Tuesday 15 September 2009

The Power of Slogans

OK, before anyone accuses us of a lack of originality, we thought of the "Dig For Victory" slogan before this came along:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/14/allotments-food-programme-private-land

Interesting to note that Chris Leslie, my mum's former New Labour MP, is the "Czar" behind all this. Here's what Bradford Green councillor Martin Love has to say about him:
Leslie is a hypocrite. He spent most of his time as Shipley MP campaigning to tarmac over 2 sites of scientific interest (the Bingley North and South bogs).
So, what's the subtext, then? "Tarmac for Victory!" ?????

Right, in case you're wondering why there hasn't been much up here recently about the garden, that's because:
  1. Guru Ed's been away on a beekeeping course
  2. The political season is back in swing, so we hacks have been getting back to street activism
There WILL, however, be another session soon. Maybe not this weekend. The weekend after??? Let's get on it, Kidz.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

Atunement

I've just been trawling around the internet, and hullo, Robocop's here already. If y'all don't start thinking about this now, this is what your bobby on the beat may look like in ten years from now:



I imagine that this gentleman probably isn't what you'd call a core Green voter. If I could get him to turn his swords into ploughshares (and his bodysuit into beercans?????) I think I'd have earned at least a PhD.

I prefer to see a picture like this:

Ah, how reassuring. The Green Party Autumn Conference, held this year in Hove (Brighton Conference Centre is a bit beyond our means). Obviously we were there because all our efforts for next year are focussed on at least getting Caroline Lucas (and preferably a couple more) elected to Westminster.

This was my fourth conference, but I guess you could say that it's the first one where I was feeling really involved, partly helped by the fact that so many people from Hackney were there.

I also learned about one Green concept which was very new to me: "Atunement". This refers to a one minute period of silence which we always have before a full plenary debate on any subject. The notion is that you're spending a moment to reflect and, errr, like, tune in to each other, Mother Earth, the Cosmos, and all that. It's pretty old-school hippie stuff for the wave of members like myself who have only joined the Green Party in the last few years, but I guess I can see why people want to hang on to a few of those traditions. It's certainly not my intention to steamroller over everything, but of course I do think we've got to atune ourselves a bit more to Jo Public, as well as each other.

I really don't know why I've only just learned about that. If I stumbled upon a moment of atunement at a previous conference I must just have assumed someone had died. Sorry.

Anyway, it was all a good laugh. We had cabaret from Mark Thomas and Attila the Stockbroker, and some decent weather. Back to London today, eh. Not sure if we're doing the garden tomorrow. Ed didn't seem too bothered about doing that.

Thursday 3 September 2009

September snuffles

Ahhh, the last baking hot day in the garden before the September weather came upon us. Here's the state of play. House end:


Wall end. All quite a change since we started, innit:




Here's Miss Hughes, addressing the stereotype that we Green Party types are just a bunch of hippies.


and here's a pair of horticultural philosophers


One piece of very good news. Yesterday Ed and I met and talked to the upstairs neighbour. She was very friendly, though initially more than a little surprised to see what had been happening in the garden while she'd been away on holiday. We're very much hoping that we can work something out with her, so that we can really go for the full permaculture treatment.


I'll mix it a bit here, with a few pics from the Climate Camp Tar Sands demo on Tuesday. A shot of a couple of my in-house placards.



Thanks to Leonie the photographer for this one. Do you geddit?



OK, now to put some order to it all....



We started outside the National Portrait Gallery, which is sponsored by BP. Shame on them.



Then we stopped for a while outside the Canadian embassy, which is just off the other side of Trafalgar Square. Here's Clayton Thomas-Muller (see my previous entry), getting the crowd going. Unfortunately I kept missing out on getting a decent short video clip of him shouting "BP - Criminal!" and "Climate - Justice!" but fortunately someone with a better camera than me got that. The clip is below


Finally we headed up to BP headquarters, on St. James' Square, just off Regent Street, south of Piccadilly Circus.

Here's the clip of Clayton that I was talking about



And here's a clip from the mainstream media.