Campaigning in full swing!

Despite the recent silence from this blog, never fear - campaigning to re-elect Jean Lambert MEP is in full swing! In the coming month or two, expect to see lots of ways to get involved - including the ability to donate online to the campaign, to volunteer to help, and to spread the word (both virtually and offline) about London's most progressive MEP.

If you want to do something right now, why not contact your local Green Party and offer your help with distributing the winter edition of London Green News? We need to get thousands of copies through letterboxes in the next few weeks - especially since the front page is dedicated to highlighting Jean's work on the Green New Deal.

Also, if you are on Facebook - why not become one of Jean's supporters, and get your friends to do the same? Just visit Jean's page and join us!

Jean Re-selected

Jean has been re-selected overwhelmingly as London Green Party's first preference candidate for the European elections in 2009. Second on the list is Lewisham Councillor Ute Michel, third is London Policy Co-ordinator Shahrar Ali and fourth is the party's International Co-ordinator Joseph Healey. Full results depend on whether London is confirmed with 8 or 9 seats in the Parliament from 2009.

Thanks to everyone who worked to re-select Jean.

Goodbye and good riddance to far-right group in Euro Parliament

The anti-immigrant, far-right 'Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty' political group in the European Parliament collapsed today following internal fighting over comments made by an Italian member about Romanians and criminality. The self-removal of five members from the Greater Romanian Party means that the far-right grouping no longer has the 20 Euro-MPs from at least 6 member states needed for a formal group.

Jean says:

"Hooray! The very existence of this group in the European Parliament, while it may have represented some citizen's views, was a blot on democracy.

"It came into being with the agreement of just one UK MEP, Ashley Mote*, who was also the final member necessary to meet the Parliament's rules. It claimed to stand for family and European Christian values, but its break-up, as a result of prejudice against national and minority groups, shows it stood for nothing of the kind. I hope that there will be no support for such groups, which preach bigotry and hatred, in the next European elections in 2009."

*Ashley Mote is now serving a prison sentence for benefit fraud.

Jean loves the NHS

Jean voiced her support today's “I Love NHS” demonstration as thousands of people marched through Westminster against the financial cuts and creeping privatisation of the NHS which will have a threaten good patient care. Jean says,

“We should treasure the fact that our NHS is universally accessible and must be vigilant about the threat from the Government to privatise. I do not believe that handing over the provision of services to private providers is in the best interests of the NHS or the people who rely on it.”

“Whilst we have an enviable health service there is much that can be done to improve it. The NHS performs poorly in comparison to other European countries on issues such as MRSA infection rates and waiting times. We needto invest more to ensure that all support staff receive appropriate trainingand are paid at least the living wage, currently £7.20 per hour in London.If we fail essential staff like cleaners we inevitably fail patients.”

Jean Lambert video

An excellent letter in today's Guardian from Jean.

The government's research highlights the valuable contribution that migrants have made to our economy recently. However, the social problems encountered in some areas point to the fact that we were woefully unprepared for their arrival. Many local authorities believed the migrants would gravitate towards already ethnically diverse regions, not settle in rural areas where they had little prior experience of integrating people from different cultures.

There has been a lack of information available in different languages about finding work and accommodation, and accessing social security, education and healthcare. It is little wonder then that many migrants have fallen prey to unscrupulous gangmasters and landlords. Given the government's tendency to think of migrants purely as economic units, we should be thankful to those authorities and organisations that have helped to ease the tensions and made the transition to life in Britain easier than it would otherwise have been.

Jean Lambert MEP Green MEP for London

"Star Wars": The Green MEP Strikes Back

She might be London's Green MEP, but we're happy to share her with other parts of the UK now and again. Jean took part in a demo at Menwith Hill, a United States spy base in Yorkshire, this weekend to protest against its involvement in the "Star Wars" missile system.

The demo, organised by the Campaign for Accountability of American Bases (CAAB), took place at the Menwith Hill communications centre outside Harrogate: where military, economic and political information is gathered and fed back to the US Government.

On 25th July the UK Government announced that it had given permission for Menwith Hill, the largest electronic monitoring station in the world outside America, to be used in the American Missile Defence System.

The site is run by the US National Security Agency (NSA), which monitors the world's communication for US intelligence, and employs around 1,800 US civilians and servicemen to analyse communications, mainly from Europe, Russia and the Middle East. All telecommunications traffic to and from Europe and passing through Britain is intercepted at the base: including private telephone calls, faxes, emails and other communications. Much of this information is collected from spy satellites, which is captured at the site by dishes contained in large white 'golf-balls' or radomes. The data is then processed and relayed back to the United States automatically.

Jean says:
"The Government approved the Menwith Hill site for missile defence without any parliamentary debate; undermining the democratic process in this country and revealing that they are not prepared to discuss the implications of this decision."

"In allowing the US to use the base, our Government is making our country more vulnerable to attack. Any US adversary could now target Britain in order to destroy the effectiveness of the missile defence system."

"Our long-term security requires international conflict resolution and a commitment to averting potentially disastrous environmental problems like climate change. On the contrary, this missile defence system simply intensifies divisions between nations."