Just a note to highlight the newish Gloucestershire campaign website against a large incinerator. It is great to see a non-party political campaign developing. Now that we have a Green party voice at the County Council Greens we will be able more easily to call to account any attempts to move towards incineration. Greens have had considerable correspondence with the County on this but we still have very real concerns about the direction they are going...Photo: pinched from The Citizen re the recent march against a large incinerator.
Meanwhile see our recent letter to the local press here......ooohps nearly forgot to leave the link for the new website:
www.gloucestershire-against-incinerators.org.uk
5 comments:
They shouldn't forget the 'No Incinerator In Gloucester' Facebook page, in that list of political parties' sites. It's creator stood for Labour in the council elections last month.
But the 'new website' is rank. That enduring straw man, 'everyone is against it, but the Tories won't say anything'... They all know what the Tory spokesman says, whether they want to accept it or not, that a decision hasn't been made yet on which technology to use. So the Conservatives say there is no chosen option to have an opinion on, but funnily enough, everyone who claims there is can be against it, and that just happens to be... rival political parties.
And who are the people behind the website? They're just 'people who are not members of any political parties', Shyeah, just like Daniel King was... (I'm going to say it) Not!
'The favoured waste control option of the current Conservative controlled Gloucestershire County Council is said to be the building of a giant incinerator. The incinerator could be up to 10 stories high'. '*Said* to be'? I was afraid that I might be in danger of opposing a bunch of people on the loose assumption that they were a bunch of 'Not In My Atmosphere' zealots, but that one-sided account cleared up my concerns.
Maybe, Philip, you could persuade them to decide on an alternative (and not just 'more recycling') that they could all get behind, instead of this 'one size fits all opposition' racket, and promote that alternative instead. I'm sure they wouldn't listen to me...
Glos specifically list an incinerator in their contract - other bids have not done this - this leads to suspicion - if they are to look at alternatives they need to work harder - the market is biased in favour of incineration for many wrong reasons.
Yes there are lots of scare tactics about emissions and the size - emissions in modern plants are not an issue - they are so well regulated - and they are about 6 stories high - Philip had a picture of the one in hampshire on this blog sometime ago - but however large incinerators make no sense - there are plenty of valid reasons for rejecting that technology.
You're right, anonymous, the Tory council have got some questions to answer. Specifically, their notion that a rather limited consultation a year or so back means the public have no right to further imput when the final option is selected, although I'm fairly sure there wasn't a 'Would you like a large incineration facility off the M5?' question in there. Councillors should obtain full details of these questions, and how they were answered. I'm certainly going to ask my county councillor (Labour, just scraped in with less than two dozen votes this election, over a thousand down from last time) to enquire.
Thanks - in haste as rushing to work but have passed on last comment to Greens new councillor and our waste researcher who is putting together an updated report on the alternatives taking into account latest research re carbon etc.
We have also discussed with others the alternatives to an incinerator - there is not full agreement at the moment on which route to go down - however there is much in common....almost any of the alternatives are better than a large incinerator.
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