Water Saving tips - and why we need to

Here below is the Ruscombe Brook Action Group's public information leaflet about saving water - we have been working on it for a while and it has now been sent to a number of local Parish newsletters and other local press.

Water resources are under pressure: save water, save energy.

About one third of the water each person uses on a daily basis is wasted – it runs straight down the plughole. We must cut that waste.

Already, despite a seemingly wet climate, almost 25 million Britons live in areas where there is less available water per person than in Spain or Morocco. The South East of England has less water available per person than Sudan and Syria. Many of our rivers already have reduced flows and climate change forecasts suggest the amount of water available will be reduced even further. It is also likely to lead to more flooding events and it is worth noting that water saving reduces flooding.

The average Briton uses 148 litres (260 pints) of water every day. However there is also a hidden aspect to our water use, in the manufacturing of the goods we buy and the crops we eat. It takes for example 1,000 litres to grow a kilo of wheat or two kilos of potatoes and a massive 24,000 litres for a kilo of beef. We could in effect each be consuming indirectly around 1.5 to 2 million litres per year!

Transporting, heating and treating water accounts for over 6% of the UK's carbon footprint. Using less water means we cut the energy needed to treat it and we reduce our impact on the environment. It is vital we start to look at managing our water better in our manufacturing and agricultural uses but also at home.


Some water saving tips from the Ruscombe Brook Action Group

Get a 'hippo'! The Hippo reduces the amount of water in your toilet cistern by up to 30%! Alternatively place a plastic bottle in your toilet's cistern. Flushing the loo uses a third of our mains water! Take care your hippo doesn't lead to extra flushing as some cisterns are already designed to reduce flows.

Fix that drip! A dripping tap can waste up to 4 litres of water a day. Replace worn washers or fit a more efficient tap.

Spray more! Spray head taps can reduce consumption by up to 70%.

Recycle! Wash fruit and veg in a bowl rather than under the tap; then use the water for watering plants!

Sprinkle less! Sprinklers use the same amount of water in an hour as a family of four uses in a day! Install a trickle system instead which works from a water butt.

Get an Eco Showerhead! 60% of the world's hot water is for showering: NordicEco, Mira Eco or EcoCamel showerheads all massively cut water use and pay for themselves in weeks.

Reduce paving and concrete! This stops run off water

Count every drop! Support widespread water metering. If applied to all households we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to more than 27 times the total UK Carbon Reduction Commitment target.

Ruscombe Brook Action Group encourages responsible water use and seeks a water management strategy in the Stroud area that will properly protect us from floods and drought. We strive for improved wildlife habitats and water quality in our streams and rivers, an end to sewage leaks and a joined up approach to water that includes changes to planning, farming and house building. Call Philip Booth on 01453 755451 or Jo Bottrill on 01453 750063 for more details. Or see our website: www.rbag.org.uk

Latest from Cartoon Kate

Some will have seen Kate Evan's excellent cartoon booklet, "Funny Weather" on climate change - now here is her new one on supermarkets - free to download at her website:
http://www.cartoonkate.co.uk/

It reminds me of the proposals from Competition Commission - it was a long while ago now when they listed at the back of their report particular branches which have anti-competitive covenants (eg restrictions on other shops selling food) - Brockworth was listed but I never had a chance to get the press interested - but you can still download the pdf report here.

Road Safety Week: another call for default 20mph

It is Road Safety Week this week - and I've been putting together a press release that went out today (available on Glos Green party website soon) - it calls for more Safe Routes to School and a default 20 mph. While putting that together I also responded to a letter in the national Good Motoring magazine - see my response below.

I write in response to letters in the recent issue of Good Motoring. One letter suggested I had hidden that I was a Green party District councillor. In fact I am proud to note my membership and the Green party's lead in calling for 20 mph in all residential urban areas and villages. But this should not be party political issue, indeed I know councillors from all parties working for a default 20 mph.

Portsmouth for example now have all residential roads, bar arterial routes, with a speed limit of 20 mph and casualties have fallen by 15%. The picture of reduced casualties in new 20 mph zones is repeated elsewhere. Part of the reason is that 20 mph is the speed when people are more likely to survive a collision. More than half the people hit by a car doing a seemingly harmless 35mph, die, yet reduce the speed to 20 mph and only 1 in 40 of us die. That alone is surely reason enough for a default 20 mph?

