On Saturday after I had finished running Saturday detention at school I went over to see the Rainbow Warrior – Greenpeace’s famous ship in Docklands. 

As a member of Greenpeace I had an email last month inviting me to visit the ship and take a tour.  The Rainbow Warrior is moored in Docklands, London on its way to Copenhagen where it will take part in campaigning at theCopenhagen summit next in December.

It was amazing to learn about life on the ship and hear firsthand from experienced campaigners the lengths that Japanese whalers will go to, to meet their quota and the efforts Greenpeace activists go to, to protect the whales.  Having met a lot of staunchly pro-whaling Japanese people when I lived and worked in Osaka and now having met some very determined Greenpeace activists I can imagine it really must be quite a tense experience.

While I was there I signed up for the Greenpeace Airplot campaign to be one of thousands of beneficial owners of a strip of land Greenpeace has purchased that will be needed by developers to build the third runway at Heathrow.  While this may not actually stop the runway being built, it will significantly complicate and delay the process.  More information can be found at http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/whats-your-plot-stop-third-runway-20091022 

Next time the Rainbow Warrior is in town I recommend a visit to anyone interested in the work of Greenpeace!

I have relatives visiting from Taiwan this month and last, studying hard at a local English language school.  They have been doing a lot of sightseeing which has been good fun, but as usual when people visit from abroad questions are raised about our imperial past which we seem to have forgotten in the UK.

The key question is should we return all the historical artefacts in the British and other museums that we didn’t purchase or receive as gifts?   For me the answer is an emphatic yes and until we do return these items we will struggle to rid ourselves of our reputation as imperial power abroad. This reputation hinders us in international negotiations and in efforts to increase the spread of democracy abroad.  

For people from Taiwan this as an especially emotive issue as they have a very large number of artefacts from China in their National Palace Museum.  There is a difference though, as these treasures were taken to protect them from destruction at the hands of communists keen to rid China of icons of inequality.  As over 10 percent of the Taiwanese citizens are from mainland China, it could be argued they were taking the treasures with them as they left. 

I don’t want to be seen as anti-patriotic, but it is worth noting that a significant proportion of the world’s population appears to see us in an imperial light, rightly or wrongly.  I certainly support our national teams in sport and where decisions have been made to send our troops abroad I wish them every success and a swift return home with minimum casualties on all sides.  However, if we are to be able to use soft political power abroad to influence the development of the world, rather like the Scandinavian nations are able to do at present, we still need to overcome our past.

Greenpeace as ever at the forefront in the flight against the destruction of our environment are on their way to the arctic on their ship the Arctic Sunrise to monitor the progress of global warming on the arctic. They will gather evidence to submit at the next global meeting of world leaders on climate change in Copenhagen at the end of the year. To see their progress in video, photos see links at the end of this post.

To see pictures that were declassified recently by the US showing how dramatic the melting of ice caps has been see this link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jul/26/climate-change-obama-administration 

With even more possibilities to recycle and travel by bicycle in Woking, we can all do our bit everyday. 

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/video-arctic-sunrise-expedition-polar-north-20090723?utm_source=ebulletin20090724&utm_medium=email&utm_term=arcticsunrise&utm_campaign=climate 

 http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/melting-20090715?utm_source=ebulletin20090724&utm_medium=email&utm_term=arcticsunrise&utm_campaign=climate 

Today (Friday 19th June) is Aung San Suu Kyi’s 64th Birthday and as suggested in my previous post, Woking Borough Council is flying its flag at half mast.  For further details please see http://www.woking.gov.uk/news?item=00004A3B55A4.C0A801BA.00002BB9.0033

On Friday 19^th June it is the 64^th Birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi.  She has remained under house arrest for of 13 years following the refusal of the Burmese military to accept the victory of the National League for Democracy in the 1990 general election.  She is now facing a futher 3 – 5 years detention for having been visited (against her own wishes).  Aun San Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and Liberal Prize for Freedom winner 1995.  Her continued imprisonment is an affront to democracy and in my opinion it is a crime against humanity for a military to prevent a democratically elected government to take power.  I have posted a message to Aun San Suu Kyi on the website 64forsuu.com and urge others to do the same. 

