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CND IN THE NEWS
18-24 September 2003
1 Living ethically: a comprehensive guide
The Guardian, Friday September 19, 2003
http://money.guardian.co.uk/ethicalliving/story/0,13437,1045719,00.html
I live in a council house in Swansea. My grownup kids have left home
now. I was retired from social services in Salisbury, and before that
used to work with adults with learning difficulties and for Quaker Peace
& Service in Dorset in the 80s. That's the first thing: try to do
an ethical job. For students and graduates, People & Planet have an
ethical jobs service.
Most people like me tend to hoard stuff because they hate to chuck things.
This means you have lots of weird bits and pieces to play with. My boyfriend
and I constructed a wonderful 'bullshit detector' out of bits of old vacuum
cleaner, phone, alarm clocks and torch pieces to point at Fairford Airbase
and emit noise of bullshit detected. You can have fun.
Nearly everything can be repaired or recycled if you try. Otherwise it
can be given to charity to sell, use or recycle. Mend your clothes, and
have things like videos repaired. Buy second hand or recycled. When my
kids were little I made some of their clothes out of old things of mine,
as well as a lovely patchwork blanket from old dresses. You can buy clothes,
china, cooking equipment, books, furniture and suchlike from charity shops
and car boot sales. I've had nice stuff out of skips. Charity shops and
charity/craft sales are good for Christmas presents and cards. Buy Fairtrade
and organic. The Co-op is fairly ethical, as are local markets.
Look after the birds. I seem to have increased my sparrow population (they
are endangered) and also had bluetits nesting in a nest box this year.
Feed them and give them water: they are such entertainment. Don't cut
hedges till nesting has finished. Keep lots of untidy garden bits for
wildlife. Let things go to seed for birds and animals to eat.
Murder slugs with a torch at night: putting out pellets kills hedgehogs
& birds who eat them. I have just rung Unit(e) to change to greener
electricity. If I was like my boyfriend I would live in a dome or tipi
& have no electricity, but I like houses. If I was rich and not on
incapacity benefit I would have a house converted to alternative energy
rather than a council house ...
I belong to The Phone Coop, which is a cooperative, and they donate money
to the people who advertised them. I filled in a form in either Amnesty,
Peace News, Green World or Ethical Consumer, one of them is getting the
dosh. Sadly, being green doesn't improve a menopausal memory ...
I belong to Henry Doubleday Society and their seed library. You pay to
be a member and receive a few rare seeds each year, then grow and save
the seeds to sow the next. I swap the excess with others. Even if you
only have a windowsill you can grow tomatoes with heavenly flavours: brilliant
ones include Tomato Broad Ripple Yellow Currant, tiny yellow tomatoes
that kids love. I grow my own garlic, sweetcorn, chillis ... You can feed
stuff with foul mixtures you make for free yourself. If you put comfrey
and nettles in a bucket with water and cover it, it makes a good tomato
feed (although it stinks!). You can grow lovely pumpkins in your compost
bins when they are full of compost.
Use rechargeable batteries. I have a solar recharger which I bung in the
window. The wind-up solar radios are good. My boyfriend has one which
is an alarm clock and torch as well - no electricity at all!
Use the library. Read and learn. I'm just finishing my Open University
degree: not bad for a woman who was asked to leave her crap secondary
school.
Use shopping bags and refuse carriers. If the buggers still come in your
house, line bins with them or recycle them back to shops or to charity
shops. You can buy ethical washing powder, toothpaste, loo cleaner- look
in ethical consumer magazines. You don't need makeup.
In the past I have made jam, marmalade, pickles and orange and lemon squash.
I didn't want my kids full of E numbers.
Use envelope labels to reuse envelopes. Make cards. When I was very poor
I used to make my own Christmas crackers ... bought the cracker bit, used
looroll inners, crepe paper and bought little things to go in.
Get involved in things like CND, Amnesty, the Green Party,
etc. Write to your MP, use what's left of our democracy. Protest. Join
the Amnesty Greeting Cards Campaign and write to prisoners of conscience.
