Keeping it out of landfill

Landfill is one of the worst solutions to waste. Burying resources in the ground, impacting on landscapes, releasing methane over long time frames and wasting valuable resources... Without a doubt, the worst thing in all of this is when perfectly usable items end up in landfill. If something is valuable, then it’s worth the effort to sell through local papers or ebay, but it’s the low-value items that it can be more tempting to throw away.

How can we avoid this?

If you have furniture to get rid of, Dursley Lyons have a weekly sale, raising money for good causes...The Furniture Sales  normally take place at the Lions Store in May Lane, Dursley GL11 4JH, 08.30-11.30  every Saturday. If you have items to donate for a Furniture sale ring 01453 544471.

Charity shops are an obvious solution to disposing of still usable things, and are always glad of donations, so anything more portable can simply be dropped off with them. You get all the warm fuzzy feelings of helping a good cause, plus the feel-good of keeping items in use.

Stroud District has a Freegle -  A great place to give away unwanted things. Freegle is especially good if you have trouble moving things around – people simply come to you and take away the stuff you didn’t want, so for bulky items, this can be especially good. Get involved with freegle and you might pick up a few handy things you wanted, as well.

Last on today’s list, but by no means least, we have a jumble sale tomorrow (Saturday) 2-3.30 at the Maypole Hall in Stroud.

DURSLEY’S FIGHT FOR GREEN FIELDS

By Trish Andrews

View from the field.

This special relationship of people and fields started over one hundred years ago.  Garden Suburb houses were built in Dursley between 1908 and 1910, on low slopes of escarpment fields, beneath hillside woods.  One row had two alleyways, giving access to meadowland at the back.  Diana Barton was born, at Number 10, in 1920.  Once old enough, she was out there, following the established pattern of local children, playing with friends, making dens, gaining wonderful, outdoor experience.

She was my mother.  Born in July 1945, I too grew up at Number 10.  My friend’s garden bordered the fields, neighbourhood children continued to play there.  My children grew up at 53, making them, with other local children, a third generation, able to enjoy everything the open green space behind our houses had to offer.  With post-war change to much easier lifestyles, parents and grandparents gained time to join in with leisure activities and the fields became a meeting ground for entertainment between family groups.  Nobody was ever approached by a landowner.

In 2010, contractors appeared, stripped the fields of all surface growth and decimated wildlife.  Huge bonfires burnt for weeks.   Shrubs at the woodland edge deemed not a hedge were removed.  The landowner organised Dursley town council to re-fence their wood and circulated his intention to introduce horses.  Field- use by neighbours continued as ever, avoiding contractors, but the motive was questioned, and doubted.  However, nothing further happened.  If any of us had known about Town Green status, we would have applied then.         

Just before August Bank Holiday, 2013, copies of a pre-planning proposal, for 69 houses on two fields off Hardings Drive, Dursley – those behind Garden Suburb - were hand-delivered from Snooks Planning Consultants, on behalf of clients, to all properties adjoining the fields.  They omitted to notify Dursley Town Council, as owners of adjacent woodland and gave residents a paltry seven days, to respond with opinions.  Following complaints, the time was extended.

These are Cotswold edge escarpment fields, within the AONB (Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) and compose the only open green space visible from Parsonage Street, in Dursley town centre.  Their part in creating the town’s pleasant rural aspect and ambiance is vital.  Replacing these green fields with a housing estate would completely ruin the appearance and nature of this town.

On 29 August 2013, residents from Torchacre Rise, Hardings Drive, Cedar Drive, Garden Suburb, Burnt Oak, Westfield and other areas, met at the Kingshill Inn to begin an Action Group Campaign.  Over 70 local people attended, giving support and help to fight any proposed development.  Memberships were taken and a steering group formed which met to establish the forward process.

It quickly came to light that one member had been involved with a Town Green application and after research, he thought the considerable use locals made of the fields, beyond the required 20 year period, ‘as of right’, without hindrance or permission, qualified us to apply.  The process would delay any planning application until finalised, success would give the fields their best possible protection.

The immediate glitch was new rules for Town and Village Green applications from 1 October, 2013, would make this status more difficult to achieve.  We had two weeks to write as many witness statements as possible, supported by photographic evidence and apply under the old rules.  Love of the fields, passionate that they stay as open green space and community spirit kicked in.  We went for it, found an amazing solicitor, who checked legal aspects in our endeavours, achieved copies of everything, made sure we were as presentable as possible and charged nothing!  No time to organise a community pot, anyway!  Our application was hand-delivered to Legal Services, Gloucester, at 2 pm on Monday 30 September 2013, the last day!

Between us, we recorded a fabulous array of field activities for the requirement of comprehensive use over the previous twenty years, with some of our long-term residents able to go much further back than required.  Naturally, there are all the usual events of daily walkers with and without dogs, adult walkers with and without children.  But we have a history of unaccompanied children using the fields for play and learning, den-making, sporting games, games of imagination.   Children at play all day, safe in the knowledge that they are free to do so, with home in easy reach if wanted, parents supplying picnics, children within easy call when they had to come in.

There have been organised events, team games of cricket and football, kite-flying, birthday parties, bonfire parties, November the 5^th celebrations with fireworks.  Tents have been put up and children have camped overnight without adult intrusion.  From the first appearance of good snow, it’s a steep slope, scream-inducing, fun-fair toboggan ride.

Teaching the ways of wildlife and encouraging children to grow up revere our countryside landscape and preserve its legacies for future generations, is high on the list of importance for so many parents and grandparents who have accessibility, on their doorsteps, by living in a spectacular rural area.