To make sure everyone in Woking is aware of this issue I have asked for the Woking flag to be flown at half mast on Friday 19^th June, I hope it will be possible for this to happen.  To see what I wrote or to post yourself seehttp://www.64forsuu.org/word.php?wid=7441 or http://64forsuu.com/

The cost of replacing trident is estimated at between £20bn and £30bn or 3% of the annual defence budget.  Is the cost really worth it? Even in the best of times for the treasury there were still cuts requiring local hospitals to be closed, people not given medication as it was too expensive and British troops not having the right equipment for their safety in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Can we still afford a deterrent that many of us would never want to see used?   

Would we not be better off spending the money on a conventional military and British made conventional military technology, which would provide jobs and feed back into the British economy? 

It is often hinted that the UK is only a world power because of nuclear weapons and we must keep them to remain a world power.  Would it not be far cheaper to fully engage with the European Union, seeking democratic reforms of its institutions and to be a world power as a member of the EU?    

I am not advocating that we unilaterally disarm tomorrow, rather that we work, as President Obama recently suggested, towards a zero point, where there are no nuclear weapons, if we were to do that we really would be wasting an awful lot of money on a replacement for trident, that we would then have to spend an awful lot of money to decommission safely.  Greenpeace suggests that it may even be illegal to replace our nuclear deterrent http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/peace/trident-replacement-may-be-illegal 

Even if the biggest threat from abroad ceases to be terrorism, it is not likely that another world power will launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against another.  Conventional warfare surrounding territory is still likely to dominate future conflicts.  If we do not invest in our conventional military, countries such as

China will have far more power when they use their conventional military than we can begin to compensate for with a weapon we wouldn’t even use, even if they didn’t have their own nuclear weapons. If the EU is to play a leading role in the effort to dissuade other nations from developing nuclear weapons, it would be better to be seen following our own advice and seeking to disarm rather than to be spending money on newer systems. We should join President Obama in efforts to work towards a world in which there are no nuclear weapons and a UK where our tax is spent prudently and efficiently on our defence.

I am disappointed with the response that Woking Borough Council has received from the government in reply to the letters sent belatedly in December. While I accept that the EU is making efforts and has recently extended the scale of sanctions, it is not enough. The government has missed an opportunity to allow local people to take grass roots action for human rights through their local council, the government is offering excuses not solutions. I think I will ask Sharon Bowles MEP to take action if the government is not willing to do anything, especially if the government is hiding behind EU obligations. In a related development Cllr Diana Smith asked Surrey County Council if their pension fund was ethically invested, they said no, but that they don’t have direct investment in Zimbabwe. The executive member responsible was not able to say why they didn’t have an ethical policy and is going to investigate. Diana will continue to chase.

The sad lack of pro-activity and enthusiasm for this issue from some tiers of government is perhaps why people are losing faith in the political process. 

To see the letters that have been sent by the council and responses received as well as the original motion, please see the following page: http://ollywells.mycouncillor.org.uk/woking-borough-council-motion-for-zimbabwe/

At the last full council meeting I asked a question of the council to find out if there had been any replies to the letters sent regarding

Zimbabwe.  The shocking reply was that the letters had not been sent.  Below is a copy of the Press release we sent out on Monday highlighting this very disappointing failure.

 Council forgets to write letter to Prime Minister for 19 weeks!

On July 24^th 2008 Councillors of both parties unanimously voted to support a Liberal Democrat notice of motion in support of the people of

Zimbabwe.

Councillors instructed the Chief Executive of the council to write to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government asking for powers to not conduct business with businesses supporting the Mugabe regime.The notice of motion also called for the Chief Executive to write to the Surrey County Council pension fund encouraging it to adopt ethical investment policy.Unfortunately the council forgot to write the letters. This was only discovered when Knaphill Liberal Democrat Cllr Olly Wells asked what replies had been received.The situation in

Zimbabwe was dire in July, and it is worse now.

