Green Motion on Robin Hood Tax succeeds

Today Kirklees has passed a motion in support of a Financial
 Transaction Tax. It could raise as much as £20 billion of additional 
revenue a year from a tiny tax of about 0.05% on transactions 
carried out by financial institutions– not ordinary individuals. 

Proceeds from the tax, also known as a Financial Transaction Tax
, could help get people back into work, be invested in infrastructure 
and public services, as well as helping us live up to our international
commitments.

Green Councillor Andrew Cooper said:

“The effects of reckless banking practices in the City of London have
 been felt by every community in the UK and many around the world – 
it is only right banks now pay their fair share to repair the damage they
 have caused.”

“If local councils are being asked to bear 28% cuts that have hit local 
people hard, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask the banks to pay 
a tax of as little as 0.05%.”

It would take less than one week of FTT revenue to fund the salaries 
of 4,000 new police constables, 4,000 newly qualified nurses and 
4,000 teachers.

The Council will resolve to write to the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime 
Minister, Leader of the Opposition, Chancellor and Shadow Chancellor
 of the Exchequer and Secretary of State for Communities and Local 
Government stating this Council’s support for implementing a 
wide-ranging Financial Transaction Tax that could help rebalance 
Britain away from an over-reliance on the City of London. 

The Council will also write to all local MPs outlining the Council’s position.

11 European countries, including its biggest economies – France, Germany,
 Italy and Spain – are set to introduce the policy as early as 2013 and it will
 raise them almost £30bn per year

You can find out more about the Financial Transaction Tax from the Robin
Hood Tax campaign. Website:www.robinhoodtax.org.uk

PRESS RELEASE - "No Fracking Way!" - Say Greens

A Leading Green Politician has condemned the Coalition Government's proposed 'incentive ' to local Councils and communities accepting environmental damaging shale gas extraction (otherwise known as fracking.)

Green Kirklees Councillor Andrew Cooper who is also the Party's Energy Spokesperson said

The fracking process is subject to significant methane leakage which is a damaging greenouse gas. There are also a number of well documented instances of water courses being polluted. The process uses millions of gallons of water and toxic chemicals.

Government has backed environmentally damaging shale gas extraction just as it has scaled back support for people to insulate their homes through the Energy Company Obligation.

What the government really needs to do is properly invest in energy efficiency measures for households so they can permanently reduce their energy needs. The Coalitions Green Deal is a dismal failure and they have drastically cut the Energy Company Obligation to improve the insulation of homes. Government clearly has no interest in helping householders control their energy demand they simply want to

It is significant that there is no claim by the PM any more that fracked gas will reduce fuel bills for householders and it is clear that it will have no benefit for those households in fuel poverty.

It is also significant that this policy is not being applied to renewable energy installations demonstrating the governments growing lack of commitment to the green economic sector.

The Government supposedly believes in ‘localism’ and allowing Councils to make their own decisions. When Council funding is drastically cut by central government and they are then offered money to accept fracking on their land it is clearly nothing less than ‘bribery’. Councils should simply have access to 100% of the business rates collected in their area with no coercion from central government on how they spend it.

We are likely to see huge local opposition to fracking , and the Government knows it. Right round the world Greens are supporting local community campaigns against fracking in their neighbourhoods.

ENDS

Leo Sayer’s Australian Anti Fracking Campaign Song ‘No Fracking Way’

PRESS RELEASE - GREENS OPPOSE THREATS TO ANCIENT WOODLAND (and Clannad with 'Ancient Forest')

Wood at Farnley Tyas - Liz Rainer

Ancient woodland in Yorkshire and the Humber could be sacrificed to building under proposals which open a new front in the battle to protect our environment.

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson has suggested that developers could encroach upon ancient woodland if that was "offset" by planting new trees elsewhere.

But this is more than about numbers. Ancient woodland, by definition, has been in existence since at least 1600. New planting could not replicate the rich biodiversity which has grown up over centuries in places such as Smithy Wood, Sheffield, Bowden Housteads at Handsworth, nor the sites threatened by HS2, Water Haigh Woodland Park near Leeds and Woodhouse Washlands, near Sheffield.

Andrew Cooper, lead candidate for the Green Party in Yorkshire and the Humber at this year's Euro elections said:

"The Government obsession with HS2 and with woodland selloffs cannot be permitted to destroy nature's surviving crown jewels. Ministers are working in Brussels to weaken EU conservation laws; at home, they have slashed the budgets of official conservation bodies and are now looking for ways to smooth the path for development, even in special areas.

"The Conservatives have lost their one-time calling as conservers of our natural and cultural heritage. Here in Britain we shouldn’t be leaving it to the EU to be the force for good in nature conservation. It means preserving, not destroying, our remaining ancient woodlands."

The Government sees biodiversity offsetting as a means to make the planning system more efficient. The Greens see ancient woodland as being like a person: it isn't replaceable, it's a unique organism and old ones contain a depth and complexity that only long undisturbed stretches of time can create.