Other benefits of 20 mph include lower noise, and a change in the way people engage with other road users when driving. Eye contact with pedestrians is much easier at 20 mph or less. In Portsmouth the scheme has already been judged to have increased the quality of life in the city and made it a better place to live.

One letter to GM said 20 mph doesn't reduce emissions. Indeed there is conflicting evidence: some arguing it creates less congestion as traffic is moving more steadily, while the AA has found it can lead to as much as 10% more emissions on some roads. However the crucial point is that 20 mph is the speed that has been found to increase the number of people walking and cycling. If we are to cut emissions and reduce congestion then we must share our roads more equitably with other users.

Britain's record for child safety is amongst the worst in Europe. We have discouraged cyclists and walkers from our roads. We are long overdue a default 20 mph. My experience from the doorsteps in my area is that people want 20 mph. That is not being anti-car as one letter writer suggested, it is just common sense.

Cllr. Philip Booth, Stroud District Green Party

Check B4 U Pet winners from Whiteshill

The winners of a competition to warn children of the dangers of running up to dogs and petting them visited Ebley Mill last week to receive their prizes. The four winners of the Check B4 U Pet poster competition from Whiteshill and Longney Primary school were all presented with a £20 voucher.

Photo: Poster showed to me by one of the winners, Emily Memory.

The Check B4 U Pet campaign was launched two years ago in response to the increasing number of incidents involving dogs attacking, maiming and sometimes killing children. The council's animal welfare team are running this campaign every year, visiting schools around the district to educate children on how to react if they are under threat from a dog but also to advise them on the correct way to approach dogs if they want to pet them. As part of the sessions the children were invited to enter a competition to create a poster illustrating the correct way to react if they were under threat from a dog.

Well done Whiteshill!

The winners are:
Emily Memory - Whiteshill Primary School
Jack Manley - Whiteshill Primary School
Lilly Brewer - Longney Primary School
William Attwooll- Longney Primary School

Stroud company selling gas to build turbines

Ecotricity is set to use rotting food leftovers and sewage to provide a new source of "green gas" to heat our homes. From yesterday folk can register for Stroud-based Ecotricity's new tariff to buy green gas – commonly known as biogas - and being billed cheekily as 'The Real British Gas.'

This looks set to be a good opportunity for those of us looking to cut our carbon footprint, cut landfill waste and be less reliant on Russian gas that is set to run out in 15 years or so. In the past all we have had is 'green electricity' and had to buy our gas from one of those companies who uses the profits to build nukes and coal-fired power stations*.

As Treehugger comments: "On the one hand, supplying fossil fuels to fund green energy seems a little ironic. On the other hand, a huge number of homes in the UK are heated by natural gas, and use it as a cooking fuel—and that's not likely to change in the near future."

As The Observer notes: "Britain discards about 18 million tonnes of food waste a year, which Ecotricity said could generate enough biogas to heat 700,000 homes. The Conservative Party believes 50% of the UK's natural gas supply could be replaced by biogas."

You can sign up now but it wont start until January - the gas will of course come from conventional "brown" natural gas but the plan is to start adding biogas into the national grid later in 2010. Most of that will be bought from other suppliers but there are hopes to also build a couple of plants to make biogas. Customers signing up are investing in creating a demand and supply of biogas for the future.

As folk who read this blog regularly will know biogas is generated in anaerobic digesters, - the organic material is broken down by microbes without oxygen and this releases methane and carbon dioxide - the main elements of biogas. This biogas then makes electricity or, as Ecotricity plans, processed and put into the national gas network. Ecotricity don't plan to use farm waste as much of that is from factory farming.

See The Guardian report here and Treehugger here. See Dale Vince's Zero Carbonista blog to read more about how it works: Continue reading “‘Green Gas’ is here”

*We should not forget that, while Ecotricity is clearly tops in terms of building new renewable sources, many of their 30,000 'lecy' customers are on the tariff that includes non-renewables including nukes. You can see Ecotricity fuel mix here and how it is significantly improving in favour of renewables - remembering also that the money they get they invest - so changing to an Ecotricity tariff means your money goes to building new turbines - or as their ad says - bills to windmills - and don't forget if you change over mention Transition Stroud and TS will get £25 to spend on more low carbon projects locally.

