Here in the United States, debate over whether to grant the President Fast Track authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership is currently causing much inner-party strife, and fortunately, it has been an uphill battle for TPP advocates – so far.

But President Barack Obama won an important procedural vote in Congress yesterday, when a handful of House Democrats joined with pro-trade House Republicans to advance his ‘free trade’ agenda in a 217-212 vote.

That has now cleared the way for a final vote in Congress today, Friday, giving campaigners just a few short hours in which to pressure their representatives for a ‘no’ vote – in the full knowledge that corporate lobbyists are hard at work practising their dark arts in the opposing direction.

The fact that President Obama has teamed up with the Republican establishment for this massive trade deal shows how un-socialist he really is – and how Republican’s aren’t really opposed to executive power, as long as it is in support of their policies.

Obviously, controversy over the TPP has made it a tough sell for the President, one that liberals are not buying. The TPP is full of corporate handouts, most notoriously for the pharmaceutical industry, which will be granted patent term extensions, and strengthen monopoly power on important medicines around the world, making them unaffordable in many areas. It will also strengthen intellectual property laws in other industries, specifically in the digital sphere.

Investment before health, environment, democracy

The most notorious part of the TPP, however, is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provision, which Elizabeth Warren wrote about a few months back in the Washington Post, saying:

“ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge US laws – and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers – without ever stepping foot in a US court.”

A scary thought indeed, but is it true? Well, it depends who you ask. If, for example, you were to ask the Obama administration, they would vehemently deny that the ISDS could challenge US laws – and shortly after the Warren editorial, they did just this, with a Q&A blog for the ISDS.

“It is an often repeated, but inaccurate, claim that ISDS gives companies the right to weaken labor or environmental standards, for example, suggesting that a trade agreement could result in the United States having to lower its minimum wage. The reality is that ISDS does not and cannot require countries to change any law or regulation”, wrote Director of National Economic Council and economic advisor to the president, Jeffrey Zients.

So, who is correct? Both, actually; but Warren is much more intellectually honest. While the ISDS cannot actually “require countries to change any law or regulation”, it can and has been used by corporations as a bargaining tool, pushing sovereign governments to back down on regulations, or fork out taxpayer money in arbitration, and possibly millions in damages.

ISDS is no ‘dead letter’ – it’s real, it’s armed, and it’s dangerous

The ISDS is barely a new instrument; it has been around since first being introduced in 1959, in a trade deal between Germany and Pakistan, but has become an increasingly popular mechanism of international law since the nineties. The original intent of the ISDS was to increase foreign investment in countries where business was risky, by providing a bit of security for investors.

While the ISDS has been included in many trade deals, it was barely used before the nineties. This changed towards the end of the century, and its use rapidly increased during the 2000s, going from just a few cases filed in the early nineties, to nearly sixty annual cases filed by 2012.

Basically, big corporations discovered how valuable the ISDS could be when dealing with foreign governments who were a bit too ambitious in the regulatory domain. In many cases, the lawsuit is brought after a government regulates an industry for environmental or health reasons.

This is currently happening in Australia, where tobacco company Phillip Morris is suing the government after they passed a law requiring cigarettes to be ‘plain-packaged’ without branding. This has been shown to reduce smoking, especially in youth, and so Phillip Morris is suing for ‘expropriation’, or lost profit.

The United States has many trade agreements with the ISDS provision, most notably in NAFTA. In once case, the extraction company, Lone Pine, has sued the Canadian government after they filed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for environmental reasons.

A valuable ‘bullying tool’ for corporate heavyweights

In one notable case the US-based Renco Group, owned by billionaire Ira Rennert, used the ISDS provision to bully the Peruvian government after they shut down a metal smelter in the town of La Oroya – one of the most polluted towns in the world – when the company delayed environmental improvements. The Renco Group pressured the Peruvian government into restarting the zinc smelting operations in 2012.

So, while the ISDS cannot literally overturn a regulation or law, it can be used to bully a country’s government into doing so. Of course, the White House has said that it will be different under the TPP. In the same blog, Zients writes:

“ISDS has come under criticism because of some legitimate complaints about poorly written agreements. The US shares some of those concerns, and agrees with the need for new, higher standards, stronger safeguards and better transparency provisions. Through TPP and other agreements, that is exactly what we are putting in place.”

At the time, we had to take his word, with the great secrecy surrounding the TPP; but today, we know a bit more, thanks to Wikileaks, who released the TPP Investing chapter last March, dated January 20, 2015.

So, is the TPP’s ISDS provision different from that of NAFTA or the other trade agreements? Are there higher standards and stronger safeguards to prevent a company like Phillip Morris from using the ISDS to sue for lost profit?

When is a public welfare objective ‘legitimate’?

Maybe a little, but not nearly enough. There is some wording in the chapter that does try to prevent the ISDS from being used as a corporate tool to sue governments over environmental, health, or other public safety regulations. In the preamble, it is written:

“Recognizing the inherent right to regulate and resolving to preserve the flexibility of the Parties to protect legitimate public welfare objectives, such as public health, safety, the environment, the conservation of living or non-living exhaustible natural resources, and public morals.”

This is good, but NAFTA has similar wording in its investment chapter, and corporations could easily argue over what a “legitimate public welfare objective” is. Is a moratorium on fracking a legitimate public welfare objective, for example?

Trade experts aren’t convinced that the TPP’s ISDS chapter is much different from previous ones, either, while the arbitration process, which has been one of the most criticized aspects of ISDS, has remained unchanged, with three highly paid lawyers selected, one by the defendant, one by the plaintiff, and one agreed upon by both.

The same lawyers also tend to alternate between the ‘suing’ and ‘judging’ positions, which critics have said creates conflict of interest.

ISDS must be eliminated from all future trade agreements

It is scary to think about this provision, largely unchanged from what we know, being included in the TPP, which covers about 40% of the worlds economy.

Warren was correct when she said that “agreeing to ISDS in this enormous new treaty would tilt the playing field in the United States further in favor of big multinational corporations. Worse, it would undermine US sovereignty.”

ISDS was an international trade mechanism that was created in earnest, to increase foreign trade by providing investors with a sort of insurance policy. But today, it has become a dangerous weapon for multi-national corporations who do not want to play by the rules, especially if it costs them some profit.

This endangers the safety of populations, the environment, and the sovereignty of nations, and it should be eliminated from any future trade agreements if our governments cannot agree on real changes.

Petition: ‘Tell Congress to Say NO to Monsanto and the TPP!‘

Conor J. Lynch is a writer living in New York City. He has written previously for openDemocracy, The Richard Dawkins Foundation, and regularly blogs on Daily Kos about politics, economics, and science. Follow him@dilgentbureauct

This article was originally published by openDemocracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence. Additional reporting / news updates by The Ecologist.

As two weeks of UN climate talks come to a close here today, Friends of the Earth International warned that not enough progress was made towards a fair and adequate climate treaty, which is supposed to be finalised at COP21 in Paris later this year.

While the leaders of the world’s seven industrial powers (G7) made lofty statements this week about a fossil fuel phase out by the end of this century, politicians actually negotiating key issues of the planned UN treaty on climate change failed to make real progress in Bonn.

They were unable to agree on the legal form of the treaty, or on a fair distribution of emission reduction commitments, and also failed to agree how to generate sufficient public finance for adaptation to climate change.

“Climate change is upon us, and every increase in temperature causes more heatwaves, droughts and floods, killing thousands of people”, said Lucy Cadena, climate justice and energy coordinator for Friends of the Earth International.