Between July and December hundreds of Zimbabweans have been made homeless, countless are suffering from intolerable economic conditions and now widespread cholera continues the relentless suffering of the people of

Zimbabwe. Said Cllr Wells “This is something Woking councillors were not prepared to tolerate and wanted to do something about, however small, and it is shocking that the council ignored what was a cross party instruction.”The chief executive has apologised to councillors for forgetting to write the letters, which have now been written, but what about the people of

Zimbabwe who were forgotten?Robert Mugabe has a friend in bureaucratic failure and forgetfulness in

Woking, said Cllr Wells”This situation begs the questions, what else has Woking Borough Council forgotten to do?

On Thursday 24th July Woking Council took the first steps by a local council, led by the opposition liberal democrat group, but with cross party support, against the despicable human rights abuses perpetrated by the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.  It is great that the local MDC group turned out in force to support the motion.

It is very difficult for a local council to take action on the international stage.  For a number of reasons it was not legally possible to seek to restrict trade that supported the Mugabe regime as had originally been proposed in Cllr Denzil Coulson’s motion on 10th July.  The amended motion passed on Thursday 24th July, goes as far as a council can to express the concern of the people of Woking at the atrocities in Zimbabwe, at the same time taking what little action we are empowered to take.  The key thrust of this is the request to Surrey County Council’s pension fund holders to seek an ethical investment policy.  If this is to be successful, pressure will need to be sought not only from Woking, but other parts of Surrey too.Woking Liberal Democrats hope that with the help of other Liberal Democrat groups across the UK this motion or others of a similar form will be passed by other councils, creating a grass roots effort in support of the people of Zimbabwe.  As Liberal Democrat group leader Cllr Ian Johnson said ‘Mugabe often accuses Great Britain of imperialist intentions, this shows that it is the ordinary people of Woking who care about the terrible situation in Zimbabwe”.

The motion passed reads as follows:

This Council resolves to:

i) condemn in the strongest terms the human rights and other abuses perpetrated by or in association with the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe;

ii) express its recognition, support and respect for the human rights of individuals and to actively promote human rights;

iii) ask the Chief Executive to write to the Trustees of the Surrey County Council Pension Fund and encourage their adoption of an ethical investment policy, so far as is consistent with proper financial stewardship and securing the best returns for its beneficiaries.\

iv) write an open letter to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Rt Hon. Hazel Blears MP, requesting enablement through statutory instrument to permmit a preference for doing business with companies that have no involvement with the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.

A few weeks back, I went to the cinema in Taiwan, while I was over there visiting family and a link school for Westminster Academy.  I was amazed that at the end of the film, everyone took their litter with them and on the way out put all of it into different recycling bins ready for recycling.  There were staff members there to instruct people on the separation process, but they didn’t really need to be there.  I saw the same thing at the school I visited, at the end of lunch students separated their waste from lunch into lots of different bins.  Taiwan seems to be aiming for 100% recycling or zero waste.  I think Woking has to rise to the challenge and do the same.  The recycling bins in the cinema were huge, wheelie bin size, but think how much popcorn, plastic and paper was recycled.

I have raised the issue to some degree with Ray Morgan the Chief Executive of Woking Borough Council and it has been received well.  So hopefully residents of Woking will be able to start recycling even more aiming for less waste going to landfill and hopefully wasting less too.

I have been thinking about how I should speak up on behalf of the residents of Knaphill regarding international issues that affect their daily lives either economically or morally.

 As a local representative I was initially reluctant to ask the council to speak out internationally.  I am beginning to feel my way as a councillor and think that while it isn’t necessarily correct to ask Woking Council to call on national and international bodies to take certain action, it is possible to call for local action that if repeated on a national scale would have dramatic impact.  For example, I don’t think I can call on Woking to condemn the Burmese government for its treatment of the Karen people or the Chinese government for the treatment of many minority groups in China. I do think, however, that it is necessary for Woking to consider only purchase goods from countries that treat their people fairly where possible. Although this may harm workers in these countries in the short run and be of little significance if only Woking did it.  A start has to be made somewhere in the hope that it could become a bottom up / grass roots movement for change with international impact.