Decent pay, decent hours

Green Party: the courage to change

Working together . . . Camden Green Councillors Adrian Oliver, Maya de Souza and Alex Goodman with Caroline Lucas, the Green Party leader

Air pollution is a deadly problemThe cold weather in December

has shown how air pollution, particularly of dangerous par-ticulate pollution, is a problem that has not been adequately tackled. In Camden legal limits were exceeded for many days in December, and across Britain government targets were broken on 20 days for particle pollu-tion, and on 22 days for nitrogen dioxide.

Jean Lambert, the Green Party MEP for London, said: “The tiny airborne particles (PM10) can cause and irritate conditions

Keep OUR post officeThe Green Party has expressed strong opposition to the Labour government’s plan to sell off 25% to 33% of Royal Mail to a private company.

Natalie Bennett, Green Party South Camden coordinator, said: “It was a tragedy for the local community when we lost the Crowndale Road post office, as well as three other branches in the North of the borough, but this is possibly even worse.

“It is astonishing that given the dreadful state of the banking industry that anyone should still think that this ideology that ‘the private sector has the answers’ still has any currency at all. ”

She noted that the current pension fund debt, which may deter potential investors, would first be taken on by the government -- one more case of an attempt to hand profits to private companies while keeping costs and risks with the government.

Camden Green News One World. One Chance. Vote Green Party. BLOOMSBURY February 2009

Working for a fairer, safer, healthier borough

such as asthma, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer and lead to premature death. In London it is estimated that over 1,000 people

die prematurely each year as a result of poor air quality and a further 1,000 are admitted to hospital. “

Are you fully registered to vote? All citizens of Britain, European Union and Com-monwealth countries should register to vote. Citizens of other Euro-pean countries will need to complete an additional registration to be able to vote in the British Euro election on June 4.Camden will be sending out forms to all of those currently on the electoral roll, but forms can be obtained and submitted until May. More at tinyurl.com/bmy9w9. Students can register to vote at both their home, and term time addresses, if in different areas.Contact:Camden electoral ser-vices 0207-974 6000camden.gov.uk/ democracy

Greens fight for living wage for council staff

Greens win ban on excessive overtime

This leaflet is printed on recycled paper using environmentally friendly inks. Please recycle it when you’ve read it.

Sian Berry, Camden Green Party member, demonstrates the scale of the problem

The Camden Green Party has vowed to continue fighting for a “living wage” to be paid to all people working for Camden council, despite the refusal so far of other parties to allow a motion to provide for this to be considered.

For the second time, at January’s full Council meeting, the Green motion was not called.

Maya de Souza, the leader of the Green group on council, said: “The national minimum wage of is clearly inadequate for anyone living in London. That’s why a London Living Wage -- currently £7.45 an hour -- has been calcu-lated. That’s been worked out to provide a minimum acceptable standard of living for London workers.”

Camden Council has a few directly employed cleaners paid below £7.45, but the rest of the cleaning and other low-paid work has been contracted out to private companies. Maya said: “This leads to an appalling situ-ation in which Camden Council pays contractors periodic uplifts in their contracts, but these in-creases are not being passed on to the workers, many of whom haven’t had a pay increase in

years or continue to be paid the national minimum wage of £5.52 per hour.

“Research has shown that 96% of those on poverty wages are from Black and minority ethnic groups, or are female.”

Other councils in London have backed Green Party motions to introduce the London Living Wage for all of their workers: on Southwark Council the lone Green, Jenny Jones, successfully pushed the motion through, and in Lewisham the six-strong Green Party group won unanimous backing for its initiative.

Camden Green Party, in what was one of the most progressive boroughs in London, is urging the council to catch up as soon as possible.

The credit crunch: is the Green New Deal the answer?

A Camden Green Party “Green Forum” meeting is being held in the back room at the Dartmouth Arms, York Rise, NW5 1SP, on Thursday, 26 February at 7.30pm.

