There are so many issues in the gracious Speech that I would like to tackle. I would like to talk about nuclear safeguards, agriculture and fisheries and the folly of HS2. However, I will try to contain my enthusiasm—or my fury—and talk about only two or possibly three issues. Continue reading “My response to Queen’s speech”
Author: iwin1961
Writer. Communications professional. Policy wonk. Problem solver. Father. Cyclist. I like the music I like and playing football.
People die and this government sits on its hands
The Mayor of London issued a high pollution alert on Tuesday evening, but not the government, not the NHS, nor Public Health England, nor the Met Office and I didn’t notice anything on the BBC. Sadiq Khan has broken the silence which DEFRA managed to maintain for over a decade when Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson were Mayors. He has quite rightly decided that the public’s health comes first and efforts should be made to warn them when we have a bad pollution episode. Unfortunately, the Met Office, the NHS and the BBC outside of London, all wait for DEFRA to act before telling the public and that is why the system of alerts has failed so badly.
The government have deliberately played down the health impacts of air pollution for twenty years, because they want to do the minimum they can get away with. If they regularly issued press releases telling people to avoid exercise, or busy roads, or even not to drive in pollution hotspots, then the public would want to know when the problem was going to be fixed. The solutions are well known and have been put in place in cities around the world: cleaner vehicles, used less.
The EU have taken the lead in the drive for cleaner vehicles and while they did a good job with regulating diesel lorries and larger vehicles, they had a light touch approach to the car manufacturers. That approach failed miserably. Many car makers put profit before people and cheated on the tests. The differences between performance in the test and the reality on the roads can be measured in human lives cut short.
Meanwhile, Labour, Conservative and coalition governments have all failed to reduce traffic. In fact, they have acted to encourage traffic growth with new roads and cuts to public transport. The cost of driving has declined while the cost of fares has risen. Measures like pay as you go driving have been promoted by the experts, but rejected by politicians running scared of the motoring lobby. A few years go the Greens on the London Assembly even commissioned a report on how it would work in London and we shared that with Transport for London.
I’m glad that Sadiq Khan is now putting this forward as part of a London strategy to reduce traffic by 3m journeys. Such policies need our support if we are to end the public health scandal of air pollution
Four reasons to vote Green
Climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity and it has been largely being ignored or sidelined by the bigger political parties. Yet last year was the hottest on record and those records are being beaten at an increasing rate. Huge cracks are emerging in the polar ice at the same time as Trump has tried to sink the Paris climate change deal. Labour has refused to oppose Heathrow expansion, which is the single most damaging policy/project for climate change and air pollution. Continue reading “Four reasons to vote Green”
Labour manifesto: still lots of reasons to vote Green
Just like Caroline Lucas, I welcome the fact that so many of the Green Party ideas from our 2015 manifesto have become Labour Party policy under Corbyn. I spent 16 years on the London Assembly encouraging Ken Livingstone and even Boris Johnson, to ‘steal’ the Green Party’s ideas and put them into practice. The Living Wage Unit, Same Sex Partnerships, hire bikes and a lengthy list of other green proposals were implemented as we changed the world via proxy. That only happened because of the large numbers of Londoners who regularly voted green.
A Corbyn led Labour government would start to address inequality, reduce the queues for food banks and stop the NHS from collapsing, but it would still be wasting billions of taxpayer pounds on Trident. Labour would also condemn the next generation to decades of paying huge energy bills for a new set of outdated and redundant nukes.
Climate change is given a mention towards the back of the manifesto and we would get a new Clean Air Act. However, there is no stated opposition to Heathrow expansion which is the single most environmentally damaging project in the country. I have no doubt that most of Labour’s current MPs (outside of London) would back Heathrow expansion in a free vote and that is what Corbyn has promised them.
Another good reason to vote Green is that I don’t want to reward Labour tribalism. We Greens have done our generous best in standing down in 30 constituencies where there is a close contest, but Labour doesn’t even support PR. Labour has even expelled activists who supported a progressive alliance attempt to unseat Jeremy Hunt by swinging behind a doctor standing as an NHS candidate. I admire the local Green parties who have made the sacrifice, but Corbyn’s Labour Party have failed to respond and engage.
