Marxism 2017: Climate Change

An account of the three meetings at Marxism 2017 that focussed exclusively on climate change.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this latest post in my series about Marxism 2017. This post deals with three meetings from the event and also features some external links as well. This post features green body text because of the subject matter – headings still in red. This post features pictures in ’tiled mosaic’ form – to view them at full size left-click/ single finger push an image to open the gallery, and if you right-click/ two finger push you get a drop down menu that enables you to open a single image.

MEETING 1: FACING THE ANTHROPOCENE – JEFFREY HALL, SATURDAY – IAN ANGUS

The Jeffrey Hall is the second largest venue in the Institute of Education, with a seating capacity of 500. It was pleasingly full for Ian Angus’ talk about Facing the Anthropocene. This talk was accompanied by numerous slides. Here are the first few pictures:

Due to the size of the venue a speaker slip system in operation, and Martin (crouched) was assisting the chair to decide what order speakers should be called in.

From this start the speaker went on to define the anthropocene:

This what the Anthropocene is NOT

Only global environment defo fit for Homo sapiens

Note – current CO2 Levels are at 409-10ppm, with almost no one reckoning they can be stabilised below 450ppm and some talking in terms of 560ppm.

Before the Anthropocene the earth had seen five mass extinction events, and all evidence points to the fact that a sixth is upon us. Here are a few links to recent articles about this:

A piece in The Guardian titled “Earth’s sixth mass extinction event under way, scientists warn”
A piece on http://www.independent.co.uk titled “Humans may face extinction sooner than we thought, study finds“

Now here are my remaining pictures from this meeting:

9 of 12 indicators beyond bounds of Holocene variability

The TEAM logo

one of those who spoke from the floor

A collection at the meeting – venue hire for this event cost £60,000 in total – in Central London everything is expensive.

The website climateandcapitalism can be accessed here.

MEETING 2, SUNDA: A REDDER SHADE OF GREEN – MALET SUITE – IAN ANGUS

This was conducted in an informal style. Martin, chairing, asked Ian questions about his latest book (it is a good read btw) and Ian answered. After about half an hour questions were taken from the floor, and they were mainly excellent contributions. At the end of the meeting Ian signed copies of his book for those who were interested. Here are some photos:

PART 3: BUILDING THE MOVEMENT AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE AFTER TRUMP WITHDRAWS FROM PARIS – SUZANNE JEFFERY

This meeting was in the session immediately after the second Ian Angus meeting, and before the closing rally. This was a really excellent meeting, with many people speaking from the floor about campaigns they were involved in, and the mood generally confident. Here are some photos:

Speaker and chair — Chair Jasmine and main speaker Suzanne before the meeting.

Jasmine introduces Suzanne — Jasmine opening the meeting.

AFTERWORD

This post being about climate change and by extension nature I have decided to end with some links courtesy of Anna who has produced some excellent stuff about nature:

This “Save Trosa Nature” post
This “humans lost in space” picture
For those willing to undertake a longer read the ‘how not to’ story of Yanno, Dunno and Victor.

James and Sons July Auction Catalogue

James and Sons July auction catalogue is now ready…

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday the catalogue for James and Sons July auction (24th – 26th, all three days at our premises on Fakenham town centre) was uploaded to the-saleroom and despatched to the printer. Before moving on I ask readers to note that some of the images in this post have been presented in ’tiled mosaic’ form – a left click on your mouse/ single finger push on your control pad on one of the images will open a gallery showing you the images at full size.

TUESDAY

Between locating images of stuff that had already been imaged and imaging other stuff I made significant progress, although the amount that had not been done was still greater than the amount that had been done. Among the new images I created were those of some Confederacy bank notes, including the item selected to be on the front cover of the catalogue:

Images of this and the other banknotes of ithe same type are created using the scanner (200dpi only for these). Here are some more of these banknotes:

Having shown the scanner at work, here are some photos to finish this section, the full gallery of lot 1479:

THURSDAY

Most of the images on this day were transferred, but there were a few new ones, including lot 405 and some lots in the low 1,000s:

This little lot intrigued me.

A few lots of cat themed covers, including some with coins.

FRIDAY

I started this day by imaging some lots for the cover:

Of the rest of the stuff I imaged yesterday the most interesting lots were some police helmets:

LOOKING AHEAD

While there remains some imaging to do for this auction, and stuff for August will sloon be ready for imaging I will also have to put out various auction alerts and press releases next week. I will definitely be contacting buyers of banknotes, cigarette cards, railwayana, stamps and postcards. The railwayana email will feature lot 1451:

If I have scope (i.e. have not reached an email sending limit) I will also send out an email to militaria buyers. Our best item in this category this month is a camera used by the Luftwaffe:

Marxism 2017: Two Meetings About Disability

Continuing my personal account of #Marxism2017 with two disability themed meetings.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this continuation of my series about Marxism 2017. This post focusses specifically on the two meetings on disability, which took place during the second and fifth slots on the Saturday.

