1

Greening NewcastleWelcome to issue 13 of the magazine of Newcastle Green Party, July 2011

NewcastleGreen Party Branch meetingAll welcome!19.00, Wednesday, August 3rd,British Legion Club(just down from the Lonsdale pub)

Metro: West Jesmond

Media matter!July’s headlines were dominated by ‘hackergate’ and the allega-

tions made against Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World (with hints of wider malpractice). Though Green Party propaganda and policy tend to be focused on matters like climate change and the injustices of the government austerity programme, phone hacking, police corruption and the power of media moguls like Murdoch are matters that Greens do not ignore.

Certainly Greens would argue that developments like the famine in the Horn of Africa are more serious and more urgent than the wrong-doings of Murdoch’s minions. Even in terms of the scandal itself, the track record of the Metropolitan police is far more worrying than that of gutter journalists and editors. [It might be noted here that, though the police now claim that they were too preoccupied by the threat from al-Qaeda to address the issue of phone-hacking, they still found the political will and resources to hound ‘climate’ activists and the like]

Yet the News Corporation affair does matter: healthy media are critical to the flow of information and serious debate nec-essary if the various threats to our collective future are to be properly addressed. A comparison of, say, the Sunday Times in the days when it led the crusade over thalidomide and the paper it became under Murdoch’s subsequent ownership demonstrates the malign effect his ilk have had on the media.

Defend the BBC!Worse, the war he and especially his son James have waged against the BBC has threatened a further dumbing down. For all its failings, public service TV and radio in Britain since the founding of the BBC back in the 1920s have set remarkably high standards, widely recognised across the globe. This was certainly true during World War 2 and remains largely the case today.

The advent of commercial TV then radio did initiate a race downwards, with more and more American imports and imi-tations such as loudmouth ‘shock jocks’. So-called ‘reality TV’ plumbed new depths but, generally, the BBC services maintained a unrivalled blend of choice, quality and reliability (spend a night in an American motel zapping channels and you will visit a multi-channel hell, HBO’s better offerings decidedly the exception to the vulgar and stupefying rule).

So the BBC has to be defended against threats posed by News Corporation and other such conglomerates. Indeed there is an overwhelming case for breaking up such empires. The fu-rore over Murdoch’s hacks and their misdeeds should not take attention away from the poisonous outpourings of groups like the Daily Mail and General Trust or Northern and Shell (Daily Express, OK!, Television X and other trash). The expansion of such organisation in the event of further crises within the Mur-

doch empire would scarcely improve the breadth, depth and integrity of the media in Britain.

MiscommunicationThere has been widespread condemnation of the phone hack-ers in particular and, more generally, of over-mighty media bar-ons like Murdoch. Very, very belatedly the Labour leadership has begun to make noises about the matter. Indeed media critics like Noam Chomsky have long been indicting the bias of Fox TV and similar appendages of media conglomerates like News Corpo-ration. This begs the question of what stance the Greens might take in the broader debate about the media in society.

For a start, Greens would join with ‘libertarians’ in the de-fence of free debate which, in part, depends on a diversity of opinion. It is very alarming that whilst the Murdoch affair was hogging the headlines, a dangerous development took place. It was the proposal from Professor Steve Jones that certain ‘unsci-entific’ points of view should be excluded by the BBC.

Jones included climate change ‘denialists’. They might be talk-ing nonsense. Both common sense and the scientific consensus suggest that adverse changes are underway and that they are largely human-driven. Yet in such a tremendously complex mat-ter there is always the possibility that sceptics might just have a point. Certainly the notion that a ‘low carbon economy’ is the solution is very misleading since it would not stop and indeed, if pursued in isolation, might even aggravate other ecological threats. In any case it is better to deal with their objections openly rather than drive them underground, something that might actually boost their appeal in some quarters.

Jones also included opposition to genetic engineering espe-cially with regards to genetically modified crops, held out by some as the solution for food shortages. In fact there are sub-stantial objections to this technology. Moreover the ‘scientific consensus’ has been wrong at many moments in history (see, for example, Barbara Ehrenreich’s 150 Years of Expert Medical Advice to Women) Scientists are not always free from tunnel vi-sion and there is no guarantee that they are taking into proper account possible connections and interactions beyond the frag-ment of reality they are studying. Only on-going debate can limit the dangers of reductionist thinking. It might be remembered that many ‘intelligent’ people thought that individuals like Co-

2

pernicus, Galileo, and Darwin had lost their senses. So it is vital to keep the debate open, even if dissidents from the dominant view seem utterly mistaken.

Unearthly ConsensusThere is, however, deeper ideological agreement right across print and broadcast media. Take, for example, the news about the UK’s growth rate towards the end of July. There was almost unanimous reportage across the media that the figure was far too low and what was needed was a stimulus to ‘get the econ-omy going’. Yet such growth would accelerate the descent into climate chaos and worsen every other ecological ill, with the inevitable result that human economy would collapse.

This has been shown in numerous stud-ies (most recently by Tim Jackson’s Prosperity Without Growth and Richard Heinberg’s End of Growth; see also: http://steadystate.org/). Indeed the need for a steady-state economy was outlined by John Stuart Mill back in 1848. Yet reporters and commentators (Will Hut-ton, Robert Peston etc) steadfastly stick to manifestly bankrupt thinking about the econ-omy and its ecological underpinnings.

Media disconnection from Earthly real-ity is even more pronounced when it comes to overpopulation. There is a deathly silence about the matter. Indeed there is often a marked pro-natalism. Thus British tabloid newspapers greeted the birth of the 20th child in early 1999 to a Mrs Pridham, Britain’s current record holder as a matter of great joy. The Guardian gave a story about the Turner family of Oxfordshire (13 children) the head-line of “the more the merrier”. Obituaries of celebrity population boomers normally talk in terms of “lust for life” (the quote is taken from a piece on late actor Anthony Quinn, who fathered his 11th child at the age of 78). Conversely lack of children is bemoaned. So when the Euro crisis moved to Italy in July, the country’s economic woes were widely blamed on a “birth dearth”.

To some extent, such ecological blinkers stem from the fact that the media share a fail-ure across society to think ecologically. How-ever there are also intrinsic biases in the very nature of mass communication technologies that also cause such distorted coverage in both factual and entertainment me-dia. It is something that only a handful of really radical thinkers like Jerry Mander and Neil Postman have explored (to be fair it is worth studying the fake populism in contemporary media, to which Tory MP George Walden’s The New Elites is a surprisingly stimulating guide).

