When it comes to Shell and the climate, we should be very wary.
As major UN talks on climate change begin in Poland, UK-based oil company Shell have made a big announcement, and if you care about climate change, it’s worth getting to grips with. Continue reading
A destroyed German trench on the Messines Ridge, 1917. More people died in the battlefields around Ypres than were killed by the atomic bomb. Photo: National Library of Scotland.
What was is like to fight in the First World War? It is a question no living person can answer, but we have inherited many stories from the dead.
My Great Grandfather, Charles Lander, kept a diary of his active service. It is a glimpse of the life of a fairly junior officer in a most extraordinary war. There are heroics and horrors – but he also chose to record some of the boredom, the bungles, the friends he made and lost, and perhaps most strikingly, vivid personal reflections on his own mistakes.
Initially rejected from the army because he was too skinny, Charles, a member of the Officers Training Corps at university, left Birmingham for the Army in 1914. He received a year of training before leaving for France in April 1916 where he was to fight in ‘Kitchener’s Army’, the masses of young men of largely ordinary professions who ‘answered the call’. He was proud, yes. But also nervous.
He is courting his fiancee Doris when he is given his orders. At home one weekend on leave he recalls feeling “very peaceful and very much in love” when “a telegram arrived giving us orders to proceed overseas. I must confess that rather a lump developed in my throat and all sorts of fears ran through my mind of what the future had in store for me; whether this was to be my last afternoon in the old house. Fortunately H. Allenby dropped in for tea and sentimentalities were forgotten. The morning came and I said goodbye.” Continue reading
Creativity and crises over the last 10 years of the publicly-owned polluter.
“Make It Happen” was an RBS slogan that meant far more than they intended. In the mid-2000s activists had spent years of fighting oil spills, pipelines and mega coal mines and the damage they cause. When they began to look deeper into how these projects came about they found that, more often than not, it was banks like RBS who provided the money to make it happen.
Back in 2007 RBS boasted “Whether your oil and gas finance requirements are straightforward or complex, RBS will bring its broad and deep experience of the hydrocarbon sector to bear on them”, and “the thing that makes us different is that we are a truly oil and gas bank.” In case you missed the point, they promoted their services on the website www.TheOilAndGasBank.com.
London-based group Platform started the charge on RBS in a report entitled ‘The Oil & Gas Bank‘ by Mika Minio-Paluello published with the support of Friends of the Earth Scotland, People & Planet, NEF and Banktrack.
Minio-Paluello set it out: “the bank is intimately involved in transforming the carbon locked in oil and gas reservoirs thousands of metres underground into atmospheric carbon dioxide – the main cause of climate change. If carbon dioxide molecules had corporate tags of responsibility, the atmosphere would be filled with RBS logos.” Continue reading
It’s not right, but money talks and money makes the world go round. Despite years of scandal, failure and chaos, financiers in the City of London continue to make the big calls on how to invest, and in doing so, hold our common future in their hands. Almost 10 years since the financial crash this is a frightening and precarious state of affairs.
Campaigners are challenging the power of big finance by insisting that investors commit to divest from fossil fuel companies. By demanding divestment we are saying that we know better than the financial industry and in many cases, we are forcing them to act.
And it’s working. Funds worth $6.15 trillion have made some sort of policy commitment to withdraw from fossil fuels. On 24th May the Financial Times reported that UK investment in green funds had “shot to a record high” with a 500 per cent increase over the last 10 years. Continue reading
By Ruby Kelman and People & Planet Society, with additional text by Ric Lander.
Edinburgh University People & Planet with supporters in the Old College quad, March 2016. Credit: Ed P&P.
After six years of campaigning led by student group People & Planet, and drawing in the efforts of staff, alumni and numerous University bodies and departments and Scottish civil society, the University of Edinburgh has finally agreed to fully divest from fossil fuels.
The UK is in dire need of new investment for housing. Credit: GWN2008
There are a lot of problems we face that we need our government to tackle. Some demand the time of effort of policy makers, like the forging of new relationshops within and outwith our borders, the provision of new rights, and changes in regulations. Others demand cash, for example to increase spending on public services.