Cook, and teach your kids to. If you are poor you can use old wartime
recipes: they are cheap, as are vegetarian Indian recipes. Try Madhur
Jaffrey's Eastern Vegetarian Cookery - gorgeous recipes made with really
cheap ingredients.
Use water butts. I often siphon my bath water on the garden. I wanted
a water meter, but the council said I would have to pay £99 to have
one put in and then pay to have it taken out if I moved. I'm thinking
about it.
Don't buy things made by slaves, such as trainers by firms who pay nothing
to the women who work locked into factories with no breaks. Investigate
the origins of everything.
Try your best - it's often a case juggling your situations and what you
can afford, although even on very low income we are never as poor as people
in the developing world.
I try not to use heating until October and not use the phone until after
six. Being economical means I have more money for ethical stuff.
Be kind and local. When I moved to a house in Dorset, an elderly lady
left a bunch of flowers on the doorstep with 'welcome from number...'.
When I was in Salisbury and had a small operation, a neighbour sent dinner
over. Look out for old people and kids. Water plants and feed cats for
neighbours on holiday. Welcome asylum seekers. Stand up for them. Learn
first aid. Be useful.
Do you remember the Water Babies? Mrs Do as you would be done by? That's
ethical living and worth trying, instead of all this eye for an eye crap
that Bush and Sharon indulge in.
I bet you already know how to use low-energy light bulbs ...
Loppy Garrard
• Anything to add? Send your comments and tips to Leo Hickman at
ethical.living@guardianunlimited.co.uk.
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2 US defence experts criticise SNP's 'damaging' defence policy
The Scotsman, 23 Sept 2003
http://www.news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1055512003
HAMISH MACDONELL
THE Scottish National Party suffered an embarrassing pre-conference set-back
last night, when some of the most senior and well-respected defence experts
in the United States lambasted the nationalists’ defence policy.
The group included James Baker, the secretary of state between 1989 and
1992, during the presidency of George Bush snr, and Charles Kupchan, who
was director for European affairs on the National Security Council during
the first Clinton administration. Their views, published in Holyrood magazine,
made uncomfortable reading for the SNP because they set out in detail
where they believed the party had got it wrong, particularly over plans
to remove nuclear weapons from Scottish soil and to pull out of NATO.
The experts voiced fears that the nationalists’ defence policies
would cause damaging fractures within the UK and also have a negative
effect on US-UK relations.
Mr Kupchan said: "Were an independent Scotland to pursue a policy
of unilateral nuclear disarmament it would be to strain its relations
with the US."
Robin Niblett, from the Centre for Strategic & International Studies
in Washington, said there would be a concern that if Scotland got increased
autonomy, it would make strong foreign policy almost impossible - and
make it less likely for the prime minister to take strong stands.
Dr John C Hulsman, of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, argued:
"No-one would stop Scotland, but there would be consequences to these
grand-standing moves.
"Scotland would be left out in the cold. SNP policy smacks of the
CND - wrong then, and wrong now."
Mr Baker said a decision to pull out of NATO would go down poorly in
the US, adding: "But it would be Scotland’s loss".
Dr Nile Gardiner, who is based at the Heritage Foundation, said: "The
breakup of the UK would be detrimental to American interests.
"As for unilateral nuclear disarmament, this would be viewed very
negatively. Scotland would be viewed as a problem state, much like France
and Belgium are today. A Scottish withdrawal from NATO would be viewed
as very disruptive, and would cause considerable concern in terms of the
knock-on effects.
But a spokesman for the SNP hit back. He said: "Supporters of NATO
are obviously going to argue in favour of countries maintaining membership.
This is a choice for the Scottish people, however."
NATO last night named Jaap De Hoop Scheffer, the Dutch foreign minister,
as its new secretary general, succeeding Lord Robertson of Port Ellen,
a former Scottish secretary.
Mr De Hoop Scheffer, 55, a career diplomat, said: "I have accepted
the nomination as an Atlanticist and as a European.
"I think these two elements can be combined very well because the
essence of NATO is building on that permanent bridge between the two continents.
I’ve always been in favour of a strong Europe."
