  
• ·         Affordable energy and a safe climate; Taking urgent action on climate change and working with other countries to hold the increase in global temperature to below 2 degrees. Banning fracking, phase out coal power stations and say no to new nuclear. Investing in a public programme of renewable generation, flood defences and building insulation.
•  
• ·         Free education; Scrapping university tuition fees, reversing cuts and investing in further education. Promote a comprehensive system of local schools offering mixed ability teaching staffed by qualified teachers. Bring Academies and Free Schools into the Local Authority system.
•  
• ·         Decent homes; Abolishing the cruel and unfair bedroom tax. Provide 500,000 social rented homes by 2020 and bring empty homes back into use to ensure everyone has access to an affordable place to live. Cap rent, introduce longer tenancies and licence landlords to provide greater protection for renters.

·         Better transport; Returning the railways to public hands, saving money and improving services. Introduce an immediate cut in fares of 10% to give passengers a much-needed financial break. Promote walking and cycling to help reduce pollution and improve people’s health.

Taken from the Green Party England and Wales 2015 mini manifesto

Not left. Not right. Just busy being green and ignoring these great distractions.