“If developed country governments continue to drag their feet at the UN negotiations instead of taking immediate action, millions of people will pay for it with their lives.”

The failure bodes badly for the Paris climate talks due to take place this coming December. As warned by Illari Aragon in The Ecologist, “countries need to make the most of the ten days of negotiations available to them in June – which, in the face of the challenge, is looking like a very short time indeed.

“Clarity on legal aspects and signs of convergence on contentious issues like differentiation need to materialise as early as possible in order to ensure success in Paris.” This is precisely what the Bonn talks have now failed to achieve.

Germany in the hotseat

Germany, as the current chair of the G7 and host of the latest round of UN climate change negotiations, came under particular scrutiny, with Ann Kathrin Schneider, climate campaigner for FoE Germany accusing Angela Merkel of having flipped “from climate chancellor to coal chancellor.”

“While she talks big on climate, she’s silent when it comes to supporting a levy on coal power plants, without which Germany will shamefully miss its 2020 emission reduction targets. If Germany does not address the fossil fuel industry in its national climate policy the phrase ‘Energiewende’ will soon be meaningless.”

Meanwhile Germany’s Federal Environment Agency has announced that the effects of climate change are now “clearly noticeable in Germany” in its first monitoring report on climate impacts and adaptation.

“Rising temperatures, more humid winters and more frequent extreme weather events increasingly affect society in Germany”, according to the Agency. “Impacts are becoming noticeable in many sectors including energy supply, agriculture and healthcare …

“The number of hot days per year with temperatures of more than 30 degrees centigrade has risen from 3 to 8 in Germany. Longer heat waves can have various impacts … In certain regions in the South of Germany new thermophilic species such as the Asian tiger mosquito are spreading which can transmit severe diseases, including malaria or dengue fever.

“In the agricultural sector drought stress or extreme weather events such as storms, heavy rainfall or hail storms lead to quality fluctuations and lower yields.”

Progress at the G7 – but what does it add up to?

At the G7 meeting in a Bavarian schloss last weekend, leaders of the world’s major industrial economies (except Russia) announced a non-binding commitment to decarbonise the global economy by 2100, with a 40%-70% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to 2010.

While the first promise is so much pie-in-the-sky, the second is more significant, as it will impact on investment decisions taking place now regarding coal-based infrastructure – such as mines, railways, ports and power plants – with a prospective lifetime of 50-100 years.

Angela Merkel is widely credited with pulling off the deal, however critics point out that it is both insufficient to tackle the climate crisis, and entirely aspirational, with no plan or concrete steps set out.

“G7 countries have signalled their agreement on the importance of tackling climate change eventually, but haven’t announced any meaningful action”, said Susann Scherbarth, climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe

“The emission cuts they’ve promised are less than half of what climate science recommends and justice requires. We are on the path to a disastrously empty deal in Paris this December, but ordinary people are making the energy transformation that our governments have failed to.”

Lucy Cadena added that there is really no excuse for the lack of action at the G7 and the Bonn climate talks, since it’s already completely clear what has to be done, and indeed people and communities are doing it already in the absence of global leadership:

“People around the world are already implementing real, proven solutions-community-controlled, renewable energy systems. The energy revolution has come of age, and our politicians must help implement it or fade into obsolescence along with the dirty energy systems they cling to.”

Today a group of activists from various Friends of the Earth groups protested outside the UN venue in Bonn calling for an energy revolution.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

Dear Executive Board of Oxford City Council,

Today you will meet and decide whether to implement proposals to make a range of activities such as ‘noncompliant’ busking, ‘noncompliant’ peddling, pavement art, riding bicycles on restricted streets and begging in a defined Public Space Protection Order area a criminal offence punishable by fines of up to £1,000.

These plans, if implemented, will radically alter the nature of the relationship between Oxford’s public servants and all those who use public space in the city.

They will have the effect of criminalising grassroots culture and creating arbitrary criminal offences such as singing songs in the wrong spot or for the wrong length of time, or drawing a picture with chalk on a pavement.

They will create a more alienating urban environment for visitors and residents alike where vulnerable and dispossessed persons can face criminal sanctions and punitive fines for begging, despite the fact that a coalition of homelessness charities have asked you to reconsider these plans.

They will create a situation where ‘City Centre Ambassadors’, paid for out of public money to welcome people into the City, will instead be cast in the role of enforcement officers handing out £100 fines to people for cycling on streets which buses and taxis drive down throughout the day.

The sum effect of these proposals will be to bring activities which cause no harm into the realm of criminal law in a manner which creates unnecessary and counterproductive antagonism between civic officials and those they are paid to serve.

Take the wise choice and abandon your plans

There is nothing inevitable about your decision today. It is not too late to think again as you rightly did when you decided to abandon plans to make rough sleeping a criminal offence after 72,280 people signed a petition asking you not to drive the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society into further alienation and destitution.

You also thought better of your proposals to make feeding pigeons a criminal offence which demonstrated an admirable willingness to change course. Now, on behalf of the Keep Streets Live Campaign, I am asking you to rethink the rest of your PSPO proposal, and, at this late stage, to think again.

Nearly 5,000 people have already signed a petition asking you not to criminalise ‘noncompliant’ busking but to work alongside the Musicians’ Union and the busking community to draw up best practise guidance instead.

In addition to the petition, the majority of people who completed your own consultation, despite its skewed terms of reference, didn’t support the proposals: 53% of people said busking shouldn’t be on the PSPO, and only 32% said it should be, whilst only 34% of people thought that begging should be included and only 38% thought street art should be included. This policy clearly lacks public support and a popular mandate.

Buskers have worked alongside the Council in Liverpool, York, Canterbury, Cambridge and Greater London, amongst others, to implement policies that create a vibrant street culture which welcomes artists and musicians. Why can’t Oxford follow in their footsteps?

You already have effective powers to prevent nuisance

With the limited resources at its disposal, the local authority should focus enforcement on the small minority of individuals who have caused a persistent nuisance rather then creating a new and entirely arbitrary criminal offence.

You have a wide range of existing powers which are more than adequate to deal with any conceivable problem that could ever result from playing music and singing songs in the streets. An afternoon of rainfall, not uncommon in England, will wash away even the most colourful chalk pavement drawing without the need to give artists a criminal record.

It is difficult to see how giving a destitute and vulnerable person who has been reduced to begging on the streets a fine of up to £1,000 will help them to improve their situation. It is easy to see how it could inadvertently lead to more people begging in order to pay the punitive fines that have been imposed upon them.

Later today I will be helping to lead a musical protest against the PSPO proposals on the streets of Oxford, but my preference is not for protest but rather for partnership. I strongly believe that by working together we can achieve more than we ever could on our own.

Instead, seek proportionate and collaborative solutions

Problems and issues will always arise where people share public space, but dialogue and negotiation are surely preferable to creating unnecessary relationships of antagonism between public officials and the public.

I have attached, once again, a copy of the guidance for busking that was agreed, collaboratively, between local businesses, the busking community, the Musician’s Union and the local authority in York. It is a testament to what can be achieved by working together.

On the behalf of the Keep Streets Live Campaign and all those who have supported us I urge you to reconsider your plans for the PSPO and to instead work alongside buskers, peddlars, cyclists and homelessness initiatives to come up with a more creative, proportionate and progressive policy response to the issues that arise in the public spaces of Oxford.

Yours sincerely,

Jonny Walker

Founding Director of Keep Streets Live Campaign.

Sign the petition calling on Oxford to abandon its plans to criminalise buskers.

Follow on Facebook.

