Dry Cleaners of the World Unite: Democracy is in Danger!

 So yesterday in Newcastle Nigel Farage became the latest rightwinger to have a milkshake tossed over his lovely pinstripe suit.

It is a trend that started when would-be MEP Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, was hectoring a young man who, pushed to the edge of reason, poured his own recently purchased liquid confectionery over the former EDL leader. Soon after, Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, a UKIP candidate in the south-west, was milked not once, not twice but four times. Even the Peterborough stall of the re-formed Social Democratic Party, a bolt-hole for allegedly moderate former Kippers, was splattered on Monday, though their only casualties were some leaflets.

Social media has of course been abuzz with pictures and memes - from relatively mild speculation about dairy-free alternatives for would-be vegan assailants through "this is what happens when lactose meets intolerance" to rather cruder speculation about neo-Nazi sexual practices. But, while predictably the rightwing mass media and rightwing groups have howled with rage about this alleged assault on free speech, so too have some on the left voiced concerns about the thin-end-of-the-wedge. Surprisingly, what would previously have been generally viewed as relatively minor, whimsical acts of protest are seen by a not small number of progressively-minded people as a serious threat to the democratic process.

You start with milkshakes, one Green activist warned me, and before you know it, people are committing atrocities like murdering Jo Cox.

Well, no. It may be a bit silly and an arguably counter-productive act to waste a tasty cold beverage on the likes of Farage, but there is a quantum difference between someone staining Nigel's jacket and Thomas Mair gunning down an MP in Birstall market.

The milkshake option (caramel and banana, I believe) follows a long tradition in political protest, one which, while messily dramatic, is ultimately entirely peaceful with clothing the only casualties and temporarily so given the prevalence of new-fangled contraptions like washing machines. It is just the medium that is new: in the past, a variety of soft food products were a popular option - precisely because, as with milkshakes, these can express disdain and anger with very little chance of anyone actually being hurt (physically at any rate, egos may be a different matter).

In 1970, after his car was pelted with eggs during the General Election campaign, Labour's Harold Wilson's response was to quip, "If the Tories get in, in five years time no one will be able to afford an egg." In 1992, Margaret Thatcher was hit by a bouquet of daffodils, while then Deputy PM John Prescott was doused in iced water by members of Chumbawamba at the 1998 Brit Awards.

Egged - Harold Wilson in 1970

My personal experience of this was standing behind the late Labour MP Tam Dalyell at a march against the looming Gulf War in 1991 when a flour bomb struck him between the shoulders, the powdery fallout temporarily bestowing my face with a ghostly Halloweenesque quality. Dalyell however dusted himself down, grinned at me and plunged into a speech about peace.

A few years earlier, at a meeting at Glasgow University where the SDP leader Roy Jenkins was speaking, I witnessed a paper aeroplane hurtle out of the mass of a far from sympathetic audience to land squarely between his bespectacled eyes. Jenkins' response was to coolly carry on speaking while he retrieved the missile from the desk in front of him before nonchalantly launching it back in the direction from which it had come.

There are scores of similar incidents down through the years. John Major, Nick Brown, Michael Heseltine, Nick Griffin, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair, Ed Miliband - all these and many more have been pelted with rotten fruit, had chocolate eclairs shoved in their hair or ended up with egg on their faces. Democracy wasn't imperilled and politicians did not call the police to report crimes against their laundry.

Until yesterday, that is, when Farage bravely called the police and made a statement which landed his "attacker" in court charged with common assault and criminal damage.(Of course, Nigel has form when it comes to wasting taxpayers money on his whims - among other charges to the public purse, he similarly insisted on a prosecution of an egg-thrower in 2014.) Whisked on from Newcastle to Wakefield, he refused to leave the "safety" of his bus while vowing (I jest not) to "keep buying new clothes" until polling day.

The cream sours on Tyneside

Well, forgive me, but I shall not weep. In or out of the carton, milkshakes do not threaten democracy. What does are people like creepy "Sargon", who ponders on twitter about whether or not to rape a Labour woman MP; or Farage himself, who has belligerently promised his "People's Army" that he will "pick up a rifle" to ensure the Brexit of his choice happens.

