Posts Tagged ‘lobbying’

Free Speech & PFI Debt – 2013

Sunday, October 8th, 2023

Free Speech & PFI Debt – Ten years ago on Tuesday 8th October 2013 I photographed two protests in London, the first against a controversial law which prevents some campaigning by organisations in the year before a general election and the second over the effect of huge repayments of PFI debts that are severely affecting the ability to provide proper hospital services – a result of misguided policy decisions by previous governments and poor agreements made by civil servants.


Don’t Gag Free Speech – Parliament Square

Free Speech & PFI Debt

Campaigners in Parliament Square opposed the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill which was being debated that day in Parliament in what was somewhere between a staged photo-opportunity and a protest.

Free Speech & PFI Debt

The name of the Bill (and the Act which came into force in 2014) is something of a mouthful as it combined three quite different things. Establishing a register of consultant lobbyists seemed long overdue, although it seemed unlikely to reduce the scandalous effect of lobbying by groups such as fossil fuel companies on government policies – and clearly has not as recent decisions on Rosebank and other environmental issues has shown.

Free Speech & PFI Debt

But the restrictions on the campaigning activities by charities and other “third party organisations” in the year before a general election was extremely controversial. So controversial that it was opposed by an incredibly wide range of voluntary organisations, “including Action for Blind People, Action for Children, the British Heart Foundation, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Countryside Alliance, Guide Dogs, Islamic Relief UK, Hope not Hate, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, the Royal British Legion, the RSPB and the Salvation Army.” All saw that their legitimate activities in pursuing their charitable and other aims could be limited by the new legislation at least one year in four.

Free Speech & PFI Debt

The third section of the bill would effect the ability of trade unions to play a full role in informing and advising members in ways that might influence how they should vote.

Many saw the bill as an attack on free speech and something that could be used to silence critics of the government in the run-up to general elections, while failing to address the problems of lobbying by vested interests which could continue so long as the lobbyists were registered.

Rather than the mouthful of its full name, the Bill was widely referred to as the “lobbying bill”, or by its many critics as the “gagging bill” and this was reflected in some of those protesting having tape across their mouths, as well as in posters and placards. Although the bill became law it has perhaps had less effect than many of the campaigners feared, probably because of its lack of clarity. But it remains in law as a failure to deal with lobbying and a threat to free speech.

More pictures at Don’t Gag Free Speech.


Scrap Royal London NHS PFI Debt – Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) was a disastrous system which enabled essential government expenditure to be taken off the books. Essentially it involved in disguising borrowing by the government to build schools and hospitals etc by getting money from the private sector for these works and then paying these back over long periods of time.

But rather than the government paying back the loans for new hospitals, these would be paid back by the NHS through the various health trusts. It made no real sense, but made the figures for government borrowing look better.

Things were made worse, firstly by the private sector negotiators of the agreements running rings around those from the public sector inexperienced in such things meaning the contracts are far too favourable to them. Then we had the financial crash and the Tory-imposed austerity. Health trusts found themselves in an impossible situation, which required some radical government action. Even the Tories were eventually forced to do something, and in 2020, over £13 billion of NHS debt was scrapped; this good news came together with a wider package of NHS reforms in part intended to allow them to cope with Covid, and I’m unclear of what the overall effect will be in the longer term.

The Barts Health Trust which covers much of East London, including Barts, The Royal London, Newham General, Whipps Cross and London Chest Hospital, as well as many smaller community facilities has been particularly badly hit, with PFI payments of £129m a year to a private consortium who financed the new (and much needed) Royal London Hospital.

Barts Health Trust needs to cut £78m from the services it provides and planned to do so by downgrading the posts of many of its staff, paying them less for doing the same work, or rather doing more work, as there will be increasing staff shortages with vacancies being deliberately left unfilled. In any case new staff will be unwilling to come and work for a trust that wants to pay them less than their experience and qualifications merit.

Barts were also proposing to close departments such as A&E at Whipps Cross or Newham and for the population of East London things are made worse by proposed closures in neighbouring health trusts.

The rally began on a narrow pavement on the busy Whitechapel Road outside the hospital but after police told the organisers it was too dangerous moved onto the access road in front of the new PFI financed hospital where they had previously been denied permission to protest.

Although the hospital has a new building, financial problems have prevented them from making use of the top two floors – and for two days recently had been unable to admit any new patients as no beds were available.

More at Scrap Royal London NHS PFI Debt.


Occupy Gandhi – Stop Fossil Fuel Criminals

Wednesday, May 4th, 2022

Occupy Ghandi - Stop Fossil Fuel Criminals

Occupy Gandhi – Stop Fossil Fuel Criminals – on Monday 4th May 2015 Occupy Democracy were on the fourth day of their ‘Festival of Democracy’ in Parliament Square “building a movement for real democracy: free from corporate control, working for people and planet!”

Occupy Ghandi - Stop Fossil Fuel Criminals

Occupy had come to Parliament Square in defiance of the law criminalising the use of tarpaulins, tents and other protection in the square, and were making six key demands:

• reform of party funding so that members of parliament act in the interests of those who elect them rather than the 1% who bankroll them
• major democratic reform of the media to break the stranglehold of vested interests
• a fundamental overhaul of lobbying and the way powerful economic interests inhabit the corridors of power within government
• the introduction of proportional representation so that everyone’s vote counts
• that MPs should not have conflicts of interests from either paid employment or corporate shareholdings
• a citizen-led constitutional convention for real democracy.