CRB checks: have they gone too far?

CRBs have been in the news recently. We have seen Philip Pullman, Michael Morpurgo and Anne Fine all announce they will not visit schools in protest against the "insulting" criminal records bureau (CRB) vetting system. Why do they object to a measure that surely is ensuring the safety of children?

As folk will know the newly created Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) introduced rules that say any adult who works or volunteers with children or vulnerable adults will first have to be vetted and given the all-clear as a trustworthy adult. The scheme was introduced following the terrible case of the Soham schoolgirls murders by the school caretaker in 2002. At the time the Manifesto Club challenged the Home Office on this new law - the Home Office said that if someone didn't want to be vetted then "there must be suspicious reasons for that."

I already have three mandatory CRB checks in connection with work and running a local youth group - in fact tonight at the Woodcraft Folk group there will be over a 100 of us and a bonfire and 'scary' walk - most of the adults will have had to have been CRB'd to enable them to lead the groups - but I digress... I've heard it suggested that maybe even councillors need to have a CRB check, so perhaps that will make it four CRBs? There is no system that allows you to get one CRB - you have to get one for each activity/job.

However at last there are noises from politicians like Ed Balls, Christopher Grayling and others questioning the system. But where were they in 2006? Even the author of the post-Soham report, Sir Michael Bichard said that this law was not his intention.

As Catherine Bennett notes in a recent article in The Observer, Sir Roger Singleton, chairman of the ISA has pointed out that members of Parliament did not, back in 2006, appear to have any great problem with this law. She goes onto ask where was the scrutiny of this law? In answer she explains some of the reluctance being due to Gloucester MP Parmjit Dhanda, the Minister responsible for the Bill, who suggested that 'such critics wanted to make life cushier for paedophiles'.

Indeed she goes on to say: "As Parmjit Dhanda made clear, the more vetting the merrier. Whatever its lamentable vaguenesses about scope, definitions, enforcement and so forth, no one would ever fault his bill for inclusiveness. 'There are between 7.5 million and 9 million people involved in work with children or with vulnerable adults in one way or another, so it will not be possible to legislate to cover all those people in one fell swoop', he said. 'It will take time.'"

Additions to the list now include Saturday job supervisors, driving instructors and others, bringing the total of those likely to be affected to an impressive 11.3 million of the adult population. Even newsagents may not escape the need for a check.

It is claimed that since 2004 the CRB has stopped 98,000 unsuitable people working with vulnerable groups. This is impressive. However this is not the whole picture. The Home Office in May 2006 revealed that about 2,700 people were mislabeled as criminals during checks and further examples in following years.

It is also suggested by campaigners that many have been rejected for jobs on hearsay - just rejected from the job - it doesn't go anywhere near a courtroom or jury? See for an example Manchester Councillor Richard Baum's comments here about cases he has come across. Indeed there has been increasing concern particularly that the Enhanced Disclosure was reproducing trivial gossip, with the CRB labelled the "Criminal Gossip Bureau". At the very least these needs tightening up seriously to avoid abuses of civil liberties.

There is also the monstrous amount of paperwork - nearly a quarter of a million forms were returned as they were wrongly filled out by organisations. Plus Nacro report thousands of applicants have been subjected to illegal checks for jobs that do not require CRB. Costs are also spiraling and have reached an astonishing £600 million.

Indeed this scheme proceeds from the assumption that none of us can be trusted with children and vulnerable people. Every adult who engages, even fleetingly, with children now has to prove they are not a pervert, and to pay for this privilege where possible No one is presumed innocent. As James Panton writing in the Big Issue South West in August this year, said: "We are assumed to be potential paedophiles until proven otherwise."

Registering a third of working adults will do little to protect children from the small number of individuals who would do them harm. A CRB check may reveal what you have or have not done, but it does not reveal what you have not been caught doing nor what you might do. A CRB is no cast-iron guarantee.

A child's safety is not best guaranteed by subjecting us all to a state-sponsored certification scheme. This surely only adds to the corrosion of the informal relationships of trust and support that are so crucial to communities? Indeed children are becoming “no-go” areas: local sports teams and youth groups are struggling to find volunteers and some teachers are running scared to even put a plaster on a child’s knee.