Little more of course than inflammatory bravado when in truth he turns tail and runs from chocolate-dusted cream, but inflammatory all the same and it is this, not harmless acts of protest, that we should be worried about. Because Farage may never lift anything heavier than a pint - but who is listening to him, and what are they thinking and doing?

The murderer Thomas Mair shouted far right slogans - "Britain first!" - as he slaughtered Jo Cox with his knife and home-made gun, and just today we learned that the police and MI5 have been tracking scores of far right extremists who have plotted to murder Labour MPs and carry out major acts of terror. In a number of cases these fascists were dissuaded from committing slaughter only by agents revealing that they were being tracked and their plans were known: the police have not been able to arrest or prosecute in many cases. Instead, they walk our streets, their minds filled with rather more sinister ideas than dispensing sugary drinks over their opponents' heads.

So forgive me, but as I look at the comparisons, I am not losing any sleep over a millionaire's dry cleaning bill.

Don't Let The Lights Be Dimmed

The last 24 hours has been filled with repeated fanfares and breathless TV newspeople proclaiming about the earthquake caused by the increase of the United Kingdom Independence Party's vote in the British stage of the European elections. A group of millionaires and friends of millionaires, funded by a multi-millionaire, have managed to win a 27.5% vote share (on a 34% turnout = 9.5% of eligible voters)  - up from 16.5% last time (on a 35% turnout - 5.8% of eligible voters) and have the biggest grouping of MEPs from the UK in the European Parliament.

But UKIP's historically lazy MEPs are not the real issue - the issue is the attitudes and culture they foster and amplify. And these are ones of manufactured anger and fear of difference; of lies about EU regulations which often are the sole protection for workers and consumers against the big predatory multinational corporations that UKIP loves; and of a willingness to berate and bully their opponents in the name of a twisted democracy.

During the campaign, UKIP candidates successfully had the police visit a Green blogger to have him delete an internet posting about UKIP policy, even although the police themselves admitted no crime had been committed. And then another issued a letter to voters calling for both his opposing candidates and anyone who voted for them to be hanged for treason. If they are like this in opposition, what sort of country will they run if they ever come to power?

And they are not alone. All across Europe in these elections, we have seen the rise of bitterly angry, right-wing eurosceptic parties, perverting the troubles of the poor into a crusade against equally poor migrants while shoring up the real problem - the tax-dodging, austerity-imposing rich. Although Greece has turned more to the leftwing Syriza coalition in response to the neoliberal European Central Bank's savage public spending cuts, the far right has grown there too. Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn has taken one in ten Hellenic votes and there is even talk of an army coup - according to Forbes Magazine the "only half joking" preference of some international financiers.

In France, the Front National under Marine Le Pen has taken first place with a quarter of the vote, wiping out the Greens and pushing the governing socialists into third place. In Denmark, the far right People's Party topped the poll while the extreme-right Jobbik, widely accused of racism and anti-Semitism, finished second in Hungary. In the Netherlands, the Dutch Freedom Party of Geert Wilders' - which plans an alliance with Le Pen - finished joint second in terms of seats. Similarly the far right has performed well in Finland.

All these parties, and similar ones in other EU states, have common themes of taking back their countries, which generally translates into a call to continue with free trade by big business but to do away with laws such as the working time regulations and common product safety standards. This is because these, apparently, destroy the culture of their respective countries. But they don't talk about consumer protection, they talk about bureaucracy; they don't refer to safety in the workplace, but rather decry job-destroying red tape. They use the fears of ordinary people to reinforce the power of the elite.

Perhaps most troubling of all, rightists from Flanders, Denmark and elsewhere happily endorse Vladimir Putin as a true democrat after their own hearts, echoing as he does their calls to "take (his) country back". And perhaps it is Putin's Russia - also praised by Farage - that provides us with the nationalist right's  ideal template for a "country taken back". Putin's nationalism uses the language of patriotic freedom to crush many of the values and freedoms we have achieved, however tenuously, here. Gender equality, gay rights, respect for cultural diversity, freedom of expression, any attempt to seek economic or social justice - these are all subordinated to and largely suffocated by the National Will, expressed by a Leader selected via a managed democracy on behalf of a super-rich elite. "Difference" is tolerated very narrowly: and those who find the courage to kick against the limits placed on them end up out of work, in jail or exile, or dead in a ditch.