Write to the Executive Board ahead of today’s meeting with your own comments:

cllrbprice@oxford.gov.uk, cllreturner@oxford.gov.uk, cllrsbrown@oxford.gov.uk, cllrahollingsworth@oxford.gov.uk, cllrpkennedy@oxford.gov.uk, cllrmrowley@oxford.gov.uk, cllrsseamons@oxford.gov.uk, cllrcsimm@oxford.gov.uk, cllrdsinclair@oxford.gov.uk ,cllrjtanner@oxford.gov.uk

What do academy schools, fracking and international trade negotiations have in common?

They’re all part of the Conservative Government’s agenda to roll back the ability of the public to question official policy, and to allow business interests to press ahead with their questionable economic projects unchallenged.

As Britain celebrates the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta in June 1215 [1], an unprecedented dilution of democratic power, written into law under the last Con-Dem administration, has been enacted.

For example, in 2014 there was widespread public objection to the Government’s ‘care.data’ scheme [2], which allows the use of NHS patient medical records by a range of private organisations.

The ability of the NHS to pass data to companies, outside the normal controls of data protection law, had been given legal sanction under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 [3] – which effectively privatized the health service [4].

With much fanfare, and an expressed will to ‘protect patient choice’, the Government granted an opt-out for those who did not want their sensitive personal medical data shared. Then in early 2015 it emerged that the opt-outs were being disregarded [5] because NHS service contractors – essential to the Government’s privatization plans – could not access NHS patient data under the terms of the opt-out.

In June 2015 it was quietly acknowledged that the 700,000 patients who had opted-out [6] were deliberately having their wishes deliberately ignored to save money [7].

Behind the smokescreen, a hard right ideological agenda

The ‘care.data’ plan opt-outs had been a public relations smokescreen. Behind it the Government continued to purposefully pursue a wider ideological agenda – and of course ideology does not require objective evidence to validate its objectives.

In May 2015, the new Conservative Government outlined new proposals which will further restrict the public’s rights to be consulted, to object, and to challenge actions by the state. These will constrain the public’s rights to participate in and object to Government policy even further.

The Queen’s Speech contained [8] a list of proposed laws [9], the majority of which do not focus on making our society more inclusive. From imposing further restrictions on unions [10], to the mass collection of data [11], to redefining the term “extremist” to cover non-violent dissent [12] – the focus of these new laws is on removing or diluting the public rights to review decisions, increasing the dictatorial power of the state.

One of the measures, based upon the shakiest of evidence, is the Education and Adoption Bill [13]. This seeks to increase the number of academy schools – even where the parents [14] or the governors [15] of a school strongly object to the change.

On Wednesday 3rd June Education Secretary Nicky Morgan told the BBC’s Today Programme [16] that –

“Parents of course have every right and should be very interested in their child’s education, but there also comes a point to say when the education is being held back, progress that children make is being held back due to legal processes and judicial reviews and appeals and actually I think what most parents want is their child to make progress … “

If based on objectively measured evidence of ‘progress’, the Education Secretary would have an argument to press this case. That ‘progress’ is, however, questionable [17], and is not based upon clear evidence of improvements brought about by academy status.

As stated in the summary of the (Conservative chaired) Commons Education Select Committee’s report published in January 2015 [18] –

There is a complex relationship between attainment, autonomy, collaboration and accountability. Current evidence does not allow us to draw conclusions on whether academies in themselves are a positive force for change.

We saw this same over-riding of local concern over issues such as ‘fracking’ [19] under the last Government.

The deliberate erosion of British human rights

What is less well understood are the subtle changes which have enabled the imposition of these policies – which will worsen as these new laws take effect. Little by little, they are eroding the body of British civil rights which have developed over the last seventy years.

This attack on the public’s ability to keep a check on Government power was outlined by David Cameron in a speech to the CBI [20] in November 2012.

As his speech detailed, today we find that: public consultation has been cut; laws, such as the ‘care.data’ proposals, are being force through with little check on their impacts; and the public’s rights to access the courts has been curtailed.

This will have a chilling effect on our democracy in future, even without the changes currently in the pipeline.

This last aspect – reducing our ability to access the courts – is perhaps the most damaging to our democratic process. Legal aid cuts have stripped many people of their basic human rights to access the justice system [21]. Our ability as citizens to challenge decision-making directly, through judicial review, has also been deliberately weakened [22] to give the Government greater power.

The last phase of that process, under the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 [23], was commenced just before the election. This changes ancient traditions – such as only having one magistrate presiding over cases instead of three. Other changes mean that rights to judicial review only apply to those with a direct interest in the issue, and under a range of limiting conditions.

Also, if a person ‘crowd sources’ the funding for a court case in order to get over the barrier of the high costs involved, then in future every one of the people providing a contribution will be personally liable for costs if the case fails.

Criminalising ‘non-violent extremism’, increasing power to snoop

Perhaps the most chilling issue in the pipeline is the much talked about ‘extremism’ legislation. The problem here, as outlined in the Home Secretary’s speech to the Conservative Party conference [24] in September 2014, is that the Government want to control “non-violent extremism” [25].

How can ‘non-violence’ be considered extreme? At what point does advocating non-violence policy change become ‘extreme’? At what point does the human right of ‘free speech’ become ‘extremism’ if it does not involve the use of or incitement to violence?

These are very dangerous ideas because the Government does not base its arguments upon clear objective criteria, but upon acts which “undermine British values”. That is of course something that varies subjectively according to your political outlook and social background. With an increasingly illiberal, reactionary Government, this clash over ‘values’ is critical to how these changes will be enacted in law.

In parallel to this, the ability to police ‘non-violent extremism’ will be augmented [26] by the Government’s updated ‘snoopers charter’ [27].

Just as law-makers in the USA are beginning to let the post-11/9 surveillance powers lapse [28], in Britain the Government is paving the way for a new generation of computer-based ‘big data’ [29] surveillance technologies to be created anddeployed against the public [30].

In the modern world we no longer, as citizens, talk about ‘civil liberties’ [31]. Instead today’s civil liberties debate is often centred upon ‘privacy’ [32] as the single exemplar of personal freedom.

In many ways, in our technological society [33], ‘privacy’ has come to replace the concepts once described within the historic debate over ‘liberty’ – since it is the imposition of those technological oversight mechanisms which have the greatest impact upon our everyday lives.

The problem is participation in the modern ‘wired’ economy requires us to trade away our privacy, whether we like it or not. The Government’s anti-extremism agenda also requires us to trade our personal privacy for alleged ‘security’ – even though the Government’s existing policies are statistically far more threatening [34] to our personal health and well-being than any combination of terror threats.

As a result, that negation of ‘privacy’ necessarily means a dilution of our traditional ‘civil liberty’. From the privatization of the NHS and ‘care.data’, to the tightening grip of the ‘security state’ [35], our privacy is being either ignored or diluted [36] – in the name of greater administrative efficiency, or to enable anti-terror or extremism measures.

Who’s calling the shots here? Certainly not the 99%

Given the increasing dominance of corporate interests in the financing of our political parties, what this inevitably means is enacting the diktats of the ‘1%’ [37] rather than policies which benefits everyone across society. That’s because, under this new system, the ‘1%’ are the only ones with money to access to the courts, and fund politicians, to protect their interests.

The Government’s support for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership [38] (TTIP), effectively dis-empowering the public’s collective interest in favour of private interests [39], will exacerbate this process if it is enacted.

That situation is, of course, made far worse the recent reforms to our abilities to access the courts and legal aid – because we cannot enforce what putative rights we may have.