Some key children's charities like the NSPCC have welcomed the CRB but even they are now questioning whether it has gone too far.

This current scheme is out of control. It needs serious attention. Of course we need to strengthen measures to protect children from potential sex offenders, but there are better ways to protect the vulnerable in our communities. We need to invest much more in teaching adults and children how to recognise warnings rather than relying on a piece of paper.

Interesting news: junk food, green beliefs and we are the deniers

Here are a couple of interesting articles I've been sent recently:

Photo: Fuzzies near top of Ash Lane

Scientists claim junk food is as addictive as heroin - With the rumors swirling that Michelle Obama is a big fan of former FDA Commissioner David Kessler's new book The End of Overeating, it seems reasonable to check in on the science behind an "addiction model" for salty, sweet, and fatty processed food. As it happens, a group of researchers has just released a new study on the subject. The conclusion: the brain responds to junk food the same way it does to heroin. See here.

Green beliefs given same status as religion - Environmentalism gets the same legal status as religion after a landmark ruling gave an Oxford man the right to sue his employer over his green views. The judge said: "If a person can establish that he holds a philosophical belief which is based on science as opposed, for example, to religion, then there is no reason to disqualify it from protection." Mr Nicholson claimed his beliefs affect his whole life and he accused Grainger's chief executive Rupert Dickinson of showing "contempt" for his concerns and claimed he once flew a member of staff to Ireland to deliver his Blackberry which he had left in London. It will be interesting to follow the next stage of this case....See more here.

Deniers of climate change are amateurs compared to us. Activists, environmentalists, scientists, and certainly Copenhagen politicians are in denial far more insidious and subtle. See here article that reads: "The reality we’re denying? We’re denying that we’ve put so much carbon into the atmosphere already that positive feedback loops are well on their way to amplification hell. We’re denying that time lags between carbon emissions and their effects are frighteningly relevant, and that the disastrous effects we’re seeing now are from emissions of 30 years ago. We’re denying that non-linear responses of physical systems cannot be calculated and therefore are perilously ignored. We’re denying that our consumption and waste have far exceeded planetary capacity, possibly irreparably so."

Councils must not invest taxpayers money in Airport growth

The more I thought about the nonsense going on over Staverton Airport the more I felt the urge to write - here is the letter I sent earlier this week:

The Citizen/Echo report that Cheltenham Borough and Gloucester City Councils, who each own a 50 per cent stake in Staverton Airport, will make a decision on 14th December and 7th January on whether to borrow £2.4 million to fund runway improvement plans. The lack of scrutiny about these plans to attract more corporate jet-setters is shocking.

A toothless "Green Management Plan" was introduced last year to appease campaigners that the airport would limit CO2 emissions. However it appears to have been dropped, as it conflicts with this latest plan to increase flights. These Councils are setting an appalling example to residents and businesses, by using taxpayers money to support increases in CO2 emissions when they should be cutting them by more than 80%.

However it gets worse. The economic arguments for expansion also just don't add up. Indeed the Government's own advisors, the Sustainable Development Commission, earlier this year called into question the economic benefits of aviation in terms of wealth creation and called for a review on policies of expanding airports.

News this month that world oil reserves have been seriously overestimated is an indication that we will be facing significant fuel price rises. This will encourage more companies to shift away from flights to more responsible alternatives. It also cannot be long before the public are not prepared to subsidise aviation anymore.

Already '"bizjet" aviation, which includes a high proportion of celebrity and leisure flights, is exempt from fuel tax. Aviation is also exempt from protection against noise nuisance claims and a whole host of other subsidies like paying for the radio spectrum which mobile phone, Emergency services and others all have to pay.

Yes, borrow £2.4 million, but invest it in renewables and energy saving measures: the return in terms of social, economic and environmental benefits will be significantly greater than anything wished for by this airport plan.

Cllr. Philip Booth (Green party), Stroud District councillor for the Randwick, Whiteshill and Ruscombe ward

Notes:

(i) Tewkesbury Borough Council, which has planning jurisdiction on the site, in September approved the extension despite huge opposition and policy statements noting that aircraft emissions are material to planning applications.

