Category Archives: Brighton

A conveniently quick conversion to Green politics by Labour’s Emma Daniel

Posted on 13 June 2013 | 5 Comments

As regular readers will know, until very recently, I have been friends with the Labour candidate in the forthcoming Hanover and Elm Grove by-election. Throughout all of that friendship, I’ve always been clear that if she were ever to become a Labour candidate I would blog everything I know about her. Last week, I revealed that she has refused to join a trades union. This week I’m explaining her attitude to politics in general.

It’s worth mentioning that almost every conversation I’ve ever had with Ms Daniel has been about politics. That’s hardly surprising. I’m a political blogger and she instigated her friendship with me as soon as she decided to join the Labour Party, with the ambition of becoming a candidate. She’s been kind (or foolish) enough to invite me over to her house many times, she’s employed me to help redecorate the place, she’s chatted freely.

Every conversation we’ve ever had which involved the knotty subject of international politics has seen her asking me questions and me asking her none. Her knowledge of practically anything to do with the rest of the world is about as uninformed as the average UKIP member, although her politics are rather different.

Every conversation we’ve ever had about the UK’s national politics has seen similarly disinterested. “I’m only interested in local politics,” she has told me on more than one occasion. I’ve protested that local government is a creature of Westminster in this country, that local affairs are dominated by national matters and that all elected party representatives have a duty to understand all the issues because they will inevitably be influential in choosing parliamentary candidates. My protestations have fallen on deaf ears. “I don’t care, I’m just not interested,” she said.

When the subject turned to environmental matters, Ms Daniel’s exclusive approach to subjects she’s not into sharpened considerably. What with me and another member of her household being members of the Green Party, this topic has come up quite a bit. She’s pretty well practised at rolling her eyes during this sort of conversation. Once, she put her hand into a flat palm and vigorously waved it backwards and forwards above her head whilst making a face reminiscent of the cruel impressions from my youth of the estimable Joey Deacon. Doubtless, by that energetic gesturing she wished to indicate that she wasn’t the slightest bit interested. Another time she professed that during a recession no-one would be interested in the environment. More often than not, she adopted the thousand yard stare most commonly associated with soldiers on the Western Front in the First World War or simply left the room.

Having witnessed this carry on so many times, you can imagine my surprise when I saw the policies which she is promoting under Labour’s banner, during this election campaign. You can find them here but for your browsing convenience, here’s the page as it stands right now (before they brush it up by filling in the missing details):

Policies which Emma Daniel may or may not be interested, depending on whether you talk to her in your home or yours

Do Emma Daniel’s interests change according to whose house she is in? Click to enlarge.

Straight away, you’ll notice that Ms Daniel is associating herself with Labour’s national policies. Odd that, isn’t it? Perhaps she has had an epiphany and realised that whilst we can have local shops for local people, we can’t really have local politics without reference to the other shit that happens in this country. Most probably she didn’t tell the local Labour Party that she wasn’t interested in their schemes for the rest of the country?

Looking at the local policies, I gotta mention that she never mentioned any of these to me in our private conversations. That’s fair enough, of course. She’s perfectly entitled to fight for her party, regardless of what she thinks for herself. To be fair, she never specified her own views to me on local matters either, so it’s probably fair to assume that she didn’t have any particularly strong views on any particular policies. That is a little strange though, for someone who boasts of having worked in “policy”, whatever that means?!

I’m sure we’re all glad that Labour wants to tackle debt by promoting a living wage and credit unions. Caroline Lucas MP and the local Green administration has done much the same, by introducing a living wage for all council staff and by vigorously promoting credit unions. Since this is a two horse race, between the Greens and the Labour tribe, this isn’t really an election issue. There is no dispute and consequently no competition here.

The idea of a Park & Ride service for Brighton & Hove has been kicking around for more decades than anyone cares to remember. Labour has had plenty of chances to make this happen. The reason it hasn’t happened is that no-one can agree about the site for the parking. Proposing it without suggesting any sites at all is a bit like proposing that it’ll never rain on bank holiday weekends every again. It’s a nice idea but it can’t be taken seriously. As an election issue, it is meaningless.

The really exciting proposal is a kitchen waste collection scheme. Presumably, now that Emma Daniel is suddenly interested in an environmental issue, she has realised that such a scheme must run across the entire city or else it will be unfair in its application. It’s a great idea. What’s not to like? Well, she doesn’t seem to have noticed that the thieving Tory bastard government in Westminster is imposing massive cuts on our City Council. Every year more and more cuts are forced on our good citizens. Sure, they want their kitchen waste collected! Who’s going to pay for this? Ms Daniel isn’t proposing that they pay for it themselves. If they were willing to do that, Magpie would have stepped in years ago and run it for them. If the City Council is going to pay for it, how much will it cost and where is the money going to come from?

The only reason Labour can get away with this sort of uncosted pipe dreaming is because this is a by-election. If Emma Daniel is elected, neither she nor the rest of her Labour colleagues (they’re not comrades any more) will be able to implement one jot of this wish list because they will still be the smallest party on the Council, without any power whatsoever. Make no mistake, Emma Daniel is not able to offer anything more than just being a ward councillor.

The fourth policy overlaps with the first one. Is Labour proposing that the Council set up its own credit unions? I confess, I’m not sure about the law in this area. I didn’t realise that local authorities were allowed to set up their own lending institutions? Certainly, there are problems with public authorities lending to businesses in the private sector under EU competition law. The policy is nothing more than a sentence, so we’ve got no detail explaining what precisely is being promoted. Could it be that Labour dashed this stuff off on the back of an envelope? No matter, if it has persuaded Ms Daniel to promote environmental concerns, it should give itself a pat on the back. It may only be a single sentence but everybody’s got to start somewhere.