If you’re interested in the answers that the Green Party has to offer, come along and discuss the causes and possible solutions of the credit-fuelled financial crisis

(The Dartmouth Arms is a 5-minute walk from Tufnell Park Tube.)

But Camden workers have already won some addition pro-tection, from excessive working hours.

That came when the European Parliament voted to end the British opting for the working time directive. This

means that the average work-ing week will be limited to an absolute maximum of 48 hours (worked out over a 12-month period).

Jean Lambert, London’s Green MEP, who with Caroline Lucas, the Green Party leader, worked in cooperation with Greens from across Europe to get the motion through, said: “Although I would have liked to have seen an even stron-ger piece of legislation, the vote in the Parliament can be considered as a real (although unfortunately rare) victory for ‘Social Europe’.

Jean’s report on the directive can be found at: tinyurl.com/b8wxdk.

If you have a ‘no junk mail’ sticker, you might be wondering why this leaflet arrived. We re-gard these as a way of helping people exercise their democratic rights and responsibilites. And we think that if you are trying to cut paper usage, you might par-ticularly want to hear about the Green Party’s work. See the back page for more you can do.

Heathrow third runway is ‘disastrous and stupid’

Camden Green Party for 2009 has launched an anti-junk mail campaign. In areas of the bor-ough that seem particularly badly affected, we’re going door to door offering free “no junk mail” stickers, and advice on other tech-niques. But we can’t reach every-one, so here’s some advice on four free ways in which you can reduce the advertising you receive:

1. To stop personally-addressed advertising, register with the Mailing Preference Service (MPS). This not-for-profit organisation informs companies of the people who do not want advertising. There is also a similar service for people who want to prevent un-solicited marketing phone calls:

Mailing Preference Service, FREEPOST 22, LONDON W1E 7EZ or www.mpsonline.org.uk

Telephone Preference Service phone 0845 070 0707 or go online

The Green Party said that the Labour government’s decision to allow Heathrow to build a third runway was indefensible and immediately put Britain in breach of European air quality guidelines.

Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas said: “This decision demon-strates a complete contempt for the environment, for the health of UK citizens and for our demo-cratic processes. A third runway will have disastrous conse-quences for residents far around the airport - leading to serious environmental damage and so-cial upheaval through increased pollution, and the destruction of local communities.”

She warned that the decision would condemn the UK to an unsustainable future of signifi-cantly higher noise and air pollu-tion - and to accelerating climate change. “Any government which, on the one hand pledges to make a significant reduction in green-

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www.camden.greenparty.org.ukPromoted by Edward Milford on behalf of Camden Green Party, both of 25 Parliament Hill, London NW3 2TA.

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Camden Green News One World. One Chance. Vote Green Party BLOOMSBURY February 2009

How to stop (or at least reduce) junk mail

house gases by 2020, and on the other gives the green light to the greatest expansion of aviation in a generation, is guilty of either the most shameless hypocrisy, or the most unforgivable ignorance and stupidity.

The MEP and long-standing campaigner against the expan-sion of the aviation industry added, “Despite the promises which were made to limit fur-ther expansion, this Government has persisted in a deceptive campaign for a third runway which its own figures estimate will almost double the number of flights using Heathrow each year.

“Whichever way you look at the Government’s proposals on aviation, they are a social and environmental disaster. What we need is a sustainable transport policy which incentivises train travel, makes aviation pay its true costs and restricts airport capacity.”

www.tpsonline.org.uk

2. To stop unaddressed adver-tising delivered by the Royal Mail, e-mail optout@royalmail.co.uk Call 08457 950 950 or write to Door to Door Opt Outs, Royal Mail Door to Door, Kingsmead House, Oxpens Road, Oxford OX1 1RX.

3. To stop independently de-livered advertising (pizzas, estate agents etc), put a “no junk mail” sticker by your letterbox. Contact the Green Party in South Camden, see below, to get a sticker. (We’ve now got fresh supplies after run-ning out last year!)