Whether it is the issue of fracking, or health privatization, or the Government’s increasingly dictatorial methods of enacting policy, all these issues have become a civil rights struggle – one which requires the public to unite against their unrepresentative political masters [40].

Slowly, like the proverbial frog in a saucepan, Britain is sliding towards a dictatorial rule by the state, very much along the lines of that predicted by Aldous Huxley 50 years ago [41]:

“Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.”

Whatever your personal interest [42] these changes require a public response [43] from each one of us …

Do you have the will to directly challenge the dismantling of our democratic rights?

Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer, and maintains the Free Range Activism Website (FRAW).

This article was originally published on FRAW.

References:

1. Magna Carta 800th – http://magnacarta800th.com/
2. NHS: ‘The care data system – Your health and care records’ – http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/records/healthrecords/Pages/care-data.aspx
3. Wikipedia: ‘Health and Social Care Act 2012’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_and_Social_Care_Act_2012
4. Sell Off!, Peter Bach, 2015 – http://www.selloff.org.uk/nhs/default.html
5. NHS disregards patient requests to opt out of sharing medical records, Randeep Ramesh, Guardian On-line, 22nd January 2015 –http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/22/nhs-disregards-patients-requests-sharing-medical-records
6. Nearly 1 million patients could be having confidential data shared against their wishes, Peter Dominiczak, Telegraph On-line, 5th June 2015 –http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11655777/Nearly-1million-patients-could-be-having-confidential-data-shared-against-their-wishes.html
7. NHS blows £5 MILLION on delayed Care.data, Ket Hall, The Register, 2nd June 2015 – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/02/nhs_blows_5_million_on_caredata/
8. Queen’s Speech 2015: Bill-by-bill, BBC News On-line, 27th May 2015 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32898443
9. Policy paper – Queen’s Speech 2015: what it means for you, Prime Minister’s Office/Cabinet Office, 27th May 2015 – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you
10. Labour funding will be hit hard by changes to political levy system, Patrick Wintour, Guardian On-line, 27th May 2015 – http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/27/labour-funding-hit-change-political-levy-bill
11. Security services’ powers to be extended in wide-ranging surveillance bill, Alan Travis, Guardian On-line, 27th May 2015 – http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/27/security-services-investigatory-powers-bill
12. If ‘non-violent extremists’ can’t express their views at universities, where can they?, Geoffrey Alderman, The Spectator, 4th March 2015 –http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/03/one-mans-extremist-is-another-mans-purveyor-of-common-sense/
13. Policy paper – Queen’s Speech 2015: ‘Education and Adoption Bill’, Prime Minister’s Office/Cabinet Office, 27th May 2015 – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you#education-and-adoption-bill
14. Education bill to close ‘loopholes’ blocking academies expansion, Richard Adams and Frances Perraudin, Guardian On-line, 3rd June 2015 –http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/03/education-bill-loopholes-academies-schools
15. Education Bill is an ‘extraordinary attack’ on free speech, says campaigner, Freddie Whittaker, Schools Week, 4th June 2015 – http://schoolsweek.co.uk/education-bill-forces-support-for-academies/
16. Nicky Morgan on Academies plan, Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 3rd June 2015. Podcast has now expired but a copy is on-line at –http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/musings/2015/20150603-today_programme.mp3
17. Nicky Morgan is wrong – the evidence for academies doesn’t add up, Henry Stewart, Guardian On-line, 3rd June 2015 –http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/nicky-morgan-wrong-evidence-academies-bill
18. Academies and free schools, Fourth Report of Session 2014-15, Commons Education Select Committee, 21st January 2015 –http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmeduc/258/258.pdf
19. Fracking – you are not important, Paul Mobbs, The Ecologist, 24th June 2014 –http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2450429/fracking_you_are_not_important.html
20. Prime Minister’s Speech to the CBI, Cabinet Office/Prime Minister’s Office, 19th November 2012 – https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-speech-to-cbi
21. Open letter condemns legal aid cuts, calls on new government to restore justice, Owen Bowcott, Guardian On-line, 1st May 2015 –http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/may/01/open-letter-judges-peers-restore-legal-aid-incoming-government-justice
22. Judicial Review reform: An attack on our legal rights?, Clive Coleman, BBC News, 1st December 2014 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30226781
23. Wikipedia: ‘Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Justice_and_Courts_Act_2015
24. Theresa May vows Tory government would introduce ‘snooper’s charter’, Alan Travis, Guardian On-line, 30th September 2014 –http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/theresa-may-tory-government-snoopers-charter
25. Policy paper – Queen’s Speech 2015: ‘Extremism Bill’ – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you#extremism-bill
26. Policy paper – Queen’s Speech 2015: ‘Investigatory Powers Bill’ – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you/queens-speech-2015-what-it-means-for-you#investigatory-powers-bill
27. Snoopers’ charter set to return to law as Theresa May suggests Conservative majority could lead to huge increase in surveillance powers, Andrew Griffin, Independent On-line, 8th May 2015 – http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snoopers-charter-set-to-return-to-law-as-theresa-may-suggests-conservative-majority-could-lead-to-huge-increase-in-surveillance-powers-10235578.html
28. NSA reform: Bush-era powers expire as US prepares to roll back surveillance, Dan Roberts, Ben Jacobs and Spencer Ackerman, Guardian On-line, 1st June 2015 –http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/31/nsa-reform-senate-deal-as-patriot-act
29. Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, consequences, critique, Big Data & Society, July-December 2014 –http://bds.sagepub.com/content/spbds/1/2/2053951714541861.full.pdf
30. US transparency over state surveillance puts British efforts to shame, Emma Carr, City AM, 2nd June 2015 – http://www.cityam.com/216889/us-transparency-over-state-surveillance-puts-british-efforts-shame
31. Wikipedia: ‘Civil liberties’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_liberties
32. How we’re fighting back against the UK surveillance state – and winning, Glyn Moody, Ars Technica, 22nd May 2015 – http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/05/how-were-fighting-back-against-the-uk-surveillance-state-and-winning/
33. Wikipedia: ‘Critique of Technology’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_technology
34. Britain’s real ‘terror threat’: eco-sceptic politicians, Paul Mobbs, The Ecologist, 3rd September 2014 –http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2540855/britains_real_terror_threat_ecosceptic_politicians.html
35. Wikipedia: ‘National security’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security
36. UK Academics pen open letter regarding state surveillance, FIRM Magazine, 25th May 2015 – http://www.firmmagazine.com/uk-academics-pen-open-letter-state-surveillance/
37. Wikipedia: ‘We are the 99%’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_are_the_99%25
38. Wikipedia: ‘Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership’ – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership
39. The obscure legal system that lets corporations sue countries, Claire Provost and Matt Kennard, Guardian On-line, 10th June 2015 –http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/10/obscure-legal-system-lets-corportations-sue-states-ttip-icsid
40. The 2015 General Election: A voting system in crisis, Jess Garland And Chris Terry, Electoral Reform Society, June 2015 – http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/blog/system-crisis
41. YouTube: ‘Aldous Huxley UC Berkeley Speech 1962’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpwOmwysqJ8
42. Fracktured Accountability: A study of political decision-making and unconventional fossil fuel interests in the Coalition Government, Paul Mobbs/MEI, March 2015 –http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/archive/fracktured_accountability/index.shtml
43. YouTube: ‘Arrest the Cabinet’, Clear Blue Films/Gathering Place Films, March 2015 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc1ESFg4fkA

Is the TTIP now on the ropes? The US-EU trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is being dealt weekly setbacks at the moment, culminating in angry scenes in the European Parliament this morning.

