Author Archives: Natalie Bennett

Some enforcement at last?

November 18, 2007 – 12:35 pm

On a recent visit to a Camden council meeting (yes, I do have all of the fun), I did learn that there might, finally, be some plans to enforce the protection for cyclists provided by advanced stop lines.

In the “London Local Authorities and Transport for London Bill, Third Bill for Deposit in November 2007” is a proposal (clauses 25 to 27) to “create a civil offence for unauthorised vehicles blocking or driving into a cycle advance stop area and the cycle lanes that feed them”.

The whole thing is written in dense legalese, but as I understand it the idea is that while “crossing the stop line” (for cars) is now a criminal offence, subject to fines and penalty points, this will retain the possibility of criminal enforcement, while also allowing council parking officers (and cameras?) to take action for the offence.

Don’t really care about the details, but it would be nice is drivers actually got the idea what that green patch with bicycles painted on it means.

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Appeal for aid for a playwright

November 16, 2007 – 11:16 pm

… John Fletcher – over on My London Your London. Seems he’s looking for a respectable home after a slightly disreputable career.

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Australia – land of polluters

November 16, 2007 – 11:15 pm

Somehow I’m not surprised that Australians have come out, on one measure, as the among the world’s worst polluters:

The survey of 50,000 power stations worldwide shows the two biggest producers of CO2 in Australia are in NSW – the Bayswater station at Muswellbrook and Eraring near Lake Macquarie, which each produce 18.325 million tonnes of CO2 a year.
Their level of CO2 to power output is comparable to many of the power stations in China often criticised for being dirty plants.
The survey shows Australians each produce more than 10 tonnes of CO2 emissions for every person just through generating power, compared to nine tonnes for each American and two tonnes for each Chinese.

I’m quite often asked, particularly by taxi drivers, in tones of astonishment, why I would move from Australia to Britain? They are reflecting in general terms the fact that Australia has, since I left a dozen or so years ago, had an almost uninterrupted period of economic growth and materialist expansion.
Well, with the drought stretching on and on, and signs that the El Nino effect is growing in severity with climate change, it is clear that there is at least some form of rough justice in the world – and no there’s no way I’d choose to live in the extremely materialistic culture that has developed, and is reflected in these figures.

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A history of curtains and a question of shutters

November 14, 2007 – 9:20 pm

So many things in life we take for granted, such as the humble curtain, yet of course they’ve been unknown for most of history, rudimentary shutters being far cheaper, more durable and practical, and cloth far too expensive for all but essential use in clothing and bedding.

In Maureen Waller’s 1700: Scenes from London Life, I read that they were a common object of theft in her period, with thieves dislodging them with a grappling hook and dragging them out through the window – aiuded by the arrival in the 1670s of divided curtains – previously a single curtain had been pulled back to the side.

I’ve been pondering these particularly since I’ve been considering doing without them myself – not being a fan of such dust-collecting items, and having now windows not very suited to blinds. I’m considering internal shutters, but haven’t been able to find how good an insulators they are – presumably they’d be as good as heavy curtains? (These are for east-facing big windows in a flat in a brick structure with a big thermal mass.)

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Britblog Roundup No 143 (The minimalist edition)

November 13, 2007 – 1:49 am

You might think that I’ve suddenly gone all postmodern and designerish, but no, I just got the gig at the last minute very late in the day (or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it).

So I won’t be able to do all of the nominations below justice – do follow the links and make your own judgements.

But I will point you to one post for the week that you absolutely must read – and it is only a paragraph, so it won’t take long: on Olly’s Onions find out how the CIA has exhausted its torture budget.

And if you’re feeling your blog reading is inadequately rewarding in the material sense, then you might want to visit Liberal England, where Jonathan Calder has have DVDs of Taking Liberties togive away.

Now the two posts I talk about on the Radio Five Roundup — I’ll add a direct link when it is up — also deserve a special plug.

First up on The Debatable Land, a Scottish journalist living in Washington (not perhaps the obvious person for the subject) considers Shane Warne versus Muttiah Muralitharan and concludes only one is great. (And, no, I don’t know why I choose to make myself pronounce that on national radio.)

Second, Alice in Wonderland concludes that
farting fish are good news. (And remember, as Chris Vallance says, we aren’t actually recommending that you try the treatments suggested here at home.*)

Also on my must-read list is Craig Murray’s take on London’s white elephant in waiting; Is Bugs Bunny a feminist? as Cardiff’s Mind the Gap returns with a new site; The Daily (Maybe) comments on the “great new plan for education”, which involves sacking teachers en masse; and Miss Prism explains the genetic code for clueless journalists of her acquaintance.

Other nominations (I’d be extolling the virtues of many more of these were it not nearly 2am):

And finally, I reckon that for late-night labours I’m entitled to link to one of my own: over on My London Your London I’m visiting the “Barbican sex exhibition”, and finding that if there’s one link across time and culture, it seems that most of the time for most women sex has been more about work than pleasure.

So that’s it for this shortened edition: I know that preparations are already in hand for a bumper edition on Clairwilnext week to make up for it, so do send your nominations in to the usual address: britblog AT gmail DOT com.

*Warning: prepared on the basis of amateur legal advice….

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Life versus work – a question of balance

November 12, 2007 – 7:39 pm

A piece in the Sunday Times by Minette Marrin about flexible work for mothers, and the reaction of non-parent co-workers goes over some old ground, and draws a predictable range of angry responses. She writes:

“In my own experience, women social workers and women doctors who work flexibly become much less satisfactory to me as a customer; they must be even more unsatisfactory to their employers….”

Except of course those “customers” may also be parents, or have other needs for flexibility in their own lives.
And she concludes:

“However good it sounds in theory, in the nasty detail of practice, flexible working all too often imposes a burden on businesses, on standards, on services, on clients and on the economy.”

Or, if you turn that around, “business”, “the economy” are putting burden on people’s lives.

So what is the economy for? Is it some great monster to feed itself, or is it there to serve its community? What if everyone – not just parents – had the option of flexible working, if it were encouraged even?

Sure we might have a smaller economy – but in this rushed world, it would be a time-richer society.

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