my weekend in Copenhagen

The weekend before last was one of the most exhausting but inspirational 72 hours that I’ve experienced; it might seem strange in the light of  what we now know about just how much our “leaders” let us down over the last few weeks, but my visit to Copenhagen at the time of the climate conference energised me enormously and re-igniting my hope that a just and sustainable future is possible.

I did not attend the offical COP15 conference at the Bella Centre, nor had any wish to do so. There was something much more relevent going on in Copenhagen – the Klimaforum09. Billed as the “alternative conference”, it ran for over a fortnight, offering a meeting place and social forum for thousands of campaigners with countless discussions, debates, workshops and much more besides. I could only be there most of Saturday 12th & Sunday 13th but even in that short space of time it was the perfect riposte to the inaction, injustice and political machinations taking place a few kilometres away (and in which international NGOs were involved to a disturbing extent).

On the saturday I took part in a 100,000 strong demo from the centre of Copenhagen to the Bella Conference centre – alongside Nishma, hundreds of campaigners from Campaign Against Climate Change, and many many others! Marching (almost running in fact) at dusk alongside indigenous activists – several of whom I had met at Climate Camp or Shared Planet 09 – was the perfect rebuttal to the feelings of atomisation and desparation which I had been feeling about humankind and its ability to tackle climate change (this experience may not have been shared by the disgusting extra-legal arrests of hundreds of activists towards the back of the demo).

Taking part in a demo can often feel like merely going through the motions or pretending that you’re making a difference, but this was somehow different. While 100,000 people is a huge turnout, it still pales in comparison to for example the Iraq march in London in 2003. As we can see all too clearly from the outcome of the talks, our messages might have been heard but they cannot have been listened to. But what this weekend was all about was  people & communities coming together to deliver their own solutions to runaway climate change, channelling our outrage at what was happening behind the police batons and security fences in the Bella Centre.

As Vandana Shiva eloquently argued at Klimaforum, in the fight against climate change one of the best mitigation methods is also a critical way to fight rising emissions; living more sustainably. It is something which we have far greater control over than international climate treaties, but tackling what we consume – perhaps most importantly what we eat – wrests back power from the corporations who are driving runaway climate change, poisoning our bodies and the planet, and who very much set the agenda at COP15.

The project that Vandana Shiva presented at Klima Forum is an inspirational story of local activists, civil society group and local government working together to help promote change – check out the not particularly sexily named International Commission on The Future of Food and Agriculture. As she pointed out, not only men with white beards can write manifestoes, and I recommend reading this one: On Climate Change and The Future of Food Security. It is a very real example about how we can take back some control over our own future by refusing to wallow in self-pity or to excuse our inaction by righteous indignation at carbon traders and global “leaders” but actually getting our hands dirty in putting the solutions we want to see into practice. I hope that other campaigners who went to Copenhagen or who stayed at home during the last few weeks share this message or take a similar approach; our movement cannot allow despair and nihilism to take over after the pathetic outcome of COP15. Put simply: we cannot afford to give up.

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originally published on the people & planet blog, 23.12.09

the UCL student voice on Copenhagen

originally published early December on the UCL website

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As most students at UCL belong to a generation which will undoubtedly experience at first hand the devastating consequences of runaway climate change – if global leaders fail us at Copenhagen in December and in 2010 – the student voice needs to be heard in the run-up to the historic summit. Given the excellent interdisciplinary work of the UCL Environment Institute, many students at UCL directly study courses dealing with issues surrounding climate change, but there are many more student activists at UCL.

For the last week UCL students have been running a Copenhagen Climate Week, with events planned to raise awareness about the summit and to bring home the urgency of the situation. Copenhagen was chosen to become a campaign week by a cross-campus vote of UCL students last academic year and students have already voted for another ‘Go Green Week’ to take place in the first week of February – no doubt the results of the Copenhagen summit will be high on the agenda.

Environmental campaigns at UCL owe a great amount to the UCL Union People & Planet Society, which meets weekly and has for four years campaigned on ethical and environmental issues, both local and international. For example, we hold events discussing the Copenhagen treaty but also concentrate on campaigning to make UCL a greener institution, and the society was central to UCL setting up a Sustainability Steering Committee.

UCL Union has become a more environmentally sustainable institution of late, but we still have some way to go. Students have constantly backed environmental policy at Union Council meetings or at Annual General Meetings covering issues from recycling and energy efficiency to a ban on union-funded domestic aviation and pushing UCL to employ an Environmental Director. The latest initiative to involve more students in environmental campaigning is the Environment & Ethics Forum.

