Public Use Piano for Huddersfield Railway Station

Really pleased my idea to get a public use piano for Huddersfield Railway Station has become a reality.

The piano has been donated by Chas Ball who chairs the Board of Marsden Jazz Festival and was the Green Party Candidate for Colne Valley in the 2015 General Election. It was a conversation with him and the Huddersfield Station Manager Andrew Croughan of Transpennine that made this happen.

I've seen pianos for use by commuters being played at Sheffield, Leeds and London St Pancras Stations and I was impressed by how they gave a showcase for local talent and entertained people on thier way to and from work. Huddersfield is a musical town with the Contemporary Music Festival, the Mrs Sunderland Music Competition and a plethora of music groups from a thriving Youth Music culture to well established groups such as Huddersfield Choral Society. Having a piano in one of the busiest railway stations in Yorkshire will provide entertainment  to thousands of travellers and be a new element to the musical culture of our Town.

Talking to the Station staff it really adds something to their day. They see a commuter walk towards the piano and wonder what tune might appear. One morning during the busy commute to work someone sat down and played the theme to 'The Walking Dead'. I guess there was some irony there.

I'm now thinking about other places in Huddersfield we might have public use pianos. Any ideas?

Huddersfield Station Piano being played to help launch Marsden Jazz Festival

PRESS RELEASE - Andrew Cooper selected as Green Party Candidate for Huddersfield

Andrew Cooper selected as Green Party Candidate for Huddersfield

Saving Huddersfield A+E a key aim of Greens Campaign

Kirklees Green Party Leader Councillor Andrew Cooper has been selected as his Party’s Parliamentary Candidate for the Huddersfield Constituency in the forthcoming General Election.

Andrew was first elected to the Newsome Ward in 1999 and has been re-elected five times beating all the major parties. He is the Green Party National Energy Spokesperson. 

He successfully campaigned for ‘Welcome to Huddersfield’ boundary markers and for free insulation to over 50,000 homes around Huddersfield.

Speaking at his selection Andrew said,

“I don’t have to defend a Conservative Government and I don’t have to defend a Labour Council the only institution I want to defend locally is the NHS and in particular Huddersfield Royal Infirmary and it’s Accident and Emergency Services. Winning the Huddersfield seat would send a powerful message if the new MP was not from one of the establishment parties”

Andrew proposed the initial motion that brought all political parties together on Kirklees to unite against the Clinical Commissioning Group proposals and he has been a consistent supporter of the objectives of the Hands Off HRI Campaign.

“I am full of admiration for everyone who has worked so hard on the campaign to save our Health Services whether they are seeking change and funding from National Government or tackling the local Clinical Commissioning Group on their proposals. We need a new way of sending a powerful message to whichever Party forms the next Government about what is most important to people in Huddersfield”

“Of course I am a member of a Political Party but I have worked with all parties on Kirklees Council on the hung council over the last 17 years. I am used to negotiating hard to achieve tangible outcomes. This is what we need from a new MP fighting in Parliament to get positive movement on our Hospital Services."

Me, Mr Ed and the Earth Centre

My Ed Miliband anecdote is from the General Election Campaign where we both appeared on 'The Politics Show' at the doomed Earth Centre near Conisborough. On the panel was Paul Scriven Sheffield Council Leader and General Election Candidate, Mr Ed himself, a Tory replicant candidate recently let out of the factory that produces them, a mad woman from the BNP who blamed climate change on immigrants (where from? - Mars) and yours truly. Ed was of course unashamedly pro nuclear despite no real work having being done to prove the necessity for nuclear power - its just something people say "We need nuclear or the lights will go out - no really they will". What struck me about Ed was how mind bogglingly serious he was. I don't remember him smiling once. I'm sure he does on occasions. One of the BBC North reporters, Len Tingle, asked me, off camera, if I ever dreamt of being on a panel with Ed Miliband? I was charactaristically undeferential suggesting Ed might benefit from the encounter more than I would given our respective records on tackling climate change.



Avast me hearties, the Earth Centre pirate ship.


The venue, the Earth Centre, is a real tragedy. A reasonable idea at the time it was opened just over 10 years ago. A top of the range environmental awareness raising centre it has now been abandoned for the last 6 years and there's a local campaign to bring it back into use.There are low energy buildings, reed bed serviced bogs, a massive 50kWp solar array and a mock Pirate Ship, which my son Dominic played on when we visited it around 7 years ago. It was a nice, if a bit of a pricey day out. A couple of years ago I was asked to have a look around the site by Doncaster Council to give a few opinions on how the site could be brought back into use or at least pay its way. My suggestion was to put some significant size wind turbines on the large Earth Centre site to generate electricity and some valuable revenue to at least help support the site and possibly bring some much needed cash to the Council. The Council has been able to make some cash from the Earth Centre as a film location for a post apocalyptic HQ following a plague in the BBC series 'Survivors'. The Earth Centre was ideal and the only thing they had to CGI on the skyline to complete the picture were some large wind turbines.

Freaky Friday

There were lots of things that were Freaky about last Friday. The most numerically obvious one was that in both Newsome and Kirkburton Wards the Green Party got exactly the same vote - 2447. In Newsome this was enough to win it in Kirkburton unfortunately it wasn't.

