This is an excellent time to hide bad news

As an unelected Prime Minister takes up residence in 10 Downing Street without any democratic direction on the nature of post-referendum negotiations and the country watches the dramatic Labour leadership battle, the government is relying on us being so distracted that we don’t notice anything else.

The UN has found the Conservative government’s austerity measures and social security reform to be in breach of international human rights obligations.

Key areas of concern include

• persistent discrimination against migrant workers
• unemployment, which continues to disproportionately affect people with disabilities
• young people and minorities
• lack of corporate regulation
• the use of zero hour contracts
• the new Trade Union Act, which limits the right of workers to undertake industrial action
• the national minimum wage has been found to be insufficient to ensure a decent standard of living
• there has been a significant rise in homelessness
• the Human Rights Act is still being scrapped
• the number of children living in poverty has jumped by 200,000 in the last year. This means 3.9 million children are now living below the breadline in this country

Yesterday’s report by the Committee on Climate Change found that the government is unprepared to deal with the effects of climate change. It is predicted that global warming will hit UK with deadly heatwaves, more flooding and water shortages. Meanwhile we're still filling the oceans with plastic, and employing disasterous farming methods that are destroying our soils and wildlife.

The country is burning. We are in a state of crisis.

This is all being buried under Brexit headlines. As the increasingly farcical spectacle that is modern day British politics continues to unfold, we cannot forget that there are still injustices to be fought. Right now. Today.

In these times of uncertainty, the Green Party remains united. Whoever is in charge, we know what we stand for. We will continue to fight for social justice, migrants’ rights and weaning our country off its addiction to fossil fuels. Help us do this. Become a member or renew your membership today.

Natalie Bennett
Leader
Green Party of England & Wales

Pre-paid benefits cards

There's talk of bringing in pre-paid cards for people on benefits, rather than giving them money to spend. There are a great many reasons for resisting this move, here are a a few, feel free to add more objections as comments. This is not jut an issue for people on benefits, this is an issue for all of us.

Stigmatising those on benefits by making them visible, and therefore vulnerable to bullying.

The assumption that people on benefits can't make responsible shopping choices is unfair and degrading.

Some things you have to pay for with cash - what will happen to people who need bus fares for job interviews and signing on?

This move benefits big business (who will be able to manage handling the cards) at the expense of smaller, local businesses. It will take money out of certain areas of the economy. Independent traders are under enough pressure already.

Often the cheapest option is the second hand shop, the car boot sale, and other places you'll have no hope of using this kind of card, making life more expensive for those who have least.

The government would like us to think everyone on benefits is a lazy, irresponsible scrounger. These cards reinforce that story.

They put the power to decide where money is spent (arguably public money, as in it is money belonging to the public and money the public funded to be available) in the hands of those in power. So expect these cards to work with large companies, It takes away the right to choose what is necessary, the right to have preferences, and the right to get the best deal you can. Even the right to make ethical and health choices. Maybe what you need isn't on the supermarket shelves. It divides those on benefits from those who are allowed to choose. We should not be comfortable about this.

The logic is that without this intervention. feckless poor people will spend their money on booze, drugs, fags and gambling. Anyone who has ever experienced addiction (and some of us are psychologically pre-disposed to it, and incredibly vulnerable) will know that forced 'cold turkey' is one of the worst things you can do. Some drugs have to be stepped down from carefully, or quitting can actually kill you. Addicts to anything, forcibly denied the means to access that, do not make the best choices, so without a great deal of support in place to deal with the consequences for those who would be affected this way, it's a grossly irresponsible non-solution. It is also wholly unfair on the many people who are not affected by these issues.

There are a number of conditions where people opt for self-medicating (perhaps unwisely, but often in the absence of any other available interventions). Depression and anxiety can drive people towards alcohol and cigarettes. Long term pain can lead people to adopt all kinds of measures to get from one day to the next. Addiction, when it's not a disease in its own right, very often comes about as a consequence of disease, and needs to be treated as such,

The best way to help people tackle addiction, is to help people tackle addiction, not to punish everyone on benefits for the 'crime' of being poor.

if you agree, there's a 38 degrees petition... https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/re-think-pre-paid-benefit-cards

Time for radical change

Green Party activist Matt Hawkins wrote this excellent piece in the Huffington Post recently, talking about the need the challenge the Tory rhetoric of 'hard working families'.

In-work poverty is a growing issue. People are working ever longer hours, for ever less economic power, as rising housing costs and energy prices particularly, make it impossible for most of us to keep up. We've no time to rest or to live, only to work frantically in a desperate bid to stay afloat. There is so much misery being caused by this. For the poorest, it has meant food banks and destitution. For many in the middle, stress, depression, anxiety, loss of social connections, loss of family time and loss of quality of life are having real impacts. The vast majority of us are suffering.