Many UCL students will be among those marching through the streets of London on 5 December to take part in THE WAVE, which will be the largest climate change demonstration ever seen in the UK. Our voice will be added to thousands of others to demand a binding carbon emissions reduction treaty at Copenhagen; one that will set in place a fair and just transfer to a low-carbon economy, recognising the responsibility of richer nations to contribute more to this effort.

Not everyone can make it to Copenhagen but several UCL students will be making the trip (by train or coach, of course!); some to lobby delegates in the conference hall, others to take part in international civil society events, or to demonstrate and take direct action.

Although there has been rather a lot of depressing news on Copenhagen of late, it remains a historic opportunity to galvanise a process which must speedily de-carbonise the world economy; the scientific consensus is that we have until 2015 for emissions to peak. Students from all over the world will be watching events in Copenhagen very closely indeed; we refuse to accept yet more failed solutions which will imperil the future of our generation and the planet as a whole.

Craig Griffiths, UCL Union Environment & Ethics Officer

Climate Campers go on cleaning spree against the government’s dirty investments

originally published on the people and planet blog here

This is a blog post I wrote for the climate camp website [now adapted] after an affinity group I was involved in carried out a direct action targetting the treasury on Monday 31st August.

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At 11am today we converged on the Treasury in our cleaning overalls, feather dusters and dishcloths – to clean up the Treasury’s act over their climate change-inducing investments. On this “anti-bank” holiday we dropped a banner highlighting that ‘Climate Change doesn’t take holidays’ – most of the bankers and officials may have had the day off but we were there to press home that time is running out in the fight against climate change.

The government is ignoring its commitments made under the Climate Act by throwing billions in public money at high street banks such as RBS – but doing absolutely nothing to challenge the banks’ investment in environmentally and socially destructive projects such as tar sands  in Canada. Our affinity group thought it was time to do something to remind the government that if its really wants to be a global leader on climate change it must stop these investments and instead give political & financial support to renewable technologies. Its most recent track record on this is appalling; blindly following business interests has resulted in madness such as the closure of the Vestas wind turbine blade factory on the Isle of Wight.

After swooping on the Treasury from St James’ Park we moved onto targets in Whitehall – after learning that apparently the Treasury’s windows fall under the remit of the Royal Parks.  You can look at the ducks all you like in St. James’ Park, but forget freedom of speech; demonstrations and banners are banned (at least according to the police officers on site). The Inland Revenue buildings, the gates of Downing Street and the Department of Energy & Climate Change were all treated to a visit from our cleaners – but we know that unfortunately there’s still a lot of dirt to be washed away in the area.

No arrests were made, indeed one police officer even found the time to discuss our action with a young kid passing by – who after getting one side of the story soon joined in with our spontaneous consensus decision-based meeting on the lawn. It was the first or second action for many activists in our group; we were delighted that it all managed to come together in such a short space of  time. It was also great to move onto direct action after four days of training, sustainable living & movement-building at Climate Camp. There’s much more to come!

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Have a look at a vid of our action here, and a BBC website article here

Take part in the Great Climate Swoop on Ratcliffe Coal-fired Power Station on 17th/18th October!

Green success in the European Parliament Elections: a silver lining?

Although it’s difficult to overlook the relative success of the far right and the calamitous results for the centre-left at the recent European elections, environmentalists can perhaps at least console themselves with encouraging green party results in many European countries. Impressive improvements on 2004 in the UK, France & Germany, and now 50 MEPs sitting in the Greens/European Free Alliance fraction in Brussels – well placed to further the debate & legislation on Europe-wide carbon cuts & other crucial environmental measures.

In the UK, the Green Party’s share of the vote increased by more than any other party – to 8.6% – and they came very close to pushing out the BNP in both the Yorkshire & the Humber and the North-West constituencies. Caroline Lucas was resoundingly re-elected with 11.6% in the South-East and Jean Lambert with 10.9% in London. The SNP and Plaid Cymru also sit in The Greens/European Free Alliance fraction in Brussels so the UK has 5 green seats, the same as in 2004.

