Category: politics
-
Sign of the Times?
I was bemused by the amount of enclosures in the envelope containing my Validation of Nomination for the upcoming May local elections. Nearly all of them were about personal security! How to stay safe from ones constituents, how to avoid confrontation and how to deal with harassment, intimidation and threatening behaviour. I guess I’m free…
-
Voter ID
Currently, in the USA, the votes are being counted. This post is not about them. In the UK, a Bill was published in late October describing the way in which Voter ID will be implemented in the Election Act 2022. The first use of Voter ID is declared to be in the local elections of…
-
The Privatisation of Place
There are approximately nine thousand parishes in England, and their history goes back to the Local Government Act of 1894. Some sixteen million people in England live within parished areas, and the local taxation of precept that they raise (a listed part of the Community Charge) is in the order of six hundred million pounds.…
-
Open letter to my MP
Dear Luke Hall MP The government’s failure to adequately address the recent behaviour or Mr Cummings – and worse, the pathetic defence of his behaviour – has risked the collapse of sensible lockdown strategy, and has likely fatally damaged the administration. If he had simply apologised and admitted error, perhaps the matter would have blown…
-
Friday 13th 2019
After the storm, when everything’s battered: Bleeding, twisted, broken and shattered. The only next step is to pick ones self up; Make a space, build a fire, help a friend, share a cup. Tomorrow will come, and the Sun will still rise To shine light on the aftermath – hope never dies. Be not overwhelmed…
-
StopEcocide : Change the Law
I’ve just come back from a talk about ecocide that was kind of a memorial for Stroud-based eco-barrister, Polly Higgins, who recently passed after a very swift battle with an aggressive cancer. As a founder of Mission Lifeforce (now re-branded and re-launched as StopEcocide.Earth) she died even as thousands of Extinction Rebellion folk were taking…
-
Vote for me (or at least, vote!)
I’m in the interesting position of actually being on a ballot paper next month! I first joined my parish council in 2007 (twelve years ago!) under the rules of co-option. That means there was a space on the council due to someone leaving but there was no election scheduled. I can’t remember now why the…
-
People’s Vote march London
It was a hint of the extraordinary day to come that we arrived in London to join the million plus (current estimates) others calling for a people’s vote – or more often a complete revocation of Article 50 – only to find that we had randomly stood smack bang next to the chair of the greenway action…
-
The Kids Are All Right!
I was in the thick of the Bristol #YouthStrike4Climate March the other day, and thoroughly proud of the kids. They turned out in their hundreds, in weather that didn’t really promise much, and shouted and chanted and marched and bloody well protested for some long overdue climate action. As a child of the sixties I remember well…
-
Time for change
At last night’s Parish Council budget meeting, someone asked the question I’d rather been putting off and tipped the domino over. “Please will you reconsider and say you’ll stay on as Chairman?” And the answer was, of course, not in the positive. But hey, the cat’s out of the bag. And since I had an…
Rosher.Net 