There is an inherent tendency, especially in daily media such as newspapers, radio and TV news, to focus on discrete events, rather than underlying processes. Spectacular accidents like oil spills match media production routines and news flows much more than the slow drip of environmental degradation (most oil pollution being from routine drips and dumping). One re-sult is that the ecological crisis is widely perceived in a narrow and one-sided way, as a problem of pollution, ignoring the many other ways in which the Earth’s life-support systems are being eroded.

Furthermore, to fill airtime and column inches, the media not only build up issues in exaggerated ways but then, to get a second bite of ‘the apple’, knock them back down again, perhaps by spotlighting some dissenting voice, again out of all proportion to the merits of the case.

Many ecological issues, especially at the level of values and intrinsic importance, translate badly, especially to media domi-nated by images and simple sound bites. Pictures of, say, an undisturbed seashore make for less than gripping TV and film compared to dramatic shots of beach buggies and surf boarders. A huge dam tends to look better on screen than a quiet river scene, its costs not that immediately obvious.

ImpactsThe effects of the media on their readers, viewers and listeners, however, need more careful consideration than is common. Cer-tainly they should not be ignored. The media not only influence what issues count as so-ciety’s ‘agenda’ but also frame the way items on it are discussed. They play a part in defin-ing what is ‘normal’ (e.g consumerism) and what is ‘deviant’ (e.g. ‘Luddite’ opponents of some new technology). They can shape fash-ion, diet and the very language we speak (“oh my god” being but one such media ‘gift’ to everyday English thanks to…).

Media effects should not, however, be ex-aggerated. On balance, the media tend to re-flect rather than shape public opinion. Com-mon sense also suggests that press barons, film producers, TV managers and the like will deliver what appeals to potential audiences simply to boost sales and rating figures. Sadly large sections of the public prefer to read salacious gossip about celebrities or watch Top Gear. They don’t want reports about ecology, economics or serious social and cultural matters. Indeed the media routinely receive lots of complaints about too much ‘bad’ news, instead of more cheerful matter.

This begs the question why businesses spend so much on advertising if the media have only limited impacts. Part of the reason is defensive with adverts commissioned be-cause rivals are splashing out. Normally it is more a matter of persuading consumers to

change brands than a manufacturing of new ‘needs’ out of thin air. Plenty of advertising campaigns, not least the marketing of new movies, flop or are even counter-productive (most famous-ly the ‘Strand’ cigarette marketing).

Audiences tend to pay attention to what they want and in-terpret what they receive in terms of the own mindset. So, ap-parently, a majority of readers of that infamous Sun front page attacking Labour leader Neil Kinnock (above) actually went and, contrary to the paper’s ‘instructions’, voted… Labour. During the Falklands War, some 25-33% of the public continued to op-pose the campaign despite near unanimity across the media in its favour. In totalitarian regimes like the USSR and Nazi Ger-many, large numbers persisted in disbelieving what intense and pervasive government propaganda was telling them.

The media, not least advertising, tend to be most influential when they are connecting to existing hopes, fears and general attitudes within their audiences. So they tend to reinforce rath-

3

Where and When?Modern green thinking has long roots stretching way back in time. See if you can identify the source of the thoughts that fol-low. ‘They’ refers to the people of the society being envisaged by the author, ‘we’ to his then contemporaries. Quotes from the text have been edited together and the language updated in places.They very seldom build upon a new piece of ground and are not only very quick in repairing their houses, but show their foresight in preventing their decay. Their cities are limited to 6,000 families. There is no-one so much raised above the rest as to be the only favourite of Nature, who, on the contrary, seems to have placed on a level all those that belong to the same species. Upon this they confer that no-one ought to seek their own conveniences so eagerly as to prejudice others.They take care, by all possible means, to render gold and silver of no esteem. They wonder how anyone should be so much taken with the glaring doubtful lustre of a jewel or a stone, that can look up to a star, or the sun himself or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of a finer thread as if he were a thing that belonged to his wealth. We who measure all things by money, give rise to many tasks that are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support riot and luxury. Care is taken that no man may lie idle. Yet they do not wear them-selves out with perpetual toil, from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden. When no public undertaking is to be performed, the hours of work are lessened. The magistrates never engage the people in unnecessary labour, since the chief end of the constitution is to regulate labour by the necessities of the public, and to allow all the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement of their minds, in which they think the happiness of life consistsThey define virtue to be living according to Nature. No pleasure ought to be pursued that should draw a great deal of pain after it. In all other places, while people talk of a commonwealth, every man only seeks his own wealth. They believe that if the common ties of humanity do not knit men together, the faith of any promises will have no great effect.The answer can be found on the final page of this issue.

er than create beliefs and specific opinions. The news can certainly be very selective and go against what,

say, Greens would want reported. Yet there are many factors, other than bias and malice, at work: time constraints, a per-ceived need for balance between different kinds of news stories, availability of suitable photos/film footage, competition from other stories, suitable fit with the news production cycle of a station/newspaper… Certainly Greens should not rubbish the average reporter and other media personnel: it is unfair and indeed rather counter-productive

It is a fact of life that conflict is more interesting than absence of strife. So days lost to strikes will be over-reported at the expense of days of normal working. Similarly, easily explained one-off stories about things that affect a lot of people will drive out ones lacking such qualities. So a rail strike will be reported rather than years of mismanagement of the railways. There is not necessarily an anti-union conspiracy here.

In any case, for all the (justified) accusations of ownership over-concentration, partiality and indeed downright censorship, there is still a surprising degree of diversity in the media. After all, it is easy to buy books by media critics such as Noam Chom-sky or see ‘oppositional’ films by the likes of Michael Moore. Tony Benn has regularly appeared on TV and radio. The Mirror gave much space to both Paul Foot and John Pilger. Yes there are plenty of counter-examples but crude black-and-white stereo-types discredit our overall arguments.

Too much, too fastThere are a much deeper and more serious problems inherent in contemporary media technology, ones independent of actual ownership, to which Marshall McLuhan famously referred when he said that the “medium is the message” (i.e. not its content). These flaws will still be there even if conglomerates like News Corporation were to be broken up (certainly causes nonethe-less worth fighting!).

For a start, the sheer quantity of airtime to be filled in round the clock broadcasting leads to a loss of quality, with endless repeats, cheap quiz and chat shows as well as yet more imports from the USA. Even a well funded public broadcasting system would find it hard to fill such lengthy schedules with high quality programming.