4. Opt out of the edited elec-toral register that the Council sells to private companies. Contact Camden Electoral Ser-vices, 020-7974 6000, electoral.services@camden.gov.uk , Elec-tions Manager, Room 11, Ground Floor, Camden Town Hall, Judd Street, London,WC1H 9LZ

Jenny Jones, one of London’s Green Assembly members, has expressed anger that the Tory Mayor, Boris Johnson has re-neged on an election promise to increase funding for rape crisis centres to £744,000, to pay for four new centres as well as fund-ing the existing one.

Since Jenny made those com-ments, it has further emerged that even the one existing centre

serving London, in Croydon, is struggling with a lack of certain-ty about funding.

The chief executive told the Guardian: “It is very difficult to get core funding to pay the rent, the salaries, the bills. We have a long waiting list of clients who cannot be seen immediately.”

Natalie Bennett, the Green Party’s South Camden coordi-nator, and chair of the Green

Party Women group, said that for women in Camden, the existing centre -- the future of which was clearly far from assured -- was at least an hour’s journey and two forms of transport away.

“This means practically no provision at all for those who prefer or need face-to-face counselling and support. And the most disadvantaged women are going to find it extraordinarily

difficult to fine the time and money to get to Croydon, assum-ing that service is still there.”

She added: “Rape Crisis Cen-tres are a vital provision; unlike the Rape Havens, which are designed with criminal justice goals in mind (important as that is), crisis centres are victim-led, and focused on the needs of vic-tims, of both historic and recent abuse.”

Crisis in provision for victims of rape

‘Listen to the public on the NHS’Camden Green Party has con-gratulated everyone who took part in the hundreds-strong Valentine’s Day protest in Cam-den Town that demanded an end to the creeping privatisation of the NHS in Camden.

The Green Party is backing calls for a borough-wide referen-dum on whether private firms should be allowed to bid for NHS contracts in Camden, which follows strong local anger and resistence to the Primary Care Trust’s decision to hand three GP surgeries in the south of the borough to the American multi-national United Health.

Natalie Bennett, coordinator in South Camden for the Green Party, said: “The PCT has shown that it isn’t prepared to listen to the voice of the people and to respond to the strong support for local GPs and a fully public service. A referendum would send a powerful message.”

She noted that local GPs were very concerned about a plan to create a polyclinic at the junction of Hampstead Road and Drum-mond Street, Euston, which they feared would make their own practices less viable. Natalie said: “I’m a patient at the Amp-thill Square Medical Centre, and it is clear that this is a practice of caring staff who know their pa-tients intimately and understand their lives. That’s a model that must be defended.”

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Green party membership is growing, in Camden, and nationally, but there’s a lot of work to do and everyone can help, whether you want to be an armchair member or get more in-volved - maybe even get elected.

In the parliamentary seats of Brigh-ton Pavilion, being contested by Caro-

line Lucas MEP, in Lewisham Deptford and in Norwich South, as well as here in Camden, Greens are surging par-ticularly strongly.

We’ll be driving in 2010 to increase our representation on the council, and later this year we’ll be selecting can-didates to become those new Green

councillors. Please join online at www.greenparty.org.uk, or contact the number or address below for an application form.

If you’re not quite ready to do that, but would like to help us out, please contact southcamdengreenparty@ googlemail.com or 07967-417859, or

fill in the form below and send it to South Camden Green Party, 56 Walker House, NW1 1EP.

Donations to “Camden Green Par-ty” are also highly welcome. Unlike some parties, we don’t have billion-aire businesspeople lining up to give us money.

Join a successful, growing partyHave your sayThe next Bloomsbury local area forum, run by Camden council, will discuss two issues: proposals for a secondary school south of the Euston Road, and homecare charges for the elderly.The forum will be held on:Tuesday 3 March 7pm - 9pm, Room 3E, University of London Union, Malet Street WC1E 7HY. (Snacks provided.)

The Green Party strongly supports the provision of a new secondary school south of the Euston Road. It believes that schools should be available close to pupils’ homes, an integral part of the community within which they live, and should be on a small, “human” scale.

And it believes strongly in democratically run public education.