If the polls are right and we end up with a Conservative landslide, then it will be even more essential that we have clear Green Party voices in Parliament to help protect existing environment regulations from Theresa May’s Great Repeal Bill. We need more Green Party MPs like Caroline Lucas to push a positive agenda on renewable energy, civil liberties and reducing pollution. There’s no substitute for real Greens.
When the NHS catches a computer bug are security services to blame?
There is no doubt that the delays and disruption caused by the NHS computer virus could have been avoided. The government could have used a fraction of the multi-billion security budget to enable hospital trusts to update ageing software. However, instead of being focused on designing out crime as they promised to do, western security services are doing the opposite. The US government and our own, are pressuring companies like Microsoft and others to create ‘backdoors’ which open up our privacy and security to attack if they are leaked.
Continue reading “When the NHS catches a computer bug are security services to blame?”
Cuts in traffic police cost lives
RoadPeace Lawless Roads Report 2017
Today’s report by RoadPeace shows the urgent need to reverse the cuts to traffic police, enforce the rules of the road and provide genuine justice for the victims of dangerous and careless driving. Continue reading “Cuts in traffic police cost lives”
New report shows need for driving bans
I was involved in taking evidence and drawing up the recommendations in the new report from the Parliamentary cycling group. Many of the stories I heard were of injustice, as the rules of the road are either unenforced by overstretched police or sidestepped through the use of legal loopholes.
For example, does anyone seriously think that the number of driving bans has fallen by 62% over the last 10 years because the quality of our driving has improved? The rules on claiming ‘hardship’ to avoid a driving ban haven’t changed, but the inclination of Magistrates to let people off has. When the ‘exception’ becomes the norm, then the law has to be changed to close the loophole and ensure that dangerous drivers are taken off the road and restricted to using buses/taxis.
The Guardian has a good summary of the report here
Finance is key to local energy independence
The creation of local energy companies could be the best way for Mayors and local authorities to reduce costs for residents and clean up energy supplies. The six metro areas across the U.K. electing a mayor for the first time, don’t have to wait for the Government to create nationally applicable policies, they can act now to create strong policies of their own. Continue reading “Finance is key to local energy independence”
Lords must fight government power grab
Today, the government revealed that they are reaching for the Henry 8th powers, which are the nearest this country comes to making law by Ministerial diktat. The Lords has to do everything in its power to fight this government power grab. Continue reading “Lords must fight government power grab”
A Green Brexit for business
Follow the link to see the range of voices discussing a green Brexit in the Green Business Magazine (paywall, but free trial available). This is taken from the interview I did.
Although I voted Leave, I’m very clear that I don’t want a hard Brexit. I want a Brexit that actually ramps up our environmental and social protections and encourages a greener economy. So the way that I am working now is that I’m assuming Brexit is going to go through and I am working with anyone and everyone who wants the same sort of agenda as I do.
GreenerUK have come up with some environmental criteria and I am supporting them and trying to push that through. So that’s my aim, I’m just looking to make sure that we have good regulations, better than before rather than worse, good enforcement of those regulations and lots of support for people who want to challenge organisations that aren’t living up to those standards. So those are three things that I am very clear that, for me, have got to happen.
It’s impossible to know what is going to happen. There are all sorts of potential problems. One is that the Tories have their wicked way and scrap a lot of environmental legislation that has protected us. But on the other hand we will be able to specify local goods and local services, which might actually give our small businesses, our small farmers, a bit of a boost.
We have to work together to make sure that our voice is heard. My fear is once the Great Repeal Bill swaps everything over to this country that by a variety of measures we will start to lose some of the values, some of the principles and protections, that we take for granted.
I still think it’s the right decision to leave, but I think it’s obviously going to be very painful for us. In any sort of big change like this, it’s momentous and it’s going to be painful, but there are opportunities there if we can just get organised.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 