A more serious concern is a decrease in average attention spans, a problem which can be laid at the door of both TV and computers, with their relentless barrage of fast-changing screen shots, shifting camera angles and special effects. [See the work of Baroness Greenfield]. It creates real problems for anyone with complex and lengthy ‘messages’ like the Greens.

At the same time, development like ‘rolling news’ TV, emails and blogging encourage knee-jerk reactions, at the expense of proper investigation and reflection. The anonymity of much ‘new media’ also seems to be inciting often vicious rudeness. Across the so-called ‘blogosphere’ and postings on the Facebook ‘wall’, the utterly inane competes with the innately stupid. Social net-working is perhaps more a case of social nitwitting. There is indeed much unjustified hype about the progressive potential about such ‘new media’ (for a corrective view, see: http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=722 as well as Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Illusion and Andrew Keen’s The Cult of the Amateur)

The media regulator Ofcom suggests that the average person in the UK spends 7 hours a day watching TV, surfing the net and using their mobile phones. Actually the total usage is more since often they are ‘multi-tasking’, which, in effect, means they are not really paying that much attention to particular things. How often does one see people in company fiddling with their mobile

phones when they are supposedly ’socialising’?True, the media may spotlight issues such as the East African

famine and stimulate flurries of concern. Yet even the best cov-erage seems to produce few long-lasting changes amongst its audiences. Couch potatoes are perhaps not the stuff of real so-cial change. As McLuhan realised, if people are glued to a TV box or computer console, they are effectively immobilised, more a recipe for inaction than active involvement in real struggle in the outside world. Perhaps it is symptomatic of such problems that the outrage of the British public over scandals like bankers bonuses and the like seems so short-lived.

Finally, outrage at Murdoch and co should never be allowed to disguise the fact that millions like what News Corporation and its ilk offer. No-one is forced to consume their products. Too often radical movements blame their lack of progress on the media, not honestly facing the fact that many people – at present – simply don’t want what Greens and other radical crit-ics of society offer. It is a harsh reality that cannot be ducked.

So when the dust has died down on ‘Hackergate’, Greens need to pose a lot more questions about the role of the mass communication in society and look to a really radical reform of not just ownership of the media. We ought to be asking whether, there is a media surfeit – frequency, speed and volume – and whether ‘less’ might really be more.

4

Where on Earth?Greening Newcastle 8 carried a feature on the accelerating loss of local identity, contrasting the trend to what it called ‘bioculturalism’,societies sustainably built on the biogeophysical character of localities.Can you identify where or what these ‘local’ places are?

Answers on page 14

1

2

3

5

8

7

4

6

5

David Williams, leader of the Green group on Oxford council, looks back at what the Green Party has done there.

Oxford’s Green Party councillors have an outstanding re-cord of achievement over the last two decades, and have

helped make our city one of the most progressive in the UK. Despite being a relatively small group, their impact has been sig-nificant, and has changed the way that both the City and County councils do business. A lot has been done but there is so much more to do – and a larger group of Green councilors will trans-form our city even further. Amongst scores of significant city-wide achievements, Green councilors have:

• Used their successful City Council budget amendments to establish the Oxford Climate Change Action Plan, and to fund the award-winning City Council Climate Change Team. It was the Green Party budget in 2007 which secured funding for new City Council energy officers (£200,000) along with over £250,000 to reduce the City Council’s carbon footprint. When the Greens held the balance of power in the City Council over £3 million in a range of green proposals was incorporated into the Council budgets over a 4 year period.• Put an extra £500,000 of funding into recycling efforts in the City Council budget and sought to extricate the County from landfill contracts that effectively stifled recycling initiatives. It was a Green councillor who wrote the prophetic ‘Bonn Re-port’ for the City which mapped out various ways to improve recycling years before they were implemented and illustrat-ed that incineration of waste by the County Council was the wrong policy for modern solutions.• Submitted an alternative to the City Councils Core Strategy Planning document to Government Inspectors which sets up a clear alternative vision of how the City could develop over the next 25 years without a focus on mindless growth. • Advocated protection of the Green Belt. In contrast, Lib Dem and Labour councilors seem eager to redraw the Green Belt and build on Green field sites such as Pear Tree and West Barton. The Greens consistently supported the campaign to save Temple Cowley Pools. They have worked with local cam-paigners, helping with the massive petition to save the pools and on three occasions moved motions in Council to save the pools. These were voted down by Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors.• Initiated and ensured funding for the Natural Resources Impact Assessment for housing and commercial develop-ments. Now every new development in Oxford must have an evaluation of its environmental impact whilst being built.• Taken the lead in making Oxford a Fair Trade City, in-cluding ethical choices such as banning the use of hardwoods from abroad and seeking GM free status for Oxfordshire.• Initiated Oxford City Council’s switch to renewable electricity, ensuring a renewable energy supply for the City and setting an example to other large organisations such as Ox-ford University. • Campaigned against City Academies and fought to keep local democratic control of our schools. It was Green councillors who exposed the underhand way in which the Tory

What have Green councillors ever done for you? This is a series of articles which look at what Greens in other parts of the UK have achieved and what those in Newcastle might aspire if we had the chance to influence local government policy in the area.

County Council organised for Academy status without full con-sultation. • Pushed for Low Emissions Zones in the City Centre and at various points throughout the City where air pollution has reached dangerous proportions.• Opposed privatisation in our city, unlike any of the three mainstream parties. Green councillors opposed the pri-vatisation of council services such as tax and rent collection services, as well as the transfer of Leisure Service management to private providers.• Objected to the destruction of the Wardens service in shel-tered accommodation, and led the ‘ 7 Days for All’ campaign to try to keep the professional wardens’ visiting service for el-derly and those in need.• Proposed that Council workers should be given a living wage (a minimum of £7.00 per hour), not simply a minimum wage, years before it was finally taken up as principle by others.• Secured new, successful benefits take-up campaigns. Greens also provided funding for claimant’s advisors, who do so much to help families struggling to survive.• Overturned restrictions to allow the building of the Central Mosque on Manzil Way, and extended the hours of the burial service to weekends to meet the needs of the Jewish and Mus-lim communities. Despite being a secular party, Greens recog-nise the right of everyone to practice their religion.• Successfully demanded an increase in the proportion of af-fordable housing in new developments from zero to 50%. • Pushed for a tough ‘Private Housing Landlord Li-cense Scheme’ to ensure decent housing standards for ten-ants. Eventually after years of Green pressure in 2010 a basic scheme was introduced by the Council.• Opposed Labour’s policy of selling off council housing. Greens have been the most consistent campaigners for more Council Housing as the real way to resolve the housing cri-sis. Other parties have continued to sell off council houses and put up rents.• Pursued the bringing of empty buildings back into use, in-cluding funding for an EmptyPropertiesOfficer. • Advocated more cycle paths around the city, establishing cycle racks right across Oxford and actively promoting cycling. It was the Greens who established the cycle racks on Broad Street as well as the cycle lane on Magdalen Street.• Secured £1 million for Cowley Road Traffic Scheme from the County Council, ensuring trees, benches and cycle parks were provided to improve the area. They can take credit for the reduction by 35% in the accident rate on Cowley Road since the introduction of the new layout. • Supported people power. The Green Party has always been a localist party, believing that decisions should be made as close to the interested community as possible. For this reasons they were instrumental in setting up Area Committees and providing them with funds and powers over planning.

