alanjjohnstone
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Out of my sense of justice, I posted my remarks so that this was not a one-sided debate.
Please don’t put words in my mouth
“So it is acceptable to make wild accusations against other party members with no action taken? this type of behaviour can be extremely intimidating, where was the call for Cde A to retract these accusations and apologise.”
I never said it was acceptable, nor did I say no action should have been taken by the Party.
I certainly do not know the full ins and outs of why a good comrade such as DC was obliged to resign over the incident and how much was due to the treatment he received when he complained. EC minutes were scant on the details.
Previous drunkenness at HO (in particular by one intimidating Scottish member) led to the restrictions being placed upon all members being permitted to stay at HO. So I am very critical about it because of the consequences it had on all of us. I never treated the Party as a source of interest-free loans, but I did consider HO as free accommodation.
Regards Cde Maratty, I was one of the moderators on the forum and I assure you he was given plenty of leeway and had several opportunities to mend his ways on the forum. But his on-line behaviour was that of a recidivist.
I was also earlier a moderator on the Yahoo forums where we had members with mental health issues and the dividing line between moderating them when they were not fully lucid and deciding when they were behaving coherently was very difficult for me to make judgement calls on what should be posted and what should be moderated. Many members believed i was far too lenient and over-protective. Well, it is in my nature to try to be so. As in this case, albeit without knowing the complete details, i tried to present both sides of the case and raise reasons in mitigation.
But i am not objecting to you seeking further and more fuller clarification and justification for the EC reaction to this. We are a transparent organisation and nothing should be swept under the carpet, no matter how unpleasant or unflattering it may be.
Out of my sense of fairness, the case for the defence.
I do not (AFAIK) personally know the comrade, so i have no dog in this fight.
“She had had problems with her payments from the state and had asked for an advance of her expenses against future attendance and has been allowed this in July and August until the payments from the state were resumed.”
I think those members who are not subjected to these benefit problems should be a bit more sympathetic to members who suffer from them. I have been on benefits and fully aware of the stress it places on decisions and judgments.
“…she recorded this in the petty cash vouchers book at the time…”
There was no attempt at deceit or fraud, it seems.“..despite the fact that the member in question had asked the Treasurer and the General Secretary if a monetary grant could be given and was told that they did not have the authority to grant this money…”
I think there is a slight difference of degree in being refused point-blank and being told they have not got the power to authorise it.
“(a bursary attend party general meetings is clearly NOT the same as funding a comrade to attend a Summer School)”
Whether it was to attend general public meeting or the Summer School, I think is splitting hairs. The only subsidy i know for Summer School is a reduced accommodation fee but not travelling expenses, and perhaps that might be looked into at a future date.
Either carrying out duties or participating in Party activities come at a cost, either in time or money. The Party has always had a generous attitude towards members facing financial restraints to engage in either.
But we are rather cumbersome when it comes to procedures.
“Her application for the funds was made the day before the meeting, to the GS and the T but neither could agree to give permission. She applied after the meeting to the T and to the Campaigns member but neither could authorise it.”
Her actions are in no way compared with “…“borrow” a couple of grand, I’ve got a tip on a horse in the 3.30 at Lingfield on Friday, and I’ll pay the money back out of my winnings…”
The situation was investigated by the Party auditors and the comrade although reprimanded for “misapplied powers”, and have fallen upon the sword by resigning her Party positions, the auditors recommendations should be accepted and lets move on before we once more lose another comrade from membership.
As for the other accusation of Cde CA being “under the influence”, throwing wild accusations against another member, I certainly do not accept that ex-Cde DC was “shit” at his Party duties. On the contrary, he was most proficient, IMHO. Despite our occasional differences, I regret his resignation and merely say, the door is always open if he chooses to return.
But in recent times these internecine disputes are growing in frequency and i am left to wonder why this is.
I have already mentioned the rise in dengue fever cases due to the changing climate patterns and the subsequent spread of the species of mosquitoes which carry it.
But also related to climate change is the rise of Lyme Disease caused by widening spread of ticks.
Compared to Ebola, in the Congo, measles is far the greater killer.
Swine flu is also a potential disease doctors are waiting for to mutate
But already because of the swift reaction of the Chinese government, old-time Maoists are out hailing their response
Chomsky and other liberal progressives warn off the Green Party from being spoilers in the campaign to get Trump ousted.
(as an aside, I note one of the signatories of the open letter, Parecon’s Michael Albert, had not disappeared as I previously thought)
Oh, I should add, that if this is indeed serious, I fully expect the pharmaceutical industries to try to hold the World to ransom, just as they did when the HIV/AIDS epidemic took place and the outrageous price demands they placed on antiviral medicines.
It took a lot of political lobbying from activists plus the competition threat from cheap Indian generics to make them reduce the costs of treatment.
Some of my fears proved unfounded. Attenborough restricted his comments to the idea of a popular assembly rather than parliaments and did not address them with any actual solutions to climate change
“For those of us in the provinces, who aren’t kept in the loop, access to EC minutes are vital.”
Nobody listens to us anyways 🙁
I think it isn’t the right analogy. One was an extra-terrestrial threat.
This simply could become very protectionist…as we see with the now closed city and province of Wuhan, whole countries might be placed in quarantine and of course civil liberties suspended and probably a rise of xenophobia soon as a stranger shows a temperature.
As mentioned there would be serious economic ramifications, another world recession. To adapt a saying, if China catches a cold, then the whole world will begin to sneeze.
