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At one o’clock Monday morning, I counted the votes to select a parliamentary candidate for the Green Party in the Oxford East constituency, to replace Peter Tatchell who had to stand down due to health reasons. Announcement to follow in due course, soon.

From one o’clock to three in the afternoon, I attended the Green group of councillors to discuss budget proposals for Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council, and election strategies.

From seven to about nine o’clock in the evening, I was glad to be at the launch of the inaugural issue of the Oxford Left Review. There I talked with three journalists (among other radical right-on comrades), from Aamulehti of Tampere, Corriere della Sera of Italy, and Samoa’s Environment Weekly. Very nice people they were.

Here is the table of contents for the inaugural issue of the Oxford Left Review (Issue 1, February 2010):

• Samual Burt: Equality and Republican Ideals
• Peter Tatchell: Voter Reform and the Left
• Stuart White: An End to Labourism
• Cailean Gallagher: Call to Scottish Labour
• Matthew Kennedy: The Putney Debates
• Jeremy Cliffe: A Fourth Way for Labour?
• Brian Melican: Germany’s Fragmented Left
• Christopher Jackson: The Return of Keynes
• George Irvin: Time for a Tobin Tax
• Kaihsu Tai: The Science of Copenhagen
• Sophie Lewis: COP15 – Activist’s Perspective
• Matthew Kennedy: Žižek review
• Roberta Klimt: Bennett review
• Noel Hatch: Today’s Lost Generation

Pace Radford, it was typeset in Palatino, to good effect dare I so say. All references to non-L——r party affiliation were cautiously scrubbed, for which I am (to be frank) a bit miffed. Despite that, it was an excellent effort by the editorial team in setting off this worthy initiative.

Near midnight, I refined my letter to the Oxford Times about public ownership of assets, after email-shots to follow up all the interesting discussions I had for the last 24 hours of politicking.

It is amazing that I am not getting paid to do any of this, but certainly it has been more fun than staring at molecules on the computer. Citizenship is a full-time job, and the work of a citizen is never done….

貨惡其棄於地也，不必藏於己；力惡其不出於身也，不必為己。 – ‘Lǐ Yùn’ in The Classic of Rites, attributed to Confucius. Translation by James Legge: ‘(When the Grand course was pursued, they accumulated) articles (of value), disliking that they should be thrown away upon the ground, but not wishing to keep them for their own gratification. (They laboured) with their strength, disliking that it should not be exerted, but not exerting it (only) with a view to their own advantage.’

Whoever destroys anything that could be useful to others breaks the law of bal tashchit, “Do not waste.” – Babylonian Talmud, Kodashim 32a (second or third century), quoted in ‘Teachings on Creation through the Ages’, edited by J. Matthew Sleeth M.D., in The Green Bible (2008) San Francisco: HarperOne. ISBN 978-0-06-162799-6.

508 is a show about Worcester.

This week, I talk to Brendan Melican. Topics include inaccurate predictions, the Telegram & Gazette’s website troubles, and WPI making non-tax payments to the city.

If you’d like to leave a comment for next week’s show, the number is 508-471-3897.

 

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I mentioned in these pages that the “green” Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, addressed the European Parliament earlier this year. This was as part of a series during the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. The other speakers were His Eminence Sheikh Ahmad Badr El Din El Hassoun, Grand Mufti of Syria; Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth; and most recently His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Thanks to the intervention by the Liberals and the Greens, Dr Asma Jahangir, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, were also invited to speak. (Sophia in ’t Veld: “I would like to know why the Conference of Presidents has chosen to interpret intercultural dialogue exclusively as an interreligious monologue and whether it feels a part-session is an appropriate platform for religious messages.” and Sarah Ludford: “it seems that you [the President(s)] have made the Grand Mufti comparable to the Pope and the UK Chief Rabbi as a European representative of his particular religion.”)

Here are some highlights from each the speakers, with links to their texts for the gentle readers’ perusal over Christmastime: Read the rest of this entry »

At the risk of obsessively praying about waste and recycling, I have this prayer to offer, which I trust to be sensibly Trinitarian.

(John Calvin was wrong. The Purgatory does exist. I have seen it with my own eyes, at the Redbridge recycling station.)

God our Creator, in your mercy:
Help us to learn how to live in Paradise, where nothing is wasted,
where we walk or cycle with you as you intended.
Bless the workers who sort our recycling,
who, as befit people created in your image, re-create order out of chaos.

Κύριε ἐλέησον.

Christ our Saviour, in your mercy:
Remove us from the flashy sports cars and the 4×4s (SUVs)
which only speed us to the incinerating Armageddon.
Remind us of your crown, when we see the thornbushes growing over the landfill.
Remind us of your Cross, whenever we see smokestacks or wind turbines on the hill.
Remind us of your Passion and your Resurrection.

Χριστὲ ἐλέησον.

Holy Spirit our Advocate and Comforter, in your mercy:
Guard us on our bus route for the recycling centre.
Purge us of our sins of pride and greed.
Blow your wind on us and drive us in your dynamic,
as on the wind turbines, and as on Pentecost.
Bless with your wordless prayer
everything that has a recycling symbol.

Κύριε ἐλέησον.

Amen.

(By the way, Chris Goodall’s second book is out: Ten Technologies to Save the Planet.)