On one side of the Atlantic, Obama seems to be losing his fight to get so-called ‘fast track’ authority through Congress. Without it, TTIP’s progress slows to a snail’s pace.

Meanwhile in Strasbourg, the European Parliament was told it couldn’t vote on TTIP, after the pro-TTIP leadership feared it had lost control of the debate and risked being defeated on a crucial vote.

This is significant because these legislative battles represent the first time elected representatives have been given a chance to air their voices on TTIP since public disquiet started growing last year. That’s how insulated these negotiations are from influence by ordinary people.

All the more shocking then that Commissioner Malmström, the unelected official who oversees the TTIP negotiations, seemed to think this morning’s debate was something worth laughing about on Twitter:

“Having postponed the vote on TTIP the EP is now debating on whether to have the debate now or not. :)”– Cecilia Malmström (@MalmstromEU) June 10, 2015.

2 million signatures against TTIP, 900 amendments to the report

So what happened in Strasbourg? The European Parliament was due to vote on a report from the Trade Committee. This tedious sounding procedure had generated nearly 900 amendments in committee stage, with over 100 still to be voted on by the whole Parliament this morning.

Although the resolution was non-binding, this was the most significant parliamentary vote on TTIP to date. Given that the Parliament will ultimately have to ratify the deal, this was the chance for representatives to lay out their red lines: ‘If this stays in, we vote down the whole deal’.

Ahead of the vote, campaigners announced that the Europe-wide petition against TTIP had reached a record-breaking 2 million signatures, opposing the deal outright. Here in London a group of celebratory artists, actors and designers launched a new groups Artists Against TTIP. MEPs themselves had received tens of thousands of emails.

Then, to the shock of dozens of MEPs, the vote was off. Leading socialist group MEPs Martin Schulz and Bernd Lange claimed there were “too many amendments”.

But in reality they feared they were about to lose control of their own party bloc, where many MEPs, especially from the Labour Party, were ready to vote down important aspects of TTIP like the ‘corporate court’ mechanism known as ISDS.

Ducking the democratic test

If the majority of the Socialists teamed up with the Greens, the Left bloc and the Eurosceptics, it would take only a few dissidents from other blocs to carry a really critical resolution. They couldn’t risk it. Working with the leadership of the Conservative, Liberal and centre-right blocs, Schulz and Lange closed down the debate.

This morning, MEPs got up early to try to overturn the postponement. They came within two votes of doing so, amid what Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said were:

“Angry scenes in the chamber. Opponents of #TTIP demand our right to represent citizens in the debate #StopTTIP” – Molly MEP (@MollyMEP) June 10, 2015

They were joined by many Labour and UKIP MEPs.

Incredibly, after saying she was “Very disappointed” about not having a debate yesterday, Emma McClarkin and the Tory MEPs voted against holding the debate this morning, siding with the EU bureaucracy against a Parliament speaking on a vital trade deal which is a real threat to our sovereignty.

TTIP now goes back to the trade committee to find a way forward. This is unlikely to resolve anything as all blocs have enough to maintain their amendments when it next comes to the floor of Parliament, presumably in September.

The EU establishment hopes this will allow enough time for the big business lobbyists and the party apparatchiks to bribe and bully MEPs into dropping their resolve.

We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Action: email your MEPs now to demand that they oppose TTIP as a whole, and in particular the democracy-stifling ‘corporate court’ system that is ISDS.

Is the TTIP now on the ropes? The US-EU trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is being dealt weekly setbacks at the moment, culminating in angry scenes in the European Parliament this morning.

On one side of the Atlantic, Obama seems to be losing his fight to get so-called ‘fast track’ authority through Congress. Without it, TTIP’s progress slows to a snail’s pace.

Meanwhile in Strasbourg, the European Parliament was told it couldn’t vote on TTIP, after the pro-TTIP leadership feared it had lost control of the debate and risked being defeated on a crucial vote.

This is significant because these legislative battles represent the first time elected representatives have been given a chance to air their voices on TTIP since public disquiet started growing last year. That’s how insulated these negotiations are from influence by ordinary people.

All the more shocking then that Commissioner Malmström, the unelected official who oversees the TTIP negotiations, seemed to think this morning’s debate was something worth laughing about on Twitter:

“Having postponed the vote on TTIP the EP is now debating on whether to have the debate now or not. :)”– Cecilia Malmström (@MalmstromEU) June 10, 2015.

2 million signatures against TTIP, 900 amendments to the report

So what happened in Strasbourg? The European Parliament was due to vote on a report from the Trade Committee. This tedious sounding procedure had generated nearly 900 amendments in committee stage, with over 100 still to be voted on by the whole Parliament this morning.

Although the resolution was non-binding, this was the most significant parliamentary vote on TTIP to date. Given that the Parliament will ultimately have to ratify the deal, this was the chance for representatives to lay out their red lines: ‘If this stays in, we vote down the whole deal’.

Ahead of the vote, campaigners announced that the Europe-wide petition against TTIP had reached a record-breaking 2 million signatures, opposing the deal outright. Here in London a group of celebratory artists, actors and designers launched a new groups Artists Against TTIP. MEPs themselves had received tens of thousands of emails.

Then, to the shock of dozens of MEPs, the vote was off. Leading socialist group MEPs Martin Schulz and Bernd Lange claimed there were “too many amendments”.

But in reality they feared they were about to lose control of their own party bloc, where many MEPs, especially from the Labour Party, were ready to vote down important aspects of TTIP like the ‘corporate court’ mechanism known as ISDS.

Ducking the democratic test

If the majority of the Socialists teamed up with the Greens, the Left bloc and the Eurosceptics, it would take only a few dissidents from other blocs to carry a really critical resolution. They couldn’t risk it. Working with the leadership of the Conservative, Liberal and centre-right blocs, Schulz and Lange closed down the debate.

This morning, MEPs got up early to try to overturn the postponement. They came within two votes of doing so, amid what Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said were:

“Angry scenes in the chamber. Opponents of #TTIP demand our right to represent citizens in the debate #StopTTIP” – Molly MEP (@MollyMEP) June 10, 2015

They were joined by many Labour and UKIP MEPs.

Incredibly, after saying she was “Very disappointed” about not having a debate yesterday, Emma McClarkin and the Tory MEPs voted against holding the debate this morning, siding with the EU bureaucracy against a Parliament speaking on a vital trade deal which is a real threat to our sovereignty.

TTIP now goes back to the trade committee to find a way forward. This is unlikely to resolve anything as all blocs have enough to maintain their amendments when it next comes to the floor of Parliament, presumably in September.

The EU establishment hopes this will allow enough time for the big business lobbyists and the party apparatchiks to bribe and bully MEPs into dropping their resolve.

We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Action: email your MEPs now to demand that they oppose TTIP as a whole, and in particular the democracy-stifling ‘corporate court’ system that is ISDS.

Is the TTIP now on the ropes? The US-EU trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is being dealt weekly setbacks at the moment, culminating in angry scenes in the European Parliament this morning.

On one side of the Atlantic, Obama seems to be losing his fight to get so-called ‘fast track’ authority through Congress. Without it, TTIP’s progress slows to a snail’s pace.

Meanwhile in Strasbourg, the European Parliament was told it couldn’t vote on TTIP, after the pro-TTIP leadership feared it had lost control of the debate and risked being defeated on a crucial vote.

This is significant because these legislative battles represent the first time elected representatives have been given a chance to air their voices on TTIP since public disquiet started growing last year. That’s how insulated these negotiations are from influence by ordinary people.