Economic investment is different again. Like service provision it costs money, but it in each case it should be a one off. You spend money to do a project – be it public or private – and society is better off afterwards whether or not further investment is provided. Continue reading
Jeremy Corbyn speaking with Naomi Klein and others in Paris during the 2015 climate summit. Image by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
It’s 2017. You live in a dystopian future where tiny drone aircraft deliver pizzas, oil companies create earthquakes to get the last drops of fuel out of the earth, our fields are tilled by solar-powered robots, people wear video-recording sunglasses and have conversations with their wrist watches, dead rappers perform at concerts via hologram, and a weak international agreement to try and stop the skies from destroying natural life is being torn up by a fascist businessman who has taken over the USA.
Now is a time of great technological change and grave danger, and we need public investment, and lots of it, to get us though it.
Climate change, and the far-right’s rejection of it as a priority, should give us a special reason to panic because every time political leaders fail to act deepens the crisis, every moment we waste makes the task harder.
The (albeit inadequate) Paris deal gave the impression there was a direction of travel, too slow, but at least steady movement. The rise of the right has changed all this.
Whilst many work to show our political leaders and the wider world that climate change matters, Trump’s message of defiance works the opposite way. His actions do matter and will have a real effect. Markets will respond by making fossil fuels cheaper and renewable energy more expensive. Emissions will rise. And many, many more people will die – from extreme weather, heat stress, starvation, respiratory diseases and violent conflicts.
Some extol technological innovation and the power of the market, maintaining that these make political efforts on climate change essentially a side show. In fact the opposite is true; markets, only capable of delivering short-term profit, are unfit for unlocking the scale of capital required for the length of time over which it’s needed to tackle climate change. And in the modern era technological innovation almost always begins with the support of publicly-funded institutions (take silicon valley, digital TV or the web). Only big political support will bring about the fast economic transformation we need to tackle climate change, and we don’t have it. Continue reading
Protestors march on Donald Trump’s half-built golf course at Menie, Aberdeenshire, 2010. Photo copyright Aaron Sneddon, used with permission.
Scotland’s fight against Trump wasn’t about his bulging personality, but corporate power.
Earlier this year Scotland was engaged, if not enthralled, in one of the more progressive parliamentary election campaigns in the wee Parliament’s short history.
At a BBC debate held in March the chair filled out the last few minutes with the apparently obligatory ‘funny question’. The topic: Donald Trump; specifically, what would you do if he phoned you as First Minister?
The speakers, from UKIP to the Greens and everyone in between, were falling over each other to point out just how much they hated Trump.
“Get off my phone”, barked Willie Rennie (Liberal). “Can I have fries with that”, smirked Ruth Cameron (Conservative). “I’m on the other line sorry” retorted Nicola Sturgeon (SNP). Patrick Harvie of the Greens said he’d be speechless and even UKIP’s candidate was scornful. Adopting a somewhat more serious tone Labour’s Kezia Dugdale said she’d get straight to the point: “I’d tell him to stop preaching hate.”
Their chorus was perfectly in tune. The message: Scotland hates bigots and bullies. Scotland hates bigots and bullies so much most of them didn’t event think it was worth taking the question seriously.
The Scottish people do indeed have a strong record of calling out this “racist, xenophobic, misoginistic, odous man”, to quote Patrick Harvie, and we should celebrate this. But it’s high time we also reminded ourselves of how we got here: Scots had to stand up to Trump because Scottish leaders courted him, invited him over, rolled out the red carpet, surrounded him with sycophantic journalists and cut out people and due process to let him have his way.
We had to do something.
So what exactly did Trump do to fall so far out of favour with Scotland? Continue reading
Paul Nash: ‘We Are Making a New World’ (IWM)
100 years ago today began the Battle of the Somme. Few episodes in human history are remembered with such a grand sense of supreme awfulness. But with this grandeur comes distance and incomprehension. As time passes the gulf widens: we need personal stories to bridge it.
My Great Grandfather, Charles Lander, fought in the Somme and recorded his memories in a diary which spanned the whole of the First World War.
A member of the Officer Training Corps when war was declared, Charles would spend 20 months in training before leaving for the Western Front as a junior officer in the British Army.
When he finally did arrive in France in the Spring of 1916 his diary entries are brimming with a sense of fascination and adventure. But as the days go by these stories are increasingly peppered with references to “the coming offensive”. Lengthly preparations are made. He writes, “we handed to the quartermaster letter for home: last letters, which he understood were only to be posted if we were killed.”
It’s 9.30pm on 4th July 1916, and after what must have been an agonising four days in waiting, Charles was given his first order to enter battle. Continue reading
Good morning readers. Time to eat your brexit: the UK has voted to leave the European Union.