More affordable homes! How, exactly? In what way does Labour’s policy here differ from the Greens? Without any stated difference, this isn’t an election issue at all.

Oh look, another environmental policy! Bus travel discounts for members in credit unions! After the Labour envelope was handed over to Warren Morgan and Steve “Lord” Bassam for their agreement, did anyone actually think about how badly constructed this is? Who is going to pay for the discount? Not Brighton & Hove buses, that’s for sure. If they were so keen on discounted travel, they wouldn’t have raised their prices recently, and then raised them again, and again… Is the Council going to pay for it Emma? The cash strapped credit unions? How much is it going to cost? Introduce a policy like this and overnight everybody in the City will join a credit union. How many discounts do you anticipate? What’s the point of a policy which cannot be implemented?

None of these are credible election issues. All of them are grandstanding. Standing on the doorsteps of other people’s houses, Emma Daniel will smile sweetly and suggest that she’s one of them. Except she isn’t. In Hanover & Elm Grove the residents are overwhelmingly Green in their lifestyles. Will they be persuaded to vote for a meat eater, converted to Green issues for the convenience of this election, a candidate who cannot cost even the simplest of her own policies?

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Posted in Brighton, Emma Daniel, Green Party, Labour Party, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Steve "Lord" Bassam, Warren Morgan

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Are the Tories evil or just incredibly selfish?

Posted on 10 June 2013 | 1 Comment

I once knew a Tory who lived in Queens’ Park ward in Brighton, who used to say that he was the only Tory for a whole mile around. I’ve kept in touch with a few people from that particular sporting club but not him. His penchant for pinning pictures of Hitler to the club noticeboard put me off. He invited me over to his house once to help him eradicate some pornography which he said had mysteriously arrived on his computer and he wanted rid of. When I got there, there was nothing wrong with his computer. Instead, he showed me newspaper clippings about how desperate refugees had killed themselves by taking to leaky boats to escape persecution. “They wanted to take our jobs,” he declared. Not that he had one. He was a landlord.

I don’t call the senior members of the Conservative Party the thieving Tory bastards because of this fellow. Although in many ways he was a typical Tory, he did not represent the party in any official capacity. He had simply paid up to join them. They get called the thieving Tory bastards because of their policies: they have persistently stolen from the poor to give to the rich. Right now they’re concentrating their fire on benefit claimants, rather than the enormously powerful tax-dodging corporations. There’s nothing new about this. In fact, the very word ‘Tory’ was originally an Irish word meaning “thief” or “plunderer”.

Incidentally, in Australia “bastard” was legally recognised as a term of endearment in 1971. Let me be clear, I am not using it in this context. Nor do I mean to say that all official representatives of the Tories were born out of wedlock. It should be pretty clear that I mean to insult everything the Tories stand for and regard their official representatives with the same level of contempt as the average medieval monk regarded the Devil himself.

Whether the Tories are properly evil, just generally too stupid to grasp how society actually works or merely incredibly selfish I cannot decide. Perhaps that’s a question for philosophers above my pay grade. Probably, it is a mixture of all three. Our local Tories openly ascribe to values so old-fashioned that they wouldn’t even be found in their romanticised version of the past, Downton Abbey. For example, only yesterday, the chair of their local party declared that she decided whether to take people seriously or not according to what she perceived to be the status of their job. Since she is an official representative of her party, her nasty views do reflect her party.

One thing is clear, the Tories do not represent the good people of the British Isles or Ireland or anywhere else. They haven’t won a national mandate since 1992 and, arguably, they have never won a majority of the popular vote. That’s why they prefer the first-past-the-post voting system. It helps them win power, despite the democratic expression of the people. Since their inception, they have stood against all forms of progress. That’s why their official name is Conservative. They are, to quote the famous phrase from the founder of the NHS, Nye Bevan, “lower than vermin.” Luckily for them, the most radical political activists in the UK today are into animal rights and therefore no-one really wants to see them killed, we just want to see their evil, stupid and selfish political philosophy eradicated from our public life.

Why don’t they take the hint? The fellow in Queen’s Park did. He took himself off to Rottingdean, to be closer to his own kind, and took his cabinet of hateful newspaper clippings with him.

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Posted in Brighton, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Thieving Tory Bastards

My new job

Posted on 8 June 2013 | 2 Comments

A month ago I got my first ever proper PAYE job! Never in my life did I ever think I’d answer the tedious conversational opener, “What do you do?” with the words, “I’m an oil man.” Although that’s now true, I’ve been obliged to then supply such lengthy a explanation, whilst my friends splutter in shock, that I switched to saying, “Waste management.“

Of course, it’s not like that at all. How could it be? I’ve only been there a month. Anyway, both of these responses required a vigorous waving of the joke flag alongside them, which spoiled the comedy. After a month, I just tell the straight truth: “I’m the oil business manager for the Big Lemon. We recycle waste cooking oil by converting it into bio-diesel, which we use to fuel our buses with.” Everyone finds this fascinating and wants to know all about it.

Unfortunately, for them, I’m sometimes not in the mood to talk about it. When I was self-employed, I lived, breathed and talked shop all the time. One of the most wonderful aspects of my personal regime change is that when I walk away from the depot, I walk away from my job. Literally. It takes me an hour and a half to walk home. That’s an excellent distance to put between home life and working life.