Die Grünen in Germany achieved one of  their best-ever electoral results, with 12.1% of the vote and 14 MEPs (that’s one more seat than Labour managed in the UK). In Germany’s three city states the Greens polled 23.6 % (Berlin), 22.1% (Bremen) & 20.5% (Hamburg). A special mention goes to the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district of Berlin (where I’m currently living!), where the Greens polled a massive 43.2%. The really outstanding Green result of these elections was however in France, where the Europe Écologie party picked up 14 seats, from just 6 last time around, on over 16% of the popular vote. There were also Green gains in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark & Sweden (unfortunately however in an election dominated by Berlusconi the Italian Greens lost all 5 of their European seats). All this number-crunching aside however, what do these results mean for the Green parliamentary movement in Europe?

The wider environmental movement has never been and must never be overly reliant on its parliamentary wing – think of the vibrancy of climate change campaigning in the UK despite no Green MP – and increased electoral success is not always a positive for the green movement. Represented in the Bundestag since 1983, the German Greens have (perhaps unavoidably) become gradually more moderate ever since, whether in quieting their opposition to nuclear power or agreeing to war in Kosovo (under the then Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer). Whereas any form of parliamentary coalition was once seen as unacceptable given the compromises – on policy, practice, and democracy – that it would necessitate, now even coalition with the conserative CDU seems to be becoming an option. Various leading personalities have refused to rule this out – partly because the chances of the German Greens being able to form a majority with the social democrats are looking ever less likely – and Daniel Cohn-Bendit has stated that this must also be an option for green parties in Europe (Cohn-Bendit is co-leader of the Brussels Green fraction and set up Europe Écologie in France – he’s come quite a way from his radical role in the Parisian 1968).

Of course in the UK the situation is vastly different given the electoral first-past-the-post system, under which the Green Party has failed to come anywhere near winning parliamentary seats. Even the system used under the European election disadvantaged the British Greens – with one national list instead of regional lists, nearly 9% of the vote would have translated into 6 or 7 seats, instead of two. Although the direct impact on the environmental movement would be questionable, most would agree that it would be an amazing achievement for Caroline Lucas to become the first Green MP at the next election – which is a definite possibility in the Brighton Pavilion constituency. Until a form of proportional representation is implemented, governing responsibilities will never be a danger to the British Greens, but having even one voice in parliament would make life more uncomfortable for the next undoubtedly “greenwashing” government.

It would certainly be a mistake to overlook the massive political & electoral differences between European Green parties, with the British Greens searching for their first MP and the German Greens looking to head back to government, but these latest electoral results do show a common trend in Green Parties across Europe benefiting from the collapse in the social democratic vote. The German SPD, French PS & British Labour Party each suffered their worst ever European results; it seems that a hoped-for 40% has now turned into 15-20% for the center-left. Its absolutely crucial that the Left and the Greens step up and fill this growing void in European politics, because if they fail to, the (far) Right is waiting in the wings. Green parties must continue to be a progressive alternative to the likes of Berlusconi, Merkel, Cameron & Sarkozy – because the traditional center-left political opponents of these figures are manifestly failing in their task. If the Greens fail to do this, the result will not only be an increased neo-liberal climate-destroying European majority, but more of the likes of Nick Griffin around European parliaments as well.

[originally published on people&planet blog 13.06.09]

Ethical Investment Campaigning at UCL Pays Off for Students

originally published in the London Progressive Journal: http://www.londonprogressivejournal.com/issue/show/58?article_id=376

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Ethical Investment campaigners at University College London (UCL) were celebrating over the New Year with the news that UCL has finally – after more than two years of energetic student campaigning – adopted an Ethical Investment (EI) policy. From the initial Freedom of Information Act request detailing that UCL was the largest known university investor in the arms trade – with more than £1.5m of stocks- an EI policy & an Ethical Investment Research Committee (EIRC) are now in place. The committee has student representation and can be approached by any UCL student, staff member or alumnus regarding a particular investment, details of which are now freely available. Campaigners with disarmUCL are confident that the remaining shares in the arms trader Cobham plc will be sold in the near future. 

How did we get to this point? From back in December 2006, disarmUCL has brought together a broad coalition of campaigning groups, including UCL Union Amnesty, People & Planet and Stop The War societies. We don’t share identical views on EI but the diversity of our politics and campaigning approaches has made us stronger. We built support among the student body by petitioning, holding speaker events, passing union motions and by more media-friendly stunts – dressing up as arms traders and holding a mock graduation ceremony from “the university of war”, or by introducing fake gravestones into the heart of the UCL campus.

