About Debbie Twitchen

Debbie Twitchen has lived in or near the town of Lewes all her life. Educated at Rodmell Primary
School and Lewes Priory, she worked in the hospitality industry from the age of 15 including most
recently as the House Manager at the East Sussex National Golf Resort.
At present a Landport resident she is Chair of the Residents’ Association there and also the Lewes
District Council Tenants Association (TOLD) as a whole. In these roles she has undertaken
scrutiny, research and consultation functions and attends the Lewes District Council Cabinet
meetings as a representative of the tenant group.
Debbie’s life story is one of triumph over adversity. She has two serious chronic conditions,
Crohns Disease and Fibrous Dysplasia, both of which on their own could stop someone from
taking an active part in the life of their community, and taken together in the form that she has them
are a one in several million occurrence. These have become progressively worse to the point that,
after numerous hospital admissions and serious operations and treatment regimes, she has had to
give up paid work.
Yet Debbie not only continues to fulfil the roles described above, in 2012 she undertook to help to
set up a foodbank on Landport, which to this day she runs with a team of volunteers. The
foodbank is open every Monday afternoon, and food and personal household items are given to
people in need including from Fairshare and donations from members of the public and charities.
At present the foodbank serves about 30 clients including both families and single people of all
ages.
In the last year she has become a Trustee of the newly formed Landport Community Hub which is
being developed on the old “Boys Club” site on Landport Road and is also a Trustee of both
Pippa’s Group Nursery which provides for children under five including those who have a range of
difficulties, and of the Landport Youth Club, both of which now operate from the building along with
the Dance Academy. All three groups were on the brink of homelessness before the Hub was set
up.
Debbie is a truly inspiring person.

Landport Foodbank

When
The foodbank was set up in 2012. This was in response to need identified by Housing Officers
from Lewes District Council and the local Residents Association on Landport. The foodbank is
open every Monday afternoon for clients to pick up food. Volunteers spend the morning getting the
delivered food and other items into family and individual sized parcels, bagged up ready for
collection.

Where
Landport Estate, an area with approximately 790 dwellings including flats, houses and sheltered
bungalows. The foodbank operates from 2A Horsfield Road which is the community room for the
estate.

Why
Over the last few years there has been an increasing incidence of families and individuals in need
both because of catastrophic happenings in their lives and because of chronic poverty meaning
that even a small change like temporary sanctions or moving from one job or benefit to another is
happening to people very vulnerable to serious food poverty.

What
A foodbank is a place where people referred by various professionals and agencies can visit to
collect essential food and other personal items from on a regular but it is always hoped very
temporary basis. Referrals can be made, for example, by the CAB, a Housing Officer or a family
doctor or the Headteacher of a school.

Who
People running a foodbank are usually volunteers from the local community. People attending a
foodbank are families and individuals of any age who are currently in food poverty and have been
referred by one of the professionals or agencies agreed in their area to do this.
This sets out the bare bones of the Landport Foodbank. There are clearly much wider issues
embodied in this social institution which can be discussed having looked at this specific example
from our community

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend to buy the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.

About the talk

Chris will provide an overview of the trajectory and work of NEF and then focus on some work specific to fisheries (and brexit).

The talk will explain why the need for a new economy where people really take control is now more urgent than ever given Brexit. It will focus on various components of NEFs work and show how, in the context of managing natural resources such as fisheries, coastal communities need a ‘blue new deal’ to create good jobs that don’t damage the environment first future generations.

About Chris
Chris Williams began work at New Economics Foundation in 2011 as the Marine Socio-economics Coordinator, managing a project to enhance UK Marine NGOs capacity to engage with key socio-economic debates relating to fisheries and the use of the marine environment. A key goal was to foster greater levels of sharing and collaboration among NGOs, specifically those working on marine conservation and fisheries. Currently Chris works on fisheries management problems and Community Economic Development.

Before NEF, Chris worked for Natural England (the UK’s nature advisory body leading on the Marine Protected Areas project) and built links with Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority. From 2004-2008 he initiated and conducted conservation and development projects in the Americas and Africa; set up marine conservation projects and ran small-scale development projects in rural areas for a UK based charity (www.quest4change.org). Chris holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and North American History and Politics from Sussex University and a Masters degree in Environment and Development (with Spanish) from Kings College London. He is a member of Lewes Transition Town.

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend to buy the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.