For more details about the hundreds of other ways in which Green Party councilors have improved our city, just visit:

www.greenoxford.com

6

Their visionLocal councils and developers are getting together their plans for our future. Not all their ideas are bad but many just repeat the mistakes of past development policies. Generally they do not address the real challenges of tomorrow even though they present their ideas are thoroughly modern, high-tech. and world class. One thing is for sure: the art of hype is far from dead. Some examples of their plans can be seen below. For more details, ee: http://1ng.org.uk/

The next Newcastle branch meeting will discuss these issues

7

Brasilia ManThe NorTh easT Labour socieTy held a very well-attend-ed meeting in July about the Newcastle politician T. Dan Smith. Originally a Trotskyist in the 40s, he became Labour leader of the city council in 1960. He is even more famous, of course, for his fall from power and subsequent imprisonment on charges of corruption, In many ways, he was “Mr. Newcastle”, perhaps hav-ing a bigger impact on the city than any other politician before or since.

Both his general thinking about the city’s development and specific policies he put into practice touch upon many Green concerns. More pertinently many of today’s ‘redevelopment’ strategies repeat the mistakes of the 60s. So study of what went wrong then is vital if we are to find the right way forward for tomorrow,

The meeting was addressed by Chris Foote-Wood, a journal-ist, former Liberal Party councillor and now author of a new study of T. Dan Smith. His presentation was quite arresting, de-molishing a number of what he claimed were simply myths. For example, Smith is widely linked to the construction of disastrous high-rise tower blocks (the last issue of Greening Newcastle was guilty of repeating this story). Yet Foote-Wood pointed out that in actually Smith had proposed “Operation Revitalise”, the re-habilitation of existing housing, a plan turned down by the then Tory government.

Smith also recognised the importance of keeping established communities together. Indeed, he could be said be said to be the father of the Byker Wall redevelopment which at least tried to put that worthy principle into practice. Though he also fathered the appalling Swan House roundabout, he did try to save the famous Royal Arcade on that site for reconstruction elsewhere (the pieces were lost!). The first element of the Grainger-Dob-son conservation area were put in place under his regime (stop-ping, for example, a gigantic modernist bank proposed for Grey Street).

Also in this period came the full implementation of the Clean Air Act and the construction of sewage pipelines that signifi-cantly reduced pollution of the Tyne. Smith first set in motion the programme that eventually led to today’s Metro system. He also supported the expansion of the ‘cultural sector’, particular-ly the launch of Northern Arts. The existence of two city centre university campuses similarly owes a great deal to Smith’s vision that the city could not continue to depend on what he saw as inevitably dying industries.

Last but not least Smith was a strong advocate of certain val-uable measures of political reform. He supported the abolition of the House of Lords, for example. He favoured much stronger regional governance, with elected assemblies and created the first post of a council chief executive, which, whatever its merits or otherwise, helped to give a certain dynamism to the city.

Modern ManSo there is much to admire in the efforts Smith put into the remaking of Newcastle. But it would be wrong to bend the stick too far the other way and play down his mistakes, not least since many are being repeated today under the guise of ‘regeneration’. Indeed some of the things that Chris Foote-Wood singled out for praise have a downside than he and others like him wrongly discount.

Of course, Smith was not acting alone. A key player in that period was chief city planner Wilfred Burns. Indeed his book

New Cities for Old (1963) is a key text for those wishing to get an insight into the thrall of ‘modernist’ redevelopment. [It needs to read alongside sobering accounts like Gavin Stamps’ Britain’s Lost Cities, Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House (1983) and The Rape of Britain by Colin Amery and Dan Cruickshank (1975).]

Apologists for the monstrosities created in the name of ‘modernisation’ and ‘development’ (Chris Foote-Wood is one) argue that people like Smith and Burns were just reflecting the thinking of their time. This is a somewhat specious argument since it could justify all sorts of horrors from racism to child labour. More importantly it is a historically false.

At the time, there were in fact many vocal critics of what had been happening in urban planning, not least Lewis Mumford and Jane Jacobs in the USA. In Britain bodies like the Civic Trust and the Victorian Society had attacked the sheer vandalism of much urban development while the Observer’s Ian Nairn was making coruscating attacks on the mediocrity of post-war city planning. Poet John Betjeman might be foolishly dismissed as a reactionary old buffer but actually he too spotlighted a lot of what was going wrong (see his poem about Slough, from 1937 for example).

Silicon Snake OilSmith’s vision was flawed in other ways too. Amazingly he had predicted that, one day, people would carry computers in their brief cases. His PR company played the critical part in getting IBM to set up in the then Peterlee New Town. Smith hoped to kick start the development of a ‘Silicon Valley’ in the NE, This then new industry offered, according to Smith and many after him, the road to long-term economic prosperity, not least job creation.

However reality has turned out differently as often with such ‘fixes’. Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren once observed that such

8

technological ‘rabbits’ pulled out of the scientist-magician’s hat usually have large appetites and leave noxious droppings. That is certainly true of the computer industry and its products. For instance, the growth of the Internet traffic, not least the system of giant servers as well as computer usage itself, consumes large amounts of electricity, not least in the home of Silicon Valley, California (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jul/27/comment.internet). According to one study, the construction of an average 24-kilogram computer and 27 cm monitor requires at least 240 kilograms of fossil fuel, 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1,500 kilograms of water – or 1.8 tons in total, the equiva-lent of a sports utility vehicle. According to Mike Berners-Lee, a new iMac has the same carbon footprint as flying from Glasgow to Madrid and back again … before you switch it on.