As growing numbers of Europeans embrace the xenophobia and monoculturalism of the Far Right, and the Establishment parties flounder, hoist on their outsourced elitist petards, now more than ever is it vital for the Left to advance the true alternative. That has to be one that focuses on a renewed drive towards egalitarianism, traversing national and cultural barriers to challenge the unbridled capitalist economic system and the thousand multinational corporations to whom our planet is so in thrall. It is possible - and if the elections show one thing, it is that, with their low turnouts, even the allegedly surging far right are still supported by minorities of national populations. We must not cede a narrative that allows the corporate media and the Tory rightwing to use UKIP's 9.5% share of the electorate to dictate yet further assaults on the rights and welfare of ordinary people.

As twice before, Europe sits on the fault-line: we can eradicate the gross inequality of wealth and power at the centre of our economic orthodoxy; we can put co-operation rather than competition at the heart of our Continent and yet become a beacon to the world. But equally, if our Demoi, our voters, commentators and political class, continue to indulge the grinning masks of Farage and his internationally franchised ilk, if we turn our world into one of closed borders and closed minds, we may once again sleepwalk into a nightmare from which, this time, there will be no coming back.

We Are Europe - Change It for the Better 22 May

For people not profit.
For consumers not corporations.
For planet, not exploitation.

We need a Europe that works for people, not big business. We need a Europe that improves the lives of workers, vulnerable people, the young and old.

We need a Europe for all of us.
We are Europe - change it for the better.

Today. Vote Green.

Guest Post: Bradley Allsop on Greens or UKIP?

Bradley Allsop explains why a Green vote is better than a UKIP one...

The past few months have seen a lot of attention on UKIP in the upcoming European elections, where the right-wing party are expected to come first or second.

Some are jubilant – I mean, they're sticking up a finger to the establishment and ridding us of an over-bearing EU in one stroke, aren’t they? Wrong.

If people want real change, and a party with a holistic vision of a fair future- then Greens are the only choice. Here are five reasons why a Green vote is a better vote than a purple one.

1. Green MEPs actually do something - Out of some kind of misguided belief that voting in the European Parliament would only “encourage” the Europhiles, Farage seems to actually take pride in his atrocious voting record in Brussels – compared to Greens who have the highest turnout out of any group. Whatever your views on the EU, we’re not going to leave it until at least 2017- so surely you want those elected into the European Parliament to actually try and fight your corner? Green MEP’s have already fought for caps on bankers’ bonuses, tougher regulation on City speculator’s, and measures to tackle youth unemployment- using their time in Brussels to actually help people. They’re also the only party talking about the US-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) - one of the biggest threats to democracy we face.

2. Climate change - UKIP are climate change deniers. The party’s 2010 manifesto promised to end the teaching of climate change in schools. Climate change, and the impending energy crisis if we do not switch to renewables, are two of the biggest problems we as a species face. The Greens are committed to tackling this head on, so we can all live in a cleaner, more sustainable way, preserving the beauty of our world -  while UKIP opt for the “bury your head in the sand” technique. This also highlights a key reason to stay in the EU - it has already passed legislation concerning carbon emissions, recognising that climate change is not something any one nation can tackle alone. We need international cooperation of the sort that the EU can give us.

3. What you see is what you get - The Green party works in a far more democratic way that the other major parties. Conference (where any member can put forward a proposal, proposals that are voted for by ordinary members) is the highest authority, and there is no “whipping” of Green candidates and officials. As long as we adhere to what is decided by everyone at conference, we are given relative autonomy to fight for what we believe and do what we think is right. What you see is what you get with the Greens, a party not mired in scandal like certain other parties seem to be…

4. Fighting for the unrepresented - The Greens have fought tirelessly for the forgotten, on local, national, and international levels. We want the minimum wage to become a living wage, whereas UKIP want to impose a flat rate of tax – something which only benefits the rich. We have fought for LGBTQI rights, whereas UKIP blame them for the weather. We have made steps at conference and within party structure to have more BME candidates, whereas UKIP officials have told them to go back to “black land”.

