Stroud Careers Event

Philip Booth writes: On 6th November at Stratford Park Leisure Centre there was a big career event organised by Stroud District Council and South Gloucestershire and Stroud College. Over 1,000 13 and 14 year olds attended the interactive day with 57 businesses and stalls with some 20 Universities also represented. In the evening over 500 people including many older children and parents attended to hear more about possible jobs. I was there in the evening with my camcorder - here is a 2 minute taster of the day: http://stroudcommunity.tv/snapshot-of-stroud-district-ambitions-careers-event/

And for a 30 minute film with interviews see: http://stroudcommunity.tv/stroud-district-ambitions-careers-event-some-of-the-57-businesses-who-supported-the-day/

It was great to see so much enthusiasm from the youth's I talked to but also the employers - inspiring stuff - am sure this event will become a regular feature!

Trashed Review

The film ‘Trashed’ was shown in Stroud on Sunday the 29^th September 2013, thanks to Stroud District Council and as part of a move to tackle plastic use within the town.

The following is a review from Pat Sykes, with observations about the impact of plastic, and of how we dispose of it. Over to Pat…

I would like to share how much I enjoyed (if that's the right word) the film 'Trashed'. Very disturbing but educational. It needs to be shown to school children, though some Heads might need to contact parents about some of the content. The film, produced by Jeremy Irons, and commentated by him, swept round the world showing the most appalling effects of discarded plastics. Seas, becoming a plastic soup, rivers flowing close to impoverished families, clogged up and polluting the waters which are the life-blood of these communities.

Sea mammals are harmed by plastic objects lodging in their bodies and suffer appalling injuries. One of the most distressing films revealed mountains of plastic waste which simply builds up and has nowhere to go except into the sea, in some locations, creating some of the worst polluted eye-sores on one-time magnificent coastlines. I felt quite helpless, as I watched. I'm so careful to recycle all, and have very little landfill waste, each week. But still I use plastic bags, to my shame. I want to give them up totally and think we all need help to identify alternatives to plastic use in our everyday lives. Since the film, I've thought seriously about not re-using water bottles and have today sourced from the Stroud Valleys Project shop, a re-usable plastic bottle which will not leach harmful pollutants, (as do ordinary plastic bottles after re-use). I am going to a meeting on 7th October to volunteer with the STOP (Stroud Opposed to Plastic Bags) 7.30pm at the town council offices in London Road.  It's open to anyone who wants to help raise awareness of this campaign. I suppose this is a start, but it looks as if we will to be very vigilant, especially keeping an eye on politicians who think that incineration will solve all our plastic waste problems.

The film showed that incineration can produce harmful dioxin emissions and this 'solution' is just too big a risk to take in the rush to sort out the globe's waste mountain. The follow-on debate touched on the incinerator campaign and I was horrified to realize that Gloucestershire County Councillors signed up to the Contract before planning permission, which we all know now was not given (and they are appealing). Even if they lose this appeal, we, as tax payers, have to fork out millions to the company involved for 'pulling out' ! We were told of Norfolk's potential bankruptcy because of a similar signing of a contract without planning. I believe we need to dig deep to find out how this can remain a legal option for contractors. How far do we need to cast the net to find this answer, I wonder, and what can we do as citizens of Stroud?

I have a lot more to learn about the science of alternatives to incineration and was cheered to learn that there are 'saner, smaller, cheaper alternatives proposed by the Glosvain campaign (www.glosvain.info).

Who is spending your money?

If anyone had asked me a couple of weeks ago how public money is spent locally, I would have assumed anything not handled by central government, would go to big, well known institutions like the Police and the NHS, and the rest would be sorted out by local government. That, after all, is a big part of what we vote for. We elect people to make financial decisions on behalf of our community.

Turns out I was wrong.

Rather a lot of money, including money from Europe, goes to Local Enterprise Partnerships. I’d never heard of them before, and I’m not oblivious to politics. Who gets to be in one of those, then? Who do they answer to? How are they accountable?  We have The Gloucestershire Local Enterprise Partnership; that was news to me. How would a local business or enterprise go about tapping into that? I have no idea.

Here’s a bit from a recent Stroud District Green Party press release…

Martin Whiteside, the Green Party councillor on Stroud District Council’s (SDC) Environment and Planning Committee, said: 'The Local Enterprise Partnership and similar bodies springing up around the country, spending billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, appear to be an immaculate re-conception of the quango system. What is most sinister about them is the lack of democratic accountability and the dominant role of unelected and unaccountable business people spending our money.'

Molly Scott Cato, Leader of the Green Group on SDC, added: 'My particular concern is the Local Enterprise Partnership, which appears to have emerged from a transfiguration of the old G1st. The process by which this body has come into existence is unclear and its governance arrangements are murky. This is not acceptable for a body that will make decisions about the investment of all the national infrastructure money in our county, as well as significant European funds. In addition, money that was previously in the budget of SDC, arising from the New Homes Bonus, will now be top-sliced by this quango to the tune of 40%'

Greens will seek to improve representation and accountability of all bodies responsible for spending public money.

Pausing to pick over Molly’s words… Stroud District Council was going to get money from the New Homes Bonus, and now 40% of that pot gets creamed off by unelected people in an unaccountable organization where no one who was elected locally has any say whatsoever over how that money gets spent. The government did not even tell us in any way we might have noticed or understood, that this kind of thing would be happening. I am deeply uneasy about this and I do not think it bodes well for the future.

If you want to get a more in-depth look at the issues, hope over to Molly Scott Cato’s blog http://www.gaianeconomics.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/how-public-is-public-money_28.html

Molly for Europe

 

The European elections aren’t until next year – 22nd May 2014, and while that may still feel like a very long way off, things are already happening. The Green Party in the Southwest has chosen its candidates and now the work begins to put Green policies in front of people.  The lead candidate for the South West is our own Molly Scott Cato and if Twitter is anything to go by, people of Stroud are already showing a lot of love for Molly.

Molly leads the Green Group on Stroud District Council. She is Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at Roehampton University, the Green Party’s national speaker on finance and an international expert on green economics. Molly represented the Green Party on the “No to the Euro” campaign and is a regular commentator on the Eurozone crisis via her personal blog, Gaian Economics (http://gaianeconomics.blogspot.co.uk/ ).

Molly says, “I am deeply concerned that the Eurozone crisis is creating tensions and threatening the peace project that lies at the heart of my vision of Europe. I believe I can communicate the vision that Europe needs: of peace, prosperity and happy settled lives within a healthy environment, rather than competition and the endless quest for more.

There is a significant risk that if we don’t get the politics right, the political pressure for a referendum on leaving the EU will build, and the Union that has provided us with security and protection throughout our lives will start to break up. Restoring public support relies on increasing the democratic accountability of the European institutions and, crucially, on switching the focus to stability and away from the corporate single market.

My knowledge of economics can offer something important to the Green Group in the European Parliament at this time. I would like to join the likes of Sven Giegold and Philippe Lamberts, working to constrain the power of the ‘banksters’ and share wealth more equally, whilst remembering that nature is the true source of all our wealth.”

Molly was brought up in Bath and has lived in the West Country for most of her life. She holds a degree in PPE from Oxford University and a PhD in Economics from Aberystwyth University. She has three children.

There are Green Members of the European Parliament from all over Europe, coming to the table with broadly similar aims and ideas around sustainable living and a fairer future. Molly would be a powerful voice in that mix. A European Parliament that delivers for the people of Europe has to be about far more than big business and keeping the bankers happy. A good quality of life, real peace and real security are what we all need. We can make that happen.