Crucially, we focused on our alumni network – not only another pool of campaigners who care what their old university is up to, but also a vital source of revenue for UCL, which has been aggressively seeking donations from ex-students for a number of years. We managed to convince UCL Council – UCL’s management body – that both reputational and financial harm was being done to the university by its continued investment in the arms trade and its refusal to listen to students. Letter writing, while hardly the most dynamic of tactics on its own, proved vital in this regard. We were not only loud but also “professional” – UCL council members were impressed by our research not only into Cobham’s activities, but also into the financial rewards of ethical investment. We could not have got to where we are today if we had not used this diversity of tactics; from powerful visual actions to painstaking research into the ethical investment dividends of the Church of England. 

Skill and resource sharing is fundamental to ethical investment campaigning. We have enjoyed the benefit of advice from CAAT, People & Planet, campaigners from St. Andrews University and Wolfson College, Oxford, among many others. “We are convinced that campaigners on campuses around the country can launch ethical investment campaigns, learning from and improving on the efforts of disarmUCL and others. Universities can no longer afford to ignore the voice of their students”, says Sara Hall, a long-standing campaigner with disarm. 

DisarmUCL is by no means finished yet. Some £400,000 of arms shares remain on UCL’s investments portfolio, and UCL’s latest quarterly investment record shows investment in a whole array of ethically questionable corporations. Now that we have the review committee in place at UCL, there should be no need in the first instance to initiate divestment campaigns that may take several years to come to fruition – applications can be simply submitted to the EIRC.

And considering that we now know that UCL invests in several high profile fossil fuel extraction companies, the mining industry, the Daily Mail, and Nestlé (despite UCL Union’s boycott of all Nestlé products), we don’t foresee that members of the review committee will be have much time on their hands.

World’s first openly gay PM – do we still need to worry about homophobia?

It may not have grabbed many of the headlines this month – what with snow in the UK, fire in Australia and Holocaust denial within the Catholic Church – but on Sunday 1st February the world’s first openly gay Prime Minister or state leader took office. Johanna Sigurdardottir is now the Icelandic Prime Minister, replacing Geir Haarde (remember his car being pelted with eggs?). If sexuality is no longer a barrier to holding even the highest public office, some have claimed that prejudice & discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been more or less eliminated.

Gone are the days (at least in the UK) in which your sexuality dictated where you could stay on holiday or prevented you from adopting children or attaining the legal rights enjoyed under marriage (even if the term “marriage” is still withheld). Since 1969, when the aftermath of yet another police raid on the gay bar Stonewall saw the birth of the modern gay rights movement with the GLF (Gay Liberation Front), huge strides have been made in achieving legal & social improvements for gay people. Growing up as a gay teenager in the 1960s and today are two very different experiences. Before 1967 (in the UK) homosexuality was still illegal and it was not until 2000 that there has been an equal age of consent (previously the age of consent for gay sex being 18). Indeed, this reform, civil unions and the repeal of Thatcher’s homophobic Section 28 – which intended to prevent the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools – mark one of the very few progressive reforms of New Labour.

However, while Sigurdardottir’s (pronunciation?!) election is an important milestone for gay rights in the same way Obama’s is for racial equality in the US, it does not mean that homophobia has been anywhere near eradicated. Perhaps the main point of concern in the UK is the continuing (and perhaps increasing) level of homophobia in our schools. Homophobia in the playground, even if this is not always directed at individuals but used in general terms -such as the derogatory use of the word “gay” – is rife. While it is rare that this leads to physical assault, verbal abuse creates a pernicious environment for gay children. Teachers are rightly compelled to record every incident of racial abuse, but for some reason this is not the case for homophobia. Growing up can be a lonely experience when gay teenagers feel unable to be themselves either at school or among friends and family – even if barriers to coming out can be personal & imagined as well as realistic & profound. According to Stonewall’s The School Report two thirds of young gay people have experienced direct bullying at school but less than a quarter have been told that homophobic bullying at their school is wrong. Obviously this is homophobia of an utterly different nature to the situation in places such as Iran, Jamaica, or Senegal – where nine gay men were only last month jailed for eight years on account of “indecent conduct and unnatural acts” – but while gay teenagers have it much better than they did in the 1960s (not to mention the 1980s), they face certain social & psychological difficulties purely on the basis of their homosexuality.