All the more shocking then that Commissioner Malmström, the unelected official who oversees the TTIP negotiations, seemed to think this morning’s debate was something worth laughing about on Twitter:

“Having postponed the vote on TTIP the EP is now debating on whether to have the debate now or not. :)”– Cecilia Malmström (@MalmstromEU) June 10, 2015.

2 million signatures against TTIP, 900 amendments to the report

So what happened in Strasbourg? The European Parliament was due to vote on a report from the Trade Committee. This tedious sounding procedure had generated nearly 900 amendments in committee stage, with over 100 still to be voted on by the whole Parliament this morning.

Although the resolution was non-binding, this was the most significant parliamentary vote on TTIP to date. Given that the Parliament will ultimately have to ratify the deal, this was the chance for representatives to lay out their red lines: ‘If this stays in, we vote down the whole deal’.

Ahead of the vote, campaigners announced that the Europe-wide petition against TTIP had reached a record-breaking 2 million signatures, opposing the deal outright. Here in London a group of celebratory artists, actors and designers launched a new groups Artists Against TTIP. MEPs themselves had received tens of thousands of emails.

Then, to the shock of dozens of MEPs, the vote was off. Leading socialist group MEPs Martin Schulz and Bernd Lange claimed there were “too many amendments”.

But in reality they feared they were about to lose control of their own party bloc, where many MEPs, especially from the Labour Party, were ready to vote down important aspects of TTIP like the ‘corporate court’ mechanism known as ISDS.

Ducking the democratic test

If the majority of the Socialists teamed up with the Greens, the Left bloc and the Eurosceptics, it would take only a few dissidents from other blocs to carry a really critical resolution. They couldn’t risk it. Working with the leadership of the Conservative, Liberal and centre-right blocs, Schulz and Lange closed down the debate.

This morning, MEPs got up early to try to overturn the postponement. They came within two votes of doing so, amid what Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said were:

“Angry scenes in the chamber. Opponents of #TTIP demand our right to represent citizens in the debate #StopTTIP” – Molly MEP (@MollyMEP) June 10, 2015

They were joined by many Labour and UKIP MEPs.

Incredibly, after saying she was “Very disappointed” about not having a debate yesterday, Emma McClarkin and the Tory MEPs voted against holding the debate this morning, siding with the EU bureaucracy against a Parliament speaking on a vital trade deal which is a real threat to our sovereignty.

TTIP now goes back to the trade committee to find a way forward. This is unlikely to resolve anything as all blocs have enough to maintain their amendments when it next comes to the floor of Parliament, presumably in September.

The EU establishment hopes this will allow enough time for the big business lobbyists and the party apparatchiks to bribe and bully MEPs into dropping their resolve.

We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Action: email your MEPs now to demand that they oppose TTIP as a whole, and in particular the democracy-stifling ‘corporate court’ system that is ISDS.

Is the TTIP now on the ropes? The US-EU trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is being dealt weekly setbacks at the moment, culminating in angry scenes in the European Parliament this morning.

On one side of the Atlantic, Obama seems to be losing his fight to get so-called ‘fast track’ authority through Congress. Without it, TTIP’s progress slows to a snail’s pace.

Meanwhile in Strasbourg, the European Parliament was told it couldn’t vote on TTIP, after the pro-TTIP leadership feared it had lost control of the debate and risked being defeated on a crucial vote.

This is significant because these legislative battles represent the first time elected representatives have been given a chance to air their voices on TTIP since public disquiet started growing last year. That’s how insulated these negotiations are from influence by ordinary people.

All the more shocking then that Commissioner Malmström, the unelected official who oversees the TTIP negotiations, seemed to think this morning’s debate was something worth laughing about on Twitter:

“Having postponed the vote on TTIP the EP is now debating on whether to have the debate now or not. :)”– Cecilia Malmström (@MalmstromEU) June 10, 2015.

2 million signatures against TTIP, 900 amendments to the report

So what happened in Strasbourg? The European Parliament was due to vote on a report from the Trade Committee. This tedious sounding procedure had generated nearly 900 amendments in committee stage, with over 100 still to be voted on by the whole Parliament this morning.

Although the resolution was non-binding, this was the most significant parliamentary vote on TTIP to date. Given that the Parliament will ultimately have to ratify the deal, this was the chance for representatives to lay out their red lines: ‘If this stays in, we vote down the whole deal’.

Ahead of the vote, campaigners announced that the Europe-wide petition against TTIP had reached a record-breaking 2 million signatures, opposing the deal outright. Here in London a group of celebratory artists, actors and designers launched a new groups Artists Against TTIP. MEPs themselves had received tens of thousands of emails.

Then, to the shock of dozens of MEPs, the vote was off. Leading socialist group MEPs Martin Schulz and Bernd Lange claimed there were “too many amendments”.

But in reality they feared they were about to lose control of their own party bloc, where many MEPs, especially from the Labour Party, were ready to vote down important aspects of TTIP like the ‘corporate court’ mechanism known as ISDS.

Ducking the democratic test

If the majority of the Socialists teamed up with the Greens, the Left bloc and the Eurosceptics, it would take only a few dissidents from other blocs to carry a really critical resolution. They couldn’t risk it. Working with the leadership of the Conservative, Liberal and centre-right blocs, Schulz and Lange closed down the debate.

This morning, MEPs got up early to try to overturn the postponement. They came within two votes of doing so, amid what Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said were:

“Angry scenes in the chamber. Opponents of #TTIP demand our right to represent citizens in the debate #StopTTIP” – Molly MEP (@MollyMEP) June 10, 2015

They were joined by many Labour and UKIP MEPs.

Incredibly, after saying she was “Very disappointed” about not having a debate yesterday, Emma McClarkin and the Tory MEPs voted against holding the debate this morning, siding with the EU bureaucracy against a Parliament speaking on a vital trade deal which is a real threat to our sovereignty.

TTIP now goes back to the trade committee to find a way forward. This is unlikely to resolve anything as all blocs have enough to maintain their amendments when it next comes to the floor of Parliament, presumably in September.

The EU establishment hopes this will allow enough time for the big business lobbyists and the party apparatchiks to bribe and bully MEPs into dropping their resolve.

We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Action: email your MEPs now to demand that they oppose TTIP as a whole, and in particular the democracy-stifling ‘corporate court’ system that is ISDS.

Is the TTIP now on the ropes? The US-EU trade deal known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is being dealt weekly setbacks at the moment, culminating in angry scenes in the European Parliament this morning.

On one side of the Atlantic, Obama seems to be losing his fight to get so-called ‘fast track’ authority through Congress. Without it, TTIP’s progress slows to a snail’s pace.

Meanwhile in Strasbourg, the European Parliament was told it couldn’t vote on TTIP, after the pro-TTIP leadership feared it had lost control of the debate and risked being defeated on a crucial vote.

This is significant because these legislative battles represent the first time elected representatives have been given a chance to air their voices on TTIP since public disquiet started growing last year. That’s how insulated these negotiations are from influence by ordinary people.

All the more shocking then that Commissioner Malmström, the unelected official who oversees the TTIP negotiations, seemed to think this morning’s debate was something worth laughing about on Twitter:

“Having postponed the vote on TTIP the EP is now debating on whether to have the debate now or not. :)”– Cecilia Malmström (@MalmstromEU) June 10, 2015.

2 million signatures against TTIP, 900 amendments to the report

So what happened in Strasbourg? The European Parliament was due to vote on a report from the Trade Committee. This tedious sounding procedure had generated nearly 900 amendments in committee stage, with over 100 still to be voted on by the whole Parliament this morning.