5. Hope not fear - The Greens are offering a fair and bright future for everyone. UKIP are offering an ever-more divisive future, fraught with an ‘us and them’ mentality. The threats we face as a species demand cooperation between us all, not division. The Greens recognise problems with the EU and seek to reform it so it works for the hundreds of millions within it, whereas UKIP just seek to isolate us, and draw us into a stagnant culture devoid of variety. The Greens are calling on you to hope for better, whereas UKIP are asking you to fear the worst.

If you want to give the establishment a good kicking on the 22nd, don’t vote for a party of not-so-closeted racists led by a former stockbroker and ex-public school boy. Vote for a radical alternative to the mainstream parties – the Greens.

(This post was originally published on the Young Greens website HE|RE.)

Picture from the incomparable blogger, Another Angry Voice: 

UKIP hit the doldrums as the Greens Surge

The media story of the European elections has been UKIP - not whether they would win or not, but by how much. Who could stop Farage and his People's Army? Hadn't the fag-and-pint-a-man colourfully captured the nation's zeitgeist (oops, is that German?)? Didn't he articulate the public mood just right?

But after several weeks of Farage overkill on the TV along with a roll-call of dodgy candidates far too long now to dismiss as the odd crank - from the man who thought gay marriage caused flooding, to the one who says women are partially responsible for date rape to the one who called for his opponents to be hanged for treason - the UKIP vote is not soaring, but flat-lining. The latest YouGov polls show that after weeks of spending his multi-millionaire funder's cash, Nigel's vote share for the European elections on Thursday has not altered at all since January and he languishes in second place.

But what the figures also show is the untold story, largely ignored by the media: the rise of the Green Party. From a 5% vote share back in March, the party has risen steadily to now be on 12%, ahead of the Liberal Democrats (the fourth national poll to show this). If the Green vote comes out this week, the party is set for a stunning result with a big increase from its current 2 MEPs.

So let's see the media cover the real story, not the manufactured purple hype.

Green Euroelections - Cllr Andrew Cooper, Lead candidate for Yorkshire & The Humber Region

In 2009, Yorkshire & The Humber region saw a rise in the Green Party vote at the European elections, but they were just pipped at the post, as in the North West, by the BNP. Just 1.3% separated the two.

Now, with the BNP imploded - their MEP left the party and set up his own, which is not standing - the Greens are working hard to gain their first seat in the region for the European Parliament. With councillors already elected in Scarborough, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, York and Kirklees, they have selected Huddersfield's Cllr Andrew Cooper as the lead candidate. Here he is.

Green Euroelections - Peter Cranie, Lead candidate for the North West Region

With the polls showing the Greens' support rising, including several now putting them ahead of the junior government party, the Lib Dems, here is Peter Cranie, the lead Green for the North West. Last time round, he lost by barely 0.3% to the BNP leader Nick Griffin. This time...

On The Eve?

One day, we will say good bye.

Nominations for the European elections don't close for another week and a half, but the poll on 22 May (which coincides with local elections across England) is already set to mark a major staging post in the collapse of the existing political system.

UKIP, a rightwing party promoting exit from the European Union, is climbing in the polls, comfortably ahead of the Conservatives and jostling with Labour for first place in some. Meanwhile, albeit on a lower level of support, the Greens are in a struggle with the Lib dems - the latest poll puts them on 6% each (with the Lib dem option prompted while the Green one isn't). There is a real prospect that the two Government parties will come in in third and fifth place respectively in a nationwide poll.

The repercussions are potentially immense - the Coalition is already coming apart at the seams as its constituent parts struggle to appeal to very different electorates by stressing an often fake set of differences with each other (as in a recent entirely manufactured "row" about wind turbines). Yet somehow they need to keep their alliance together in some meaningful way for another full year thanks to their own decision to create fixed term parliaments. The likely chaos that will ensure, with Lib Dems turning on each other and Tories trying to fix deals (and maybe even some defections) to UKIP, could lead to a collapse of the Government and a constitutional crisis of unprecedented proportions.