Nicholas Burns, the NATO ambassador for the US, said Mr De Hoop Scheffer
was the ideal person to advance work on the transformation of the 19-nation
alliance "to confront the new threats of terrorism and weapons of
mass destruction".
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4 US experts attack SNP defence policy
http://www.news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1054882003
The Scotman, 23 September 2003
HAMISH MACDONELL
SNP leaders suffered an embarrassing pre-conference setback last night
when some of the most senior and well-respected defence experts in the
United States lambasted the nationalists’ defence policy.
The group included James Baker, who was secretary of state to George
Bush, the former president, and Charles Kupchan, who was director for
European affairs on the National Security Council during the first Clinton
administration.
Their views, published in Holyrood magazine, made uncomfortable reading
for the SNP because they set out in detail where they believed the party
had got it wrong, particularly over plans to remove nuclear weapons from
Scottish soil and pull out of NATO.
Mr Kupchan said: "Were an independent Scotland to pursue a policy
of unilateral nuclear disarmament, it would be to strain its relations
with the US."
Dr John C Hulsman, of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, said: "No-one
would stop Scotland, but there would be consequences to these grand-standing
moves. Scotland would be left out in the cold. SNP policy smacks of the
CND - wrong then, and wrong now."
Mr Baker said a decision to pull out of NATO would go down poorly in
the US, adding: "But it would be Scotland’s loss".
An SNP spokesman said: "Supporters of NATO are obviously going to
argue in favour of countries maintaining membership.
"This is a choice for the Scottish people, however."
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5 A rebel in suburbia
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;$sessionid$QIACWMUUF5AJDQFIQMGCFF4AVCBQUIV0?xml=/arts/2003/09/23/boball23.xml
Bomb the BBC, trash the Tate . . . in his latest controversial novel,
J.G. Ballard chronicles a violent middle-class uprising. But does this
jovial septuagenarian really want a revolution in Shepperton? Emily Bearn
meets him
A few years ago, J. G. Ballard described himself as a man of "complete
and serene ordinariness" - an image he hasn't had much success in
getting across. At 72 he remains one of Britain's most bankable novelists,
and one of its most controversial.
One of his best-known books, Crash, was inspired by his obsession with
car crashes and deals with "the mysterious eroticism of wounds; the
perverse logic of blood-soaked instrument panels, seat-belts smeared with
excrement, sun visors lined with brain tissue".
The publisher's reader who first saw the manuscript (herself the wife
of a psychiatrist) wrote: "This author is beyond psychiatric help."
If true - and Ballard tells me he took it as "proof of complete artistic
success" - it does not appear to have afflicted his writing. He has
written 17 novels, all of which have been translated into at least 20
languages and three of which - The Drowned World, Drought and Crash -
are generally considered modern classics.
His latest book, Millennium People, could join the list. It is upliftingly
radical, portraying London's middle-classes in violent rebellion against
the temples of middle-class propriety - the BBC, the National Film Theatre,
Peter Jones - there is even murder at Tate Modern.
As Ballard explains: "It is about my own people, the English middle
classes, having to cope with the world of 2003 and not liking it . . .
they're rebelling simply because they feel ruthlessly exploited."
I have been invited to discuss this middle-class exploitation with Ballard
at his home in Shepperton, a somnolent (and resolutely middle-class) London
suburb in which he has occupied the same small 1930s semi for the past
43 years. His street is lined with identical-looking houses with names
such as "Laurel View" and "Ivy Dene" and bears a passing
resemblance to Beverly Hills in that there is no noise and not a single
human being in sight.
He used to claim that he stayed in Shepperton because it gave him unique
insight into what middle-class England was up to, but this afternoon he
insists the motives are more mundane.
"When I first came here I liked it because it was green and quiet
- it was as simple as that really," he says, ushering me through
a hall silted up with junk (including a lawn-mower, a tricycle and a spade),
and into a dining-room in which every surface is heaped with yellowing
papers and decaying pot plants.