The fields off Hardings Drive are loaded with exciting wildlife for adults and children to seek out and enjoy together.   We have bats, foxes, badgers, squirrels, an array of mice, shrew and vole prey items for raptors, many amphibians, frogs, toads, palmate and common newts, slow worms, birds of woodlands, birds of fields, butterflies, caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets, shield bugs, other bugs and beetles, plus three types of deer with regularly produced fawns.  The One Show nature team visited the site in 2008, stayed longer than scheduled as wildlife was so impressive and put out a prime-time television programme as a result.

Bird watching is a serious hobby for many people who walk this lovely area.  So is landscape appreciation.  Walking from Hardings Drive, the fields rise steeply and the view opens up behind.  Turning, reveals the hanging valley Dursley nestles in, a landscape of surrounding Cotswold scarp slopes, bordered by beautiful hills, clockwise from Cam Peak, Cam Longdown, Downham, the south face of Uley Bury, showing its Iron Age defences, then miles of woods and escarpment fields curving round from Uley village.  No wonder, then, between wildlife and landscape, these fields have huge attraction for amateur and more professional photographers.  Owners of Clifton Cameras, Dursley, have just moved premises to double their floor space.  Customers are directed in the street, to focus their prospective purchases on Hardings Drive fields.  In rain, an assistant holds the umbrella!

Please support our Town Green application. These fields are vital to our community, too lovely to lose and every letter counts.  The address is: Head of Legal Services, (on behalf of the registration authority), Legal Services, Shire Hall, Gloucester, GL1 2TG, and quote reference JKS/51943

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Trish Andrews is not a Green Party member but asked us to share this blog to raise awareness of the issues.

The Spirit of Christmas

This new report by Green MEP Keith Taylor shows a 60% rise in food bank use and thousands facing a hungry Christmas: http://ow.ly/rNhZ5 

The report focuses on the South East, an area traditionally a lot better off than much of the country. It is a shocking thing that in an affluent nation like ours, anyone should be hungry, but hunger is on the rise. Malnutrition is a real risk for people who regularly miss meals, or go more than five days without eating, with long term health implications for people who aren’t eating properly. If you’ve never done that, you might take a moment to try and imagine what it’s like not to be able to afford to eat properly. Weight is no indicator, either. A person eating a badly balanced diet, can be both obese and suffering malnutrition. Junk food with lots of calories but little nutritional value, is often a cheap option.

The Charity The Trussell Trust runs a number of foodbanks in Stroud district – typically open for a few hours several days a week, they are giving food to some of the most desperate people in the district. Dursley Tabernacle, Douglas Morley Hall in Stonehouse, Wotton Baptist Church and The Cross at Parliament Street, Stroud, all host foodbanks. http://strouddistrict.foodbank.org.uk/

Of course you have to be able to get there. We have a lot of smaller villages across the district, many of which do not get much of a bus service. The person who cannot afford food probably also can’t afford the cost of petrol, or a bus ticket even assuming a bus is available. We might imagine the countryside as a place for the wealthy, but many of our villages also have small pockets of council housing, and older people in houses bought before rural property prices inflated so outrageously. We have a small population of people living on narrowboats as well. The tendency of foodbanks to be in small towns, may hide the extent of rural poverty and the people who cannot access that help.

The rise in foodbanks marks the failure of our modern politics and culture. They are proof of a corrupt system that punishes the poor for being poor. The government may talk of ‘recovery’ but Shelter (http://www.shelter.org.uk/) are telling us there will be some 80,000 homeless children in the UK this Christmas. And how many hungry people? This is not recovery, this is the destruction of lives, and an assault on civilization.

 

St Nicholas was a saint famous for giving to others. This Christmas, charity at home is more critical, more needed than it’s been since the Victorian era. You can bet the bankers who wrecked our economy, and the politicians who dish out the austerity measures will not be going hungry on Christmas day, or any other day. Plenty of other people will. It’s not acceptable.

Nuclear power is not a cheap option

A letter from one of our local Green councillors, Martin Whiteside, tackling nuclear issues. Re-blogged for the benefit of those of you who may otherwise have missed it.

23^rd October 2013

 

Dear Editor,

The agreement to let the French and Chinese build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset has serious implications for us in Gloucestershire.  If we are not careful, next in line could be the go ahead to build a massive new nuclear power station close to us on the Severn at Oldbury. If something went wrong, (like happened at Fukushima, Chernobyl or  Three Mile Island) this would, at average wind speeds, carry radioactive contamination to us in Dursley in 40 minutes, Stonehouse in one hour and Nailsworth or Stroud in 1 hour 20 minutes.

Nuclear power is not only dangerous, it also makes no economic sense. These nuclear power stations will only be built with a guaranteed price subsidy from you and me and our children - on our electricity bills for the next 35 years. Our higher bills will be subsidising shareholders and taxpayers in France and China for a generation! Does handing over this technology to foreign companies make us more energy secure in an uncertain future? The Greens don’t think so. Who will be left with the legacy of the nuclear waste (we still have found a way of dealing with our existing waste – let alone any new waste!) - we will! Who will suffer if there is an accident – we will!

The Green Party energy policy is based on the latest scientific evidence. It shows how we can live comfortable lives without nuclear, while still radically reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. We need to invest more in energy conservation and genuine renewables. The good news is that this will also create many more local jobs than nuclear, and with technologies that are locally owned and creating local profit. It makes a lot of sense.

Martin Whiteside – Green Party District Councillor