Andy D'Agorne

Adrian Ramsey has taken a step closer to being the first Green MP with the size of the Green group on Norwich council overtaking the Lib Dems as the official opposition. As one of our youngest councillors and leader of the group, Adrian is distinguished at Green Party conference as the clean shaven young man in a dark suit - The local Norwich had one headline when he was selected, referring to his bid for Charles Clarke's seat "MP or PM?"

The political make-up of Norwich City Council is now:

Labour: 15 seats.
Green Party: 13 seats
LibDems: 6 seats
Conservatives: 5 seats

Norwich City Council is in no overall control. Labour is expected to 
continue running a minority administration with the Green Party as the 
main opposition group.

Finishing the night with an increased number of City Council seats 
from 10 to 13, Norwich Green Party has leapfrogged the Liberal 
Democrats to become the official opposition on Norwich City Hall, just 
2 seats away from the ruling Labour Party.  At the same time, the 
Greens have beaten Labour on local election vote share across the 
Norwich South Parliamentary constituency by approximately 2000 votes.  
For the first time, the Norwich Greens also won more votes than Labour 
across the entire city.

A trip to Sheffield with my bike on the train on Thursday gave me the chance to help the local party that I first joined in 1990 - a far more efficient election machine now, with two councillors and a push to get the third of the 'set' for central ward. The ward now has massive modern appartment blocks for the thousands of students, so business at the polling station that I was covering was very slow - more like one person every ten minutes, but then it did pick up a bit with some students and young mothers about 11am. The bike proved not to be so crucial as the whole operation of collecting numbers and identifying supporters to go out and 'remind to vote' was organised so efficiently for each polling station. In the past we have had to keep ferrying the returns back to one central 'committee room'. However I did use my bike later in the day to visit a few of the polling stations more as a 'tourist' might do and went out from one to do some 'knocking up' before leaving for the train home to York. 

The main concern and talk of the day was about an incident a couple of days prior to the election when the Green Party agent spotted a handful of postal votes being collected in a taxi. This was reported to the police with the registration number, that turned out to be the taxi belonging to the Labour candidate in Central ward. For the press report, see www.thestar.co.uk for Tuesday 29th Apr 2008. The consequence was an unpleasant verbal exchange when Green and Labour campaigners met outside a polling station.

I felt the effort was however worth it, with our third councillor getting elected in Sheffield ousting the Labour candidate by a narrow margin of 48 votes, to join Bernard Little who also got in on a narrow majority when I last went to help out in Sheffield. This means Sheffield has now overtaken York in terms of the number of Green councillors although they have lost the balance of power in the swing that saw the Lib Dems regain overall control of the city.

On Thursday May 1st residents of London will have the choice of replacing Ken with a clown (well they voted in a monkey in Middlesborough so anything is possible!) Green candidate Sian Berry is striking a balance between promoting the party and not letting Boris in - fortunately in London the proportional voting means that first and second preference votes are available. Not so in Yorkshire local elections, so I will be on my old stamping ground in Sheffield where the Green Party holds the balance of power on the council between Labour and Lib Dems and are looking to grow from two to three councillors. In York of course we have to wait until 2011 barring by elections for the chance to change the balance of councillors on City of York Council. However the fact that it will be a Labour mayor chairing council meetings from May means that when the 7 Tories decide they dont want to support the Lib Dem position, the two Greens can decide whether the Lib Dem or Labour position is adopted. This could prove interesting when it comes to deciding who runs the council at the May council meeting!! (Watch this space)

So, the seedlings are getting bigger, the weather's turned warmer and the home compost that is ready has run out. A small bag from the local shop would be ideal. Local shop is the Co-op who offer FSC (Forestry Stewardship) certified compost. Great, but er, it says its 60% from sustainable sources, 40% peat! Greengrocers next door sells flowers but no compost, so it will have to be Homebase. That means an expedition either in the car club car or with the bike trailer. Being frugal (well have just replaced the knackered bike saddle) I opt for the bike trailer. Nice new bike park all to myself, I make a bee line for the garden centre were I find peat free FSC compost (100%) Only thing is it is in 70 litre bags (3 for £12!!) Wisely I opt to restrict myself to one, plus a small bag (25 lts) of topsoil. With some effort this is attached by bungees to the trailer and I set of back home, grateful that York is flat. Is the brake jammed on?? No its just b** heavy!! This return trip from Foss Islands reminds me of how slowly I had to cycle with my daughter on the back when we lived in Sheffield. Anyhow the courgettes and tomatoes are now much happier in their bigger pots and Im a little fitter.

