Well I didn't get very far with the "political" post, so I'll save it for another time. My constant travel continues, and I'm taking a short pit-stop in Manchester, before heading for the Netherlands for a week, and then crossing Central Europe and the Balkans to get to Greece.

I was in Dublin for the first Inter-Isles Young Greens get-together, which was great fun. We managed to achieve the perfect balance between socialising and serious stuff. Highlights included going on my first Pride march, and developing a taste for Guinness. The next event is in Edinburgh, later in the year, so I'm looking forward to that.

While I was in Ireland, I managed to squeeze in a trip over to Co. Galway to visit family. Rural west of Ireland is quite a contrast to Dublin, shown most clearly in the difference between a pub in Cong with DJ Eamo (bored looking man in the corner with a laptop plugged into the speakers), and pretty much any pub we went to in the capital.

Anyway, 'twas all fun, as, hopefully, the rest of Europe will be.

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Tags: travel, dublin, green

Woohoo! My exams are over. I'm officially still in term time, but in reality I'm on holiday until September. Not that its all going to be resting. I have quite a lot of projects on the go at the moment, and I should probably make a start on my dissertation over the summer.

I spent the weekend in Berlin, at the Federation of Young European Greens General Assembly. It was very interesting. At quite a few points, I was totally lost in the European variant of English that seems to have developed (manifestation is used to mean demo, odd), and a couple of times, I'm shamed to admit, I wasn't completely sure what I was voting for. I didn't get much chance to do touristy things, but I did see the Tiergarten and travel around Berlin on the U-Bahn and S-Bahn a little bit. I've also managed to become the subject of gossip among the DWARS delegation and one of the new executive committee members. Maybe I'll go into that in another post though.

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Tags: FYEG, berlin, green

I’m going to put forward a rather unorthodox view for a Green Party member: that the party should willingly co-operate and communicate with other political parties and with companies. I say this is unorthodox because, from my experience, it seems as if most party members are very much of the opinion that the Greens are the alternative to normal politics, and that somehow by co-operating and communicating in a meaningful manner with other parties, we are losing something of our otherness. I don’t know how much this is just something that occurs in the UK, and I could of course, be totally wrong, but I was inspired to write this post by another post
on a blog written by a friend of mine. Read More...

Tags: green, green Party, politics

Is it just me, or was there an easing of the pressure to make environmental issues take the fore in 2007? 2006 saw the Stern Report; a mass re-branding of organic and fair trade products; and what can only be described as green issues becoming adopted in the mainstream. 2007 didn’t really seem to hold any setbacks for green issues (except the disappointing Scottish general election result), but it didn’t really seem to have many leaps forward either. Read More...

Tags: green, environmentalism, fairtrade, ethical consumerism

Every year, 20,000 or so hippies congregate on top of the Mendip Hills in Somerset. It is called the Big Green Gathering. I just got back from this year's Gathering, so I thought I would do a joint blog and photo posting.

The idea of the festival is to let people learn about green lifestyles, and swap ideas or bring important things to peoples attention. There's also a lot of great music. One of the best experiences the festival offers is just to be able to know that you are not alone in caring about the environment. And with twenty thousand people in just a few fields, you pretty quickly get to see the full green spectrum! Among stall-holders this year were "Hunt Saboteurs", the Simultaneous Policy people, and the Squatters Rights group who, rather amusingly, put up posters for a forum titled "Beyond Squatting" on the doors to every portaloo on site!

I have to mention the Simultaneous Policy people because their idea is just so unusual that I was surprised to see them back at this years festival. The gist of the idea is that nation-states can make decisions that could affect matters such as trade and investment more easily if they all make the decision at the same time. It removes the disadvantage in being an early adopter and possibly losing the trade or investment to another state which has not implemented the idea. To be perfectly honest, while it may sound like a good idea, I think that it is just really incredibly idealistic and naive to think that this could ever work in the current international community. Anyway, they seem like nice people with good intentions.

One of the musical highlights of the festival was Martha Tilston's performance. I don't think that she is particularly well known outside the realm of folk music, but she is an absolutely amazing artist. Because most of the audience got to the venue before she probably even left her tent, she had to tune instruments and warm up in front of everyone, but I think that just added to the experience. At the end, she managed to sneak off stage and out of the tent, leaving everyone in the audience still singing her last song!

Tags: green, bgg, festival