This week, IoM Friends of the Earth’s co-Ordinator Cat Turner reports on a great day of campaigning at Tynwald Fair, celebrating our national day in the Isle of Man and encouraging residents to keep it a terrific place to live and work
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This year, as in previous years, the Green Centre team was out in force at Tynwald’s fair, with four (FOUR!!!) gazebos and lots of information and ideas for the public.
Isle of Man Friends of the Earth teamed up with its allies at Zero Waste Mann (recycling and waste reduction), the Manx Energy Advice Centre (renewables, insulation and energy efficiency) and Beach Buddies (beach cleaning volunteer events).
And what a great day it was! The sun shone, the crowds were there in force, and we were glad we had some new members helping out, because we fielded lots of enquiries and suggestions from the public.
IoM FoE campaigns on lots of different areas, as regular readers will know, but we decided that for this day we’d focus on one ‘grass roots’ campaign which we already know matters a lot to the public, and for which we chose bees and biodiversity bee-friendly planting.
In addition we also chose one ‘big issue’, reflecting the fact that the Isle of Man, as an international finance centre, is deeply embedded in the way the global economic system works.
So we promoted our NO TTIP day – a protest action held on July 12 at the Green Centre, in connection with the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact, with the potential to undo years of hard-won progress in environmental, employment and safety protections.
We were pretty much cleaned out of literature and give-aways relating to the bees – the ‘Make a Bee-and-Bee’ instructions were massively popular, especially with youngsters and their families.
And speaking personally, as the wearer of the bee suit (on one of the hottest days of the year), I got more hugs from people than I’ve had in ages. Bonus!
But the biggest surprise, if I’m honest, was how many people wanted to discuss TTIP – we thought it’d be a bit of a dry and technical subject, but of course we have a very financially literate and aware population since so many people here work in the finance /tax industry.
So many people ‘got it’ right away, and have said they would support our day of action – because like it or not, if it goes through, the Isle of Man would be massively affected because it’s a dependency of an EU member state.
TTIP effectively gives multinational corporations the ability to over-ride a government’s ability to protect its national interests, and those of its people – and it allows the company to sue that government for lost profits, if its environmental or other laws prevent the company from doing what it wants there.
This means losing some of our most hard-won personal and environmental protections, such as labour rights, food safety rules (including restrictions on GMOs), regulations on the use of toxic chemicals, digital privacy laws and even new banking safeguards introduced to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.
And they can sue a country that tries to enforce these in secret. And even if the government wins, it would still be liable to pay for the company’s legal costs. You couldn’t make this stuff up . . .
If you’re concerned about this, and how it might affect our independent little nation’s future economy and environment, take a look at War on Want’s excellent guide on the issues at www.waronwant.org/campaigns/trade-justice/more/inform/18078-what-is-ttip. As one of those multinational companies’ brands would say: ‘Because You’re Worth It’.