Freecycle, Freegle and whats going on?

The excellent Ecologist website carried an article recently about Freecycle - and where it all is now - you see changes have been afoot and I wasn't understanding where this Stroud Freegle came from and why that had replaced Freecycle - now all is clear - well you can find the article here or I've taken the liberty of copying below:

What went wrong with Freecycle in the UK?

Sarah Lewis 30th September, 2009

The recycling network has seen its UK groups halve in number after members lost patience with its 'autocratic' US leadership

Since its inception in 2003, the online world of Freecycle has looked to many like a paragon of an environmentally conscious grassroots movement. But over the last month, simmering tensions in the network have boiled over, resulting in more than 40 per cent of the 510 UK Freecycle groups breaking away to form an independent network called Freegle.

Freecycle is, in essence, a giant internet-based swap shop, made up of thousands of localised groups allowing users to give away stuff they don't want any more, and receive stuff they do want. The rules are simple: whatever you give away must be free, and you can't keep taking without giving.

The aim is to keep useful things out of landfill, and although there are no official figures as to how much waste the network has kept above ground in the last six years, with nearly 5,000 groups in over 70 countries, and a total membership tipping 6.5 million people, it's hard to deny its success.

'Autocratic'

So why has it all gone wrong? Cat Fletcher, one time moderator of Brighton Freecycle and creator of replacement group GreenCycleSussex, says the founding US network was becoming increasingly 'autocratic and unreasonable'.

'We'd been trying to negotiate with the Americans for years but it wasn't successful. The guys in the US just didn't reply,' she says.

The Freecycle concept began innocently enough. A man called Deron Beal started the first group in Arizona and as the idea spread, anyone was allowed to set up with the name Freecycle using the Yahoo Groups messaging service.

Just over a year later, in August 2004, The Freecycle Network (TFN), which acts as a central administrative body for all Freecycle groups, filed an application to trademark the word Freecycle and imposed stringent rules on its usage. Genericisation in any form was forbidden. Anyone claiming to be an 'active freecycler', or to be in the process of 'freecycling some old stuff', would be guilty of trademark infringement.

In 2006, groups on Yahoo using the word freecycle, or any similar sounding word, were targeted and told to shut down. Yahoo itself deleted one group on the request of TFN, but Freecycle Sunnyvale retaliated, bringing a trademark opposition lawsuit against the network, which in turn responded by bringing a law suit against Freecycle Sunnyvale owner Tim Oey for trademark infringement.

The rulings in both cases said the word 'freecycle' could be used generically. But Beal kept this quiet, with Oxfordshire moderator Andy Swarbrick insisting no one was told about the court decisions and strict rules as to the use of the word held in place.

Moderators

While all this was happening, moderators who contacted the American network to question decisions or make suggestions for improving Freecycle in the UK - such as implementing a Freecycle area at local tips - were told to leave their positions.

‘Any moderators expressing opinions not exactly in alignment with what the Americans wanted were being deleted from their groups and asked to step down,' says Fletcher. 'These people started groups out of the goodness of their hearts and devoted thousands of hours of time. All of a sudden they were told to go, just for expressing an opinion’.

Neil Morris, who resigned as director of the UK Freecycle Network in September, and is now an active member of Freegle, says: ‘Volunteers were being told they didn't fit within the organisations. I didn't think it was right. You just don't do that. I had more or less managed to prevent people being forced to leave, but when I scaled back from being so active to work on my PhD it became very clear that the people filling the space were going to work the way Deron wanted them to, rather than to speak for the autonomy that had been building up.'

Brighton breakaway

Tensions came to a head when a combination of internal and international politics caused Cat Fletcher to feel she had no choice but to delete the Brighton Freecycle group and invite its 16,000 members to join GreenCycleSussex.

Fearful that Beal would delete their accounts and ban their free-recycling activities, and buoyed by the actions of Fletcher, moderators across the country began removing their groups from the Freecycle Network. The following day, a group of moderators decided the exodus of some 190 groups was large enough to warrant creating an independent network - Freegle.

The future

Morris insists Freegle wasn't premeditated, but a logical response to an immediate need.