About the talk:
“Can governments tax both equitably and consensually? I will explore the answers to that question over space and time: in Britain and other wealthier countries historically and today; in Africa today; and in the world in the emerging future. I will argue that, in contemporary wealthier countries, there has been a great deal of progress in making taxation more consensual, but less progress in making it more equitable. And the progress made is now threated by a combination of globalisation, digitalisation and the gig economy. Tom Paine’s ideas about taxation are highly relevant to the construction of a more sustainable global system.”

About the speaker:
Professor Mick Moore is a political economist. He has done extensive field research in Asia and Africa, especially Sri Lanka, Taiwan and India. He has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

His broad research interests are in the domestic and international dimensions of good and bad governance in poor countries. He focuses specifically on taxation and governance, and is the founding Chief Executive Officer of the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD).

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend to buy the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.

About the talk:
“Current transport policy doesn’t work for Lewes or many other places like it. The Southern rail franchise is a mess, buses are being cut back, the Government wants to widen the A27 but without any idea of what will happen to traffic and communities around it, and meanwhile car-based development is being allowed which forces people to drive and makes walking and cycling difficult. Stephen will describe ways out of this and suggest examples that Lewes might follow to get better transport”

About the speaker:
Stephen Joseph has been executive director of Campaign for Better Transport since 1988. His wide-ranging expertise and contacts have helped to make the organisation the country’s leading transport NGO.

The last 20-plus years have had many highlights for Stephen, including persuading the Treasury to cut the road-building programme in the 1990s, campaigning for increased rail investment and new/ reopened lines and stations, and highlighting the importance of buses and the impact of cuts in bus services.

Stephen was a member of the Commission for Integrated Transport from 1999-2005, having been one of the panel of external advisers on the Transport White Paper 1997-8, and was a member of the Standing Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment (SACTRA) during its inquiry on transport and the economy. He was also on the steering group for the Government’s road user charging feasibility study 2003-4. More recently he has been a member of challenge panels or advisory groups for Government plans on high-speed rail, eco-towns, transport appraisal and the Local Sustainable Transport Fund.

He was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1996 for services to transport and the environment, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hertfordshire in November 2010.

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend to buy the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.

The Porn Panic and the New Left’s War on Free Expression
A talk by Jerry Barnett, Founder of Sex & Censorship, and author of Porn Panic!

The 90s was a particularly liberal era in terms of personal freedom. But soon after the turn of the new century, new morality groups began to pop up in the UK. Perhaps the first to notice this trend were strippers in East London, who found pickets outside their workplaces, and lobbyists trying to close the clubs down. These new moralists were not of the old, Christian, Tory kind: these groups were young, left-wing, and feminist. They were funded by social justice organisations and supported by the Guardian. Social conservatism, having faded on the right, was being reborn on the left.

Beginning with campaigns against strip clubs, pornography, “sexualised” music videos, and other forms of sexual expression, the pro-censorship movement grew, and broadened its scope. The old feminism and anti-racism messages of the left subtly turned into pro-censorship movements. Restrictions on “hate speech” morphed into suppression of speech that merely offended people. This new, quasi-fascist movement of the left took aim at fundamental liberal values of free speech, equality and reason.

Jerry Barnett is a technologist, entrepreneur and veteran activist. As an operator of adult entertainment sites for many years, he watched the rise of the porn panic, and saw much of the political left collapse into conservatism. Realising that the attacks on sexual expression were precursor to far broader attacks on free speech, he founded the Sex & Censorship campaign in 2013. His book Porn Panic!, was published by Zero Books in 2016.

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend to buy the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.

About the talk:

Mark Twain wrote of the late nineteenth Century as a Gilded Age in America, in which vast inequality and insecurity were masked by a veneer of wealth concentrated in the hands of the few. In his new book Guy Standing suggests that we are now living through a Second Gilded Age. Only this time, it’s global.

Guy Standing, best-selling author of The Precariat, argues that governments and international institutions have combined to build the most unfree market economy ever created. It is a deeply corrupt system in which income and wealth are increasingly channelled to the owners of property – financial, physical and intellectual – at the expense of everyone else.

The book reveals how global capitalism is rigged in favour of this ‘rentier’ class to the detriment of workers – not just those in low-paid jobs, but many professionals and entrepreneurs. While wages stagnate, rental income has soared. A powerful plutocracy and elite has enriched itself, not through production of goods and services, but through ownership of assets, including patents and other forms of intellectual property, and the private exploitation of scarce resources.

It has been aided by government subsidies, tax breaks, corrupt deals and the ongoing privatisation of public services. Debt has become an integral part of the system. Meanwhile, labour markets are being transformed by outsourcing, automation and the rise of the on-demand economy, generating more rental income for the few while creating an ever larger precariat.