It seems hard to believe that people in Africa in the main dont have the benefit of solar power to light their homes and power their radios and TV's. Here's some information from 'Solar Aid' - more details can be found at

http://solar-aid.org/project_lighting_malawian_homes/

The problem with batteries

This is a picture of discarded single use batteries, which are used throughout Africa to power radios and are then abandoned, causing pollution. One of the benefits of our microsolar work is that people can now power their radios using solar chargers, which means no more abandoned batteries.

Nick

So there is enough petrol for everyone despite the strike and shutting down of a third of UK supplies, as long as motorists dont panic buy...  So have the ration coupons (sorry, swipecards) been prepared yet? What about car sharing and a national 50mph limit like we had in 1973 in the first oil crisis??

It is not fuel for the average commuter we need to worry about, but for the nurse, engineer, etc as well as the delivery vehicles that keep our food supplies stocked. Perhaps the government learned from the 2001 fuel protests... or perhaps not. I hope the refinery workers manage to hang onto their final salary scheme, but their action has helped to highlight our complacency over peak oil and the importance of developing local energy and food for national security in the future.

Here's a statement from Caroline Lucas Green MEP on the issue:

Dr. Lucas, whose 2006 report 'Fuelling a Food Crisis' examined the dependence of the EU's food supplies on oil (2), said:

"In 2006, I asked several Government ministries what steps they were taking to prepare for a decrease in national fuel supplies. None of the organisations contacted gave a serious response: the DTI and Cabinet Office both refusing to answer the question, ridiculously citing restrictions under the Freedom of Information Act. The panicked words from John Hutton suggests that the Government is ill prepared for any sudden drop in fuel supplies, and such incompetent behaviour endangers us all.

"Only the Green Party has the initiatives and policies that would protect the British public from suffering the consequences of a sudden decrease in fuel supplies.

"Our proposed national free insulation policy would ensure that homeowners can warm their homes for a fraction of the domestic fuel needed in uninsulated homes, and the Green Party policy to shift the UK towards a sustainable energy economy would mean that our homes' energy would be increasingly off-grid, readily available and not dependent on fossil fuel supply.

"Crucially, only the Green Party supports locally sourced food production, ensuring food security for communities is not dependent on long haul transport and the whims of the fuel market.(3)

Notes to Editors

1. commentisfree.guardian.co.uk 2. http://www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk/2006/12/08/fuelling-a-food-crisis/ 3. http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2816

View of one of the three peaks!

Spent the weekend near Ingleton with Chechelele, learning some new songs, eating, chatting and not talking politics! Going for walks in a group is a good way to get exercise and spending a whole weekend together makes for a more cohesive group (well it did for us!) The walk on Sunday proved to be a good choice with sunshine while the people of York were getting wet! My map reading skills and a 30 year old OS map that I took with me 'just in case it came in useful' proved to be a winner when we balked at paying £4.50 each for the right to walk the waterfalls walk. I suggested we could do an alternative walk, and it eventually transpired that we visited the same falls approached from a different direction avoiding the toll booth.

We also found the ideal setting for the cover of our next album (if we ever produce another) - some 30+ stepping stones across the river!

 The workshop leader who came up from Cambridge learnt the Spanish song from a choir in Cuba - it turns out that Rowena had been there with the Sheffield Socialist Choir who I used to sing with, and we will be meeting up again when I go to their 20th birthday reunion in May. I really hope that Chechelele decide to add this one to our repertoire as I really like the Spanish songs we used to sing in Sheffield and it reminds me of them. If you want to learn some songs of struggle for justice there are workshops by Ali Burns and Pete Moser as well as a concert at the Octogon Centre on the weekend of May 17th/18th - both are accomplished musicians/ song writers, Ali from Laurieston and Pete now based in Lancaster/Morecombe area. Will all be a bit strange, like an old school reunion after leaving Sheffield some 8 years ago now.