‘Everyone tried to stay within Freecycle,' he says. 'The people who left were the people who had taken leadership and grown Freecycle to make the UK the country with the highest proportion of freecyclers in the world. I quite honestly don't know why Deron has done what he's done. I'm actually gobsmacked that someone would allow an organisation that has such great potential to be run the way it is run. You need to enhance the enthusiasm and efforts of volunteers, rather than hold them back.’

By the end of September, Freegle had gained about 43 per cent of the original UK Freecycle membership and is continuing to grow. Deron Beal and the US Network made no comment.

John Barnes will be missed

I was very saddened to read news of John Barnes death in the SNJ today. I've copied the article below as it captures some of the energy and passion that I also experienced in conversations with him.

Photo: John at the recent Open Homes Installers fair talking LED

Indeed it was great to meet someone with such a passion for green stuff and ideas to make it happen. John had, for example, offered to put in LED lighting at cost price to all of Stroud High Street if we could find some funds for a half or whole day of consulting - I had already had discussions with the Town Council about a project that we had hoped could be launched early next year. It would have meant up to 95% savings in energy for the shops involved. I was looking forward to working more with John on this project.

This is a great loss to Stroud and I all my sympathies to his family and friends.


Tributes paid to John Barnes - By David Wiles - see SNJ here.

INNOVATIVE, full of energy and a fantastic father - those are just a few phrases used to describe popular Stroud character John Barnes.

John was always buzzing with ideas and was known as a friendly face around the town. But he also suffered from bipolar disorder, a serious mental health problem involving extreme mood swings. Sadly, John took his own life recently aged 36.

His mother, Christine Rogers, 61, said: "I would like him to be remembered as he was, a very kind, caring young man. If you wanted his help, he would be over straight away. He was innovative and very creative."

Born in Wigan, Lancashire on February 9, 1973, John soon moved to Wales where his parents ran a pub. He relocated to Gloucester in 1988 when the family took over the Golden Cross in Southgate Street. John started an electrical engineering course at Gloscat's Park Campus in Cheltenham but left to be an unpaid helper at a small business in Oxford, providing sound and lighting at local gigs. His break came at the age of 18 in 1990, when he was invited to work as a lighting technician at rock concerts in Germany.

John returned to Gloucester in 1992 and then spent the next 10 years touring the world with acts including Iron Maiden, Sting and Blur. He met his wife-to-be, Emma Ordonez, during a night out at Gloucester Guildhall in 2002. The couple married at Gloucester Register Office in August 2003 and celebrated the birth of their son Ruben in April 2005. They lived on a canal barge for a short while and relocated to Chalford in 2006. The couple divorced amicably in 2007 and John, a volunteer with the Samaritans, moved to live above the Retreat in Church Street, Stroud.

His friend Annabell Walker, 35, said: "He was a fantastic father. He had lots of energy and was a lovely person to be around."

Over the last three years, he freelanced around Britain and was also employed to help large corporations develop new ideas. Among his ideas were a pushchair which could be folded to carry on your back and a washing line cover.

John was also passionate about green technology, particularly LEDs, and organised a carbon-neutral festival in Bank Gardens in August 2008. He also installed lighting in the Retreat and organised the light show on the closing night of the Greyhound. John died on October 23. A humanist funeral was held at Gloucester Crematorium on November 5 and the ashes will be spread locally.

He is survived by his mother Christine Rogers, former wife Emma Ordonez, son Ruben, four, brother David Barnes, stepfather John Rogers, stepbrother Peter Rogers and stepsister Lara Rogers.

Vote Earth

Add your vote at:
www.earthhour.org/
It will be taken to Copenhagen to help call for positive action on climate change - all the more needed after reading Guardian - see here - a new study shows that we could be seeing a 6 degrees rise in temperatures by the end of the century - this is way serious stuff.

Drama over Puckshole flood measures

Yesterday evening it was our monthly Ruscombe Brook Action Group meeting. Amongst topics was an update on Puckshole - see below. Here was our agenda resulting from a meeting I had with some RBAG members last month. I've also included some quick comments.

