Green Party

The Green Party of England and Wales gets about 4.0 % of the vote on Facebook’s ‘standing poll’. Adding the sister parties in Scotland and Northern Ireland does not improve the situation too much.

In the last general election (2005), the Greens got 1.0 % of the vote. One could argue that this should land it 6 members in a 646-seat House of Commons were proportional representation in place, until one notices the usual 5 % threshold as applies in Germany, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Taiwan.

One could further argue that proportional representation will change voter behaviour by defeating the ‘wasted vote’ argument, but I am not sure how far that would carry. By the way, Green Party Taiwan got 0.6 % for party-list ballots in last weekend’s legislative election. And I am glad Clara Rojas is now free; I hope Íngrid Betancourt will soon follow.

Or: œcumenism in Oxford; and trees. Last Friday, journalist Eric Albert of the French newspaper La Croix interviewed several of us about œcumenism in Oxford, for a series for the centenary Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which starts this Friday. La Croix is a daily paper of Catholic foundation, with circulation about 100 000. Those interviewed include: Bede Gerrard (Orthodox; county œcumenical officer), Hugh Lee (city rector, Anglican), Stephen Platt (Russian Orthodox), Rosemary (layperson at Blackfriars, the Catholic Dominican friary), me (Église Reformée Unie), and several others. We had fun discussing. Expect to read something about this in French soon.

Tree-related news: Earlier in the month, there was some brouhaha about a tree in Bonn Square in the city centre. Now that tree is gone. ¶ Last Wednesday, my friend Oxfordshire County Councillor Deborah Glass Woodin was wrongly arrested whilst trying to ascertain the legality of some tree-felling attempts by Oxford City Council in the nearby Westgate area (but not at the same site as Bonn Square). ¶ Later in the weekend, my landlord decided to chop off the apple tree in the back-garden (more on this later, with photographs perhaps).

For this Saturday: have a happy feast-day of Saint Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, patron of vegetarians.

The Reverend Jesse Jackson gave a talk in New Road Baptist Church, Oxford, on 13 November, after being made an honorary fellow of Regent’s Park College, Oxford. I agree with most of what he said, except his final exhortation that people in sub-prime debt should be offered debt restructuring (rather than bankruptcy?). I thought that was not radical enough.

You cannot spell ‘mortgages’ without ‘age’ and ‘mort’: We need to find a way to work out housing allocation without most people having to spend a large chunk of their lives working (for ‘The Man’) to pay off their student-loan debt and mortgages. Security of housing does not necessarily have to mean ownership.

We also have to work out a way for energy-efficient measures to be implemented on all housing stock: be it rental (state-owned or private) or occupant-owned. Anyway, Jesse got what he wanted (almost) this week: Guardian Business: Bush imposes curb on mortgage rises. Be careful what you wish for.

In other news: Let’s see if Sarkozy can help free Íngrid Betancourt; new encyclical: Spe Salvi.

508 is a show about Worcester. This week, Brendan Melican talks about privatization and municipal employees; Mike Benedetti flips through the InCity Times and complains about the Green-Rainbow Party; Dante Comparetto talks about Worcester Local First (here’s a WCCA interview with two of the businessmen organizing it); and Nick Reville talks about Miro.

You can download the mp3, subscribe to the feed, or see other formats.

 

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This weekend I went to Yorkshire, for Saturday evensong at York Minster, and for Sunday service at Saltaire United Reformed Church in a World Heritage Site.

In unrelated news, my friend Chris Goodall’s calculation “If it’s only greenhouse gas emissions you are worried about, then it may be better to drive than to walk” got picked up by the Times on Saturday, and in turn by Rocketboom on Monday. Chris is the parliamentary candidate for the Green Party of England and Wales in the constituency Oxford West and Abingdon.

In Trinity Term 2007, I took a course called Introductory Certificate in Management. I recognized that there were three parts in what was introduced in the course:

1. the questions asked and issues raised (“How to get things to happen”), or, in academic speech, “problematizing” (so far so good);
2. the mechanisms proposed (not so convincing); and
3. the evidence supporting the mechanisms proposed (not so sure).

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Happy Fourth of July to Stateside readers.

I am glad that Alan Johnston is now released. I hope and pray that Íngrid Betancourt will also be freed soon.