There is also the matter of the water pollution around mi-cro-processor plants and the unsustainable volume of so-called E-waste, with big dollops of toxic metals like cadmium and mer-cury being dumped (http://inhabitat.com/annie-leonards-story-of-electronics-is-an-e-waste-eye-opener/). The conditions of workers in related manufacturing plants are often poor, with se-rious health problems like eye strain reported (see, for example: http://www.globallabourrights.org/reports?id=0034.) Of course pay and conditions might improve but, then, those ‘cheap’ com-puters and assorted gadgets would become much more pricey.

Last but not least, ‘Silicon salvation’ fails the test of ‘univers-ability’. Just imagine what all these problems would be like in everyone in China had the computer usage of an average Ameri-can. T. Dan Smith might have been a visionary about the advent of portable computers but he failed to foresee the downsides of the industry he so cherished.

More destruction than by the LuftwaffeSome corrective balances to the popular image of the Smith years must be conceded: he was not the ‘Tower Block’ man of legend. But the fact remains that he and his co-thinkers did do much damage to the urban fabric of Newcastle. The Swan House construction has been noted already. But even more hor-rendous was the destruction of three sides of old Eldon Square. This could have been Newcastle’s equivalent of the elegant and vibrant squares found in the best continental cities.

The 1963 Newcastle Development Plan led to the loss of a number of fine old buildings, notably the old Town Hall and Library (the latter’s replacement was so poor that it could sup-port the weight of books the old one so stock was thinned out and eventually it had to pulled down). Smith’s ‘vision’ also in-cluded the giant Eldon Square mall, his contribution to the ‘clone town’ transformation of Newcastle and a veritable cathedral to consumerism. Part of the real lack of vision was the absence of

How Newcastle might have been had Smith’s ideas for a new ‘Venice’ of the North had been fully put into practice. The map was produced by SOCEM, a local campaign group which did much to stop the destruc-tion that the plan proposed.

natural lighting in this monstrosity, something that worsened the oppressive feeling of its interiors as well as increased its energy bills (to be fair, there have been some welcome modifications of late).

Meanwhile, John Dobson Street was bulldozed through en route to the new Civic Centre whose foundation stone had been laid in 1960. The quite ghastly Newgate Shopping Mall was opened in 1969, another failed 60s development now fac-ing demolition The even more brutalist Westgate House, a con-struction from the early 70s is mercifully no longer with us. [The lovely Union Rooms next door, revitalised by the Wetherspoon’s pub chain demonstrates that rehabilitation not demolition was an option for those older buildings that gave the city centre its distinctive character compared to the utter mediocrity of most new developments like the Bigg Market office block]

But the worst part of the plans pushed through by Smith and his circle was the surrender of the city to the private motor car. Indeed in public Smith talked not only about Newcastle as a new Brasilia but also as the ‘Venice of the North’, with motorways instead of canals. So the council helped to drive the city down a dead-end road with mass commuting, mass conges-tion, aggravated air pollution from car exhausts and, most fatally, increased dependence on an energy source, oil, that was bound to become more scarce and progressively more expensive (that last trend was not ‘unknown’ at the time, having been publicly demonstrated by M. King Hubbert back in 1956).

T. Dan Smith was similarly an enthusiast backer of expansion at Newcastle airport. Again, far from being a visionary, he and many like him, failed to anticipate the unsustainability of mass aviation, even though there were radical economists like E. J. Mishan who, from 1960, had been attacking the folly of such growth-oriented strategies. He had particularly singled out what he called the ‘external diseconomies’ of developments like air-port expansion.

It might be noted that Smith’s development strategy, like those of today, were sold on the basis that they were ‘modern’, ‘innovatory’, and ‘bold’. Yet these words are meaningless. After Zyklon-B was a bold, modern innovation speeding up the mur-der rate in the Nazi death camps. The question is not change versus the status quo, which, in the case of contemporary New-castle with its widespread slums, poor levels of education for the working class and dependence on soon-to-die industries,

The 1960 Newcastle Development Plan

9

Smith had condemned quite rightly. Rather it is a matter of what kind of change, by whose choice, for whose benefit, with what long-term goals.

So ‘modernisation’ was used as a slogan by Tony Blair (in some ways, Smith was actually a pre-echo of New Labour) to sell what was something quite different, the dismantling of public services to the gain of private profiteers. Often the claims to be ‘modern’ are phoney anyway. Take, for example, Smith’s vi-sion of the city rebuilt around mass motoring. The east central motorway actually has its roots in a 1905 plan by John Crackett. Many elements of Smith’s proposed developments were also an-ticipated in 1924 by Robert Dick Burns who also proposed that a new civic centre be built (his plan sited it in Exhibition Park, not Barras Bridge).

The fad for new roads and for more motor cars has had some decidedly loathsome adherents in fact. Some 50 years be-fore, Futurism in Italy had celebrated the ‘shock of the new’ and embraced what it saw as the great new machine age. Yet its position was wholly anti-ecological and, politically, it was to nail its colours to the Mussolini’s mast. The German Nazis were also very keen on new autobahn (some of the first motorways in the world) and building cars for the masses (Volkswagen).

Smith also wanted ‘high profile’ buildings (i.e. shiny glass and concrete edifices) but here his ‘forward’ thinking was nothing

more than a desire to copy the architec-ture of places like the USA. He regularly boasted that a world class skyscraper ho-tel would be built in the city centre (one of its models, to the left)

Any truly visionary thinking would be based on sober assessments of the chal-lenges ahead. Smith and his associates clearly failed that test regarding their road and airport plans as well as the ‘Sili-con Valley’ scheme (the rise and fall of

‘Silicon Glen’ in Central Scotland might be noted here). There is one last example of the flaws in the Smith vision. It is his strong support for university expansion.

Gown versus ‘toon’Unlike most of his contemporaries, T. Dan Smith correctly an-ticipated the huge expansion of university education of recent years. His regime garnered the land that now houses both the Newcastle University and city centre campus of Northumbria University (excluding the most recent expansion of the latter). To be fair, the benefits of city living over those of distant cam-puses out in the sticks were foreseen (Northumbria itself failed to see this when it wasted a lot of money on the Longhirst site beyond Morpeth).