I recall one flu epidemic several years ago brought trains and other parts of the economy to a temporary stand-still. With Brexit, could the UK endure an additional economic strain.
It would also result in the collapse of the NHS which health experts say is already tottering towards a collapse of services every Winter with normal seasonal flu. A pandemic would bring it crashing down.
So far it is only the old folk with pre-existing chest complaints that have died. The risk is as with flu, is it once again mutates into something more virulent and I believe this is the reason for the urgency to contain and remove it.
I recall the World was awaiting for bird flu to cross over the species line, which it did but only in a few isolated cases where there was much more human chicken contact.
Then there was SARS, again originating in China which they stopped from turning into a global pandemic.
This too I think will not develop into a Spanish Flu (note how we do blame foreigners) which killed millions upon millions.
No – on this topic I am an optimist, not gloom and doom.
…Atishooo… and we all fall down
How quickly will the slums and shanty towns around the world can be demolished and re-built with decent housing and sanitation and infrastructures such as schools and clinics certainly won’t take as long as some presuppose. Similarly, the rural areas can be equipped with better connecting roads.
I always mention that when the military is demobilised many of its regiments will in fact remain. The Royal Engineers, The Corp of Signals and Transport, logistic brigades, Medical Corps, REME, etc. These will be diverted to civilian use in the undeveloped and developing world, making use of those skills for civilian use, as you say, building airfields and laying bridges.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/24/david-attenborough-citizens-climate-assembly
The Citizens Assembly appears to be a promising idea but then I saw that David Attenborough is to offer it his opinion and I began to think of that computer saying “Garbage In Garbage Out.”
The principle that a randomly but representative selected assembly exercises democratic will of the people in theory seemed a good one but the information they receivecan be skewed. They will be given various presentations but who decides which ones and how many will be in conflict with the already prevailing general consensus albeit with what may be considered conflicting but which we wouldn’t judge a true choice.
Does the Assembly have the power to call witnesses? Then what is the process is there for it to be aware of the variety of ideas out there to hear? Do organisations such as ours have the right to address it? What is the procedure to apply?
It is easy to determine the outcome of the Citizens Assembly as it is any Public Inquiry by setting its remit and cherry-picking those whose voices is to be heard. Nor have I heard so far about any admittance of the public/media to watch the proceedings. Do we have the ability to leaflet and canvass the members of the Citizens Assembly ? If so how can lobbying by business interests be avoided?
Just a few questions that popped into my head when I read that some will have privileged access to the assembly and others such as ourselves , as always remain silenced.
A German journalist has come under fire for writing that Russia and Israel exploited a Holocaust remembrance ceremony for their own agendas. She said the memorial missed an opportunity to stand against anti-Semitism.
Jewish leaders and the former BBC executives have criticised the report as antisemitic.
Orla Guerin said: “In Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names, images of the dead. Young soldiers troop in to share in the binding tragedy of the Jewish people. The state of Israel is now a regional power. For decades, it has occupied Palestinian territories. But some here will always see their nation through the prism of persecution and survival.”
If my memory serves me right Orla Guerin was one time the BBC correspondent for Israel/Palestine and was removed for accusations of not being sufficiently pro-Israeli.
A case of shooting the messenger?
Scientists are attempting to transform nuclear waste into batteries that can last for thousands of years. Next-generation diamond batteries that use energy from radioactive materials have already been developed and tested by researchers at the University of Bristol. Carbon-14 isotopes extracted from graphite blocks produced by the plant are infused with wafer-thin diamonds to create the batteries, which researchers say are capable of providing power on a “near-infinite basis”.
Donald Trump has become the first US president to attend the anti-abortion movement’s biggest rally. Trump said: “We’re here for a very simple reason: to defend the right of every child born and unborn to fulfill their God-given potential.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51239795
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at an event sponsored by Colorado Christian University likened the arguments of pro-choice advocates to those of pro-slavery supporters during the Civil War era.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51233444
Mini nuclear reactors could be generating power in the UK by the end of the decade. Manufacturer Rolls-Royce has told the BBC’s Today programme that it plans to install and operate factory-built power stations by 2029.
Mini nuclear stations can be mass manufactured and delivered in chunks on the back of a lorry. “The trick is to have prefabricated parts where we use advanced digital welding methods and robotic assembly and then parts are shipped to site and bolted together,” said Paul Stein, the chief technology officer at Rolls-Royce.
Environmentalists are divided over nuclear power, with some maintaining it is dangerous and expensive, while others say that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 all technologies are needed. However, the industry is confident that mini reactors can compete on price with low-cost renewables such as offshore wind.
Rolls-Royce is leading a consortium to build small modular reactors (SMRs) and install them in former nuclear sites in Cumbria or in Wales. Ultimately, the company thinks it will build between 10 and 15 of the stations in the UK. They are about 1.5 acres in size – sitting in a 10-acre space. That is a 16th of the size of a major power station such as Hinkley Point. SMRs are so small that theoretically every town could have its own reactor.
But Paul Dorfman from University College London said: “It’s far more economic to build one 1.2 GW unit than a dozen 100 MW units.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/24/90-pe-cent-uk-africa-energy-deals-fossil-fuels
“More than 90% of the £2bn in energy deals struck at this week’s UK-Africa investment summit were for fossil fuels, despite a government commitment to “support African countries in their transition to cleaner energy” … A report by Greenpeace and Newsnight also found that UKEF spent billions of pounds abroad supporting fossil fuel projects that will emit an estimated 69 million tonnes of carbon a year…”