Tony Blair has recently stepped down as the Prime Minister of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government. There is rumour that he might convert to Catholicism from the Church of England. Anyway, now he will become the envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East. In this connection, it will be instructive to read the end-of-mission report of a former envoy, Álvaro de Soto (thanks to Professor Hugh Robert MacMillan for this).

Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, is a son of the Manse in the Church of Scotland. Today, at Prime Minister’s Questions, he stated that he would like to “be in a position finance interfaith groups in every community” around here. (Official reports in the Hansard will be digested tomorrow.)

Isaiah House Music Club
The LA Times reports that some of the kids from the Orange County Catholic Worker sang at Carnegie Hall!

Another friend attacked over gay rights
You’ll remember that back in December 2006, my friend Sarah Loy was reportedly assaulted at a pro/anti gay marriage event in Worcester. Earlier this week, Kaihsu’s friend Peter Tatchell was attacked at a gay rights event in Moscow. BBC:

Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell and singer Richard Fairbrass have expressed their shock after being punched by anti-homosexual protesters in Moscow.

Both men were hit on the head during a gay rights march on Sunday. Protesters attacked with kicks, punches and eggs.

Anne Marie Kaune profile
Nice article in Worcester Business Journal about the sometime Catholic Worker, healer of the poor, and St. Peter’s parishioner.

New Snow Ghost book: Many Wisdom
Download it from the Archive or buy it at HBML.

Snow Ghost Community Show #2: Dracula

 

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“Truro. It was a name as lonely as the edge of the sea.” – Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain

This weekend I visited Truro and St Austell in Cornwall. I went to Evensong on Saturday (Augustine of Canterbury) and Eucharist on Whitsunday (Bede and John Calvin) at Truro Cathedral.

I spent a disproportionate amount of time at the bookshops, and found that my friend Michael Everson and his friend Nicholas Williams have been parties in the debate about modern Cornish-language orthography. I found an article “Worship in the Cornish Language” by Brian Coombes in the May 2007 issue (number 128) of An Baner Kernewek (The Cornish Banner, said to be erstwhile the party organ of the Cornish Nationalist Party; ISSN 0306-8079):

In 1986, following the research of Dr Ken George, the Cornish Language Board adopted a “phonemic” spelling system for Unified Cornish – seeking to provide closer links between pronunciation and spelling. This was adopted, but a substantial number remained using the 1928 “Unified” system. The situation has been complicated by two further variants. Dr Nicholas Williams of Dublin has modified Unified Cornish, (“Revised”) less radically, partly by adopting the late Medieval period as standard [...]

In 1996, the Bishop’s Group held a one-day conference in St Austell about the rendering of Biblical names, place and personal. From this grew the idea of translation from the original languages and the aim of completing the New Testament by the centernary of Jenner’s “Handbook” in 2004. The team had been ably led by Keith Syed of Cheltenham, and in the New Testament six translators were involved, the books being published in part between 1999 and 2004. It is Common (“Kemmyn”) Cornish, though Unified versions are available for services and the Cornish Language Board aims to produce Unified versions when any corrections needed are apparent. The full New Testament [ISBN 1-902917-33-2] was launched at Bodmin Parish Church in August 2004 and a specially bound copy was presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury [Rowan Williams] (himself a native Welsh speaker and member of the Welsh Gorsedd) at a service in Truro Cathedral in November that year. As well as the New Testament, some books of the Old Testament have also appeared.

In the meantime, in 2002, Nicholas Williams of Dublin brought out his own one-volume New Testament from the Greek [ISBN 1-953975-4-7; typeset by Everson]. However, this was in his “Revised” version of Unified Cornish, which may limit its utility – though it is good to have two version from the Greek as well as “secondary” translations from other languages.

(For balance, I should mention that my party, the Green Party of England and Wales, is a partner with Mebyon Kernow, the other Cornish party: “Cornish, green, left-of-centre, and decentralist”.)

This morning Grace Ross announced she’ll be running for an At-Large seat on Worcester’s City Council.

Ms. Ross is best known as the Green-Rainbow Party candidate in the 2006 Massachusetts governor’s race. She lives in Worcester’s Piedmont neighborhood.