Although the resolution was non-binding, this was the most significant parliamentary vote on TTIP to date. Given that the Parliament will ultimately have to ratify the deal, this was the chance for representatives to lay out their red lines: ‘If this stays in, we vote down the whole deal’.

Ahead of the vote, campaigners announced that the Europe-wide petition against TTIP had reached a record-breaking 2 million signatures, opposing the deal outright. Here in London a group of celebratory artists, actors and designers launched a new groups Artists Against TTIP. MEPs themselves had received tens of thousands of emails.

Then, to the shock of dozens of MEPs, the vote was off. Leading socialist group MEPs Martin Schulz and Bernd Lange claimed there were “too many amendments”.

But in reality they feared they were about to lose control of their own party bloc, where many MEPs, especially from the Labour Party, were ready to vote down important aspects of TTIP like the ‘corporate court’ mechanism known as ISDS.

Ducking the democratic test

If the majority of the Socialists teamed up with the Greens, the Left bloc and the Eurosceptics, it would take only a few dissidents from other blocs to carry a really critical resolution. They couldn’t risk it. Working with the leadership of the Conservative, Liberal and centre-right blocs, Schulz and Lange closed down the debate.

This morning, MEPs got up early to try to overturn the postponement. They came within two votes of doing so, amid what Green MEP Molly Scott Cato said were:

“Angry scenes in the chamber. Opponents of #TTIP demand our right to represent citizens in the debate #StopTTIP” – Molly MEP (@MollyMEP) June 10, 2015

They were joined by many Labour and UKIP MEPs.

Incredibly, after saying she was “Very disappointed” about not having a debate yesterday, Emma McClarkin and the Tory MEPs voted against holding the debate this morning, siding with the EU bureaucracy against a Parliament speaking on a vital trade deal which is a real threat to our sovereignty.

TTIP now goes back to the trade committee to find a way forward. This is unlikely to resolve anything as all blocs have enough to maintain their amendments when it next comes to the floor of Parliament, presumably in September.

The EU establishment hopes this will allow enough time for the big business lobbyists and the party apparatchiks to bribe and bully MEPs into dropping their resolve.

We have to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Action: email your MEPs now to demand that they oppose TTIP as a whole, and in particular the democracy-stifling ‘corporate court’ system that is ISDS.

The pro-GM bias of the BBC was plain to see during Monday’s (8th June) Panorama programme ‘GM Food – Cultivating Fear‘.

Blinkered and narrow rather than panoramic, selective and prejudicial rather than investigative, this sorry display set a new low for a programme which was once a flagship of investigative journalism.

It had no more veracity and insight than the most clichéd corporate press release.

The result was that a mix of myths, deceptive assertions and inaccurate statements by pro-GM lobbyists – including those masquerading as independent scientists – were given a free ride and promotional slot on prime time television.

It’s tempting to say that you couldn’t make this stuff up – except Panorama has proven with its latest fiction that actually you can – and that you can even get the BBC (and thus the licence fee payer) to pay for it.

New and improved!

Any viewer who has ever visited a supermarket will already be familiar with the concept of the front-of-the-package ‘come on’. Words like ‘new’ and ‘improved’ and ‘scientifically proven’ get splashed on product labels every day – and yet the reality is often that the only thing that really changes is the package.

So it is with Panorama’s claims of ‘new and improved’ GM technologies that are safer and more efficient. After noting the “unease and occasional hostility” with which GM crops have been greeted by the general public and many NGOs in the UK and the rest of Europe, presenter Tom Heap begins the programme by saying “tonight we’re going to tell you the story of two genetically modified crops that might change your mind.”

If the title of the programme – GM Food: Cultivating Fear – hadn’t already given the game away, Heap’s introduction left the viewer in no doubt that far from being an in-depth investigation, this was a programme with an agenda.

What followed was a 30-minute propaganda exercise featuring a now all too familiar cast of characters – claiming that those who oppose GMOs were selfish, ideologically-driven Luddites who were insensitive to the health and well-being of farmers in the developing world and who were afraid of the ‘science’ of the new.

Familiar faces

The programme did indeed tell a story and like all good fictions the narration could have been compelling to anyone who is new to the issues.

For the uninitiated here is a brief guide to the cast of characters.

Tom Heap: This Countryfile reporter’s bias towards the GMO quick-fix, and his disdain for the concerns of the general public on GMOs, is well known. These days Heap doesn’t even bother to hide behind even a thin veneer of impartiality or journalistic integrity.

Notions such as ‘critical’ and ‘questioning’ are habitually missing from his repertoire – or only appear when talking to anyone who raises questions about GM food and farming.

Mark Lynas: Sweating manfully in the heat of Bangladeshi brinjal fields, this now notorious supporter of GMOs is often presented alongside scientists as an expert in whatever GMO field he happens to be filming in.

But Lynas’ expertise lies in self-promotion rather than science. Rumours abound that Heap and Lynas are good friends. This may or may not be true but it certainly might be an explanation for why Lynas’ widely criticised tales of GM brinjal (aubergine) cropping in Bangladesh were given such an easy time.

Steven Tindale: Described as one of the anti-GMO movement’s “former leaders” who, like Lynas, has broken ranks and begun hurling accusations or moral decrepitude at those who oppose GMOs. Tindale is certainly not a ‘leader’ that most of us would recognise. He resigned from Greenpeace after only five years – coinciding with his “religious conversion” in support of nuclear power.

He has now joined the ranks of the professionally converted on GMOs.

Jonathan Jones: Professor Jones works at the Sainsbury Laboratory at the taxpayer-funder John Innes Centre. However in order to include him as an ‘independent’ expert on GMOs the BBC elected to ignore its own editorial guidelines, and simply didn’t mention his commercial interests in GM start-up companies and the fact at he is the owner of various GMO patents.

Anne Glover: Her job as Chief Scientific Advisor to the EU President has recently ended. During her time there she played a controversial role in holding back progress on reviewing and limiting endocrine disrupting chemicals and promoting the reduction of regulatory oversight of GMO crops and ingredients.

Andrew Miller: Former Chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, Miller opined that it was “impossible to consider how to feed a planet if nine or ten billion people without genetic modification.”

This lack of vision was reflected in the strongly pro-GM House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s GM report, but is at odds with the Environmental Audit Committee’s view, which is that GM has little to offer.

The same old story

Other ‘minor’ characters came and went. Anybody who has followed the GMO story over the last two decades will already know the playbook: GMOs will benefit small farmers, GMOs will cut pesticide use, genetic modification is a ‘benign’ and’ neutral’ technology and there is no evidence that it harms human health.

There was a brief and dismissive visit to an organic farm in Bangladesh as well as a walk on part for the Soil Association’s Helen Browning, various cutaways to Doug Parr from Greenpeace and soundbites from Liz O’Neill of GM Freeze and Pat Thomas of Beyond GM. A palpable disrespect for those who question the GMO approach to food and farming ran right through the programme.

Worse, the programme did not address the widespread and successful non-GM approaches to sustainable farming. The perspective that GM technology could possibly be unnecessary, as well as risky, was beyond the vision of the production team.

Instead the three-note tune that throughout the excruciating 30 minutes of the programme was: we need to feed the world, therefore we need GM, and it’s immoral to oppose it. All three notes are false and do not accord to the evidence.

What’s more, this now familiar tune is deeply disrespectful to the millions of people who care passionately about changing the way our food and farming system works to ensure we do feed people sustainably and equitably.