DISABILITY AND RESISTANCE

This meeting was scheduled for room 3E, but when the main lift at Student Central broke down and resisted all efforts to get it working again it was rescheduled for the ground floor. As soon as it was known that the lift was busted the organisers of the festival made it clear that refunds would be available for those who thought they could no longer enjoy the event (there was only one ground floor location remotely suitable for meetings, and three meetings in each session were scheduled for rooms on the 3rd floor, which was inacessible to the physically disabled without the lift working.). Although the ersatz meeting venue was not ideal it was the least bad solution for this meeting.

This meeting was packed full of inspirational stories from various campaigns. As an autistic person I identify particularly strongly with struggles for disability rights. I am a member of group of whom (UK figures – feel free to give me others from elsewhere in the world if you know them) 74% are unemployed, and 85% are under-employed.

Here are some pictures:

Amy advises the panel — Amy, organiser of the festival, speaking to the panel before the meeting started.

HOW CAN DISABLED PEOPLE WIN LIBERATION – RODDY SLORACH

The lift appeared to working again during lunch, but then packed up again and could not be coaxed back to life again, so again we were in the ersatz venue. There was an additional problem this time in that the machines in the cafe outside which we were based were shutting down, creating a lot of background noise. Although 6 hours had elapsed since the end of the panel meeting covered above this meeting felt in many ways like a continuation of the other, with every contribution being inspiring. Although I did not speak myself I was pleased to note that three other autistic people did make contributions. I conclude this post with a few photos:

With two meetings being held facing it I got a good look at this ‘internal mural’.

Marxism 2017 – Day 3: Outline

An outline of day 3 at Marxism 2017, setting the stage for two further posts.

INTRODUCTION

Wel come to this latest post in my series about Marxism 2017. The Saturday at Marxism is always the busiest day of the festival. For this reason I am doing three posts about the day, this one, one that covers the two disability themed meetings I attended and one which will also cover a meeting from Sunday devoted to Ian Angus’ two talks, “Facing the Anthropocene” and “A Redder Shade oif Green”.

THE TIMETABLE

Here to show you the scale of the event is the timetable for thia day:

IS A ROBOT AFTER YOUR JOB? MARTIN UPCHURCH – FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE

For the Saturday we were using venues at three locations, Student Central, The Institute of Education and Friends Meeting House. This meeting took place in the Hilda Clark room, which is on the first floor of Friends Meeting House. The answer to the question in the meeting title is “probably not”. As yet robots still require humans to watch them to ensure gthat they function as they are supposed to, and that is likely to remain the case for some time. Here are some photographs:

It was announced during this meeting that the main lift had failed in Student Central and gthat as yet the engineer had been unable to fix it. Therefore the panel meeting on disability was moved to a ground-floor location because the backup lifts only went up to the first and second floors (duh!). Barring a brief period at lunchtime this main lift did not work again during the rest of the event.

DISABILITY AND RESISTANCE

I will be dealing with this meeting and the last one of the day in a separate post. For the moment here are a picture from the first and a couple of lunchtime pics:

Banner3 — The woman in front of the banner is Paula Peters of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC).

Picnic — The Norwich & East Anglia picnic. A small donation buys you a meal – the guide prices are £3 waged and £1 unwaged, and as someone who is employed part-time I split the difference with £2.

Canary — The canary is the symbol of Norwich City FC, and this specimen can be seen at a fair distance.

HOW THE MEDIA LOST ON JUNE 8TH – IAN TAYLOR (STUDENT CENTRAL)

The mainstream media were virtually unanimous in predicting (and in most cases making it obvious that they wanted) a Tory landslide in the June 8th General Election. The fact that the Tories ended up without a majority at all, and that Labour increased their presence by 30MPs was one in the eye for MSM. Newspapers are losing readers at a vast rate, and readers are increasingly not taking their papers on trust. Since this meeting happened we have seen Theresa May begging for policy ideas (“here is a copy of our manifesto!”), and a Prime Ministers Questions where both leaders were absent, and Emily Thornberry starred for Labour while Damien Green for the Tories managed the less than challenging feat of doing a better job than Theresa would have done. Here are some pictures:

FACING THE ANTHROPOCENE – IAN ANGUS – INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