To add further grit to the Establishment's discomfort, if UKIP, largely perceived to be the English Nationalist Party in disguise (its former Scottish leader has written his compatriots off as "subsidy junkies"), polls particularly well, its emergence as a key player in politics south of the Border is likely to give the "Yes" campaign for Scottish independence its biggest fillip yet. The gap in the "Better Together" camp's favour has narrowed considerably in recent weeks. If a rising tide of right-wing "Little Englanderism" is confirmed, the social democratically-inclined Scots are increasingly likely to want to follow their own course when they vote in September's independence referendum.

And so we may stand on the eve of major change in the politics of our country - few of the players seem to appreciate just how major; perhaps our machine politicians can't. After all, they are not programmed for change, and for all their focus groups, sound bites and professional advisers, and their evident delight at creating their very own isolated, self-cloning and totally sterile "political class", it is as likely as not that many of them are about to find the Westminster bubble is fragile and insubstantial indeed.

Yet UKIP is not a genuine alternative to the three neoliberal parties it wants so keenly to join at the trough. It is narrow, self-defeating, inward-looking: it is no wonder that when a recent group of its supporters was asked to name one thing they liked about Britain, all that they came up with was "the past".

We don't need the three old parties. But we can do better than vote for a political pastiche like the populism evinced by Nigel Farage, the blokely stockbroker who wants tax cuts for the rich, opposed action to stop tax evasion and wants to cut the NHS and state pensions. Most Britons support instead a more equal, tolerant society: the vast majority want the return of industries like energy and transport to public ownership, back inclusive social policies like gay marriage and want action with other countries in Europe and elsewhere to protect consumers, workers and the environment - all things that UKIP is hostile to.

In the European elections, the Greens provide by far the strongest option for people who want a more equal society that uses its resources carefully and shares its wealth fairly. They were very close to winning MEPs in several regions last time: it is to be hoped that leftwing voters will turn to them to elect members with a very different agenda, people who can build on the work already done by the two current English Green EuroMPs in protecting workers' and consumers' rights in the face of the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition's efforts to rip up workplace safety and employment rights. In Yorkshire and the Humber and in the North-West regions, there is the additional appeal that the Green candidates there are in pole position to oust the UK's only two overtly fascist MEPs. With the elections held on proportional representation, every vote will count effectively.

But beyond the European vote, the challenge will remain, whatever the results. As we face a more polarised and fractured political scene, the Left above all must put aside its sometimes sectarian differences and its dogma; with people from a range of progressive parties, trade unions, civic groups and communities, we need to recapture the mainstream for collectivism, for the common good. The peoples of these islands are not by nature inclined to selfishness or exclusion: we are better than that.

So, for those of us who care for a fairer world, who deeply and genuinely love our country as the open-hearted, generous spirited society it once was and can be again, there is much, much work to do: but the good news is that we have real choices and, this time, we really can make the difference.

Neither Nigel Nor Nick, for the Common Good

As I write, we face another couple of hours of the yawn-athon that is the debate between Nigel Clegg and Nick Farage, two neoliberal con men devoted to preserving a system that works for the richest people and the largest corporations on the planet.

Sounds odd? After all, aren't these two meant to be polar opposites. Well, let's see:

- both support free trade areas, either with Europe and/or the USA (or in UKIP's case, Russia) which sounds great except that in practice it means more profits for big business and fewer services for citizens from Governments no longer able to raise money from border tariffs. Their only real difference is which free trade areas they want to be part of - indeed, Farage even wants to have one with the EU, which would mean in practice we would continue to have to follow all the things he complains about, but with absolutely no say in how they would work. So the real difference between them is simply volume and rhetoric, nothing more.

- they both support "flexible" (i.e., low wage & insecure) workforces: Clegg has stripped all of us of significant employment rights while in Government; Farage wants to do away with the rest of them completely.

- they both want to subsidise foreign companies to come and build nuclear power stations in Britain.

- they both support fracking in our countryside to produce yet more carbon emissions into our smog-filled atmosphere.

- both of them know and patronise the finest restaurants in Brussels, courtesy of the rest of us.

They are a prime example of what Noam Chomsky calls "the illusion of choice". In this, we are allowed a semblance of democracy with rows and angry debates over a small range of issues - but anyone wanting to debate the fundamentals, such as how our wealth is created and used and who owns it, how it is shared, is excluded. Just as the Green Party was excluded from the debates between the two men in suits.