Scientific consensus

Heap’s lamentable failure to ask any challenging questions of the pro-GM spokespeople and then going journalistically AWOL in the face of assertions – such as that by Anne Glover who was allowed to assert, without challenge that anti-GM campaigners just “make things up” – was compounded by his littering the programme with statements straight out of the industry PR manual. These included:

• “27 countries are now growing GM crops totalling 18 million acres”. The viewer is meant to be impressed. In fact almost all of that is grown in just 4 countries and 18 million acres accounts for around no more than 4% of the world’s farmed land.
• “Billions/trillions of meals containing GM ingredients have been eaten without any adverse health impacts.” How does anyone know? There have never been any epidemiological studies and precious little monitoring at all. But there is a clear and documented correlation between the rise of many diseases in the US and the introduction of GM crops there.
• Heap suggested “there has only been one scientific study linking GM crops and adverse health impacts and that was retracted”. In fact there is mounting evidence of adverse health impacts and risks published in peer reviewed journals. And the “one study” he refers to, the only long term study of GM and glyphosate health risks by Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini, has been republished and therefore returned to the scientific literature.
• Heap mentioned the use of glyphosate (Roundup) on GM crops engineered to withstand its effects. This trait has caused an exponential rise in the use of this herbicide n GM crops as weeds have quickly become resistant to the herbicide. What he failed to mention is the fact that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization, has recently determined that glyphosate is a category 2A “probable human carcinogen”.

Heap also completely failed to acknowledge the recent statement by more than 300 independent scientists which says there is no scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs and further suggests that the weight of the evidence points to cause for serious concern.

The rules of balance say we should compare like with like; thus on a programme of this nature a pro-GM scientists should be balanced against an anti-GM scientist – of which there are many. Shockingly, this particular BBC programme did not feature a single dissenting scientist from an independent university or research institute.

2015 Bt brinjal crop failure – too unimportant to mention?

Bt brinjal is a type of aubergine that has been genetically modified to produce its own pesticide. Rejected in India and the Philippines, the crop has recently been transplanted to India’s more impoverished neighbour Bangladesh – which has no bothersome GM regulations at all.

What Panorama hoped to prove in Bangladesh isn’t clear. GM brinjal is relatively new there and the crop trial is small and limited with, at best, variable outcomes. Indeed in March of this year, reports emerged of widespread crop failure of the Bt brinjal, for example in Bangaldesh’s New Age newspaper:

“The cultivation of genetically engineered Bt Brinjal in the country’s several districts has cost the farmers their fortunes again this year as the plants have either died out prematurely or fruited very insignificantly compared to the locally available varieties, reports United News of Bangladesh.

“Spot visits to 12 Bt Brinjal fields in Manikganj, Narsingdi and Comilla over the last one month hardly found any living or properly fruiting plant on those fields … The fields belonging to Afzal Hossain and Md Mannaf have turned out to be an ultimate upset as each of the two fields appears half-barren as one looks at.

” ‘We’ve removed most of the plants after those had died about 15 days ago. The officers (BARI officials) told us to do so to prevent the spread of the disease. Despite that the rest of the plants are dying out in numbers every day,’ Mannaf’s wife Lovely Begum said … “

Needless to say, there was not a word of this truly disastrous outcome on the Panorama programme, which only admitted to a “false start last year” before claiming a “90% success rate” in 2015.

There are other parts of the world where the controversies surrounding GM cropping and especially the damage wrought on the environment and farmers – both GM and non-GM – are visible and long-standing. Clearly this information did not fit the Panorama narrative.

The genetic modification of the brinjal is aimed at one thing: the fruit and shoot borer, a moth species, which farmers use copious amounts of pesticides to fight. Much like the Bt maize engineered to produce a pesticide that kills the corn borer, early results suggest that under some conditions the Bt aubergine can reduce pesticides use.

But after only a relatively few years of use the corn borer is now showing signs of resistance to the Bt toxin, leaving crops more susceptible to attack than non-GMO. It can’t be long before the fruit and shoot borer does the same.

In the meantime, as the programme noted, farmers continue to spray a range of pesticides to treat the multiple other insects and fungi that can attack the brinjal.

What health effects?

Confronted with an organic farmer who was concerned that the Bt toxin could be harmful to human health, Heap dismissed the woman by telling her that it wouldn’t harm her because she’s “not a fruit and shoot borer.”

By that wacky, unscientific logic anything that harms a laboratory animal or insect should be considered safe for humans to eat. (Heap needs to take a look at GMO Myths & Truths for the scientific low-down).

In fact in 2011 a New Zealand-based epidemiologist and risk assessment expert, Dr Lou Gallagher analysed the raw data on 14 and 90-day rat feeding studies from Monsanto’s Bt brinjal dossier. It showed that rats eating Bt brinjal experienced:

• Organ and system damage: ovaries at half their normal weight, enlarged spleens with white blood cell counts at 35 to 40% higher than normal with elevated eosinophils, indicating immune function changes.
• Toxic effects to the liver.

A return trip to Bangladeshi in a year or two will likely paint a very different picture of the safety and viability of the Bt brinjal.

The ‘superspud’ – it doesn’t exist, and it’s not needed

The so-called super-spud contains eight separate genetic modifications to make it combat everything from Late blight fungus – the one that caused the Irish potato famine – to bruising in transit.

The programme insinuated that this “game-changing GM potato” was ready to go to market. It’s not. In fact it is still in concept stage and unlikely to see the light of day for a decade – if at all.

But British taxpayers are already paying for it. According to the group GeneWatch £3.2 million of taxpayers’ money has already been spent trying to develop a GM blight-resistant potato. Some £750,000 of public money was put into 3 years of field trials for a blight resistant Desiree potato which was trialled in the UK in 2011-12.

But in fact, there already are numerous varieties of potato available right now that resist Late blight, that have been developed by conventional plant breeding techniques.

Although the field trial was hailed as a success in the media, the researchers at Sainsbury’s lab now admit that inserting just one gene is not enough “because the pathogen tends to become resistant”. So they are now looking for a further tranche of taxpayers’ money to develop this more complicated (but not necessarily better) strain of GM potatoes.

So much for “working with the grain of nature in a scientifically well-informed way”, as Jonathan Jones put it.

Shoddy journalism at the public expense

We have come to expect a pro-GM stance from the BBC; we know they pass off people with vested interests as impartial experts; we know they are so obsessed by so-called high-technology and science that they are blinkered to alternatives.

We know they treat facts with breath-taking selectively; and we have come to expect shoddy journalism. But the dismissive and disrespectful tone of this programme breaks the bounds of acceptability.

The failure of government, politicians, the research establishment and media to acknowledge the concerns of citizens and the clear health and environmental risks associated with agricultural GM technology cannot continue.

But to stop it members of the public – citizens, voters and taxpayers – must take action.

Pat Thomas and Lawrence Woodward are directors of the campaigning group Beyond GM. This article first appeared on the Beyond GM website. This version includes some additional reporting by The Ecologist.

What can you do?

Apart from throwing your TV out the window, you can:

• complain to the BBC online, by post or by phone.
• tell us what you think by taking our brief survey on the BBC’s stance on GMOs.
• join our GM Free Me visual petition and show your face for a GM Free UK.
• if you are a mum, join the Mums Say no to GMOs and campaign locally for, instance for supermarkets to stop selling GM fed-meat, dairy and eggs.
• start a conversation with your MP by sending him or her a link to The Letter from America, along with your own views.
• Most importantly, support Beyond GM with a donation to help us keep working to present an accessible and rational opposition to GMOs in food and farming.