The age of rentier capitalism has been entrenched by the corruption of democracy, manipulated by the plutocracy and aided by its concentrated ownership of the media. The Corruption of Capitalism shows why the rise of rentier capitalism must be reversed. If it is not, dire social and political consequences will follow.

Advance praise for The Corruption of Capitalism:
“The Basic Income is an idea whose time has come, and Guy Standing has pioneered our understanding of it … As we move into an age where work and leisure become blurred, and work dissociated from incomes, Standing’s analysis is vital.”
Paul Mason, author of Postcapitalism: A Guide To Our Future

“Guy Standing’s incisive critique … should put politicians and ruling elites on the alert.”
John McDonnell, shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer

“In this thoughtful book, Guy Standing focuses on the central problem of modern capitalism … and suggests useful and important solutions.”
Robert Reich, Labor Secretary to President Clinton, 1993–97

Biography

Guy Standing is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He was previously Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath, Professor of Labour Economics at Monash University, and Director of the Socio-Economic Security Programme of the International Labour Organization, in the United Nations. He is a co-founder and honorary co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network. His books include A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (2014); The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011), Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (2009), and Basic Income – A Transformative Policy for India (2015).

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend to buy the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.

Short biography:
Craig Murray is a historian and human rights activist. He served for twenty years in HM Diplomatic Service, including a controversial tenure as Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and is a former Rector of the University of Dundee. He has published Murder in Samarkand, The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Sikunder Burnes.

About the talk:
Craig never knows what he is going to talk about until he gets to his feet, but will doubtless include a radical analysis of recent mould-breaking political developments worldwide.

This special night will celebrate 30 years of the Headstrong Club and Tom Paine’s birthday.

A number of speakers will also pay tribute to the late David Powell, co-founder of the reborn Headstrong Club in 1987 and author of an important Paine biography.

John May (the other co-founder) will be the MC for the night. His newly-printed ‘Life of Paine’ booklet will be launched as part of the celebrations.

The event will be opened by the current Mayor of Lewes Graham Mayhew. Harvey’s have been kind enough to donate Tom Paine beer for the occasion.

This informative and entertaining evening will contain some surprises.

Please click on the image to enlarge it.

Bio: Barb Jacobson is co-ordinator of Basic Income UK and on the board of Unconditional Basic Income Europe, a network of people in 25 countries. She was secretary of the Thomas Paine Society 2008-2013, and works as a welfare rights advisor in central London.

Discussion: With the basic income debate breaking out into mainstream discussion, it is worth revisiting both Thomas Paine’s ‘Agrarian Justice’ and Thomas Spence’s reply ‘Rights of Infants’. These two texts both proposed different forms of what we now call ‘basic income’ – and ways to pay for it – which have some bearing on the debate today.

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue. Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited, we recommend to buy the ticket in advance to avoid disappointment.

About the talk

‘How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life is a 2012 popular economics book by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky. It was published initially by Other Press and later by Penguin Books.
The book asks why Westerners work so many hours per week and lead lives that revolve around money, business and financial decisions in defiance of John Maynard Keynes’ 1930 assertion[1] that there would come a time (around 2015) when capitalism would be able to provide for all our needs and the work week would drop to 10 or even 5 hours.
The book and (Edward Skidelsky’s writing generally[2]) looks into the idea of The good life and how Capitalism may have been the key to it, but we have now lost sense of the good life as a priority.
The solutions offered to this problem are to “curb insatiability” and to consider a form of basic income for society’

About Edward Skidelsky

My original research was on the early twentieth century German philosopher Ernst Cassirer (published in January 2009 with Princeton University Press asErnst Cassirer: The Last Philosopher of Culture) but my interests have since shifted to moral and political philosophy. I have written essays on the ethics of capitalism, the value of happiness and the philosophical importance of the history of ideas. My most recent book, co-written with my father Robert, is called How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life. It came out in the UK with Allen Lane in June 2012 and has been translated into 15 languages worldwide. A following book, The Language of the Virtues, has been commissioned by Princeton University Press.
I appear regularly in the press and on radio on subjects including philosophy, religion and intellectual history. Here is a link to a Radio 3 debate between me and Richard Layard on happiness:http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mkbqq. And here is a video of a talk I gave on “genuine leisure” in Dublin on 15 October, 2014:http://www.iiea.com/events/an-adequate-economic-discourse-for-the-europe-of-our-grandchildren

The venue:
The Elephant And Castle
White Hill
Lewes
BN7 2DJ

Tickets:
They are £3 and you can purchase them on the door or about a week before in the venue.