All my new colleagues said, “You walk to work?!” Then the incredulity really began. One even described it as a “waste of time“. I couldn’t get him to understand that a walking creature sitting still whilst being carried along in some conveyance was a bigger waste of time. Am I totally alone in getting that? Why bother going to a gym, if you can exercise on the way to work and back? We have evolved to walk. It’s good for you, it calms the spirit and livens up the mind. The irony of stopping using buses whilst working for a bus company is not lost on me though.

My new boss, Tom Druitt, has read this blog from time to time. I asked him whether he had any problems with continuing with it. He was fine with it. “Yeah, why not? It’s got nothing to do with me.” Of course it hasn’t. Why should it? Yet so many people are so terrified of their employer that they feel obliged to litter their social world with disclaimers about how their views are, er, their views. Obviously this blog represents neither Tom’s views nor the various organisations I am a member of. Anyone who thinks otherwise must be either completely stupid or both desperate to challenge what I’ve written and too timid to address me directly.

Another really great aspect of working for the Big Lemon is the pay structure. Workers get £9 an hour. Managers get £10. That’s it. There no other pay differentials. In an age when practically everyone, other than the thieving Tory bastards and their lackeys from New Labour, realises that greater equality makes for a greater society, the Big Lemon has virtually achieved it. Can anyone name another company with a flatter salary structure?

The information in this next video is probably easier to digest than reading my explanation. It’s a company promo and the staff have changed a bit since it was made but the processes haven’t.

Thanks to the Big Lemon there’s now three bus companies plying their trade on the streets of Brighton & Hove. Previously, there was only one, Brighton & Hove Buses, which is still going strong. Rumour has it that they make £8,000,000 profit per day. I don’t know whether that is true or not ~ I did ask them (on twitter, ages ago) but they didn’t reply. Their boss, Roger French, isn’t much loved, though that didn’t stop the obsequious bawheids who run Brighton & Hove City Council granting him the freedom of the city recently. His company did its best to put the Big Lemon out of business by using an unfair pricing strategy on certain routes. However, there was so much goodwill for the Big Lemon that it survived the commercial attack and, just to show that there were no hard feelings, it gave Mr French lifelong free travel on the very service he tried to kill.

The third bus company is called Compass. If wasn’t for their routinely dangerous attitude to cyclists, they would probably just be regarded as any other old company, neither loved, nor hated. Sort it out Compass ~ cyclists are road users too!

So far I’ve concentrated my energies into reorganising the oil business. Once we’ve got to where I want us to be, I’ll expand it. Over the last week, I’ve been meeting all sorts of business owners, chefs and so on. The quantity of goodwill towards to the Big Lemon has been the real eye-opener. I’ve got big plans for the business but I’ll not reveal them here. All in good time. It’s my weekend, I shouldn’t be thinking about this now!

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Posted in Big Lemon, Brighton, Hove

Emma Daniel won’t join a trades union because her employer “might not like that”

Posted on 5 June 2013 | 5 Comments

Emma Daniel is the Labour Party candidate in the forthcoming Hanover and Elm Grove By-Election. Over the last year a so, I’ve formed an unlikely friendship with her, at her instigation. I’ll be writing about her from a personal perspective on another occasion but today’s post is all about Emma’s grasp of the principles of political action, or rather her lack of them.

Emma Daniel is a hard working woman who is rightly proud of her career. “I was a CEO at 26,” she told me more than once on the first evening I spent in her company (in a pub, not at work). She’s been employed in a number of capacities and never been self-employed. Yet, oddly for a Labour Party member, she has never joined a trades union.

Until a month ago, I’ve only ever been self-employed. I was brought up to believe in the power of the trades union, in solidarity with working people everywhere and to support organisations which support other people. Last month I got a job with The Big Lemon and immediately joined the GMB, because it was obviously a strong union with a clear record of fighting for workers’ rights, which had plenty members in the transport sector. The fact that the GMB paid for Labour’s election campaign against the Greens in Brighton & Hove in 2011 didn’t trouble me. Trades unionism is just too important to allow political squabbling or any other issue to frustrate it.

Shortly before I started my new employment, Emma started new employment herself. Naturally, I asked her, “What trades union are you a member of?” Her reply astonished me, “None.” The trades unions have historically been the backbone of the Labour Party. It is fair to say that without them there would be no Labour Party. Yet here is Emma Daniel, who joined the Labour Party in the last year, with a job and no trades union membership. “Why not?” I asked her. “I don’t think they’d approve of that at [her employer's company].” “What on earth has your employer’s approval got to do with it?” Her reply was much in keeping with her character, revealing her Blairite desperation to be liked by everyone, “I think they might not like that sort of thing, they’d see me as a troublemaker. I’ve only just joined.“

Here’s a candidate for political office, who is basing her campaign on listening to the voters, to represent them. Yet Emma listens keenly to others as well. She’s so keen to please the local Labour Party hierarchy, that she refused to publicly criticise Warren Morgan, her political leader, when he published private messages between him and a Green Councillor recently. Perhaps that is fair enough, perhaps she doesn’t think Mr Morgan does anything wrong, perhaps being slavishly loyal is part of the deal in the Labour Party.

“You don’t have to tell them you’ve joined a union,” I pointed out. “I don’t know, I don’t think it is a good idea. No-one else there is a union member.” The union movement would never have achieved anything if all political leaders had adopted Emma’s attitude.

Emma Daniel is a political coward. She stands on the doorsteps of Hanover and says, ‘I’m listening’ and asks for the voters’ trust but she cannot be trusted to speak out for them because she is frightened of challenging those who butter her bread. If she can’t even bring herself to join a trades union in secret, she cannot be trusted to stand up for anything much.

