Transition Culture

Mmmmm….

Hi, nice blog. A friend lent me the Sigur Ros dvd last week and I may catch them at the Electric Picnic. We will be there demonstrating lime based finishes/plasters in the new green craft area.
Have a look at http://www.hemplime.blogspot.com/ for an Irish based blog about natural building , hemp, lime, cob etc. I bet its right up your street !

Nice one Rob. I love that track. Looking forward to catching them at the Electric Picnic where Transition Town Kinsale will be doing workshops in the Body and Soul area. Enjoy the break.

As an alternative take on the current situation, try this…

http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/3427

Knives out in the Labour cabinet mask a crisis of bourgeois rule

JUST three members of the Labour cabinet put out a statement on Saturday supporting their leader Gordon Brown.

Chancellor Darling, deputy leader Harman and skills secretary Denham said that the Prime Minister was the only one who ‘has a profound understanding of what this country needs.’

These three musketeers were responding to the challenge to Brown issued by Foreign Secretary Miliband, who had nothing new to offer except to ‘start afresh’ meaning that there must be more of the discredited Blair privatisation and smashing of the Welfare State/NHS policies, that Brown is proceeding with anyway.

A cabal of previously discredited Blairite ministers, from Byers to Milburn and Charles Clarke, have meanwhile rushed to join the fray.

They have been throwing fuel onto the flames arguing that the Labour Party must be ‘refreshed’ by dumping Brown, and if they cannot have Blair back, they must have the nearest clone there is to the early Blair in the cabinet for Premier, namely Miliband

Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday has published a ‘secret memo’ in which former PM Tony Blair accused Brown of playing into Tory leader Cameron’s hands with a ‘lamentable’ and ‘vacuous’ performance as prime minister.

What is being played out is the death agony of the Labour Party, with its different factions thrashing around wildly in the tsunami of a massive inflation of oil, gas, electricity and food prices caused by the deepening and worldwide death agony of the capitalist system.

It is this world crisis of capitalism that has brought the Labour Party to its knees.

After all, it was Blair-Brown that encouraged the entire nation to get into massive debt in order to help what was left of the British capitalist economy after the ravages of Thatcher and Major.

It was after all, Brown-Blair who boasted that the crisis of capitalism had been resolved and that there would never again be another boom to bust.

Brown was so convinced of this stupidity that he sold half of the gold reserves for a pittance, for paper currencies that are all now diving downwards.

No wonder, that with capitalism being overwhelmed by the debt crisis and a mountain of inflation, the working class has lost all confidence in the Labour Party.

The working class knows that it, not the bankers and the bosses, is going to be made to pay for the crisis, so why should it vote for and support the party that is now giving the bankers billions while it is beating the life out of the working class and the middle class.

In fact, it is gearing up to fight this party and this government and to remove it, spurred on by massive 35 per cent increases in energy and food prices.

The fact is that whatever faction of the Labour Party or the Tory party gains control of the government, it will have to put value back into the capitalist system in the only way that this can be done, by waging new wars to recover all of the raw material resources of the planet that have been taken out of their control, and by waging the class war against the working class at home.

They have to drive the working class back to where it came from!

This is why there is no parliamentary solution to this crisis.

The ruling class will have to mobilise all of its forces. This will most likely be begun by Brown when he returns, purging his cabinet and bringing into it Tories and Liberals who will call for national unity to save the nation and for massive wage and benefit cuts.

In 1931 Ramsay MacDonald crossed the floor of the House of Commons to form a national government in a situation where the crisis of British capitalism was not as extreme as it is today.

This time it may well be Tories and Liberals who do the crossing.

For the working class, the situation is clear. It must get rid of its reformist trade union leaders in the course of organising a general strike that will bring the Brown government down and bring in a workers government that will bring in socialism.

Have a good holiday y’all… …while it lasts.

Hi Rob,
A group of practicioners would like to spread the transition towns idea in Belgium. We’d love to do a learning journey to the UK. How can we make contact?
Erik Mathijs
(professor in natural resource economics at the Catholic University of Leuven)

Dear Rob,
nice blog, brillant idea and you catch attention on my blog Bioterra in return.
Hope you have a nice holidays.
Pls visit my postage on this issues of transition.
Many thks for your work.
See you
Paz*Peace