1. Works at Puckshole (phases I, II and III) - phase one is going ahead (see below) - phase two is tackling a water pipe that is damaging the brook and up for discussion in January. Phase three looking further at attenuation is on hold at the moment.
2. Severn Trent sewer works. A lengthy discussion on the huge progress since our first meeting some 4 years ago - we drafted a letter to seek an update on their plans as we have still seen little evidence of capital works going ahead.
3. Wider community involvement in the group and the brook - like involving schools again - our latest project is our water saving tips list which is ready to go out.
4. The Ruscombe Brook water standard - this is on hold.
5. Wider catchment issues and the Stroud Valleys Water Forum - we fed back from the recent Water Forum group - I don't think I've covered that yet on this blog - basically it was stuff about how we can develop the group to get bodies to take wider catchment issues more seriously - our planned speaker from the NFU didn't materialise but we were able to catch up on where each of the action groups are - see the meeting before that here.

Puckshole drama

For those who don't know for some years we have sought measures to reduce the flooding at Puckshole. The flooding continues to damage the road and in the past has flooded cars and cut off a small group of houses. We were delighted to get some funds from Stroud District Council to clear the culvert and put in a grill as part of our initial efforts. Then a couple of weeks ago the contractor got on site and found part of the culvert collapsed - the work was stopped and no funds available to restart.

I contacted various people and I know others also wrote and we are now delighted to learn yesterday that the District has managed to locate another source of funding to enable the culvert under the access road to be replaced - and the headwall/screen can be constructed as originally intended. A start date hopefully before Christmas - well done to Stroud District for coming up trumps on this one.

It should be noted that in funding the replacement culvert, the Council is not accepting any riparian responsibilities for ownership or maintenance of the culvert in the future as it is seen that this should lie with the owners of the access track. All this sounds so simple but behind the scenes it has meant yet more talks with the Environment Agency, the contractors, residents and lots more.

On a positive note, the culvert has already been carefully cleaned by "365 Environmental Ltd" and a CCTV record made of the culvert condition. The survey shows the "oil drum" culvert through the builders yard to be intact and of a good circular shape. Flow through this section is also good. The survey did show that there were two sections where the metal drum had rusted and fallen away from the concrete surround, but the concrete left behind is still supporting itself.

Sign Tobin Tax petition

I have repeatedly called for a Tobin Tax - see most recent call here - now I see there is a petition set up by a Green colleague on the Downing Street site.

Photo: Stroud 'bankers' launching the Stroud Pound

It would be great to see many folks sign:
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/TobinTaxThanks/

Please sign, blog, tweet and generally disseminate this petition. Brown is going to get a huge amount of counter-lobbying from the banksters, so he needs a positive push. It is one of the rare petitions that is actually supporting what he is saying!

It reads:

Preamble: The PM has put forward the idea of a Tobin Tax at the G20 meeting in November. This is a tax on financial transactions, which will be hypothecated to poor countries, to which the PM has not unreasonably added a clause to put some to meeting the cost of the next bank bailout. The US and Canada have already talked sown the idea, but many poorer countries and nearly all NGOs will welcome it, and we encourage our PM to persist against all odds.

Petition: We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to persist with his praiseworthy plan to persuade the G20 to place a Tobin Tax on financial transactions, designed to aid poorer countries and increase financial stability.

Tricorn House demo today

Lunchtime today I joined the protest picnic against the Government's decision to refuse a compulsory purchase order which would have seen derelict Tricorn House transformed by energy company Ecotricity into their HQ.

Photos: sent to me by other protestors and the group shot taken by Stroud Life reporter on my camera

There were some 20 of us there including at least one protestor on the roof. Here's some of what I said at the picnic: "Over 4 years ago I interviewed over a 100 people in the area for Cainscross Parish and time and time again in the interviews Tricorn House was raised unprompted. Without exception thoughts about Tricorn House were negative and it was repeatedly mentioned as what people would most like to change about the area. Virtually everyone I speak to still wants action. For over 10 years this building has lain empty with no attempts by the owners to engage with local people. I joined this demo to show my support again for a deal that will enable local wind-energy company Ecotricity to build a new HQ, where more than 300 people will work. This could have a huge positive impact on local businesses in this area. It is time we had a better deal for Cainscross."

The CPO has overwhelming public support. Many have been outraged at the decision of John Denham, Minister at the Department for Community and Local Government, to block the purchase of Tricorn House which has long been a vandalised eyesore on a prominent a Stroud gateway site. Denham has indicated that he has no commitment to either local communities or local government. He has ruled bizarrely that the CPO did not strike a fair balance between the public interest and the human rights of the owner, and that the HQ could be located on another site.