The real tragedy is that the Labour Party has been reduced to choosing such gutless candidates. Being nice is not enough for achieving anything in politics. It’s a useful attribute but it doesn’t by itself wield power. There are times when a politician has to take a stand, has to kick arses, has to take risks. Our political offices are stuffed with nice people with nothing to say for themselves. We don’t need any more.

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Posted in Brighton, Emma Daniel, Labour Party, Politics, Politics in the Cave

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Is Geoffrey Theobald the most ridiculed politician in Brighton & Hove?

Posted on 29 May 2013 | 1 Comment
Geoffrey Theobald, Conservative Councillor for Patcham, Brighton

Keep him talking!

Councillor Geoffrey Theobald is one of my representatives on Brighton & Hove City Council, on which he’s a political leader, allegedly. He’s a Tory and well known for his political speeches but not for good reasons. Until now, the popularity of his speeches has been something of a secret from his colleagues on the blue benches. Today I let the cat out of the bag – and quite right too, it’s cruel.

Basically, Geoffrey Theobald is famous for finishing sentences which he didn’t start. If you have the time and are utterly unable to find something to do, check him out on the council webcast. One day I’m going to collate his speeches and post the pick of the bunch on YouTube. So far there’s never been a day when I could bring myself to listen to him speak for more than a minute.

It’s a different story for his fellow councillors. They have to listen to him speak all the time. In fact, they find it distracting from the usual diet of fear and loathing from our local Tories. So distracting that they regularly vote for him to be given extra time. That’s right, Labour and Green councillors vote for a Tory to get extra speaking time!

The council’s webcast doesn’t show anything other than the speaker. You have to sit in the public gallery of Hove Town Hall to see the confused look on the Tories’ faces, the look of pride on Theobald’s oblivious mug and the strain of trying to keep a straight face on the benches populated by Labour and Green councillors. Time and time again, the progressives raise their hands in the air to have more of Theobald’s nonsense. It is a form of cruelty really.

The question is, now that I’ve revealed the joke, will Theobald add to his collection of extended speeches or will he sulk?

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Posted in Brighton, Geoffrey Theobald, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Thieving Tory Bastards

Is Graham Cox the most confused politician in Brighton & Hove?

Posted on 28 May 2013 | Leave a comment

Today’s post is a deconstruction of a Tory blog post which is so confused that, had it been written by a comedian, it would be safe to assume that it was a spoof. Sadly, it was written by Councillor Graham Cox, who made his career in the cops, climbing the greasy pole and now finds himself flailing around looking for something to say to the good folk of Brighton & Hove. Reading it, you’d never guess that there was a by-election in progress. Let’s break it down with reference to some good old fashioned facts.

It has been a lovely sunny Bank Holiday weekend in Brighton and Hove. … The situation in the suburbs – Hangelton, Woodingdean, Portslade, Hollingdean, Patcham etc – is particularly bad with some residents going three weeks without their rubbish being collected.

Good opening paragraph. Factually accurate. Sets the scene for the post’s theme. Okay, he’s mispelt Hangleton and doesn’t seem to know how long rubbish hasn’t been collected in Patcham – it is more than three weeks now in places, probably because Jason Kitcat lives there – but perhaps that’s me being a stickler for accuracy.

… a two day unofficial strike by the GMB staff at City Clean, followed by a ‘work to rule’ reminiscent of the behaviour of the print unions in late 70′s Fleet Street.

Classic Tory nonsense. For starters, unions have frequently adopted a work to rule strategy, especially during Tory governments. Work to rule just means fulfilling your contract of employment and not doing anything extra. The English Law of Contract is the darling of the capitalist world, which is why so much litigation goes through London. The corporations love its unfailing strictness. Yet when a trades union adopts the same approach… ooh, it’s like when media barons didn’t quite rule the world!

The Green Party … are trying to modernise the pay and conditions of City Council staff, partly to comply with pay equality legislation (historically women have been paid less for jobs of equal value) but also … It really should be possible to have our rubbish collected on Bank Holidays rather than use expensive and inefficient catch up processes.

It’s true that the pay equality issues inside Brighton & Hove City Council are mostly concerned with gender imbalances but that isn’t really a fair description of the overly complicated pay structures. For example, CityClean, the in-house service which collects the city’s refuse, employs men as well as women.

So far as the claim that refuse collection and street cleaning on bank holidays is intimately connected with the present industrial strike is concerned, well that’s a new one on me. Remember, I attend Green Party meetings with Jason Kitcat and I have never heard him make that point. If Councillor Cox has had private conversations with Councillor Kitcat, perhaps we should be told?

I wrote here … on 11 May on how … the Conservative Group – are trying to be a responsible opposition on this matter. … Labour, … calls for the leader of Council, Jason Kitcat, to resign … arguing that the Council should cave in to the strikers. The reason the Conservative Group has not been attacking the Green Administration is that in broad terms we support what they are trying to do. … We think we would have conducted the negotiations more skillfully (as the well respected Mary Mears did when she run the Council), …

Prior to 2011 the Tories were running the Council. Equality legislation is hardly new – the Sex Discrimination Act came into force in 1975. The only reason local authorities around the country are suddenly panicking is because of a recent court decision that said these issues could be heard by County Courts instead of Employment Tribunals, with the result that claims up to six years old can be litigated over, rather than just claims from three months’ previous. Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh, you can’t expect a Tory to be up to date on employment law. When I say ‘up to date’, obviously they know that many forms of child labour are now illegal but other than that, pretty much everything passed after 1945 is news to them.