Residents in a group of streets in Fishergate are to get the chance to be the first of a new kind of 20mph area - a policy which the Green Party hopes could apply to most residential areas in York, following the example being set by Portsmouth. A letter has been delivered to every household in Grange Garth, Grange St, Rosedale St, Levisham St, Farndale St, Hartoft St and Lastingham Terrace, asking if they would support the idea of the area being signed as 20mph max, but without the humps that have been so unpopular with many motorists.

Response has been generally good, and we have now collected over 100 signatures on a petition that will be presented to full council on April 10th 2008. Coincidentally 20mph as a standard for residential streets is one of 6 key themes nationally for the Green party local election platform.

             Cllr Andy D'Agorne said: "The idea is to create a culture of low speeds, well below 20mph. With lower speeds more people are happy to walk, cycle, let their children play on terraced streets with their neighbours children etc. Pets and children are safer and the street can become more of a community, cutting the fear of crime and 'stranger danger'. Its more about the message it sends to people than just a speed limit."

The Portsmouth project is expected to cover the whole of the city by March 2008, funded out of their Local Transport Plan as a key measure to improve road safety and promote alternatives such as walking and cycling. The limit will apply to all residential areas away from major roads, and is being achieved through education campaigns and signing without humps by being applied to roads where average speeds are shown to be less than 24mph. Cllr Alex Bentley Executive Member for Environment and Transportation in Portsmouth has said "On most residential roads its not safe or appropriate to drive at more than 20mph.. what we want to do is target the small number of drivers who drive at inappropriate speeds without regard for safety or respect for anyone else." See www.portsmouth.gov.uk/ Living section - getting around or just click on http://www.portsmouth.gov.uk/living/8403.html or look at info about the '20's plenty' and slower speeds initiative: http://www.slower-speeds.org.uk/content/view/101/55/

A 460 mile round trip to Aldermaston, driving a minibus from York makes for a pretty shattering day, but the insanity of spending billions of pounds on developing new nuclear weapons instead of preparing to adapt to climate change demands such actions. Maybe we didnt have the bravery of the Tibetan protestors at the Olympic flame ceremony to get us onto your screens, but we were there at the base 50 years after the first march to Aldermaston. Some of the original marchers, a Hiroshima survivor, and Walter Wolfgang where there to remind us of the sacrifices that some have made to get the peace message heard. Some young people were there for the first time, the bye laws criminalising the act of attaching something to the fence were suspended for the day so that we could decorate the fence like we did in the 80's - The five gates each had a theme of a decade since 1958 and ours had an 80's theme, so some of our relic posters were copied and laminated to adorn the fence once more.

Mrs T and the miners were there too, though far more amenable and in comedy spirit than applied in the 1980s during the miners strike. I pointed out on the way down the motorway bridge that I recall being lined with police on a Monday morning on the watch for flying pickets heading north to the Sheffield pits. The boys in blue were there of course today in their 'acceptable face of the police state' mode, backed up by the 'Evidence gathering team' with their long lenses to spot any new faces for their collection of usual suspects. We were even treated to some music from the 80's protests with a reunion performance of the 'Fallout Marching Band' (not much marching these days)

Connaught Court -haven of tranquility the other side of the wall from the traffic on Fulford Rd/Main St

There's a lot happening on the planning front in York at the moment The RMBI have lodged a last minute appeal against refusal of their plans to develop the open space that separates Fulford from the rest of York. - the development of Derwenthorpe and the University are both about to start, Hungate has been underway for about 6 months (with a planning applicaton soon for the controversial design of the new council HQ), building on the Barbican site will soon start to appear, the Peashome hostel is stalled while they try to find firm ground for the foundations, Germany Beck is delayed by a last ditch bid to register a village green in the line of the access road to the site. Until this is resolved, no work can start on raising the A19 above the flood level and building the access road to serve 700 new homes, and the plan to 'hold back' congestion with bus priority measures will have to wait too. However improvements for cycling and public transport on Fulford Rd are likely to move ahead fairly quickly now that the principles have been agreed. I will be doing my best to make sure I know about the plans before the work starts and that local people do too!