ENDS

Kitchener - We don't need you! - Letter to Yorkshire and Humber Region Newspapers

Dear Sir,

Lord Kitchener, the great World War I recruiter, is to be the new face of the £2 coin.

Like so many of the statues of military men to be found around Westminster, Kitchener is a reminder of the days of industrial warfare and of the military and political leaders who made huge blunders costing millions of lives.

This was a case of 'lions led by donkeys' as has been described by several historians of World War One.

Shouldn’t 2014 be about remembering the monumental folly of war?

A  different, progressive choice for the £2 coin could have been a war poet, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, or Siegfried Sassoon. Or better still Vera Brittain, showing the female side of service and loss and working for a better world.

Instead they chose Kitchener – a man whose driving force was putting a million men more in the field than the enemy – knowing they were machine gun fodder and regardless of how many came back.

We really ought to be commemorating the end of World War I and not the beginning.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Cooper

Yorkshire & Humber Green Party

Harder to Treat

For those of us working in the energy efficiency business the term ‘hard to treat’ refers to properties that cannot be cost effectively insulated using materials such as mineral fibre wool in the walls or the loft space.

A typical hard to treat property would be stone built and constructed around 1900 or before. Across West Yorkshire there are hundreds of thousands of these terraced properties which, though they have a cavity wall, have stone ties between the 2 walls to give it stability. Modern properties have metal ties and can be insulated relatively cheaply using mineral fibre wool. Stone tied properties can’t be insulated in this way due to the possibility of ‘cold bridging’ across the cavity wall creating cold spots and damaging condensation on the internal wall. Its at this point we come to the good news/bad news section of this blogpost.

The good news is that there is a material which can insulate these cavity walls called ‘Technitherm’. It is a polyurethane foam which is manufactured over the hill in Lancashire but don’t let that put you off. It has higher thermal performance properties than mineral fibre wool and as such is deemed to warm up the walls sufficiently to make the cold bridging issue insignificant according to the Building Research Establishment. It is of course more expensive than standard insulation but under some of the funding levels which were obtained under the Energy Company Obligation it was just about possible to fully fund the installation of insulation to these properties.

Now for the bad news, due to the proposed changes to the Energy Company Obligation funding hard to treat properties will effectively be impossible. In many areas these homes are predominantly occupied by households on modest or low incomes. A huge opportunity to develop a new mass insulation programme has been lost to gain a minor temporary and short term reduction in energy bills in response to a campaign run by the energy companies themselves and the right wing media such as ‘The Sun’.

There are millions of homes that could benefit from hard to treat cavity wall insulation products and you have to wonder at the wisdom of spending somewhere between £50-80 Billion of public funds on HS2 when it could be used to improve the properties of people in fuel poverty putting money back in their pockets and not bolstering the profits of the Big Six

Never mind the baubles

 

I've just seen 'Never mind the baubles' a documentary about the Sex Pistols last ever UK gig on Christmas Day 1977 in Huddersfield at Ivanhoes (the facade is to the rear of Lidl on Manchester Road). The gig was a benefit in aid of the hard pressed families of firemen ( they were all men then ) who had been on strike for weeks. I'd love to be able to say I was there but the truth is that I would have been half a mile up the road in Edgerton at the family home at Imperial Road being 13 and all. What I do remember about punk was that it was a part of growing up for me and others around me a few years later. I was in a band called the Criminal Minds in 1981. There was a lot of gratuitous swearing involved and we did a few gigs, a barn in Sowood, the Venn Street Arts Centre and once at our school spring to mind. All good fun and I still have a cassette of our 'music'. Punk is anti establishment and our song 'F***the Government' was.definitely on message.

There was a good punk scene in Huddersfield which carried on a good few years after the Pistols departed. I always remember Punk as not just anti establishment but also pro people and anti fascist. (There were exceptions such as the Neo Nazi band  Screwdriver' who were offensive but they were the exception not the rule). This pro people aspect came across listening to Johnny Rotten speaking about the Huddersfield gig and their motivations for doing it. It wasn't a big prestigious gig but doing it was right for the band that was finding it difficult to get gigs due to a hysterical media and for the striking firefighters who were going through hard times. It was authentic and demonstrated the humanity of the   Pistols in choosing to do this benefit gig. 

Something I take from the punk years is a healthy disrespect for authority and institutions and a dislike of deference to people, titles and positions. Is this contradictory as I've been elected to Kirklees Council five times now? Maybe a little, but I still feel slightly uncomfortable when people address me as 'Councillor' and recognise that power and authority is something that should be used carefully and sparingly.  

Boxing Day Bus Service- Flockton/Grange Moor/ Huddersfield

With Grange Moor Parish Councillor on the first run

Kirkburton Green Cllrs Derek Hardcastle and Robert Hardcastle  - second crew