Claiming that Labour wants the Council to ‘cave into the strikers’ completely contradicts the facts. Cox published this post yesterday. Only four days before Labour refused an offer from a Green Councillor to help undermine the city administration with a view to ending the currently proposed pay cuts. It simply isn’t possible to claim that Labour wants to side with the strikers in the face of that fact. Presumably, Councillor Cox only reads his own blog.

The claim that the Tories would handle the negotiations more skilfully than Councillor Kitcat’s crew is utterly absurd. Firstly, Jason Kitcat’s administration has not conducted the negotiations. That is at the heart of the problem, as it happens. He handed power over the council officers. There’s been so much written about this delegation of power that it is literally incredible that Councillor Cox did not know this.

The claim that Mary Mears managed the negotiations better is demonstrably false by dint of two plain facts. Firstly, she simply abandoned them altogether. Secondly, if she had been so brilliant at them, the equal pay issue would have been resolved instead of the Green administration being obliged to resolve the problem.

The Council leader, Jason Kitcat, has written a blog post … This is well argued  …

This is a straightforward attempt to embarrass Jason Kitcat in front of his own party’s supporters. Along with the clear majority of civilised people everywhere, they distrust the Tories in much the same way that we all distrust rabid dogs.

… the Greens in Brighton and Hove are divided, … as an outside observer they seem to be split between ‘realists’ and ‘revolutionaries’. The realists (and I include Jason Kitcat and his team in this) are liberals/social democrats with a commendable concern for the environment …

The local Tories have woken up to the facts of political life in Brighton & Hove. Condemning green politics out of hand has condemned them. They need to appeal to green minded voters somehow, or go out of business. This paragraph is the first step along that new strategy.

In many ways I am supportive of much of what they are trying to achieve. I want to see congestion reduced, the roads may safer, air quality improved, cycling encouraged and space in the city centre shared sympathetically between all road users. …

The Tories have objected to every cycle lane proposed in the city.

However it appears now that the realists within the local Green Party are facing concerted opposition by a Group of revolutionaries within the Party who have never been comfortable with the compromises required when in control. It is difficult to tell who exactly leads this revolutionary faction – it could be anyone of Caroline Lucas MP, Phelim Mac Cafferty, Ben Duncan or Alex Phillips. They are united by a dislike of Jason Kitcat, and a political outlook which regards Derek Hatton and Arthur Scargill as liberal compromisers.

When I last checked, revolutionaries didn’t trouble themselves with elections. They just launched revolutions. It’s worth noting here that although Arthur Scargill failed to hold a ballot for the miner’s strike, he did himself insist on more regular ballots for his own NUM post than both the law or his union rules provided for. Similarly, back in the day Derek Hatton was elected to office. What Councillor Cox cannot stomach is the idea that socialists can get elected to power from time to time. Nevertheless, having adopted the rhetorical label of ‘revolutionaries’ for a whole bunch of elected Greens, he needs them to have a leader. Obviously radicals must have a leader because, erm, the Tories always have a leader. If a radical group doesn’t have a leader, Councillor Cox cannot see it. He is literally blind to the facts. Presumably, so far as he is concerned, there is no Cowley Club, no critical mass, no vegetarians, no peace movement, no… well, you get the picture. It is Councillor Cox who doesn’t.

‘The compromises required when in control’ is a classic Freudian Slip. It says more about Councillor Cox than anyone in real life. Doesn’t he mean ‘in power’? Does he mean to say that he is ‘out of control’? What does he mean? Presumably he hasn’t heard of reading through what you write and redrafting it before hitting the publish button.

Last week they tried to remove Jason Kitcat as leader of their Group and of the Council. Ben Duncan tells the story of the attempted coup  here and here in his recently relaunched, and entertaining, blog.

I’m glad that Councillor Cox derives pleasure from Councillor Ben Duncan’s blog, which I’m pleased to host by the way. Certainly he can’t have actually read the posts he linked to because if he had he would see that they are not concerned with any coup at all but instead with the actions of one councillor.

The local Labour Party also find themselves in a difficult position. Almost all their funding comes from the GMB, and they have therefore followed the GMB line. …

Again, if Councillor Cox had actually read anything about what Councillor Phillips had done, he would know that Labour have failed to support the GMB. Instead they have betrayed it. Labour & the Tories have run the council since 1975 but they didn’t cure pay inequality, they exacerbated it. This Tory writes as if anything that occurred before he won his by-election is irrelevant to his analysis. BC could mean ‘Before Cox’. By ‘act responsibly’ he means ‘support Tory policy.

Labour’s position is complicated further because their new leader, the very capable Warren Morgan, is actually an arch Blairite and supporter of Progress. At the moment he is going through that strange process it seems all ambitious Labour Party politicians have to do – appearing to be more left wing than he actually is in order to appease his Party. I have little doubt that in his heart of hearts Warren knows that pay and conditions at the City Council need modernising, just as he knows that using a mixture of in house, co-ops, mutuals, the community and voluntary sector and private companies is the best way to deliver Council services.

You can almost hear Councillor Cox unzipping his flies to release the pressure as those words flowed. His adulation of Blairism is complete. Announcing that the best way to deliver council services is to make use of every type of financial vehicle known to man all at the same time is a bit like revealing that the weather involves the sky.

I was surprised that Warren Morgan chose to reveal the confidential messages from Alex Phillips, rather than assist her in a way which would have ended the pay modernisation process that he professes to oppose. This tribal Labour approach – put the Party rather than the City first – smacks more of Lord Bassam than Cllr Morgan.