Yet there are bigger issues here. For a start, the expansion of the then new Newcastle University and what was, of course, Newcastle Polytechnic destroyed quite a bit of working class housing, forcing previous residents out of the central city. The influx of students, which has turned into a flood in recent years, also had the effect of a social cleansing with whole streets in Jesmond, Heaton and Fenham being turned into student ‘bedsit land’, with the families that formerly lived there effectively being driven out. This in turn fuelled more suburban sprawl.

Most of the new buildings were, furthermore, utterly me-diocre, a hotch-potch where the choice is between ugliness and blandness, a tradition being maintained today, not least at the so-called Citygate complex of Newcastle University near St. James. However the really big issue is whether society actu-

The 1924 Robert Dick Burns plans for Newcastle with new roads (dotted lines) and a new civic centre (white circle) in Exhibition Park

Some of the suburbs would have been wrecked too. Above is the 1962 plan for Gosforth, obliterating most of its east side.

Today’s sterile Regent Centre embodies some of this ‘vision’.

New buildings for HE in Newcastle (above, the Polytechnic, and, to the left, the University, what was previously King’s College of Dur-ham going independent in 1963. Marks for taste, scale and sense of place = 0/10

ally needs so many graduates, whether the mix of university courses is an appropriate one and whether, as the ecological ‘recession’ depends, society will have in future the wherewithal (real resources, not money), to underwrite such a large higher education sector.

This is not a philistine argument for purely utilitarian courses since what is ‘relevant’ today can radically change tomorrow. Nor is it necessarily an elitist one since no-one benefits if the ‘value’ of a degree declines. It is simply a matter of asking wheth-er society might be better served (as well as individual young-sters) if some resources were switched to, say, a programme of really generous apprenticeships in solar technologies and so

10

forth, away from the plethora of Business Studies diplomas and degrees. It might also be asked whether the strategy of bringing over students from the other side of the world is a sustainable one given the likely curtailment of mass travel by aviation in the wake of Peak Oil and adverse climate change.

Limits of ReformismT. Dan Smith is, of course, most famous as the ex-council leader sent to prison on corruption charges. ‘Revisionist’ historians like Chris Foote-Wood seem to have established that, basically, Smith was framed. He copped a plea bargain at his third trial, when it became clear that he would be pursued in the courts (at a time when alcoholism was getting the better of him). But instead of the six months he was led to expect, he got six years.

It does seem to be the case that his dealings with the cor-rupt architect and businessman John Poulson were fairly limited. It also seems true that any monies he corruptly took were not great Smith felt entitled to rewards for all his services to New-castle (councillors were not paid at the time) and may have bent the rules. But whatever he wrongly took was utterly trivial compared to the tax avoidance and evasion by the super-rich.

Finally, it may pay to reflect upon the Smith years and perhaps find some political lessons for today. The former revolutionary had chosen to work within the ‘system’. He really does seem to have done his best to improve his city, all the above criticism notwithstanding. To do so, he tried to ‘ride the tiger’ but, in the end, the tiger ate him.

Yet there are still Labour leaders like Gordon Brown who think that if they are nice to the rich and powerful, not least press barons like Rupert Murdoch, the powers-that-be will be nice in return. But ruling elites resent upstarts from below. So they eventually turned on Smith just as they turned on Gordon Brown and the last Labour government. So there has to be star realism about the struggles ahead, with no illusions about the extent to which they in power in today will go to make sure they will be in power tomorrow.

That said, Smith did demonstrate what a small but deter-mined group can do. He apparently once said that ‘with six good people’ he could control of the city. To that extent, small parties like the Greens should not worry too much about the size of their membership. Proper organisation, skill and determination can open paths to power, as, rightly or wrongly, the Bolsheviks showed back in 1917.

Of course Smith was, to some extent, going with the flow. Mention has been made of city planner Wilfred Burns and the whole modernist drive. Less tangible was the way he rise re-flected the breakdown of a 1950s consensus and its associated institutions (not least the then Tory Party) as the 60s zeitgeist began to seep through society, nationally leading to a Labour government in 1964 as well as big changes in fashion, music, and wider social mores (aided by the spreading use of contraceptive pills). But Smith had made the most of the moment.

That said, Smith political trajectory demonstrates the dan-gers of a ‘march through the institutions’, with strong grassroots support and organisation outside those institutions. He went from the City Council to become chairman of the newly formed Northern Economic Development Council. In a sense, he got lost in a maze while, outside, the dubious activities of his public relation company were making him more exposed to attack. In just over a decade, he went from proverbial hero to almost zero.

So perhaps the final lesson is the need to walk on two legs: win seats on councils and in Parliament but never neglect the need to build a strong movement outside their doors. The two must go hand in hand… and have a really sustainable vision too.

Above is a plan by John Bryson from the 1890s for a new civic centre in Newcastle. It is a bit more interesting than the somewhat bland box of glass and concrete erected in the 1960s, an edifice

that does not seem to be wearing well, like so many from that time (and for the most part, from today as well).

The visualisation below comes from the early 1970s with a plan for gardens in the Bigg/Groat Market area, facing the cathedral,

something of an improvement over the utterly mediocre office block that now occupies the site. Of course, the council has been keen

to promote the ‘drunks culture’, with the city marketed as a world class ‘partying’ venue. So, if the scheme actually had been realised,

it might have been routinely trashed by the hordes of ‘stag’ and ‘hen’ parties now attracted to the city.

Below, the east central motorway heading down under the Swan House roundabout, over which is the modernist block that replaced

the old Royal Arcade. To the left side of the picture is one of the many multi-storey car parks thrown up in the 60s & 70s. Most

days, there are, of course, far more vehicles clogging up the roads.

11

This is a regular series featuring questions that both opponents and simply curious members of the public raise about the Green Party, its values and policies. This round:

1. What is the Green Party’s perspective on the population issue? Is the green perspective so pro-Earth that it is actually anti-human!!

Greening Newcastle 12 looked at the first part of this question. But the second part raises all sorts of controversial issues about human freedom, gender relationships, and what are sometime called “reproductive rights”. The very mention of population policy spotlights another myth propagated by pro-natalists, namely that freedom to reproduce is the most basic of rights. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, treated the individual as having an unqualified right to parent as many offspring as desired. In many countries, this has been socially underwritten, with welfare benefits not limited to, say, the first two children.

The slogan of ‘‘reproductive rights’ brings together some strange bedfellows: the Catholic Church and individual cam-paigners like British mother of nine Victoria Gillick, scientists working non-stop to extend the capacity to bear children past the menopause as well as to produce more babies by artificial insemination and fertility drugs, many ‘ecofeminists’ as well as self-styled ‘libertarian ecology’ advocates such as Nicolas Hild-yard, formerly editor of The Ecologist.

