Bee warned

The Kent on Sunday reports on the worrying news that bee numbers are falling and suggests that fruit harvests and honey production will be hit. I thing they are missing the point somewhat!

They do go on to suggest that 33% food production relies on pollination from bees, but surely that proportion is a little low? I can't think of any food stuff from the land that, in the long term, won't be affected by a lack of bees. Ok, one third is directly reliant on bees, but the knock on effects on other species are huge. Surely only water based life will be unaffected? According to scientists talking at the Earthwatch debate, bees are the most invaluable species on the planet.

The Living Planet Index suggests that the decline of species in general is of epidemic proportions with a 30% decline since 1970. Others suggest that we have not seen the like of this since the extinction of the dinosaurs and are call it the sixth mass extinction.

Perhaps this is the fourth crunch? The others being credit, energy and climate.

Anyway, letter going to the Kent on Sunday:

Sir: Last week's Kent on Sunday article suggesting that honey and fruit production will be hit by the declining bee numbers merely scratches the surface of the threat posed by the loss of bees. While one third of food of is directly produced from food pollinated by insects, the knock on effects of devastation of bee colonies will affect most land based food production in the long term. Scientists have dubbed the honey bee as the most invaluable species on the planet, yet there seems to be little concern about the rapidly declining numbers.

Of course, it is not just the bees that are declining. The rate of extinction and decline over the past few decades has been at a rate not known since the disappearance of the dinosaurs with the World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Index showing a 30% drop in biodiversity since 1970 and attributing this to human actions.

Actions such as pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, chopping down rainforests to provide land for meat production, concreting land to build roads, and spraying growing areas with pesticides, all contribute to a fight against nature that we sadly seem to be winning.

Individuals and governments need to become wise to the world around us, the natural world that ultimately feeds and clothes us. We have to work with the living world rather than against it, we are after all, part of it.

Join NO2ID letter

Joint letter published in the Kent Messenger this week. This was written by the NO2ID campaign.

Sir/Madam,

You may be aware that from this month the government begins issuing what it calls, with an obvious nasty spin, "ID cards for foreigners". You may not be aware what this means for Maidstone. First affected will be students and those marrying Britons. The plan is that gradually residents from outside Europe will be fingerprinted and have to account for their movements. (Later, so would we all.)

This is unlikely to put off refugees and the poor unskilled with nothing to lose. But successful foreigners such as sportspeople and overseas students have a lot of choice where they study or exercise their talents. Some will decide Britain has become too unfriendly. When the US introduced more hostile visa conditions 3-4 years ago, the numbers applying to study there fell by 15% and Bill Gates complained that Microsoft could no longer hire some of the best software engineers.

If this scheme is continued it will lead to less fee-income and lower international status for our universities. British students will have to pay higher tuition to make up, and will have less money to spend with local businesses. Fewer of the world's star performers in every field will choose to make their homes here than do now.

We the undersigned value the contribution that these gifted people currently make to our institutions and our society. We think our country should treat them as guests, not criminal suspects. "ID cards for foreigners" is not just a small-minded slogan - Maidstone will suffer culturally and economically.

Yours faithfully

Paul Hobday, Chairman BMA Maidstone division; Adrienne Margolis, Richard Baker-Howard, co-chairmen of the Maidstone No2ID campaign; Kathy Moss, Stuart Jeffery, Maidstone Green Party; Helen Grant, Conservative PPC for Maidstone.

Widdecombe defeated!

More happening at Kingsnorth this weekend. Kingsnorth is really becoming the front line in the battle against runaway climate change. This comes on the back of the good news with the climate change bill which gained royal assent yesterday despite the attempts by our local climate denying MP, Ann Widdecombe.

Of course there now needs to be real action to actually reduce our CO2 emissions. This means not building runways and road. It means retrofitting our homes with the best possible insulation. It means sorting out our transport. It means working, buying and playing local. It means focussing on building communities.

Sadly I don't see much hope of this from the grey parties at present.

