I think the Basic income is central to the Green Party’s ecological aims, but also to any answer to austerity. But that does not mean Conference is interested. My fringe intending to explain was not selected. My anger at this decision is my problem alone, but I thought that interest in the issue had been seriously underestimated. I was wrong. As at 23rd August, a week after my appeal via this blog and the Green Party website Members’ Forum, Louisa Greenbaum, conference organizer, had receive just one message. So there will not be a Basic income fringe at the Bournemouth conference.

What I shall do is distribute a leaflet at Conference giving this blog site. A small room, Dressing Room A, may be available at 18.30 on Sunday evening (26th Sept). It is not suitable for a fringe, but it will be possible for anyone who shares my concern – distress really, in my case – to decide what to do next, how to get the party even interested, let alone take the Basic Income seriously.

I guess that at this point in time most people are focussed 0n the refugee crisis. I have written posts on migration before the recent developments. The relevance of the Basic Income at an international level is long term, and relates primarily to economic migration. It is help for refugees which is urgently needed, but once the transformative effect of a Basic Income is seen where conditions do make it possible, as in the existing example of Otjivero, the concept will spread.

Once upon a time, everyone, everywhere lived in tribes which had had access to the means of subsistence. That is no longer the case. The Basic Income reinstates that access in a way which means that everyone is better off contributing to the society in which they are born in some way, and limiting their numbers to the carrying capacity of their environment.

That Syria and Ethiopia have populations five times greater than 1950 is spilt milk. But the same milk is still being poured away. The rise of ISIL is not entirely unconnected with this aspect. Brazil has shown the way with the Bolsa Familia, a stepping stone towards the Basic Income, that it is possible to persuade families to have fewer children.