It is interesting to note that some of the world’s worst au-thoritarian regimes have been rabidly pro-natalist in outlook. Italian dictator Mussolini led what he called a “battle for births”, with special prizes for those who produced three or four off-spring in a three-year period. Hitler also presided over a cult of motherhood, proclaiming that “with every child that she brings into the world, (the mother) fights her battle for the nation”. The same was true of the Communist Bloc. Thus the repres-sive Romanian dictator Caeusescu pursued policies that grossly limited birth control options while encouraging large families.

Of course, human reproduction is a very personal affair and many prefer to treat it as a purely private matter. Yet it is one truly pregnant with many consequences. As in any interconnect-ed and finite system, one ‘right’, especially if ‘exercised’ too of-ten, comes at the cost of other ones. Rights are not abstractions, divorced from contexts and consequences. Rights only have real meaning if the conditions in which they are exercised can be sustained. Otherwise, they are just licence to create ruin for one and all. With regard to procreation, resultant goals and policies (or, conversely, failure to adopt other goals and policies) have opened a dangerous chasm between power (to reproduce as well as to move and settle freely) and responsibility (to control family size and to avoid overcrowding)

The supposition of a right to reproduce in effect makes un-limited claims can be made on other people, for, without their support, the right is meaningless. Furthermore, an open-ended right to reproduce in a finite, interconnected world can only mean the reduction of other rights. Freedom in a finite world is not indivisible. In other words, there are many other liber-ties, most of which decrease as human numbers increase. At the

Q&Asame time the burden to environmental systems and cuts in the number of non-human species multiply.

The issue of reproductive rights is meaningless unless put in a demographic context. Some 7-8% of all humans ever born are alive now. More humans have been added to the total world population in the past 40 years than in the previous 3 million years. To ignore those trends unchallenged under the name of ‘freedom’ or whatever slogan is to kiss goodbye to any chance that the Earth might retain its capacity to sustain both human lives and those of the myriad of other species now threatened with extinction.

Fortunately, population limitation policies will bring many other beneficial side-effects. Most notably, they will benefit all those women whose health is threatened, opportunities re-stricted and rights violated by all the pressures, economic, social and cultural, to produce more offspring. Indeed it is estimated that at least 40% of all births are unwanted. So free access to safe contraception is a right that can be multiplied with lots of spin-off benefits for the individuals concerned. At the same time, unemployment, homelessness, traffic congestion, pressure on education and welfare services, ethnic rivalries, urban sprawl, rural land use conflicts, resource depletion, pollution, wildlife destruction…all these problems and more will not be so severe and be easier to solve if human numbers are contained. To para-phrase Paul and Anne Ehrlich, whatever your cause, it will be a lost cause without, first, the stabilisation and then reduction in human numbers. So it is scarcely ‘anti-human’.

So Greens must never tire of arguing that human numbers do count and that biogeophysical limits apply to people as to any other species. It is a message that many will not want to hear. Yet it is one which can be put in positive ways. There is no need for population policies to take socially intolerable forms such as compulsory sterilisation (whose record in places in India was hardly one of success, its other failings apart).

Population restraint can be encouraged by positive incen-tives. If it is right to reward procreation, it cannot be restric-tive to reverse the policy and reward abstinence instead (a ‘no claims’ bonus!). Scientific effort should be similarly redirected towards safer and more convenient forms of contraception (for both genders), instead of pushing fertility drugs—how crazy in an overpopulated world to be enabling women to give birth well past the menopause.

Of course, such measures lose their value if pursued in isola-tion. There is no suggestion here that parenthood should be-come a prerogative of the rich. It is simply suggested that soci-ety should underwrite, through collective welfare provision and other forms of redistribution, the resources needed to parent only a limited number of children. Reproductive constraint will benefit women in particular, from own health dividends to the opening up of wider opportunities in life.

Perhaps the most important change needed, short of a cul-tural revolution, is a shift to public policies which face people with the true cost of their actions. The current economic sys-tem positively encourages individuals and organisations to shift such costs away from themselves, dumping them upon other people in other places and times as well as upon other species. There is nowhere more the case than in child-bearing.

Currently family planning receives comparatively little sup-port. Each year, Americans spend some $1.5 billion on costumes for Halloween, a one-night event. For the whole year, their gov-ernment budgets what by comparison is a measly $378 million on international family planning aid. A reversal of such priorities might go some way to avoid the real horrors of demographic meltdown.

12

The pictures were, of course, all taken in Newcastle, demon-strating how the tide of globalisation is washing away this city’s identity too. To be sure, many aspects of our regional ‘heritage’ were best consigned to the dustbin of history, not least the ap-palling poverty that has long blighted the area. There were awful slums, for example, around the current Manors Metro station. Though the process of closure was shamefully mismanaged, we are better off without the coal mines that once dotted even the city itself.

Moreover, some exchange, economic and cultural, between different regions and countries can be beneficial, providing it is on fair terms, by mutual consent, at a digestible pace, and ecologically sustainable. But the processes represented by the pictures are far from that. At the same time, they are robbing the city of a heritage that was worth conserving.

1. ‘Old Orleans’ in HaymarketFew things are more blatantly fake than the ‘themed’ pub, totally devoid of real character and often, as in this case, with no rela-tion to the localities where they are sited. The food and drink is as ‘plastic’ as the decor. This particular one has been ‘re-themed’ a number of times. At the same time, genuine local pubs have been demolished or so transformed as to be unrecognisable. Thus, in the Haymarket, the lovely old Burgoynes is long gone while the once pleasant Three Bulls Head has been trashed by brewery ‘make-overs’.

2. Apple store in Eldon Square extensionPart of the ‘clone town’ phenomenon is the spread of the chain store, making most town centres almost identical. The Apple computer company is a bit different in that it has been at the cutting edge of innovation, Yet it also embodies a quite virulent consumerism. The picture shows the opening of its new New-castle store to which huge crowds flocked. Apparently people were hospitalised in China recently as people fought each other to get the new iPhone 4 while a Chinese teenager reportedly sold his kidney to buy an iPad2. But the record of Apple itself is far from shiny. See for example:http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/837185/apple_the_hidden_costs_of_your_ipad_and_iphone.html andhttp://www.greenpeace.org/apple/about.html

3. ‘American Golf’ shop, old A1, GosforthSport too has been subject to the tide of globalisation. Of course, there is a history of local people gladly adopting games that originated abroad. Perhaps what has really changed is the rampant commercialism behind the spread of, say, ice hockey (e.g. Newcastle Vipers) and basketball (Newcastle Eagles).