We need to be aware that 'the poor' are not some special group, and any of us can go there. Ill health and the loss of a job can take a comfortable middle class family into arrears, debt, and crisis. The idea that 'hard working families' are not at the same risk as those unspecified 'other people' keeps us running hard with no security whatsoever. The myth that those in crisis got there because they were not working hard enough also needs challenging, because in this climate, most of us are not capable of putting in enough hours to maintain our standard of living. It is not possible, for most of us, to run fast enough in order to keep up. Disposable incomes are falling, and we are all feeling the pinch.

For those in most difficulty, pushed to total crisis, the language of 'hard working families' is not just unhelpful, it's downright cruel. It implies there might have been a choice, or a viable alternative and so often no choice was available. It implies that only if they had tried harder, disaster could have been averted. This language encourages those who are still just about staying afloat, to feel that those who are sinking have failed through their own lack of effort, not because the system is sick and destructive. This keeps us from questioning the system too much. So we blame the poor and those in crisis, and if we're lucky enough not to be in that much trouble ourselves (yet) we cling to the irrational belief that if we can just stay at the edge of almost working ourselves to death, we might get away with it.

The Green Party does not believe that work is the meaning and point of life. We want a decent quality of life for all. We want meaningful work for all that pays a living wage, but to get to that place - which is entirely possible - we've got to stop believing in the fairy tale that hard work pays, and that hard working families are something a country should aspire to having. Let's talk about the common good instead, and work on making that happen.

World Development Movement in Stroud

In February 2014, Nick Dearden, Director of the World Development Movement came to Stroud to give a talk, alongside Molly Scott Cato.

WDM is a group campaigning against the root causes of poverty and inequality. This is a democratically-governed movement made up of local campaign groups based in towns and cities around the UK. The World Development Movement campaigns in ways that challenge the powerful and seek to bring about economic justice for the world’s poor majority.  For more information, visit http://www.wdm.org.uk

Dr Molly Scott Cato is Green EU candidate for the Southwest. Molly has long been challenging inequality and highlighting the innate unfairness in capitalist systems. These articles – Defending the poor - and Green Welfare - will give you a sense of Molly’s vision for a fairer world.

More local films like this on www.stroudcommunity.tv

The price of a second chance

Listen to noises from government and media alike, and you could easily come to think that hardworking people, and poor people, are two separate groups. Hardworking people are good, virtuous and to be commended, while poor people are lazy and manage their money badly which is why they are in this mess in the first place. It’s a very deceptive style of talking. For a start, a lot of benefit money goes to pensioners, and in-work poverty is widespread. Hard work and wealth do not neatly go together.

What is most worrying is the way this rhetoric creates the illusion that if we work hard, it won’t happen to us. If we are protecting ourselves from the dangers of poverty, then we don’t need to feel so sympathetic about those other people, who are not wise of careful or responsible enough to do what we are doing.

However, it is worth considering that most disabled people are not that way from birth, but become ill or injured to a degree of being unable to work. That can happen to any of us, no matter how careful we are. It has rather a lot to do with luck, or random chance.

Do you get the pay rise, or the sack? This is a matter of luck, not judgement usually. Does the effort you put in make or break whether your company thrives or fails? Usually the answer is no. If you’re a regular person, employed by a company, then its viability does not come down to your personal efforts, and no matter how good, how diligent and hard working you are, if your firm goes bust, you are out of a job.

This has been the size of it for a lot of people in the UK. The recession has cost jobs, and the shrinking economy puts pressure on those that remain, and round we go in slowly decreasing circles that make life harder for the majority of us. Those who were closest to the edges are the first to be pushed out into unviable situations. The longer we suffer hard economic times, the more people are pushed out to the edges. With interest rates at rock bottom, savings do not increase in value to keep ahead  of inflation, while rents and housing prices accelerate. Even people who made wise and careful choices over a lot of years can find themselves in trouble due to simple bad luck and the impact of the struggling economy.

It is a terrifying thought that most of us are really vulnerable. Many of us would get into debt or difficulty very quickly if our circumstances changed beyond our control. Too many people are a big car bill, a fuel prices hike, a cut in hours away from disaster. We all need the safety net of knowing that if things get totally beyond our control, help will be available.

It’s not a one way street, either. JK Rowling has been explicit that, without the support of the benefits system, she would not have been able to have her amazing career. She’s been distinctly good for the economy. I personally know of quite a few examples of people who have fallen on hard times, survived and gone on to build a new and better life. There’s Jack Monroe as a good current example, too.

We are all of us worth taking care of. We all deserve some safety net in case we are floored by situations beyond our control. Some of us, if given the time and space to get up again, will  not just get up, but get up and go on to do brilliant, inspiring things that make the world a better place. If we leave people who have fallen down in the gutter, the chances are they will never be able to get up. If we recognise that this could happen to any of us, and that we’d all want that help and therefore shouldn’t begrudge it to others, we can help each other achieve more, in all kinds of ways.