I am covering this meeting and Ian Angus’ other meeting which took place a day later in a separate post. For the moment here are a few of the pictures from this one:

HOW CAN DISABLED PEOPLE WIN LIBERATION? – RODDY SLORACH – SC

My final meeting of the day was back at Student Central, and as with the earlier panel meeting had been relocated due to the faulty lift and the fact that the backup only went as far up as the second floor. As I will be covering this meeting in more detail in another post, suffice to say that it was an inspirational end to the day. Here to end this post is the chair advertising Roddy’s book:

Marxism 2017: Day 2

An account of Day 2 at Marxism 2017.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the next post in my series about Marxism 2017. The event finished with the Closing Rally last night, after which I travelled back to King’s Lynn. I have quite a few more posts to do before this series finishes however.

DAY 2

I was staying in a room in a University hall of residence about a 15 minute walk from the event, which suited me very well. I set off at about 9:20AM (the first meeting session started at 10AM, and I wanted to be early because the meeting I had chosen was likely to be very well attended. I arrived at Student Central at about 9:30 and took the stairs to the third floor as the meeting was scheduled for the Upper Hall (I am old enough to have attended meetings there when it was still called the Badminton Court).

FAKE NEWS: MEDIA, TRUTH AND POWER – SIMON BASKETTER

This was a splendid way to start the day. There was some very entertaining stuff, with serious purpose. The events of June 8th showed everyone who was not already aware that there are limitations to the power of the media – our mass media were universal in predicting (and in most cases wanting) a huge majority for Theresa May and the ~~Self~~Conservatives and of course she ended up with no majority, dickering with the foul bigots of the DUP to hang on to the power. Of course she is now so desperate that she is asking Labour for ideas (Jeremy Corbyn’s response: “I’ll give you a copy of our manifesto”). Here are some photographs to help tell the story:

UCL building — This building caught my eye as I walked past on my way to the event.

Throughthewindow1 — The view through one of the the Upper Hall windows

Food stand — A food stall (London prices are beyond my means – I was not a cjustomer)

Sarah Ensor + Simon Basketter — Chair Sarah (one of the speakers at the meeting on Biodiversity and Species Extinction) and speaker Simon Basketter.

Sarah Ensor opens the meeting — Sarah introduces the meeting

Simon Basketter starts his talk — Simon speaking, careful not obstruct the screen.

MARXISM AND MENTAL HEALTH – BETH GREENHILL

I will be giving this meeting a full post to itself in due course – it deserves it, and I have asked the speaker to email me all her slides, including those she did not get to use because of the importance I attach to this subject. For the moment here are a few pictures:

Display1 — A display on the main staircase at Student Central.

MARXISM, NATURE AND SOCIETY – MARTIN EMPSON

Following the lunch break (picnics are something of a tradition at Marxism festivals, and I participated in the Norwich and East Anglia picnic) I headed to room 3E for this meeting. I would have preferred this talk to have been assigned a bigger room because the topic is so important. It was well attended, as it should have been. There were many outstanding contributions, including from those fighting against fracking (a particularly destructive method of extracting fossil fuels from shale). A woman who was born in Australia and whose father works in mining talked about her arguments with him and how she explains that she does not want people in mining to be jobless – she wants them to have jobs helping the environment, such as developing renewable energy sources etc. Here are some pictures:

IRELAND AND THE RISE OF THE RADICAL LEFT – GERRY CARROLL

Gerry Carroll is one of two members of People Before Profit elected to the Stormont Assembly in the days when that body still functioned. The other was Eamonn McCann. One of Stormont’s less charming features is a register that requires you to state whether you are Nationalist or Unionist – McCann and Carroll both wrote the single word Socialist in this space. People Before Profit are a cross-border organisation and they also boast three members of the Dail (the Irish Republic’s parliament), two of whom, Richard Boyd Barrett and Brid Smith were also at Marxism 2017. Gerry Carroll won his seat in West Belfast – Gerry Adams’ stamping ground. For an avowed non-sectarian to win in the very heartland of Sinn Fein is particularly remarkable. Carroll talked about both his success and that in the Republic. In the Republic much of the radicalism developed around the attempted imposition of water charges (yes – in Europe’s wettest country), but also of course the Republic became the first country in the world to vote in favour of equal marriage.