Much has also changed in the gay movement(s) since Stonewall 40 years ago. The GLF was a radical anti-capitalist organisation, but most present gay organisations – while doing important work – have been institutionalised to the extent that radical analyses of the many types of  inequality inherent in our society are rarely made. It might be argued that they would fall on deaf ears anyway given the evolution of such concepts as the “pink pound” – the retreat of some elements of the gay community into a bland & destructive commercialism. Nor, for example, does the very recent history of homophobia in the Conservative party – see voting records on the repeal of section 28 and an equal age of consent – seem to have prevented a significant minority of gay people voting Tory. So in much the same way many students last year were questioning where the spirit of 1968 had disappeared to, the radicalism of 1969 and the following years seem to have vanished 40 years on in the gay movement. Yet seeing as stereotypes of students as being apathetic and selfish are looking increasingly tenuous given the tremendous success of the recent student occupations in solidarity with Gazans, I have hope that radicalism on the basis of sexual orientation – but not exclusively on that basis, and provided also by heterosexuals – will soon be rediscovered.

help Craig Murray avoid censorship

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, was due to publish his latest book this month, “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo: And Other Conflicts I have Known”. However his publisher has caved in to demands from the legal firm Schillings on behalf of the mercenary – Murray deals with the nonsense term of “Private Military Company” in his book (p.68) – Tim Spicer, who claims the book is libellous. Given the embarrassing nature of Murray’s revelations about the British Government’s actions in Sierra Leone & elsewhere in Africa, one might expect the hand of the British government to be at play somewhere in this attempt to silence one of its most outspoken & brave critics.

I remember Craig Murray as one of the headline speakers at the 2007 Shared Planet conference, organised by People & Planet. He was compelling & inspiring, and talked with real feeling at his frustrating experience of being ambassador to Uzbekistan, revealing gross human rights abuses to his employers – the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) – who instead of doing something about it, simply ignored it and its foreign policy implications – what they did do was to attempt to silence Craig Murray. Murray’s account of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan – made so much worse by the so-called war on terror – can be found in “Murder in Samarkand”.

The present book is a biographical prequel to Murder in Samarkand, covering the years 1998-2002. In Murray’s words: ‘It exposes the links between blood diamonds, crime and British mercenary involvement in Africa. it argues that the disregard Tony Blair showed for both British and international law in dealing with Sierra Leone prefigured the disaster of Iraq’.

Craig has decided to go ahead and publish his book himself, and has therefore made it available for free. If you’re on facebook join this group to find out more and see the links from which it can be downloaded. Or there is also this website (be quick, it may not be live for too much longer). At present, following link at least still definitely works: http://vencentral.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/catholic-orangemen-of-togo-murray-2008.pdf

Craig Murray is also hosting the book from his website, which also has copies of the letter from Schillings. To find out more about Tim Spicer, check out his company’s nauseating website. I’m not sure how spraying civilian cars in Iraq with bullets fits in with supposedly “securing a better future”. Or more importantly, find out more about Spicer and human rights abuses by reading – and forwarding – “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo: And Other Conflicts I have Known” – and say no to politically motivated censorship.

why you should care about ethical investment

Campaigners from University College London (UCL) were celebrating over the new year at the news that UCL has finally implemented an Ethical Investment (EI) policy – a just reward after over two years hard campaigning by disarmUCL, the coalition of campaigning organisations including UCL People & Planet, UCL Stop the War & UCL Amnesty, which have worked together to bring about ethical investment at UCL. None of us think the policy – available here – is anywhere near as good as it could be, since it does not rule out investment in the arms trade, does not guarantee equal student involvement on the committee set up to deal with EI concerns, and has no explicit role for positive investment (of which more later) – but it is still a great success.

Perhaps the most obvious reason to campaign for EI at your university is that students have a right to say how their university’s money – which may include their tuition fees – is spent. Any university investment in the arms trade makes all students at the particular university complicit in investment in a sector which depends on war & murder to be financially viable. And as CAAT’s (Campaign Against The Arms Trade) research has shown, there is a very good chance that your university invests in the arms trade – find out here.