So, if you are bored by the prospect of another evening of these two self-regarding poseurs on the airwaves and would prefer something different, here it is. The Greens' punchy and amusing response to the "debate" on Europe. Take a look - it's for the Common Good.

Death Wish Lib Dems

Registering now regularly below 10% in the national polls, the Lib Dems are showing increasingly frayed nerves as The Reckoning of the 2015 General Election gradually draws into sight. And looming large between now and then, the Slaughterhouse of the Euro-elections also beckons so very terrifyingly - even their own President, Tim Farron, concedes they may be completely wiped out in the Euros. Hurriedly, northern Lib Dem MPs have issued a report attacking austerity a mere four years and hundreds of Commons votes too late. Meanwhile, shaken by the rise of UKIP in the polls, Eurofanatic leader Nick Clegg is to face his opposite number among the Eurosceptics, Nigel Farage, in a debate that is likely to be about as compellingly memorable viewing as the final episode of BBC Eurosoap El Dorado. (remember?)

Against all this, they remain unapologetic for their years enabling the Tories to change Britain perhaps for a generation if not forever: in the stealth privatisation of the health service, the emasculation of local government via death by a million cuts, the stigmatising of disabled people as a drain on society and a host of tax cuts and regulatory changes to support big corporate business. They've made tough decisions, they claim - all too often rather too eagerly and proudly to sustain their facade of reluctance for long.

And now, today, their hubris, their delusion and their death wish stand naked before us all.

The Green Party received a leaked memo from the Lib Dem Head of Campaigns setting out their plans to target the Greens at the Euroelections.

First of all, it is a perhaps sound acknowledgement of the very real threat the Greens pose to the Lib Dems in the elections: with 2 sitting MEPs and strong chances of adding at least a further 4 or more to their total, they stand poised to overtake the junior Coalition partner in both seats and votes, making in effect as big a story as any rise in UKIP support. The Lib Dems nervousness is well founded here.

Less well founded is their target for their "smearing" of the Greens as "dinosaur left-wingers that are more red than green." It seems that the Lib Dems (whose constitutional name is still the Social & Liberal Democrats) view the Greens commitment to social justice and a more equal society as Jurassic age communism. So be it. It is far less of a commentary on the Greens than on just how far the Lib Dems have travelled in their power-seeking odyssey and how pathetically desperate they are to cling onto the privileges and office-troughs they have their snouts so firmly stuck in.

For the appalling truth the Lib Dems plan to reveal about the Greens is the party's opposition to TTIP; the Trans-Atlantic Trade & Investment Partnership currently being (secretly) negotiated between the EU and the USA. This treaty sets up a free-trade zone between these two areas, allegedly to help harmonise commercial standards on each side of the Pond, but also to facilitate the accumulation of wealth by large business corporations. Not only will trade duties be relaxed (denuding public treasuries of much needed tax revenue) but large American companies will be able to participate in public procurement in Europe (including the UK). Crucially, if the Governments of any European countries impose any restrictions through public policy that might reduce the profits of these predators, they will be able to sue that country for damages. Secret abritrators rather than public courts will decide such cases, making the whole process ever more opaque and undemocratic.

India and Australia have already come unstuck with similar treaties where companies have successfully sued over public health regulations at a cost of hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars to the taxpayer. Meanwhile, under its free trade treaty with Canada, Costa Rica faces paying out to Canadian gold mining interests for stopping them prospecting in environmentally sensitive areas of its country - no wonder some call the TTIP the BAD law: Business Against Democracy.

So this is what the Lib Dems will stand for against the Greens: they will plant their flags firmly in the dung heap of corporate capital. Pitching themselves against a party that stands for the interests of ordinary citizens and communities,  they will claim that the TTIP will create some jobs generously brought to us by here-today-gone-tomorrow multinationals chasing the lowest paid round the planet (even although most of the evidence of such deals points quite clearly in the opposite direction). Clegg and his Orcs think this will stir up such resentment that the public will turn away from the Greens' ideas for a living wage, a transaction tax, clampdowns on tax avoidance and extension of the public sector.  Judging the electorate by their own standards, they apparently believe voters will prefer their own slavish adherence to corporate Europe over the Greens' aspiration for a transformed social Europe working for people not profit.