There is a lot to come to terms with, a lot to think about, and a lot to do. Some things we know, and they might help crystallise a vision for how we can go forward.
1. This is a constitutional cluster-fuck
The muddle and mess that is the British constitution will be fully exposed, and may begin to completely unravel in the coming days.
The SNP leadership have indicated an interest in retaining EU membership if the rest of the UK intends to leave. With such a high remain vote in Scotland they have a very strong mandate to do this.
Alternatively if Scotland is ‘dragged out by England’ another referendum on Scottish Independence seems highly likely.
Northern Ireland voted clearly for EU membership and is faced with deep uncertainty about its relationship with the Republic. Northern Ireland will now have to live with an EU border. Nationalists will propose an alternative: a referendum on unification.
The whole tone of the official leave campaign has been about independence for the English. This will surely bolster calls for English Votes for English Laws and other measures to strengthen the political power of England.
Finally and by no means least of all the UK is entering unprecedented series of negotiations with the EU and global trading partners. It seems very likely it will be offered a tough deal, and if so, we may be faced with another referendum on our deal with Europe.
How all of these issues may be resolved is utterly unclear. We should start talking about them right away to offer our solutions: more, not less democracy.
2. The right has been tearing itself apart
This referendum was an accident. The Conservative leadership, outmanoeuvred by its own back bench MPs, and given an unexpected majority in Parliament, set the date of the vote. The already divided tories split their own cabinet over this issue, and senior figures have flown insults left and right at one another. UKIPers have been at each others’ throats, and whilst they have won many arguments on a national level in England and Wales many of their members may now feel the party has lost their raison d’etre.
Meanwhile the left, in Labour, Greens, and nationalists in Scotland and Wales, have been united. This is a huge advantage.
It matters for public perception, but perhaps more importantly for cooperation. We’re still friends with one another, and should build up our alliances to defend human rights, the environment and people who’ve migrated to the UK.
3. We need to steal the initiative
Post election analysis has considered some populist themes of the remain campaign which aren’t inherently regressive.
Many leave campaigners talked angrily about George Osborne’s post-leave-vote ‘punishment budget’ and how they won’t accept further austerity. Osborne’s welfare cuts being removed from the 2016 budget was a key political event of the Spring. We must keep this sentiment alive.
A key theme throughout has been the idea of people being ‘fed up with the establishment and elites telling them what to do’. This can spiral into conspiracy theorydom – but it can also be taken as an anti-corporate, anti-centralisation, and anti-autocracy – very much in tune with Bernie Sanders’ inspiring campaign for US President. They are all strong anti-capitalist, green, progressive themes, and we should adopt them.
4. The fight is on to save the European Court of Human Rights
We will need to grab all of these opportunities to win a future General Election (including if one happens before 2020 – a real possibility now that Cameron has resigned) and to defend worker, migrant and environmental rights as our relationship with our neighbours is redrawn.
Long before it was clear that an EU referendum would take place, the Conservative Party had indicated its intention to leave the European Court of Human Rights and replace it with a ‘British Human Rights Act’. This seems unstoppable now – their story is that this is exactly the kind of ‘red tape’ that the EU forces upon us. We’ve got a fight on our hands to retain basic fundamental rights.
5. Bankers will be crying, fascists will be smiling
The 1% didn’t want this, and they will be somewhat astray for the next weeks and months. This does present an opportunity.
On the other hand, the result is exactly what the far right wanted. They will be gearing up to take to the streets to call for the UK to kick out anyone they don’t like the look of. A wider political movement against Islam and workers who aren’t UK nationals will gain momentum. We will have a job to do to stop it.
We shouldn’t forget that before last week it was some time since a sitting MP had been murdered. This will get worse before it gets better.
6. We will still need our friends in Europe
This vote is a blow for Syriza, Podemos, and other progressive forces in the EU who have been asking for our solidarity in democratising Europe. Their fight remains intrinsically linked with our fight for a Europe that protects human rights and upholds democracy.
7. Referenda aren’t all bad
This campaign, and the fallout of it, have had some appallingly regressive outcomes for the UK. But referenda are not in principle bad.
In Scotland the independence referendum had an incredibly positive impact on political engagement. When people have the chance to vote for something better, progressive change is always possible.
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Note: this article, originally posted at 5am, was updated to accommodate Cameron’s resignation
