Coffee House Discussion on Stroud

Stroud's future was discussed in the Green party sponsored evening in Stroud's Star Anise Cafe - this evening's talk was part of the national Coffeehouse Challenge organised by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) to promote discussion and debate.

Over 40 people turned out to hear three short speakers then go into discussions at tables about what could be done to take issues like Climate Change and Peak Oil more seriously. Ideas on the table included Mike Jones talking about making more of Stroud's brooks and rivers - after all the mills were powered by them years ago - plus developing a more sophisticated form of LETS or local economic exchange system that could get over the problems of previous systems by people being able to purshase local hydro energy.

Martin Whiteside talked about a vision for Stroud in 2020 plus developing a 'Hub' on the internet for better sharing of the wonderful creative activities and inspiring projects that are already going on - plus better local communication - an estimated £2 to £3 million in advertising money was said to be taken out of the local community by the SNJ American owners.

Graham Stanley, a Director of Vision 21 talked more about local projects like car share schemes and the importance of holding onto local services like post offices. His key suggestion that petrol should be increased to £1.50 a litre was not as unpopular as he expected - he explained that prices were set to rise to this anyway in coming years so why not phase it in quicker now and ring-fence the extra tax to build proper local services so that poor and rural people will not be hit so hard - free school bus services, reduced tax for rural people, investment in public transport etc.

This argument makes sense but clearly needs very careful planning - Sweden are already on a programme to be free of oil dependence by 2020 - we can to - the congestion charge in London was unpopular by many but there are few who can criticies the enormous benefits - public transport is improving every year and people are choosing it because it is actually easier than taking the car - those that do use the car also find things better.