Fine. Let them. The sooner they do, the better. It's getting boring now watching the long, lingering demise of this hubristic ragbag of puffed-up careerists: let's get it over with in time for the next season of The Walking Dead. Please.

Green Party Eurocandidates offered help for Lib Dem conference delegates troubled by their guilty consciences at a special Field Hospital in York last week. There were no takers.

Still Nothing Worth Watching... UKIP TV

Last weekend, a Spring conference of a national political railed against inequality, cuts to the NHS and tax evasion by the wealthy and called for a basic citizens' income to be paid to all adults. The same party heard how its MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) have worked to create laws that give real protection to workers and consumers, that support communities facing pollution from big business and introduced a cap on bankers' bonuses. This party has an MP, 2 MEPs, and over 160 local authority councillors as well as 2 members of the London Assembly and its candidate came third in the last London Mayoral contest.

However, the Green Party gained relatively little coverage for its work and proposals. When leader Natalie Bennett was granted an audience with the eminence gris of Radio 4, John Humphrys, his main focus was on whether or not the party should change its name.

Wall to wall coverage meantime went to another party - UKIP, the United Kingdom Independence Party. As for some months, its seemingly ubiquitous leader, Nigel Farage, has been profiled ceaselessly on TV, radio and press. One Tweeter was even moved to state "Listened to Sports Radio Bulletin & no quotes from UKIP. Britain isn't what it used to be."

This in spite of UKIP having no MPs, and having just pulled ahead of the Greens in terms of local councillors last year (and subsequently losing swathes of these councillors either to breakaway groups, resignations, suspensions from councils or expulsion from their own party). The party's MEPs for a second parliament in a row have plunged in number as they have been expelled or left of their own accord (although to be fair, this time none of them have gone to jail for fiddling expenses). Their record of attendance in the European Parliament is pisspoor beyond compare and when they have turned up they have voted against/abstained on votes calling for action to stop violence against women, including female genital mutilation. In spite of this, they happily draw the salaries and expenses funded by the taxpayers they claim to be defending.

In policy terms, they are indistinguishable from the Tory right wing - opposed to Europe, supporting cuts to the NHS and pensions, opposing action on bankers' excesses and hostile to immigration while ignoring the millions of Britons living in Europe. And they even have a councillor who asked on social media if tuna is "a real fish that swims in water".

UKIP have nevertheless been polling reasonably well in opinion polls - around the 10 - 12% level, neck and neck with the sucker-punched Lib dems. So now Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, has decided that UKIP is to be treated as a major party for the purposes of broadcasting during the European elections. This means parity of coverage on the BBC and commercial TV and radio channels with the Tories, Labour and Lib dems. It also strengthens Farage's claim for a place in any Leaders' debate at next years general election - and indeed reflecting this, the BBC have already set up a Nigel Farage-Nick Clegg debate in early April.

 (A note for viewers in Scotland: There are some limited exceptions in Scottish-only programming given UKIP's dire position north of the Border - keep up the good work! However, Scots can be assured that they will still be able to see plenty of Farage & Co on all UK-wide programmes such as Newsnight, Question Time and the Daily Politics as well as all news bulletins. One more reason to vote Yes!)

So UKIP joins the three other neoliberal parties on the telly. Needless to say, the Greens and any other parties with genuinely different agendas (especially, it seems, left wing ones) are still not invited - our viewing is restricted to a mere illusion of choice. "Balance" in political broadcasting is a rather oddly interpreted word, with a clear bias to providing the status quo with a near overwhelming incumbent advantage. This paralyses genuine political discourse in a context where access to media is often key to any political idea or movement being taken seriously. Indeed, UKIP's rise is not entirely unattributable to polling organisations adding them to their list of parties respondents are prompted to think about when asked how they plan to vote. The Greens and others are not currently included - on the occasions they have been, they often poll between twice and four times their normal showing.

Of course, you could argue that this is just crying over spilt milk on the party of a Green. But on the other hand, you could look to the absence of any real debate on the mass media about our society and our world and the future we face. Instead, like a set of adverts for banks or insurance firms, you get some mild variations on a theme. Go compare, but don't waste your time for too long - they really are all pretty much the same.

So many channels; so little choice...