KCC's investments

Just realised that KCC's largest holdings as at 31 March 08 were not on my blog. This is the list:

United Kingdom	£000		Japan	£000
Invesco Perpetual Income Fund	237,034		Mitsui & Co	4,421
Vodaphone Group	36,353		Canon	3,613
Glaxosmithkline	29,749		Nissan Motor	3,107
Royal Dutch Shell	28,038		Japan Tobacco	2,699
BG Group	27,714		Rakuten	1,998
HSBC Holdings	25,302		Asahi Breweries	1,991
Anglo American	23,239		JFE Holdings	1,821
BP Amoco	21,810		Keyence	1,657
Unilever	20,493		Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance	1,644
Royal Bank of Scotland	16,194		Kyocera	1,557
Standard Chartered	15,626
Prudential	13,472		Europe
BAES Systems	13,416		Nestle	8,105
Barclays	12,884		Total	8,094
Centrica	12,592		Investor	5,810
BT Group	12,571		Svenskahandelsbank	5,494
Astrazeneca	11,196		Celesio	5,241
Johnson Matthey	10,716		Sanofi-Aventis	5,212
Legal & General	10,511		UBS	4,790
Soc Gen UK Smaller Cos Inc Fund	9,895		Heineken	4,539
Balfour Beatty	9,621		Credit Suisse	4,538
Pearson	8,899		Atlas Copco	4,073
British American Tobacco	8,668		Essilor	3,491
Smiths Group	8,504		Securitas	3,487
Rio Tinto	7,960		E.ON	3,200
Royal Sun Alliance	7,202		Geberit	3,099
Whitbread	7,027		Adidas-Salomon	3,017
ICAP	6,911		SAP	3,009
Henderson Secondary PFI Fund II	6,717		CRH	2,828
			Allied Irish Bank	2,798
			Deutsche Boerse	2,766
North America
Pepsico	8,409		Pacific/Other
Schlumberger	8,338		GMO Developed World Equity Fund	152,692
Walgreen	7,862		Schroder GAV Unit Trust	112,574
Phillip Morris	7,812		GMO Emerging Markets Fund	7,767
Praxair	6,978		Petrol Brasileiros	7,583
Microsoft	6,661		Samsung	7,052
Conocophillips	6,070		BHP Billiton	5,137
EOG Resources	5,823		Cia Vale Rio Doce	5,101
Wal-mart Stores	5,598		Reliance Inds	4,803
Well Point	5,330		America Movil	4,746
			Bnc Itau	4,337
Arms	13,416
Oil	65,525
Tobacco	19,179
Zimbabwe	109,557

Totally unethical investment

This is from the excellent 'Save-Kent' site:

"WE ALL KNOW that the oil we use is bad news, but some is fuels is worse than others.

This is about Burma/Myanmar. French oil giant TOTAL Oil is in business with Burma's brutal military dictatorship. Its joint venture in the Yadana gas project in southern Burma earns the military regime hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Find out at the Burma Campaign UK."

TOTAL is one of the companies that KCC like to invest in. As at March 31, 2008 the had £8 million in TOTAL shares. Our campaign against un-ethical investments has has some success and it will be interesting to see whether KCC hang on to theses shares.

As always, I encourage everyone to make their voices heard. Write to the Superannuation Committee at Kent County Council, County Hall, Maidstone, Kent and tell them what you think.

Car parking charges in Maidstone

It looks like the Tories are to start charging residents £25 for each residents parking pass and are to start charging for car parking in the Towns car parks on Sunday.

Interestingly the LibDems have put out a press release saying the the £25 residents parking permit is a 12% increase on the council tax. Not sure how much they pay for their council tax , but I have to pay about £1200 on my band C property, £25 as a percentage of £1200 is about 2%. There won't be many people paying just £200 a year for their council tax. Either their sums are wrong or they are trying to 'big up' the impact.

That said, unless the extra revenue from this rise in charges is invested directly into alternatives to car transport then it should be fought. Maidstone is the worst place to cycle in that I know of and the bus services are few and far between (except for the London Road service which is regular but expensive).

As far as Sunday car park charges go, I have similar problems with that. There are very few alternatives to driving into Maidstone on a Sunday. The buses get worse, our train service is already a branch line etc. etc. Unless these extra taxes are ploughed into alternatives they are penalising people on lower income more than those who are richer. This is wrong.

Finally, it looks like Ashford's got a radical new road system. They have paved a one mile stretch of the ring road and got rid of signs and markings making pedestrians mix with the cars. Good radical stuff, lets hope it works!

Two fingers to the climate and the future

There's so much going on and I have hardly has a chance to read emails, let alone blog anything much, so apologies...

Firstly, rail fares are rising way above inflation in the South East. This is appalling news, rail usage is rising and investment is urgently needed, but increasing fares is not the way to do it. When the government wants to build roads it talks about new investment in the infrastructure, but when it comes to our railways it talks about subsidies and privatises it. We need government investment in the railways and we need a public railway service.