After Carroll finished his inspiring speech various people in the audience talked further about some of the points he raised, filling out the picture. Here are some pictures…

DID LENIN LEAD TO STALIN? – PADDY NIELSEN

After the second long break of the day it was back up to floor 3, this time room 3B for me. This meeting dealt with one of the more persistent accusations flung at the left (note, until the mid 1990s Socialist Worker retained its masthead stating “Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism”). Nielsen set out the counter arguments excellently. Stalinism was a product of the isolation of the Russian Revolution – it did not spread elsewhere as the revolutionaries hoped, and it was separated from the revolutionary movement by a river of blood. Most of the old Bolshevik leadership who were alive when Stalin took power died at his hands. Here are some pictures:

Marxism 2017: Biodiversity and Species Extinction (Ian Rappel and Sarah Ensor)

Ian Rappel and Sarah Ensor’s meeting on biodiversity and species extinction covered in detail. #Marxism2017

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this post in my series about Marxism 2017. The meeting covered in this post was the second that I attended on day 1 of the festival. Most of the rest of this post will be photographs from that meeting, but before getting to the main meat I have one small thing to do relating to my previous post…

ERRATUM

In the first published version of my post about day 1 I labelled a logo as being from the front of a TEAM t-shirt. It was not, and I have corrected the original post, but I refuse to do the blogging equivalent of sneaking out a correction in 6pt type in the middle of page 27, so here is a picture showing the a TEAM t-shirt:

BIODIVERSITY AND SPECIES EXTINCTION

Of our two speakers, Ian Rappel is a conservation biologist and was looking at the overall picture, while Sarah Ensor, author the blog Herring and Class Struggle, focused on the oceans.

THE PRELIMINARIES

Here are the photos from before the main talks:

P1020696 — The speakers and chair (centre) at the platform

P1020702 — The chair introducing the meeting

PART 1: IAN RAPPEL

P1020706 — Four diverse life forms – sperm whales, ants, duckweed (the smallest of all vascular plants), tardigrades

P1020736 — There will be more on the Anthropocene later in this series, with an account of Ian Angus’ meeting on this subject.

PART 2: SARAH ENSOR

P1020749 — The light relief – a tardigrade.

P1020756 — AS followers of this blog will know I was in northwest Scotland recently, and I saw many signs of fish farms, including in Loch Alsh, as seen from above in this post: https://aspi.blog/2017/06/12/scotland-walking-from-ferry-cottage-to-kyle-of-lochalsh/

CONCLUSION

This was an important meeting, and I welcome the higher profile that nature and ecology are enjoying at this year’s Marxism (I have been to three meetings on the topic already, with another three scheduled for this final day). I cannot say that I enjoyed it, but I am glad that I attended and was glad to note that there were few empty seats.

Marxism 2017

Setting the scene for a series of posts about Marxism 2017.

INTRODUCTION

In approximately two hours I will be off to catch a train to London for Marxism 2017, four days of political meetings. Given the location I will have regular wi-fi access and will blog regularly about the event.

MARXISM 2017

Most of the rest of this post will be taken up with pictures of my timetable, but before I put them up a note – I have ticked the meetings that I definitely intend to go to, and put question marks against those I am considering (if for example there are two in one slot that appeal and I have not yet made a final decision).

Records Galore at Lord’s

An account of yesterday’s Royal London Cup final.

INTRODUCTION

Yesterday Nottinghamshire and Surrey contested the final of the Royal London Cup at Lord’s, and it is that match that is the subject of this post. However, before I move on to the body of the post I have one other thing do…

A NEW WEB ADDRESS

I recently upgraded my package for this blog because I needed more space for photos. As part of the deal I acquired a free domain name, so for an overview of this blog you can now go to aspi.blog. This new address is considerably short than the old one.

THE ROYAL LONDON CUP FINAL

Surrey batted first and scored 297 from their 50 overs. Mark Stoneman, who must have been considered by the England selectors for the test match that starts on Thursday scored 144 not out, at that time the second highest score ever in a big Lord’s final. Many of us had hoped that he would break the record which had stood at 146 since the 1965 Gillette Cup final (a 60 overs a side match as compared to 50), not least because of the identity of the old record holder, a certain G Boycott.

The Nottinghamshire response started as though the innings was being played on two different pitches – while Alex Hales was in complete control at one end, a succession of batsmen struggled and failed at the other. When Chris Read came in at the fall of the fifth Nottinghamshire wicket Surrey were still probably just about favourites, not least because there was not a lot of batting to come (Luke Fletcher is a capable lower order batsman but Messrs Broad, Pattinson and Gurney are all very definitely picked purely as bowlers.

Read played a fine innings, while Hales blazed on into record setting territory. He set the record in emphatic style with a thumping boundary. By the time Read was out Nottinghamshire were pretty much home and dry. In the end it was Luke Fletcher who hit the winning runs, with Hales 187 not out. This is Hales’ second recent record breaking innings, as he also holds the record for an England men’s One Day International with 171 (the distinction is necessary, since the highest individual score for England in any One Day International is Charlotte Edwards’ 173 not out for the womens team).

