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Newsletter
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Environmental issues will be of paramount importance in the campaign. and we are using FoE's "Green X Code" campaign to find out whether prospective Members of Parliament are really committed to protecting the environment.
We are asking candidates to sign up to the following five key targets relating to the environment:-
Why? Many of us would recycle more of our household waste if it were collected from our homes. By meeting a 50% recycling target, the Government could create 45,000 jobs and protect natural habitats.
Why? Over half the poorest families in Britain don't have a car. They rely on public transport. Quality public transport and safe residential streets are essential to community life.
Why? Biotech companies claim that GM food and crops are safe. So why do they refuse to be held legally responsible for any damage they cause? The Government must use tax and spending measures to protect public health, small and impoverished farmers and the environment.
Why? The world's climate is changing. We are already seeing dramatic changes in the weather as shown by recent floods. Thousands of jobs could be created if the Government gave businesses incentives to use renewable sources like wind, solar and wave power.
Why? Most businesses produce economic reports. We want them to publish similar reports on their social and environmental impacts. If there's nothing to hide, it shouldn't be a problem.
On Friday 23rd March there will be a further opportunity to get postcards signed.
A Pre-Election public meeting "Vote Locally - Act Globally" is being held at Friends Meeting House, York Street, at 7.30pm by Bath Oxfam, Christian Aid and Amnesty International in association with Bath FoE, CAFOD, the Mothers' Union, Churches Together in Bath, Save the Children and Jubilee Plus.
Prospective parliamentary candidates for Bath - Don Foster, Bath's Liberal Democrat MP, Marilyn Hawkings the Labour PPC and Ashley Fox the Conservative PPC will be asked for their views on the following topics:-
I have written to the PPCs asking them to sign up to the Green Cross Code. I will write to further candidates when / if they are declared.
Don Foster and Marilyn Hawkings have responded with letters and have ticked all the boxes. Ashley Fox has written back detailing how he can go some way towards the targets but he has been unable to tick any of the boxes.
Notwithstanding these responses to me, it is essential that candidates receive as many Green X postcards as possible, both to make them aware of the concern for these environmental issues and also to enable them to personally inform voters of their views.
Candidates' addresses are shown below. However, I have set up a table at envolve with Green X Code cards and a for-use-by-the-public post box so that, if you are passing by, pop your cards in and I will make sure they are delivered!
Don Foster MP
31 James Street West
Bath BA1 2BT
Ashley Fox
Conservative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate
20 Crescent Lane
Bath
BA1 2PX
Marilyn Hawkings
Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate
Century House, Pierrepont St
Bath BA1 1LE
Bath Green Party is hoping to field a candidate for the General Election but has yet to raise the necessary funds. They need £1,000 minimum. They are asking for pledges of financial help to enable them to formally select a candidate. Pledges should be sent to Sue Bradley, Secretary Bath Green Party, 4 Broadway, Widcombe, Bath BA2 4JA.
Terry
There will be a Day of Action on GM on Saturday 24 March to target those candidates once more and in particular to insist on the precautionary principle being fully applied to GM. No more releases into the environment, from test sites or commercial sites, before safety can be thoroughly and publicly assured.
As stated in our last newsletter, on 15 November the government suspended "indefinitely" the public hearings against seed giant Aventis's' genetically modified cattle fodder maize, Chardon LL, otherwise known as T25. T25 was to have been the first GM seed approved for full commercial use. It would have entered our food chain this year if not for the public hearing demanded by FoE. We would have been eating cheese and yoghurt and drinking milk containing the unknown residues or mutations of a product which demonstrated the power to produce a surprisingly high death rate when fed to chickens.
Tony Blair set out his position on GM foods at a summit in Japan last July: "Our responsibility as leaders is to say to people, let's set up the best system, best process available so that you get the real facts, not the prejudices of one side or the commercial interests of one side, but the facts and the science."
But he does not have the best system for research or food safety approval. And the facts and the science are increasingly against GM.
By closing the hearings without any conclusion, the government has cut off the flow of information about T25 and kept its options open to finally approve this maize at a later date. It would have approved T25 if FoE had not demanded a public hearing, yet it must have known Aventis' research was flawed.