The Conservatives are champing at the bit about expanding airports in Kent, they just can't agree which airport to expand. Vote Blue Get Green? I don't think so. 350 ppm is now felt to be the maximum safe level of CO2, yet we are now around 380. Urgent and radical action is needed, not building more airports and roads (a position that the grey parties, Tories, Labour and LibDems, are guilty of calling for).

The sea ice loss at the North Pole continues to break records: "if we look at the total extent of ice lost between the March maximum and the September minimum, 2008 set a new record for total ice loss over an entire melt season."

The New Scientist reports that in this year's hurricane season, "the total energy carried by storms this year is double that of last year."

The number of climate related problems just keeps on rising. We have already exceeded the safe levels of CO2 and yet the grey parties are continuing with business as usual. Sure there are some good individuals around, but politics is about policies, not the rhetoric of individuals.

Widdecombe outed as climate denier

"I have read Nigel Lawson's book on climate change and I believe that we are moving far too fast on the basis of some pretty challengeable science. I am therefore not even supporting the Climate Change Bill let alone any additional measures.", wrote Ann Widdecombe in a letter to me last week.

It amazes me that someone in public office would prefer to believe the opinion of a former chancellor over 99.5% of climate scientists over a scientific matter. More than amazes me, it horrifies me. It is like suggesting that smoking cigarettes is good for you.

Last year Caroline Lucas ruffled some feathers when she compared climate change denial to holocaust denial. If we don't address man made climate change NOW, there will be far more deaths than during the holocaust. The New Scientist has described the environmental problems as the 6th Mass Extinction. Anyone denying the scientist should resign now and make way for people willing to try to ensure that there is a future.

I will be writing to the other PPCs to see where they stand.

Googlebombing Eon and nonewcoal

Been unable to blog for a few days, too busy opening companies, buying houses and perfecting pumpkin soup...

E.On / Eon are back in the news again after the recent meeting on Kingsnorth, meanwhile there is a campaign to googlebomb Eon. I suspect this will increase my extremist ranking a bit further, but ho-hum. The explanation is below:

They've been the targets of all kinds of action, from last summer's Camp for Climate Action, to a series of smaller action on April 1st (Fossil Fools Day), to a wave of recruitment fair actions, with more action coming up at the end of this month.

One easy, comfy action can happen from this computer you're looking at. The tactic is called google-bombing.

The more links to a site, the higher it climbs in Google rankings. So, if enough people make the word 'Eon' link to the No New Coal site, pretty soon it'll top the list of anyone searching for Eon. (This tactic was successfully used a few years ago to make 'swivel-eyed loons' link to UKIP).

Two weeks ago www.nonewcoal.org.uk wasn't in the top 50 sites when searching for Eon. As I write this it's already number 13.

So a simple online action can help us get our electronic placards in their face without getting out on the cold winter streets.

If you have a website, blog, myspace, bebo, forum account, etc then please place a link to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk.

Ideally you write 'eon' and place a hyperlink to http://www.nonewcoal.org.uk from that text.

Anyone can do this! Blog comments/forums are easiest. Good websites are most effective.

If you're wondering what else to write, you could copy or edit this.

To get a top 10 google ranking probably won't be to hard, but to pip E.ON to the top will require a lot of effort so tell your friends, consider putting this simple action in your newsletters, spread the word online...

MBC Carbon Reduction Targets

It looks like Maidstone Borough Council's Tory run cabinet are going to ditch the previous 'Primrose Promise' of carbon neutrality by 2010 agreed by the Lib Dems in favour of year on year carbon reduction targets of 3%.

Carbon neutrality, as any real green will tell you, is a farce. It is like paying someone in Africa not to smoke cigarettes so that you can continue to. I welcome MBC's change of direction (of course the LibDems are furious...), but it doesn't go any way near far enough.

The scale of the climate challange is such that we need to kick the carbon habit by around 9% per annum in this country. Furthermore simply reducting the council's footprint will achieve very little, the target should be borough wide and include all households and business as well as local government.

9% is achivable with polictical will and public support, but the latter will be lacking until the former is evident. The world is in a position where it now needs an effort akin to the changes made to manufacturing at the start of WW2. There are just 100 months left to tackle the problem if we want to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Mote Park and Ride

Letter sent to the KM:

Dear Editor,

It is rare for a Green to speak out against a bus lane, but putting one through Mote Park would surely be a disastrous piece of vandalism, especially as there are two clear alternatives.