He is reported never to have cleaned the house since he arrived there
in 1960, a rumour supported by the thick film of dust coating absolutely
everything, in true Quentin Crisp style. Although he has a girlfriend
who lives nearby, she has clearly not been let loose on the mess.
"Please!" he cries, sitting me down at a table covered with
a dead palm tree. "Don't ask me about the dust! Everyone is fascinated
by my dust - there must be more interesting things to talk about."
In fact, Ballard seems so jocular one imagines he would be game to discuss
just about anything. He speaks in a throaty yet animated voice of the
sort that suggests that - in contrast to the "exploited" middle
classes of his fiction - he is permanently amused.
"Shorthand!" he says, roaring with laughter as I dig out a notebook,
rather than the tape recorder he expected. "Good for you! I write
all my books in longhand!" (He does not have a computer or an answer-machine
and, when I ask for his telephone number, he has to look it up.)
One character in Ballard's book claims that "the middle class is
the new proletariat", made financially and spiritually impoverished
by exorbitant school fees and house prices, and by an anxious need to
compete. "They have no job security and they have an education that
doesn't equip them for anything much," he explains, rocking his considerable
girth back and forth in an antiquated leather chair.
"Fifty years ago, a degree guaranteed you a job for life and a certain
standard of living. But that's not true any more. People in middle management
are forced into early retirement and the polls reveal huge levels of dissatisfaction.
The traditional privileges of the middle classes are no longer there.
My characters are extreme cases, but the book anticipates what happens
when middle-class dissatisfaction reaches crisis point."
What happens is spectacular. London's bourgeoisie throws off the chains
of civic responsibility, smoke-bombing department stores, barricading
residential streets and trashing upmarket travel agencies. Molotov cocktails
are concocted from bottles of vintage Burgundy filled with petrol and
corked with regimental ties. As one character puts it: "This is hard-core.
From now on ordering an olive ciabatta is a political act."
"I think there's a lot of humour in it," Ballard says, running
a hand over his gently protruding stomach. "But I'm not trying to
poke fun at the middle classes. They're an easy target but it's not satire.
I suppose one could say that my humour is deadpan."
But would the middle classes resort to violence, as they do en masse in
Millenium People? Ballard is confident that they are up to it. "I
really do think they are capable of rebellion," he says, brushing
away a few strands of untamed grey hair from his collar.
"When they attach themselves to protest groups - CND,
animal rights, genetic crops - they're quite capable of violence, even
planting bombs under scientists' cars. It's a myth to think that the middle
classes are incapable of violence. They're just very patient and they
need to be sufficiently provoked before they explode."
One of the recurrent themes in Ballard's fiction is the notion of a middle
class brainwashed both by the BBC - with, as Ballard puts it, its "Old,
Reithian values of education" - and by cultural institutions such
as Tate Modern, "a sort of middle-class disco, designed to anaesthetise
any real aesthetic challenges that might occur to them."
He repeatedly stresses that the views of his fictional characters do not
necessarily reflect his own (although it is bombed in the book, Ballard
tells me he himself is "a great supporter of the BBC"), yet
he clearly feels some solidarity with them.
"You could certainly say that I'm sympathetic to my characters,"
he says. "But you have to remember that I am writing about extreme
cases. I myself would not go out and start upturning cars."
Indeed, when it comes to rebellion, it's hard to image J. G. Ballard on
the front line. His appearance is a study in Pooterish bonhomie - slightly
corpulent; cosily dressed (on the afternoon I visit he is wearing sagging
black trousers and a pair of brown loafers, possibly slippers) and with
a face permanently erupting in mirth. It is often commented that he looks
at least 10 years younger than he is, and he keeps fit with daily walks
along the Thames.
"I don't know if I'm well," he says, sounding wholly unconcerned
by the matter. "You'd have to ask my doctor that."
As a writer he has been described as "the scourge of complacency"
- a notion that makes him quake with laughter. "Am I? Who said that?
I've never thought of myself in those terms. I hope I provoke people into
the odd thought about the way the world's going. But I'm a novelist, and
I don't think novelists are thought of as a threat to the status quo.
At least not now."