Despite the embarrassment of those hearings, the government has not dropped its support for T25.
The Day of Action on 24 March is aimed at getting the government to change this definitively and to come clean over the approval system that almost allowed this under-researched product to reach the food chain.
The advisory committees that vet novel foods such as T25 for the British and other governments, only require the product to show "substantial equivalence" with non-GM crops of the same type, in this case, fodder maize for cattle. Thus the focus of the companies' research to satisfy the authorities is not one of safety, but to demonstrate that the new products are more or less the same as existing ones.
But of course, the genetic modification makes a difference, however substantially equivalent. Otherwise why bother to develop it?According to the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes: "Where a food can be shown to be substantially equivalent, it is considered to be as safe as its counterpart and no further safety assessment is required"
No one knows the long-term effects on GM food on animals, humans, or the environment. There is plenty of evidence that these effects are not being studied.
The authorities in the USA and then in the EU decided about a decade ago not to label GM foods. Therefore we have been eating them unknowingly and no one has studied us. Now with slightly tougher labelling in the EU after public protest, genetically modified oils are still exempt. Most processed foods contain oils, and these could be GM oils. We don't know and neither does the Food Standards Agency.
The GM test sites in Britain originally had exclusion zones of just 200 metres, so presumably nothing beyond that is studied. Yet insects and winds carry seed for miles. Thus the true impact on the environment has not been and is not being researched.
The principle that the polluter pays is present in EU law, but this cannot be applied to GM crops either for new human, animal or plant diseases that they may cause or for environmental impact if there is inadequate research. It is interesting that farmers sowing GM crops cannot get insurance cover for damage to the environment. Insurance companies clearly feel the risk is too great.
A one-day conference to discuss GM crops and medical research will
take place at Long Ashton Research Station on Saturday 7 April from 10am
to 5pm. It is being organised by the Institute of Biology plus UWE and
the OU. Enrolment forms from Tel 0117 928 8155/9035 or sue.fletcher@bris.ac.uk.
Cost for the day is £10 (£5 for IoB members. NUS Students free).
Terry
In the UK, heavy rainfall will get heavier and flooding, as recently experienced, will occur more often. Malaria could even find its way back to the UK.
The timescale is not that long in the scheme of things - just a few generations. Urgent action is required to reduce the human-induced emissions of CO2
The UK has the biggest wind and wave power resource of any European country. Yet most European countries have already exceeded the UK government's unambitious target of 10% of electricity generated from renewables (currently 1.7% ) by 2010.
According to the British Wind Energy Association, the UK's wind and wave power resources, together with solar power, could generate over 30% of the UK's electricity needs. Within the past six years only two new wind farms have been approved out of a total of 18 that have come before planners. NIMBYs, local councillors and central and local government planners have clearly not yet woken up to the reality of climate change and the need for action.
The Government's Climate Change Levy hopes to deliver around 4 million tonnes of carbon savings. However, since an 80% rebate is granted to industries that sign agreements with the Government, the actual amount of CO2 reductions will depend largely on implementation and compliance. The levy will probably not deliver what a carbon tax, ie a tax on the carbon content of a specific fuel , could achieve.
The Government has launched its Renewable Obligation which next year
will require electricity suppliers to supply 5% of their electricity from
renewables by 2003 & 10% by 2010.
But where is the Government, or indeed industry, vision that much more is needed to counteract the dangers of climate change. The Government has got to take the lead by diverting investment away from the carbon economy and offering real tangible alternatives, such as improved public transport, renewable energy and clean air. Their recent 3p per litre petrol duty cut will cost £20m - another wrong signal and a waste of investment potential.
Locally, the Bath Chamber of Commerce is not a great help. It appears to be firmly in the grip of the fossil fuel fiends. The BCC's president is quoted as saying that the environmental reasons for traffic measures were flawed because scientific understanding of global warming was still "rudimentary". In a recent report the chamber says that schemes such as residents' parking, bus gates and bus lanes are not only harming firms but pose a danger to residents(!) Some streets "are now largely empty or deserted during the day and the (residents parking) zones would seem to be of no benefit to local residents". The chamber seems incapable of understanding that many of us who live in now largely car free streets, welcome the reduced noise, air visual and space pollution.