Occupy Festival of Democracy
Occupy Ghandi - Stop Fossil Fuel Criminals

On Monday 4th they began a rally and meditation at the foot of the statue of Gandhi, noted for his direct action civil disobedience, calling for fossil fuel exploration and investment to be made a crime. Donnachadh McCarthy laid out a large blue banner with the message ‘Criminalise Fossil Fuel Exploration‘ and a mock tombstone with the inscription ‘RIP – 300,000 Dying from Climate Crisis Every Year Said Kofi Annan UN Gen Soc‘.

Occupy Ghandi - Stop Fossil Fuel Criminals

People then brought tarpaulins to sit on around these on the paved area in front of Ghandi’s statue and began a series of short speeches, meditation and songs about climate change and fossil fuel use.

They took a small blue tarp to the statue of Gandhi and wrapped it carefully around him. After a short pause two of the GLC’s private security heritage wardens who had been watching the event with a few police officers came up and removed the blue tarpaulin. A replacement was brought up and carefully held by two of the protesters without touching the statue (much) and the meditation continued.

There was another minor intervention by the heritage wardens who objected to burning incense sticks being placed in the flower beds. The protesters removed them and instead held them.

Donnachadh McCarthy then produced a blue folding tent and erected it, announcing that he was going to defy the ban on tents and inviting others who wished to join him.

People climbed in and after posing for a photograph with the tent the protest continues, with Donnachadh joining them inside as police approached. The police warned those inside the tent they were committing an offence and warned them they could be arrested – and then walked away.

Some minutes later, at exactly 2pm a larger group of police returned and surrounded the tent.

They gave those inside a final chance to leave without being arrested. Three people remained inside the tent, holding each other tight.

Finally they were arrested, handcuffed and taken away to waiting police vans. The whole police operation seemed a massive waste of public money enforcing a ridiculous law. The real criminals are not a few protesters with tents and tarpaulins in public squares, but those who sit in boardrooms and continue promote and produce fossil fuels which are driving us towards extinction, plotting actions to derail attempts to make the changes the planet needs in order to increase their profits.

More pictures at Occupy Gandhi – stop fossil fuel criminals.


Dirty Money Still Rules

Sunday, November 7th, 2021

Nine years ago on Wednesday 7th November 2012, the day that the election of Obama for a second term as President of the US was announced, the Campaign against Climate Change organised a series of protests in London urging him to stand up against the lobbying, dirty money and media lies funded by the Koch brothers and other fossil fuel companies.

Nine years later, after both the end of Obama’s presidency and four years of climate denier Trump, President Biden is still having problems in getting his plans to clean up the environment (and other policies) voted through because of opposition by a Senator who made a fortune from a coal brokerage business in which he owns more than a million dollars in shares and who receives more donations than any other senator from the coal, oil and gas industry.

Campaign Against Climate Change, March 2003

The Campaign against Climate Change was founded in 2001 as a response to President Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, and I think I first photographed one of their marches back in March 2002 when they pushed a bed with Bush in bed with the Esso tiger from Esso’s UK HQ to Westminster. It was a long walk and the wheels fell off the bed as it came to Westminster Bridge, but in 2012, after a static protest at the HQ of giant US private company Koch International they chose sturdier wheels in the form of an open-top bus.

Koch Industries is the US’s largest private company and made its fortune through developing improved processes of oil refining, and this remains a major part of its widespread activities. It is owned by the Koch Brothers, who ‘have been a major source for funding disinformation on climate change and in instigating the wave of populist anti-science, anti-regulatory, right-wing extremism associated with the “Tea Party”.’

Both in the US and the UK, governments are hugely influenced by the lobbying of big business, with many politicians accepting large payouts for services rendered, as well as a large PR and lobbying industry aimed at law makers and the media. The truly shameful think about the current case of Owen Paterson is not that he was paid paid £100,000 and broke the rules, but that their are rules that exist which he claims to have kept within to allow such paid lobbying by MPs.

Phil Thornhill at the front of the bus

Although the bus didn’t lose its wheels, it was desperately cold as it went through London on a cold, wet and windy November evening, with Phil Thornhill of the CCC leaning over the top with a large megaphone informing the public about the reason for the protest. It was also extremely bumpy, which together with the low light made photography rather difficult, and most of the time I was too busy holding tight to the rail across the top of the seats to take pictures.

Finally after its journey through the rush-hour streets the bus arrived at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square and we all alighted. At first police tried to push the protesters into a penned area in a dark corner of the square where it would be neither heard nor seen. The protesters sensibly refused and after some discussion were allowed to protest as usual in front of the locked front gates – protected outside by a thin line of police, and inside the tall fence by wandering armed officers.

Barach Obama with David Koch on the top of the bus

Protests such as this of course had no effect on Obama’s business-friendly administration, while Trump made climate denial core policy of his tweets. But these and other protests did raise awareness of the catastrophe the world is facing. Many of us had been aware of the coming crisis for many years – at least since the 1980s, though there were warnings from some scientists years earlier, but the wider public, often misinformed by the media was largely ignorant.

Without protests such as this around the world, it seems unlikely that their would have been an agreement reached at COP 21 in Paris in 2015, and since then, helped by the publicity given to Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough, not to mention various extreme climate events around the world, there is now a wide consensus that something needs to be done, and done urgently. But thanks to the huge continued efforts of big business in fossil fuels the politicians are still locked into doing too little too late.

More pictures: Stop Fossil Fuel Dirty Money takeover of US.