Certainly, Ballard appears less steamed up than his ficitional characters,
and when he talks about politics it is with a sort of affable ponderousness.
Blair is "a very strange man"; Cherie is "possibly stranger",
and while he believes that "the Hutton inquiry has pulled back the
curtains and shown what a corrupt business government is", one senses
that he's not minded to do much about it.
Yet when it comes to "provoking people into the odd thought",
his fiction has made quite an impact. After abandoning a medical degree
at Cambridge University, he established himself in the 1960s with a series
of best-selling apocalyptic novels - The Drowned World, The Drought and
The Wind from Nowhere - portraying the world beset by natural upheavals.
His later works dwelt on the soul-destroying features of the modern world,
such as skyscrapers (High Rise), city planning (Concrete Island) and -
most famously - man's relationship with the motorcar, which became the
subject of Crash (1973) - later made into a controversial film by David
Cronenberg.
His obsession with car crashes was to become the stuff of legend. He organised
an exhibition of them at the ICA, and could rabbit on cheerfully about
the erotic conjunctions of mangled metal and flesh. He was even reported
to have silenced dinner parties by producing photographs of his girlfriend's
car-crash injuries, or urging her to show off her scars.
"Car crashes were simply becoming a popular obsession at the time,"
he says. "Every film seemed to be about them. I'm just an observer.
That's what being a novelist is about. I wasn't actually interested in
car crashes myself." (You could have fooled his readers.)
It has been suggested that Crash and the other "atrocity" novels
of the 1970s were provoked in part by the loss of his wife, Helen, who
died in 1964 after suffering from pneumonia during a holiday in Spain.
"I suppose there might be some truth in that," he says. "I
was trying to make sense of a terrible tragedy. It seemed to prove that
black was white. It was a terrible crime of nature against this young
woman, and I think I felt very angry that nature could behave in such
a cruel way. I think an attempt to solve the mystery was part of what
drove me along."
After his wife's death he was left in charge of their three children,
aged four, five and seven, whom he raised single-handedly. "I loved
it," he says, implanting a fist on the film of dust lining his dining-room
table. (As he once remarked: "You can do all the housework in five
minutes if you don't make a fetish of it.") "We were all living
here and I didn't have much help, but they were the happiest days of my
life. They really were."
His own childhood was less peaceful. In his book Empire of the Sun (later
immortalised on screen by Steven Speilberg), he described his childhood
in Shanghai and, in particular, the three years, from 12 to 15 years old,
which he spent in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War.
"It was a huge slum, and like all teenage boys I was running wild,"
he says. "I enjoyed it most of the time - it was terrifically stimulating.
Though I'm not sure that the adults had such a good time.
"I think the war did help shape my view of the world. As a child
you can't see grown-ups under extreme stress without learning something
about human nature. Most middle-class children never see their parents
under stress." (A belief with which today's middle-class parents
might not concur.)
While Ballard's fiction depicts a world of soul-destroying blandness,
one senses that he doesn't feel a victim of it himself. At 72, he retains
a seemingly inexhaustible gusto for life and appears to view the modern
world as a source of fascination, rather than as a cause for depression.
"I'm not disillusioned with it but I do sometimes find myself slightly
dismayed," he says, fingering one of the dead palm fronds heaped
between us on the dining-room table. "We're not living in a heroic
age, which some people might think is a very good think. But there's a
suburbanisation of the planet going on, and, you see, that's a problem
. . ."
At this point we are interrupted by a ring on the door-bell. "God!
Who's this?" he mumbles, levering himself out of his chair and picking
over the rakes and lawnmowers to reach the front door. A minute later
he returns.
"A satisfied customer!" he says, collapsing back into his chair
with a clap of his hands and an expression of unmitigated glee. "It
was a Shepperton resident wanting a book signed - I don't get many of
them!"
For publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page please phone
44 (0) 207 538 7505 or email syndicat@telegraph.co.uk
• Millennium People by J. G. Ballard (Flamingo) is available for
£14.99 plus £2.25 p&p. To order please call Telegraph
Books Direct on 0870 155 7222.
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