One thing we all can do is switch to a Green Energy supplier. For example for every unit of electricity it sells Unit(e) supplies the national grid with an equivalent unit which it generates from wind power and small-scale hydro-electric plants. It just takes a phone call!
Unit(e) Tel 01249 705550. Website www.unit-e.co.uk
Terry
The good news is
that It has been reported that BNFL have now decided not to use MAGROX
fuel - the virtually untried fuel which contains 14% more fissile uranium
than the standard MAGNOX fuel currently in use and which would have increased
Tritium discharges from Oldbury.
The bad news is that the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate appears to remain unconcerned about worries expressed about the continued safety of Oldbury - subsidence, crumbling reactor cores, tired steel structures, cracks in the concrete reactor walls, no secondary containment, unfiltered radioactive incineration, isotopes discharged into the Severn - and the potential for a meltdown.
There are two related public meetings coming up locally :
Thu 8 March 7.30pm Public Meeting "Oldbury Cancer Link" Friends Meeting House, 126 Hampton Lane, Redland, Bristol .
Dr Chris Busby , author of a damning report revealing a cancer cluster near Hinkley Point nuclear power station will explain how isotopes discharged into the River Severn and the air can find their way into our immune system triggering fatal illnesses. He will highlight the local areas most affected. Hugh Richards - anti-nuclear campaigner will outline the severe technical problems in Oldbury's ageing reactors which could lead to a nuclear meltdown. Michael Holmes MEP for the South West will say why he sponsored the Oldbury cancer study.
Wed 21 March 7.30 pm Public Meeting ."Oldbury Power Station - Is it safe?" Cossham Hall, Chapel Street, Thornbury.
Charles Secrett, Director FoE will discuss Oldbury in the context of national energy policy. Helen Wallace, Chief Scientist Greenpeace, will address specific problems at the nuclear plant. Contact Tony Harding, Northavon FoE. 01454 772285
Terry
PlasticsThanks to protests from people affected by the possible withdrawal of
the service and representations from Avon Friends of the Earth, which runs
the local kerbside recycling operation, as well as a letter from Terry
to the Chronicle and waste sub-committee members, the councillors decided
to look elsewhere to recover the budget shortfall.
Incineration of B&NES waste has, however, not yet been completely removed from their agenda. In March last year, the Labour and Conservative Councillors on the Waste Management Sub Committee voted down a Liberal Democrat proposal to scrap all proposals for incineration of B&NES waste.
Hopefully, the way things are moving, the Lib Dems will soon be able to bring forward this proposal again and get council support for it. Andy Nelmes
"Battery on Number10"
is a wheeze generated by a group campaigning against an incinerator in
Newhaven East Sussex. Their idea is to bring Tony Blair's attention to
the need to recycle generally and batteries in particular.
They want to do this by getting people to send, as soon as possible, a small spent battery through the post in an envelope with a short notice saying something like:-
"The international symbols on this mean DON'T BURN! DON'T BIN! DON'T BURY! Please can we make arrangements in the UK to recycle batteries?"
The address is:- Tony Blair, 10 Downing Street London SW1A 2AA
The intention is to give the Government a clear pre-election message from all across the country that people are worried about the way we dispose of waste and batteries in particular.
Terry
The aim of the debate is to identify the solutions to the transport problems facing managers in the Bath area, whether it is in getting staff to and from work, delivering goods or services to customers, taking deliveries from suppliers or disposing of waste and to consider the transport networks into and through Bath from the surrounding areas. The speakers will be: Steve Howell (B&NES), David Redgewell (Transport 2000), Brian Noton (First Badgerline), Barry Maunder (envolve) and Christopher Irwin (Rail Passengers Committee - part of the Strategic Rail Authority)
Terry
If the company succeeds it will devastate peat bogs both here and in Ireland
If you can help join in this Day of Action please let me know.
Terry
Terry
A Memorial Gathering will take place at the Friends Meeting House, York Street on Sat 21st April at 2.30pm. You are invited to bring along any memories of Miller, readings or anything that you think he would have appreciated and that you would like to share with those present on the day.
For any further information please contact Tony Pope: 01225 463363 or Mary McGlone 01458 835821.