No-one is suggesting that the arms trade has a monopoly on unethical practice – nor is it unfortunately the only unethical & unsustainable sector that UK universities invest in. Being involved in people & planet campaigns makes us aware, for example, of corporate malpractice and the contribution of energy companies to causing runaway climate change. To tackle the arms trade – the mission of CAAT for example – while to ignore Nestle, GlaxoSmithKline, Anglo American, RBS or E-ON, fails to make EI a holistic campaign with an effective aim of fighting climate change & poverty across the world. This is a very good reason why EI campaigning at universities urgently need greater involvement from people & planet groups, with our approach of tackling the root causes of poverty & injustice. The fact that P&P as a national organisation no longer has the capacity to give office support for EI campaigns need not be seen as a problem – campaigns can be set up which tailor to the specifics of your own university and coalitions can be formed with many diverse groups which are active in your area. EI campaigners have therefore an incredible freedom to run the campaign that they want to. For a good introduction into setting up a campaign, see for example Sara Hall’s article for New Statesman or the excellent EI wiki.

Positive investment is in my view the aspect of EI campaigning that makes it into a holistic approach to tackling poverty, injustice & climate change. Positive investment is not merely ruling out investment in a sector such as arms trade or tobacco – negative screening – but actively seeking out investment in sectors which universities believe fit in with their ethos & mission. This is one way in which smaller but financially successful (and more importantly strategically crucial) sectors can be driven & popularised. We should not only be thinking about divestment from E-On & RBS – because we don’t want our universities driving climate change – but also positive investment in clean renewable energy suppliers, which actually seek to tackle the issues at hand. To chase 80% cuts in carbon dioxide emissions, we need an urgent switch to a green sustainable economy. We cannot be satisfied with merely removing the stain on our universities’ characters by divestment from particularly abhorrent trades – this may make us feel better but will enact little long-term change. But if universities can use their investments to support the brilliant research they are conducting into climate change & strategies for tackling it – for example UCL’s leading Environment Institute – we can actually help shape the future rather than running single issue & potentially ineffective campaigns. Get on board with EI campaigning – take heart from its successes but also use your involvement to take it to the next, urgently needed, level.

Eric Hobsbawm on the current crisis of capitalism

I’m knackered after my first full day at uni since March, but I felt I had to post this after listening to a podcast of Hobsbawm on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. It’s weird that only earlier today I started a history course analysing Hobsbawm’s classic ‘The Age of Extremes: a world history of the short twentieth century’. Actually, I’m studying in German, so its “Das Zeitalter der Extreme” in translation. Hobsbawm argues that the period 1914-1989 (or the fall of soviet-style communism) can properly be judged as this “short twentieth century” – as the French revolution to the first world war was the “long nineteenth century”. I wonder what epoch we’re know living in?

Hobsbawm is quite properly something of a beacon for the Left, and is truly a remarkable man with a similarly remarkable history (check out his autobiography “Interesting Times”). Both his direct experience of economic turbulence in inter-war Vienna and Berlin and his critical Marxist ideology make him well-placed to analyse the current economic crisis.

He reports on the schadenfreude that he feels at the current discontents of capitalism, analyses the parallels between the current crisis and the 1930s, and bashes the globalised free market economy. Indeed, if anyone should know about the destructive cycles of capitalism, its Hobsbawm, as he’s been writing about them for half a century.

I remember seeing a poster at Birkbeck advertising a talk he was giving and now really regret not being able to go – I’m never seen (or listened) to him in person although he’s certainly a historian role-model for me. Hopefully next year when I’m back in London!

I can’t seem to find the longer interview they mention; its probably on the Today website somewhere or other. But the 6 minute excerpt can be listened to via the BBC website by clicking here.

well done Sachin!

this morning, Sachin Tendulkar became the highest ever run-scorer in test match cricket, breaking Brian Lara’s record (11,953 runs). Hopefully during his innings against Australia in Mohali he’ll pass the 12,000 mark, therby helping India to a good first innings score.

This great batsman was already the record holder in ODIs (One Day International Cricket) and had the most centuries both in that form of the game and in test match cricket (39). He’s been lighting up cricket pitches all around the globe for 18 years and is such an amazingly stylish batsman – its a real treat to watch him bat, even now, when he is admittedly past his best.

Its a disappointment that I was never able to watch Sachin bat live – I saw him bowl (!) both in England (Trent Bridge) and in India (Changigarh) – only a lot of rain over 3 days stopped me seeing him bat there! But I’ll always remember his 98 against Pakistan in the 2003 world cup – best ODI innings I’ve ever seen, without question – and in such an important match.

Anyway, well done Sachin, and hopefully you’ll stick around for another tour of England!

after his first test match hundred, 1990