Hang on a minute, didn’t Councillor Cox earlier claim that Labour was hamstrung by the GMB and did whatever they wanted? Yes, he did! Yet a few paragraphs on, he admits that the new local Labour leader did exactly the opposite. This isn’t a proof-reading issue, this is now a question of intellectual capacity.

All in all it is mess. We have an irrecoverably split Green Party Administration and a Labour Party which seems content to sit on the sidelines and fire off cheap shots, whilst offering no alternative. All the time the people of Brighton and Hove see rubbish piling up, and face the likelihood of an all-out strike as summer begins.

This is getting weird. Actually Labour coined the phrase ‘irrevocably split’ in reference to the Greens but Councillor Cox now claims it as his own. He uses the cheapest of all rhetorical devices, repetition, to drive home his point that Labour don’t agree with him. I’m tempted to buy him some of Cicero’s speeches, to show him how to make an argument.

Someone tweeted me last week asking if it was possible for some kind of no confidence motion to be proposed, which if successful would lead to new elections. I cannot see how that can happen under the constitution.

Somebody asked Councillor Cox a question to which he does not know the answer a week later but rather than just side step that, here he is bragging about it!

But I do recognise that Brighton and Hove deserves better than petty squabbling from its councillors. I am therefore willing to work with anyone of goodwill in the best interests of the City of Brighton and Hove. The alternative is that we cede power to the officers and allow them to run a technocratic organisation. Some may see this as attractive in the short term – as a democrat I’m not convinced.

A generous offer indeed. Why on earth would any progressive want to work with a thieving Tory bastard? Even if they did, why would they pick Councillor Cox, who cannot string two logical points together in sequence, who cannot distinguish fact from fiction and who mistakes political debate as petty squabbling?

The message is clear: a career in IT in the cops is no preparation for politics.

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Posted in Brighton, Graham Cox, Green Party, Hove, Labour Party, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Thieving Tory Bastards

Who will run the most tedious election campaign in Hanover & Elm Grove?

Posted on 27 May 2013 | 1 Comment

A by-election battle has begun in the Brighton ward of Hanover & Elm Grove. The election date hasn’t been announced, most of the candidates are still undeclared, the sensible residents are out and about enjoying the bank holiday weekend. None of that troubles any self-respecting political party! Today will see activists from the two main contenders – Labour & Green – pounding the glorious uninhabited streets of Hanover. Why are they doing this? There are two reasons.

The first reason is that both parties are desperate to win the by-election. The local Labour party knows that a win for it will redeem itself with its national party. In 2011, its electoral strategy in Brighton & Hove proved disastrous. It ended up in third place, with the least number of seats on the council. Being defeated by the Greens was extremely embarrassing in Labour circles. Humiliating even. Their comrades in the rest of the country laughed out loud at the seaside sideshow. The Greens know that losing a ward seat now will increase the workload on an already pressured minority administration. Although they ‘won’ the last elections, they didn’t win enough seats to spread the resulting jobs properly. Winning this election will also boost their moral because their chosen candidate has promised not to support the rogue elements in the City Council administration.

The second reason is that both the main parties are well aware of their inherent capacity for being boring. Tedium is a very modern disease. Whereas fashionable people in the sixties celebrated sitting around doing nothing, nowadays vacuity is socially unacceptable. Unfortunately, the sort of people who pitch for public relations’ jobs tend to be the most tedious types. The grass roots activists tend to be far more interesting souls than those who are in charge of their media output. So the activists are hitting the streets now, before the election has begun properly, to warm up their lines, to liven up their twitter feeds and to get the debate started before the PR people wade in and spoil the party.

It’s competition time: who will make the most tedious tweet of this by-election? I’ll be the judge, since everybody knows that I’m not particularly beholden to my own party’s public relations policy. You can nominate any twitter account you like, whether it is personal or party, whether by an activist or an armchair warrior. Anyone can nominate anyone. I’ll post the nominations here. Hashtag: #HEG13Tedium if you’re into completely transparent communications only. The prize will be a guest post here. I’ll kick off with this strong contender from the official Labour feed, which compounds its problems with a spelling error in the second word:

Labour Party tweet competing to be most tedious election message in 2013

Labour boring into Hanover

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Posted in Brighton, Green Party, Hanover & Elm Grove, Hove, Labour Party, Local Elections, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Thieving Tory Bastards

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Green Party stand local candidate in Hanover & Elm Grove bye-election

Posted on 26 May 2013 | 2 Comments

There will shortly be a bye-election in the ward of Hanover & Elm Grove in Brighton, following the long expected resignation of Councillor Matt Follett. Mr Follett, a criminology lecturer at Brighton University, has moved away from Brighton, which is why the Green Party has persuaded him to step down from office. Few recent joiners to the Green Party even knew who he was, so little did he grace their company with his. If you want to represent the good folk of Brighton, you have to be one of the good folk of Brighton!

David Gibson, Brighton & Hove Green Party candidate in the Hanover & Elm Grove bye-election, 2013

I’ve cancelled my holiday to campaign for David Gibson

I’m especially pleased to report that Brighton & Hove Green Party has selected David Gibson to be their candidate in the forthcoming bye-election. My particular pride in his selection stems from the fact that Mr Gibson is a proper Green, by which I mean he is very concerned about both the environment and social justice. He is unequivocally committed to the local Green Party’s policy of opposing pay cuts for the lowest paid workers employed by the council. Although I don’t know him very well, I have met him and can endorse his political position on that crucial issue. In other words, he isn’t going to support the rogue administration which currently governs Brighton & Hove City Council in the name of the Green Party.

