Become more of an activist

Last week I came across this website : http://www.getfair.org.uk/about which is a campaign aiming to inspire people to lobby their MP’s and get them to commit to eradicating poverty in the UK.

I sent an email to my MP, expressing my concerns that although the UK has the fifth richest economy in the world, 1 in 5 people are living in poverty here.

And today I received a reply! He claims he is happy to support the aims of the Get Fair campaign, and he described his party’s plans to eradicate poverty. Here are our messages : Me = blueMr Sanders = red

Dear Mr Sanders,

My name is H Youster. I am writing to you as part of the Get Fair campaign. I am concerned that as the fifth largest economy in the world, no one should be living in poverty in the UK.

However, it is my understanding that the current number of people in the UK living in poverty is 12.8 million. In other words, in a population where all people should have sufficient money to live on, 1 in 5 are living in poverty. I hope you would agree that this is totally unacceptable.

I believe that the shared objective of Government and political parties must be to protect the poorest in our society who are badly hit by the impact of the recession. I have no doubt that an increase in levels of income will be essential to achieve a major reduction in poverty, together with affordable housing and fair access to public services, without discrimination.

I hope that you agree with me and will support the Get Fair campaign by committing to the Poverty Pledge below:“I undertake to use, or support the use, of all policy powers available to parliament to meet poverty targets and include concrete measures in my party manifesto to achieve a lasting reduction in poverty in the UK.”

In addition, please support the campaign by raising these issues in Parliament and signing the Early Day Motion 1529 (tabled by John Battle MP).

I look forward to receiving your reply. If you would like more information about the campaign, please email info@getfair.org.uk or call 0161 236 9321.

Yours sincerely,H Youster

Dear H Youster

Thank you for your email. I will be happy to support the aims of the Get Fair campaign.

There are so many things the Government could do to reduce poverty and narrow the gap between rich and poor. Unfortunately very few of these have happened.

My party is arguing for a radical shift in the tax system; raising the tax free allowance to at least £10,000 so that those on the lowest wages are not hit by high tax bills. Similarly we want to change council tax to a local income tax as currently those on the lowest incomes and especially pensioners have to pay a far greater proportion of their income on council tax.

Furthermore we aim to raise the basic state pension so that no one over 65 receives less than the poverty level. Today a single pensioner may receive as little as £125 per week, compared to the poverty level of £165.

This will all require a shift in spending priorities so we will not spend money on projects such as Trident replacement. Revenue can also be gained from tackling tax fraud. Each year tens of billions of pounds are lost to tax havens and tax evasion by large companies and wealthy individuals. It is time everyone contributed to society according to their ability to pay.

Please be assured the Liberal Democrats will do all they can in Parliament to reduce poverty.

If you have any further concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerelyAdrian Sanders MP

I’m really pleased about this, and the fact that I got a decent reply is really encouraging to want to do this sort of thing more often. :)

Me and Claire went back to our old Sixth Form college and spoke to each tutor group.

I’d emailed the Head of Sixth Form, who allowed us to come in and said he’d put it in the school newspaper. :)

We put a few posters up round the school and we got well over 30 email addresses of people who were interested in helping us run the event!! Yippee!! Just got to wait to hear back from Primary schools now.

Me and Claire are currently rushing to get so many things organised! * * * I met members of the Green Party a few weeks back, and they took my contact details and invited me to meetings. :) The woman who is going for MP soon told me about Claire, who was wanting to plan a 350 event but needed some one to help her organise it ~ of course, I was deffinitely up for this!

350 : http://www.350.org/
350 is basically an organization who have decided to make Oct 24th a ‘Day of Action’. Scientific evidence now tells us that 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is the safe UPPER limit for us to continue living in the environment we are used to. We currently are at around 390, which is why many now view THIS as the time to take action! CO2 stays around in our atmosphere for 10 years, which is why we must make severe changes to how the world works now, to avoid the consequences being even worse. Through thousands of events taking place in over 100 countries, 350 hopes to gather MANY photos of each event that will form a petition to world leaders that we want them to push for a stronger climate treaty at Copenhagen this December!

Torbay has recently been showing that our community does care about our impact on the environment, with the recent Transition festival and Brixham soon becoming a transition town. So I have been emailing the local media to get coverage before and after the event ~ and they are keen!!

• Young ones ~ We plan to speak to local primary schools next week to get as many as possible involved in getting the children to make kites to then take to the event. Our aim is 350 kites!!
• Young people ~ We are going to Sixth Forms (16-19 year olds) and local youth groups to tell them our plans and get them involved with the planning and publicity of the event. This will help us get things done quickly as well as giving them a bit of experience and something to put on their uni applications and CVs.
• We hope to also run a coffee morning for the elder generation so that they can still be involved but since we don’t know what the weather will be like, they can keep nice and warm!

I am seriously excited about this event, and it’s been awesome meeting other people who are passionate about things like this since most of my friends don’t seem to care much for environmental stuff and just call me a hippy!! This will be great. :)
x xx

Oh my gosh!!!

More ideas for The Hungry Clickers!
Last night I just couldn’t sleep at all. Possibly due to the large number of cups of tea, but also because I couldn’t stop thinking about this!!

My idea of furthering the work of The Hungry Clickers is that when we have a sufficient sized group, we organise days of going out in small groups with our own cups of food, a camera and good spirits! We could take sandwiches, and cups of soup and just sit with the homeless people you see in town, talk to them, get to know them, feed them ourselves. They deserve a chance jsut as much as any one else in society!!

We could then write up a blog of how it went, using pictures (if they let us take some) and describing how its gone.

I’m so psyched about this!!!!! :) :)
x xx xx x

I know I’m supposed to be focusing on exams, but…

I couldn’t help it anymore!!
I was getting so much inspiration through reading the likes of Michael Norton all the time [Link] that I had to start something!! I read a scenario that Norton wrote, about how much can come from doing one little action as many more little (or big) actions can come from it.

I knew that Emma also goes on the rainforest site every day but I did not know her preference, so I asked. She has the exact same as me! www.thehungersite.com set as homepage, ready to click every time we go online!!

As of tonight, we have started the group, ‘The Hungry Clickers’.
When my site is running there’ll be plenty of dedication to it there, but for a start we’re running off Facebook.

Become a Hungry Clicker

The page isn’t exciting yet.
I’ve e-mailed The Hunger Site to ask for use of their pictures, as well a blog with a powerful photo on.

EEEEEEP!!!! x xxx x