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Actually all the wonderful Fairtrade tea and coffee (as well as biscuits and other goodies) was provided free by the Coop. But people drinking their cuppa had the chance to gamble on the market price, just to experience the madness of the food commodity markets. In just a few hours, the price of a cuppa rocketed from 40p up to £3, before crashing back to just over £1. Just a bit of fun, but a real illustration of the way that bankers are playing with the price of food, making profits on market volatility and forcing people into hunger as a result. Fortunately, the free cuppa was accompanied by a chance to take action – lots of people signed a campaign card urging the UK government to support strong EU regulations – see wdm.org.uk/food-speculation for more info

The courts may have turned down the judicial review of the Scottish Government’s decision to include the proposed Hunterston power station in the National Planning Framework (http://bbc.in/rfHQUg), but the fight goes on to stop this mad scheme. You can still comment on North Ayrshire Council’s planning portal – http://bit.ly/nlVKjD – 20,000 people have objected to the plans in one way or another and CONCH will be giving evidence on 24th Oct, before the Council meet to make a decision on 9th November. Keep up to date with the campaign on the CONCH website – http://www.conchcampaign.org/

Over the next few weeks, we’re planning to meet up with as many of the local MSPs as we can, to introduce ourselves to the newbies and make sure the re-elected ones haven’t forgotten us. Let us know if you fancy joining us to meet your local MSP and remind them of the importance of global poverty and injustice…

In just a few hours at Festival Sunday in the West End of Glasgow, 161 people signed a campaign card telling the Secretary of State for International Development that they don’t agree with locking the world’s poorest people into more unjust debt.

Time to listen up, Mr. Mitchell – the Daily Mail might be ranting about the ‘shame’ of the UK giving aid to poorer countries, but the Glasgow public think it’s only right that we should give grants to tackle the effects of climate change.

Just in case you were in any doubt about the validity of the science behind climate change, we recently observed concrete (or rather sponge) evidence at our climate cafe hustings.

Oh, and we talked to some politicians too, whilst we were eating the world. They all seemed committed to tackling climate change here in Scotland. We’ll see what the public make of their promises on 5th May…and then it’s up to us to hold them to account once they’re in Holyrood.