Here is what Martin Large said: "Millville Ltd (owned by Wellfair Holdings) the offshore, Guernsey based owner, has kept Tricorn House mostly empty since 1996 for ‘property investment’. It is now derelict, vandalised, with broken windows. Stroud civil society would like to see the site brought back into productive use, by SDC vigorously continuing its CPO bid to secure the site for Ecotricity. A letter to John Denham has been signed at this picnic, inviting Mr Denham to come and see Tricorn House for himself, and to personally help SDC remove the blockages to reclaiming the site for business and the community."

“Tricorn house is an abomination, that ranks even worse than Stroud Police Station, as the most ugly lump of concrete in the district. The graffitti on it says it all: ‘Please Knock Me Down.’”
Local resident

Anyhow I brought donuts along for the picnic and proceeded to bite into a jam one that shot the jam up my sleeve where it remained when I went to work - agh well it was still tasty. Here is how the SNJ already describe the demo with picks on their website (How dare they beat this blog with the news!):

Concerned residents gathered outside the derelict building in Cainscross to show their support for Stroud District Council's CPO. One protester climbed onto the roof with a banner proclaiming 'Power to the People' will others, who gathered for a picnic, held banners including 'Tri Harder', 'Land 4 People' and 'Reclaim Tricorn'. After a three-day public inquiry into the CPO in July, John Denham, Secretary of State for Community and Local Government, said this month that he did not think there was not a compelling case for a CPO in the public interest. At the picnic, a letter to Mr Denham was signed by protesters, inviting him to come and see Tricorn House, and to personally help SDC remove the blockages to reclaiming the site for business and community. Martin Large, a member of Stroud Common Wealth, said: "Organisations and members of the community now have the chance to make a renewed CPO bid. This could be a community buy out plan with much needed housing, community facilities, offices and a green gateway to Stroud on the Tricorn House site."

As a last note I think it is very unlikely that the community would have the chance of putting in a bid - Ecotricity are already refining their previous bid. I am hopeful that this time they can provide all the info needed to ensure a successful bid. As I said above it is time that local people had a better deal.

Tesco's Greener Living website

Tesco has launched a new Greener Living site, which they say "has been set up to help shoppers become more environmentally-savvy" They wrote to me asking whether I'd "be interested in writing a review or letting your readers know about it".

Pics: Left a Tesco ad and below art from Russ inspired by this blog entry!!!

Well I have real serious problems with such sites - yes they may reach out to people who perhaps wouldn't get that info or want to find out more - a sort of cuddly feel good very pale, pale green sort of thing.....but I think they can do more damage by making folk think they are doing what is needed....hey just a brief look has me very worried...under food they are talking about satsumas and lots of meat - how is that all green? And where is the mention of buying locally?

Indeed you have to question how serious Tesco are with there special airmile offers and this ridiculous ad above. As Ed Gillespie commented in The Guardian: "Supermarket's offer of air miles in exchange for low-energy light bulbs is like giving away a pack of Benson and Hedges with every Nicorette patch."

Indeed giving away air miles to incentivise the lightbulb swap is well just plain madness.

Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas has said in the past: "Did Wilberforce ask people to cut down from two slaves to one? Or Emmeline Pankhurst politely suggest that husbands might consult their wives before going out to vote?"

We need sweeping changes to our carbon emissions, not tweaks. The signs running up to the UN summit in Copenhagen, are not great. Playing down hopes is not what I want to hear - we need to maintain ambition that we can have a deal that is based on fairness and science. To have even a 50/50 chance of keeping global temperature rise below two degrees C, the industrialised countries need to adopt binding targets to reduce emissions by at least 40% by 2020, based on 1990 levels. Importantly, these reductions should be made domestically – not ‘outsourced’ to poorer countries.

I'm not sure Tesco will be asking me to review their site again - but let's face it if we are to tackle climate change we need to all be on board. If those Greener Living folks are reading this I would urge you to really develop the site to take account of what we know needs to happen. Tesco have made some steps but we need some serious moves in the right direction not playing at the edges.