Apart from the numerical freakiness the actual results didn't bear a lot of relationship to natural justice or effort expended. In the Parliamentary elections the Conservative who didn't turn up to hustings and didn't appear to have done anything much during the campaign came second. I managed 4% just ahead of the BNP thank goodness. In the rest of Kirklees the BNP beat the Greens If anything was evident from the results it was that local factors just went out of the window with national TV coverage focussing on Leaders debates and tactical voting.

The bright spot for Greens was the election of Caroline Lucas as the UKs first Green Party MP. A real acheivement and hopefully with far reaching consequences.

In the local elections our truly excellent Candidate Michelle Atkinson polled a record number of votes for us in the Kirkburton Ward but the increased General Election turnout worked in the Tories favour and we missed out by over a thousand votes.

We all await for the outcome of the negotiations and Nick Clegg chooses whether he wants the death of thousand cuts (Conservatives) or the death of 500 cuts (Labour). Whichever way round it is the double dip recession is already in the pipeline and whatever his choice it won't do his Party or the rest of us much good either.

What about the Community?

One thing that has not seen much attention during the election campaign is 'the community' and what makes the places we live and work safe, secure, enjoyable and happy places to be in.

Ultimately the community is everyones immediate environment, it is what is most important to them. When the community is working well it gives people certainty, continuity and security. The Conservative and Lib Dems have bashed Labour over bankers, the economic crisis and selling british gold cheap but what the government have done to our communities has gone largely unmentioned. Think back ten years ago to the community that perhaps you live in. How many Post Offices, shops and pubs have closed. What has happened to the bus services that have served those communities? Are they as regular or frequent as they were? Do they still exist? Was there a local Housing Office or Library? Is it still there or under threat with public spending cuts?

Of course the economy is important but it is the impact of government policy on the places we live that matters to people in the most immediate way, because it affects all of us in our everyday lives.

We have to turn this around and government and Kirklees policy should be directed more at supporting and protecting locally owned shops and businesses and public services in our comunities not big deals with big supermarkets that threaten those local businesses survival.

Ultimately the 'big idea' is not the big deal with a supermarket chain, such as the Kirklees deal with Tescos, but one which places the importance of locally owned and managed shops and services at the forefront. Thinking at the smallest level gives us the biggest gains as a society and as such the strength of our communities should be at the centre of government policy not an afterthought.

(Picture - Green Valley Grocer - Slaithwaite)

The strange case of the Invisible Tory Candidate

Rumour has it that there is a Conservative Candidate standing for Parliament in Huddersfield. For 5 out of the 6 Hustings I and the other candidates attended she was conspicuous by our her absence. She only appeared at the Churches Together hustings following her non attendance was made an issue by the Huddersfield Examiner. She said she attended that one because it was a Church invite but that contradicts the email she sent to the NUT which said she wasn't going to attend any hustings.

When Roy Hattersley didn't attend 'Have I got news for you' they substituted him for a tub of lard. But what would be most appropriate for a non present Conservative? Answers on a postcard please!

My blog postings have been limited of late due to election work but I intend to give a reflections on elections post shortly sometime next week.

Back to the Future.. Again!

Gordon Brown is (we are told) going to put us out of his misery tomorrow and call an election. We know it must be on the cards because he's running out of time anyway and he's really being practicing 'that smile'.

What can we predict over the next few weeks. Lots of muscle flexing over who's toughest on dealing with the deficit is a sure thing but of course tough in a 'responsible' fashion. The truth is that a double dip recession is already in the pipeline. Hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs are certain to go within the next 2 years. This goes way beyond the efficiency savings we would all like to see in Councils and the Health Service. The loss of these incomes will impact on the spending power of many households and have a knock on effect on the economy as a whole. Have political parties not learnt anything about how you come out of recessions e.g Keynesian economics? the New Deal?

In their desire to appear 'tough' things could get very tough indeed. What we are experiencing now is the logical conclusion of policies started by the Conservatives in the 80s and embraced by New Labour. The lack of financial regulation got us into this mess and now we are going back to the regressive public finance constraints of the Eighties.

Instead of the Labour's rather barmy idea of comparing David Cameron to a politically incorrect but popular figure (Gene Hunt - Ashes to Ashes) they would have been much better comparing him to a vacuous american getting into a De Lorean that flies! But then it would be equally fair to superimpose their faces over Marty McFly's visage.

Back to the Future indeed!

Standing for Parliament

I was recently asked to write a 100 words on why I wanted the job as Huddersfield's next Member of Parliament so for your interest here it is (a bit more than a 100 words though!)

"As a Green Party Councillor in Huddersfield for the last ten years I have seen first hand the issues affecting people day to day around Huddersfield . People are trying to make ends meet financially while local services and facilities diminish and disappear around them. We need a totally different philosophy in Westminister which values and cherishes locally delivered goods and services and where care for the most vulnerable in our society is not compromised. Our values as a society have to change. We need to move away from a confused and confrontational foreign policy to one of certainty where putting our armed forces in the firing line for the most dubious of reasons simply does not occur.Sustainability is a principle that drives Greens but it is at least as relevant to the economy as it is to the environment. Just as our natural resources are been squandered so our approach to finances has been one where greed has won out over good governance.For all these reasons i decided to stand for election as Huddersfield's first Green MP to ensure these principles and ideas that are shared by millions at last get a voice in our Parliament."