It is hard to deny the unsustainable impact of Big Money on what were pursuits of and for local people. Now sports clubs and their fans are just treated as a cash cow, to be ruthlessly milked with little regard for the long-term prospects of the game itself. David Conn of The Guardian has superbly docu-mented this trend in the case of football. Most players in the upper divisions and leagues now have little commitment to or identification with the places where they play.

The inequalities of wider society are mirrored in the con-trast between, on the one hand, the huge rewards reaped by ‘star’ players’, often just for kicking or throwing a ball around and sometimes not very well, and, on the other hand, the in-

come of ordinary punter in the stands. The extravagant prices at golf, soccer and other sports shops speak for themselves. Thus cycling gear has been turned into another ‘style statement’, with corresponding price hikes.

4. McDonald’s on Grainger StreetNothing epitomises the spread of an unsustainable global mass culture more than fast food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC, all of whom are dotted across both Newcastle city cen-tre and its suburbs. McDonald’s is certainly gigantic with some 32,000 outlets (75-80% franchises) in 117 countries, employing 1.7 million people. It took $6.1bn in the first three months of 2011 alone. Monies from the resulting profits are largely lost to local economies. Its adverse health and environmental impacts are well known but, if you have not seen it, watch the film Su-persize Me. In light of the chain’s recent attempts to ‘green’ its image, see also:http://inhabitat.com/is-it-green-mcdonalds/ http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/behind_the_la-bel/941743/behind_the_brand_mcdonalds.html

5. Shearer bar at St James football stadiumBig Al was at least a local lad who gave his home club a great deal so it is quite in order to name the bar after him. Inside, however, is more of the same clone culture. It is obvious in the case of that ice-cold fizzy lager Carling, perhaps not so with Worthingtons beer. Yet it too is now just one more ‘unreal’ ale from the giant North American corporation Molson Coors. Grolsch beers are products of the global corporation SABMiller.

6. Subway outlet in JesmondSandwich group Subway claims to have overtaken McDonald’s as the world’s largest restaurant chain. At the start of the year, it had 33,749 sites across the globe. It epitomises the trend to-wards a ‘grazing’ diet, one based on a dangerously narrow range of foodstuffs. Like its cousins, Subway generates lots of litter on neighbouring streets and scarcely benefits the nation’s health. Less quantifiable are the social costs of fast food (for an alterna-tive view of how we should prepare food and dine, see: http://www.slowfood.com/ )

7. Holiday Inn off St James boulevardThese ‘inns’ are the same ultra standardised hotels, some 1300 around the world, all owned the American International Hotels Group, usually rated as the world’s largest hotel chain. There is an interesting contrast with the big Best Western group whose hotels are actually all independently owned and frequently have much more local character.

8. Newcastle Green Party branch meetingThis is a picture of… Sorry wrong picture. This is how the me-dia now picture Newcastle, some sort of clone, comprising bits of Essex, Bondi Beach and Venice Beach (the US one). Still it might be an improvement of sorts over the old stereotypes of Andy Capp, Get Carter and Harry Enfield’s sketch character ‘Bugger-all-money.’ The show in the image, Geordie Shore, might well appeal to the Council since it clearly revels in the notion that Newcastle is a ‘clubbing’ capital of the world, if it that means regular misery for those who live near the Quayside or work in the hospitals that cope with the consequences of binge culture.

Green Quiz Answers

13

Current officers and their contact details are listed below. If you know of any opportunities that the local Party might take up or want to raise any other matters, get in touch with Laurence or one of the other officers.

To reduce the number of emails in circulation, please use this newsletter to draw attention to any papers you want to put forward for discussion. Just send your name, email address and the title of the topic and we’ll try to give it due publicity. Laurence Ellacott, Branch co-ordinator manyellacotts@tiscali.co.ukAndrew Gray, Election Agentandrewgray123@virginmedia.comJohn Pearson, Treasurerjohn.pearson@unn.ac.ukTony Waterston, Literature and Publicity.A.J.R.Waterston@newcastle.ac.ukSandy Irvine, Newsletter editor and Policy Responsesandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk

Branch officers

This is the issue 13 of a regular publication.Send material for the next one directly to Sandy Irvine

(Tel: 0191 2844367 orEmail sandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk)

Please pass Greening Newcastle to any person or organisation you like, and they can in turn pass it on themselves, provided it is transmitted at all times in its entirety as a PDF file and unchanged. Anyone may quote from our magazine, provided this is done in context and Newcastle Green Party is ac-knowledged as the source of the material.

Forthcoming eventsDate Event OrganiserWednesday, August 3rd, British Legion, West Jesmond

Branch meeting Newcastle Green Party

Sunday, October 16thStar & Shadow, Stepney Bank, nr. Byker Bridge

Film screening & debate (see advert below)

Transition Town

The next Newcastle Green Party branch meeting will focus on the

Newcastle-GatesheadCore Strategy

as proposed by local councils.

Film screening

‘Uranium: Is it a Country?’ 14.00, Sunday 16 October

at the Star and Shadow cinema,

Byker Bridge.

Followed by debate on nuclear energy.

Tickets at the door £4 ( concessions £3)

Organised by Transition Town

Coming Q&A(See Page 8)Please send more questions and, of course, an-swers to the editor.

1. How can the Green Party address the mentality of consumerism which prevails in all of us to a greater or lesser extent... Greens included!

2. Should nuclear power play any part in the energy needs of the UK?

3. What is the citizen’s income? The current government are going to introduce a benefit called universal credit, which will amal-gamate several means tested benefits. Is this the same as citi-zens income? Won’t it just encourage scroungers?

Where and When?The answer is Utopia written by Sir Thomas More and pub-lished way back in 1516. Inevitably, there is much therein that might be objectionable. Prison inmates seem to be treated like slaves, for example. The author of the original excerpts, Christian Williams, himself notes that the absence of ‘alehous-es’ might be considered by many to be one minor downside. None the less, Utopia spotlighted a number of ideas now taken for granted by critics of mass industrial-consumer society and, as such, might be counted as part of the green heritage. Its attacks on inequality, indebtedness, and unrestricted market forces are particularly germane.

It’s your future?http://www.newcastle.gov.uk/core.nsf/a/

onecorestrategy2030