The bye-election in Hanover & Elm Grove will be a straight fight between the Green Party and the Labour Party. The thieving Tory bastards will put up a candidate but won’t bother wasting any time or effort campaigning there. They might spend a bit of cash on election literature but that’s just because, for them, money is as easy to come as it is for the banking industry.  The Liberal Democrats were eradicated from Brighton’s political life a long time ago. They’ll probably put up a candidate, to keep up appearances but no-one will appear on the streets of Brighton’s grooviest residential quarter in their name. UKIP can be expected to field a candidate too because they have to spend their millionaire’s donations on something. We might even get a rare glimpse of Paul Perrin pounding the streets, if his Mum lets him out the house. (If you follow that link, you’ll see that he uses the shittiest website you’ve seen this century to claim that he is a website designer.) The council has published the results from the ward in the 2011 election on its website but here they are, for your browsing convenience:

2011 election results for Hanover & Elm Grove ward in Brighton

Hanover & Elm Grove was a target ward for Labour in 2011.

Only the Greens have announced a candidate so far. Labour is expected to follow shortly, possibly with Emma Daniel to give her some basic political experience before she decides which ward to contest in 2015 (she doesn’t seem to want to contest the ward she lives in). Since Mr Follett’s resignation was announced at the start of the bank holiday weekend, no date has yet been set for the bye-election.

David Gibson lives in Hanover and works in housing and community regeneration. On being chosen to represent the Green Party he issued a press release which quoted him as saying,

“I’ve been a community campaigner all my life, both locally and nationally, where I set up a national housing campaign, ‘The Daylight Robbery’, which got the law changed to end an unjust tax on council tenants which was used to fund benefits. The change paved the way for the current system where councils get to keep all of the rents paid, for investment locally. I am also a co-founder of Hanover Action for Sustainable Living (HASL).

Like many people in Brighton, I became a Green after being inspired by our Green MP Caroline Lucas and because the Green Party was the only political party prepared to challenge the creaking status quo propped up by the Conservative and Labour parties – especially after Labour lost its way under Tony Blair, took the country into the Iraq war and, in Peter Mandelson’s words, became “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich“.

I don’t see Labour leaving that legacy behind them any time soon, being the recent architects of so many present troubles, from bedroom tax to NHS privatisation, and being champions of cuts and austerity. I love living in Hanover; I’m active in the community and I’m also a member of the Hanover Community Association.”

In 2011, the GMB union funded the local Labour Party’s election campaign. Their volunteers flooded the streets of Brighton to deliver leaflets and canvass for Labour. They paid for an office to coordinate Labour’s campaign. However, on Thursday, Labour betrayed its most loyal supporters by publicising an attempt to to stop them having their pay cut.

Hanover residents are famous for many things: their great pubs, their community spirit, their artistic endeavours, their steep hill (!) and, not the least, for their long standing commitment to a green lifestyle. Labour just isn’t interested in this issue. Their members roll their eyes and make funny faces when you mention climate change. You don’t have to take it from me, you can ask them if they come calling on your doorsteps. After this warning, they’ll swiftly invent something to parrot but you’ll be able to spot its ugly invention for the sake of argument a mile off.

I’ll be out in Hanover tomorrow afternoon, calling on my friends and asking them to vote for Mr Gibson to keep the Green vision alive. If you want to follow the action on twitter, all parties are using the hashtag #HEG13.

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Posted in Brighton, David Gibson, Emma Daniel, Green Party, Hanover & Elm Grove, Labour Party, Local Elections, Politics, Politics in the Cave

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The democratic dilemma: people or party?

Posted on 24 May 2013 | 11 Comments

Ask anyone in Britain today what they most dislike about our politicians and you will hear a consistent theme in all the answers: the political parties have strangled the process of politics, politicians put their party loyalty above all else and they cannot be trusted to keep their promises. In Brighton & Hove this weekend, this complaint echoes especially loudly. A prominent and much respected local councillor, Alex Phillips, attempted to build a consensus across the party divide between the Green Party, which she is a member of, and the Labour Party, to prevent a rogue Green administration from imposing pay cuts on council workers.

The current battle for the heart and soul of the Green Party is no secret. It is focused on Brighton & Hove, where the Greens muster most support. The struggle is dominated by what party members think about the style and leadership of one person: Jason Kitcat. It is worth noting that whilst other bloggers and the press routinely calls him the local party leader, in fact he is not. There is no local party leader. Mr Kitcat is the Leader of Brighton & Hove City Council. Those who support Mr Kitcat’s leadership say that all party members must rally around him for the sake of party unity and that he has been handed a poison chalice by being obliged to lead a minority party in times of austerity. Those opposed to his  über managerialism have been growing in numbers over the last few months and now form the majority of the local party and roughly half of the local councillors.

Recently Mr Kitcat managed to win, narrowly, re-election as Convenor of the Green Group on the Council. However, immediately afterwards it was revealed that he had broken his very important and much repeated promise to his party and the Green Group. That promise concerned ongoing pay modernisation negotiations. Mr Kitcat’s administration chose to hand Council Officers total power over those negotiations and wash their hands of it. The broken promise was that the Green Group would be consulted before the new pay offer was announced. They were not.

In Italy, there was much disquiet about handing power to technocrats after a major financial crisis. Jason Kitcat’s administration has handed power over to technocrats before any crisis. His justification was that both Labour and the Tories failed to resolve the equality issues in the council pay structures and that there was nothing to suggest that he could do any better as an elected politician! Aside from the recent claim by Norman Tebbit that only marriage as traditionally defined by the Church of England could prevent him from wanting to marry his own son, it is the most bonkers statement of political belief anyone has ever heard of.