The best option would surely be to use the Loose Road, continuing the bus lanes from the A274. The Loose Road already has four lanes. two of which could easily become bus lanes. To prevent too much of a squeeze on car drivers, the frequency of buses would need to be dramatically increased. Alternatively, the A20 could be widened without encroaching on the park to allow a bus lane from Willington Street into town.

Aside from the environmental vandalism that a bus lane through Mote Park would be, bus lanes should serve people and there aren't that many people living in the Park.

Stuart Jeffery
Green Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Maidstone and the Weald

More moral extremism

The Guardian has now started to brand eco-campaigners as extremists. This ridiculously misleading article attempt to make a link between a group that torched a Hummer in the US and the climate camp protestors, and manages to brand both as extremists.

I'm not even sure that torching cars is an extremist act, a lot of it went on the estates that I grew up in...

Fortunately, despite the police's National Extremist Tactical Co-ordination Unit being deployed against people who are trying to stop the destruction of the living world for the sake of our children (the 6th Mass Extinction as it has being described by the New Scientist), the judiciary seem to be on our side. Minor damage to property was seen as having just cause at Kingsnorth.

Thanks to Marc Roberts and Matt Sellwood for pointing it out. This is from Marc's blog:

Bus lane through Mote Park

A bus lane through Mote Park? The KM reported that the council is considering a bus route through the middle of 450 acre park that forms a massive green lung for the town. The building incursions into the park have been gradual over the years.

The park was left to the town with some form of covenant that said that it should not be built on. Since then there has been slow incursions such as the leisure centre, but a bus lane would surely be disastrous for the park. Of course the park has a strong link to the road industry with Earl Bearsted being a founder of Shell.

Building new roads is almost always wrong although I would often accept that bus lanes are an exception. In this case a bus lane through this beautiful park is wrong. The A274 bus lane can be extended down the A229 by making one of the two car lanes a bus lane. This would squeeze the space for cars but would encourage more use of the buses.

To have a bus lane down the A20 from Bearsted is more difficult but the road could be widened to encompass third lane for buses on the side away from Mote Park. I would hate to see Chip's beautiful 16th century cottage in Mote Park bulldozed.

I can't believe the councillors would be crazy enough to let this go through. There will be a serious campaign if they try to...

White Poppies

Remembrance Sunday today will have plenty of people walking around with red poppies. While being very keen to remember those people who have died, I dislike the association that red poppies have with war. The military parades that are part of Remembrance Sunday seem to glorify war and I don't believe that we should do that. There is nothing glorious about war and given that the UK continues its illegal occupation of Iraq, we must make a stand for peace.

The white poppy, calling for peace, is more appropriate and I would like to see it worn more often at this time of year.

Peak Oil

This graph from the Grauniad last week neatly shows the Peak Oil effect. The government have their head in the sand about one of the three major crunches facing the planet (the others being the climate and the economy). Earlier this year I commented on the rising oil price and expected it to continue to rise, but I hadn't factored the world recession that reduced consumption very slightly, just enough to push the price back down.

This graph shows a peak in production in 2013. Others have predicted the peak to have been this year, either way the important point is not when supply peaks, but when demand outstrips supply (as it appears to have done in 2007). The price of oil rockets when demand outstrips supply and the knock on effect on both people and the economy is hard felt.

The report in the Guardian tells how industry are beginning to taking the threat seriously.

What does this mean for people? It will hit the poorest hardest and while we all need to use less energy, energy should be shared fairly, not based on ability to pay.

Kent Police confirm Lib Dem error

Since receiving a letter from Peter Carroll telling me that violent crime is on the rise, he has bizarrely maintained that he is correct.

To back up the evidence from the British Crime Survey which clearly shows that violent crime has fallen dramatically since 1995, I wrote to the Chief Constable and have now received confirmation that: "Mid Kent Police Area was showing a financial year reduction of violent crime by 11.6% at the end of September 2008 compared to the same period last year."

Mr Carroll's comments that he is trying to reflect how people feel and that he is not trying to raise the level of fear simply do not wash. His statement was unequivocable: "violent crime is on the rise", it was not "people are worrying more and more about violent crime" or "many people are worried about".

I also suppose you have to ask what changed over the last 10 months. In Dec last year, the Lib Dems proclaimed: "Crime Down Under Liberal Democrat Leadership". I accept that they were talking about overall crime with that statement, but if violent crime was rising then (which it wasn't), why not mention it.

Forget the facts, why not change the story to suit the purpose?

Nuff said.