Mention of womens cricket leads me to finish this section with another record. Chamari Atapattu of Sri Lanka scored 179 not out in a team total of 257-9 against Australia in their womens world cup match. Australia chased them down, with skipper Meg Lanning 152 not out. The key difference was that Lanning was well supported, first by Nicole Bolton with 60 and then by Ellyse Perry who was 39 not out at the end. Atapattu set two records with that innings. First, and unwanted, the highest individual score for a losing team in an ODI. Second, that 179 not out was 69% of the team’s total, also an international record. Viv Richards had scored 189 not out in a total of 272-9 against England in 1984, which is a similar percentage to Atapattu, but for no3 in the list you have to go back to March 1877 and the inaugural test match, when Charles Bannerman scored 165 out of 245 all out in Australia’s first innings (also the first innings of the match).

A FEW PHOTOGRAPHS

I always like to include photographs in my posts, so here a few to end this one:

Bawdeswell Church captured through the window of a moving bus.

The frontage of St Peter Mancroft church, which is pretty much plumb in the centre of Norwich.

The 2018 Wall Calendar

Seeking reader participation in the selection process for the 2018 wall calendar.

INTRODUCTION

When I began covering my holiday in Scotland I brought up the subject of my plans for a 2018 photographic wall calendar, which will be my third such. This post now takes the story forward, and seeks to bring my followers in on the selection process.

THE CANDIDATES

Some of these pictures were nominated by Oglach (“Oglach’s Selections“), a couple by my aunt Celia, and the rest are others that I consider especially worth sharing. Most of the selections are Scottish for obvious reasons.

MY AUNT’S PICKS

My aunt Celia nominated two from the return journey from Scotland:

MY ADDITIONAL SCOTTISH SELECTIONS

These are the Scottish pictures that I have selected as possibles on my own:

Steamer5 — One of these steamer pictures will definitely feature.

Farewell to the Jacobite — I may assemble a composite image of several “Jacobite ” pictures.

GV4 — At least one of these Glenfinnan Viaduct pictures will feature.

single span bridge 2 — Bridges on Skye will definitely feature somewhere.

Balmacara House to Craggan Cottage2 — This is the stretch of Loch Alsh on which Ferry Cottage, where we stayed, sits.

OGLACH’S SELECTIONS

I have of course shown these before, but for completeness sake here they are again:

NON-SCOTTISH PICKS

These are the pictures from outside Scotland that I consider worth a second look.

NOMINATIONS

You can nominate by commenting on this post identifying the pictures by name. If you right-click on a picture and select “open image in new tab” from the drop-down menu that appears you can see its name. If you have a blog of your own you can nominate by creating a post featuring your choices and putting a link in the comments (this will earn you a reblog as well by the way). Those whose pictures make the cut will be acknowledged on the page(s) that they get in the calendar.

Scotland – The Last Post: Inverness to Peterborough

The final post in the series about my holiday in scenic Scotland.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to this concluding post in my series about a Scottish holiday. In this post we deal with the last stages of my journey home.

AVIEMORE AND THE CAIRNGORMS

Aviemore is the first station the train calls at on its way out of Inverness towards Edinburgh, and also marks one edge of The Cairngorms national park.

DALWHINNIE TO BLAIR ATHOLL

The next stage of the route takes us to Blair Atholl.

BLAIR ATHOLL TO MARKINCH

Markinch is situated two miles from Glenrothes town centre, a fact that is advertised on the platforms.

MARKINCH TO EDINBURGH

The train arrived at Edinburgh so promptly that had it been allowed by my ticket I would have had time to get the 13:30 to London instead of the 14:00. As it was I was glad to be able to take things a bit easy at this interchange, the corresponding one on my journey up having been a little close for comfort.

THE CLOSING STAGES

I located my seat on the express train that would carry me to Peterborough and it was in a designated quiet coach. Unfortunately there was a large family who had been assigned seats in that coach and who did not really understand quietness, so it was not as relaxing a segment of the journey as it should have been. A minor frustration at Peterborough when I stepped out of the station exit just as an X1 was heading off towards King’s Lynn. This half-hour delay notwithstanding I got home dead on 8PM.

	Round Three of the 2… on The Headingley Heist
	Maiden County Ton fo… on Cricket Season Underway
	Aoteroa Axed by Ahme… on South Africa Finnished as Alle…
	Thomas on World T20 Cup Underway
	Anna on World T20 Cup Underway