Mr Kitcat’s breach of trust unleashed a tidal wave of anger inside the local party and around the country because the Green administration appeared to be in breach of party policy by seeking to impose pay cuts. The local party convened an extraordinary general meeting which decided, by a substantial majority, to declare its support for the council workers against the administration and asked the administration to change its policy. Since that resolution was passed, distrust has continued to grow. Most party members, including almost half of the local Green councillors, now see the administration as traitors to their stated principles. There has been much discussion about what can be done to prevent Jason Kitcat from continuing to wield power in the council, so as to realign the administration with party policy.

It was in this context that Councillor Alex Phillips contacted Councillor Warren Morgan, the Leader of the local Labour Group of Councillors to see if he would support an alternative ‘candidate’ from the Green Group for Council Leader. She suggested that Labour support Councillor Phélim Mac Cafferty (oddly, the local media cannot spell his name properly), who is the Deputy Council Leader. She used Twitter’s private direct messaging system to make the plea. She asked for the communication to remain private.

Her decision to make this effort has been called into question by one local blogger and some Green Party members. Essentially, they say that she’s misjudged the situation, because it is well known that Labour prefers to promote itself rather than its own policies.

That’s harsh. Had the attempt to build a consensus on the Left been successful, those councillors who would have been prepared to break party ranks would have been eulogised up and down the country. Rather than respond constructively to Alex Phillips’ private messages, Warren Morgan chose to publish them via the local Labour Party website. Here they are ~ read them from the bottom up:

Direct Messages on twitter between Councillor Alex Phillips (Green) and Councillor Warren Morgan (Labour)

Private negotiations made public

Many Green Party members regard Alex Phillips’ actions as the stuff of the politically brave. Without doubt, she has confirmed herself as true leadership material. Despite all the risks to her standing within her tribe, she has stuck true to her principles. She has chosen to support the poor over and above her party.

It’s worth remembering which principle is in play here. It’s called solidarity.

Council workers who do the filthiest job in town, the street cleaners and the refuse collectors, are currently balloting for strike action to oppose the pay offer made by Council Officers. The local Green Party has already declared its support for them (in the Extraordinary General Meeting). With a slim majority of the administration apparently unwilling to follow party policy, Alex Phillips has taken a risk to try to right the wrongs already done. Had Phélim Mac Cafferty become Council Leader, the pay offer would have been withdrawn and the negotiations restarted with full political control of them. There is no doubt about that.

Whatever the merits of her judgement call, the real eye-opener has been how much Labour relishes division, even if that means pissing on its own supporters. Warren Morgan’s motivation for revealing the private messages was to show up the Greens as divided. Every party has differences of opinion. All of them are broad churches. Show me a party where everyone agrees about everything and I’ll show you a fascist party.

Labour’s entire election campaign last time around in Brighton & Hove (in 2011) was funded by the GMB, the very union now balloting for strike action. Without GMB funds, the local Labour Party could not have fought a city wide election. Labour persistently promises to help the poor, the disadvantaged and working people everywhere. Locally, it has launched tirade after tirade against the Greens on the basis that they are the same as the Tories, that they are all middle-class, that they are politically backward, that they support cutting the pay of the poorest workers. Yet here we see Labour being given an opportunity to protect the very people who form its natural constituency and instead of immediately achieving a clear political goal – protecting their pay – instead it chose to score petty points.

The GMB is a major funder of the Labour Party nationally. It is a strong trades union which has managed to weather the storm of Thatcherism reasonably well. This weekend its leadership will be asking serious questions about its continuing relationship with the Labour Party. Many people in the local Labour Party will now be asking themselves similar questions.

For many of us Greens, the correct position is straightforward. We have a clear party policy, which supports those who fought an election against us, because it is the right thing to do by our socialist principles.

Personally, I have just landed my first ever PAYE job (I’ve been self-employed until now). Last night, I joined the GMB online. Then I realised that I didn’t have any money in my bank account but luckily my wife also supports the trades union movement and she has lent me the subscription money until I get my first pay cheque. Joining a trades union is a fundamental human right and key to progressive politics. Now that the leadership of every party in my home town opposes working people, that’s more important than ever.

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Posted in Alex Phillips, Brighton, GMB, Green Party, Hove, Jason Kitcat, Labour Party, Politics, Politics in the Cave, Trades Unions, Warren Morgan

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1st Brighton People’s Assembly

Posted on 20 May 2013 | 3 Comments

Ahead of the People’s Assembly at Westminster on 22nd June, anti-austerity campaigners are meeting to build resistance to cuts to public services in Brighton & Hove on 30th May 2013. The doors open at 6pm for live music, displays and stalls. The venue is the Brighthelm Centre, North Road, Brighton.

From 7pm onwards a number of high profile speakers will talk to the assembled campaigners, including Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, Mark Steel, the comedian, Hilary Wainwright, the editor of Red Pepper, Owen Jones, the journalist and author of Chavs, Romayne Phoenix, of the Coalition of Resistance, Clive Bryant, the Regional Chair of the PCS union, Kelly McBride, of the University of Sussex Students’ Union, Andy Richards, of Brighton & Hove Trades Union Council and Kayla Ente, of Brighton & Hove Energy Services.

From 8pm there will be discussion groups (women and the cuts, benefits and poverty, impact of privatisation, culture against austerity, Labour movement against austerity, European and international campaigns) and a film screening. Registration is free here.

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Posted in Brighton, Caroline Lucas, Hove, Politics, Politics in the Cave