Well this was when we were feeling demob happy at the end, when none of the dire possibilities in the risk assessment had befallen us and not even a drop of rain had fallen from the sky all afternoon! All in all a good time was had, although the trusty stewards had all had to spend a couple of hours on one of the five entrances ensuring that we got some money back to cover the insurance and other expenses and checking that we were not over- run by more than 600 people in the park at any one time!( a reasonable turnout, but never a risk of overcrowding) Now we know how it all fits together we can do it again next year, with better publicity and hopefully without the last minute fears of being forced to cancel the event.

Perhaps we should set up a training course in community event management!

What the world would be like if "The Press" was a broadcaster ...     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl3gMfQGv7Q      ( Amusing but not for children! ) Even editors are human (and prone to using bad language when they think they are not 'on air' )! 

PS Well sadly its not there any longer - Kevin Booth presumably was 'not amused'!

Who says animals dont have a sixth sense? This story was mentioned this evening on BBC Radio York, as reported in the New England Journal of Medicine:

"Since he was adopted by staff members as a kitten, Oscar the Cat has had an uncanny ability to predict when residents are about to die. Thus far, he has presided over the deaths of more than 25 residents on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. His mere presence at the bedside is viewed by physicians and nursing home staff as an almost absolute indicator of impending death, allowing staff members to adequately notify families. Oscar has also provided companionship to those who would otherwise have died alone. For his work, he is highly regarded by the physicians and staff at Steere House and by the families of the residents whom he serves.^"

^{The radio presenter was speculating on whether Oscar might be shunned by the elderly residents or even have some macarbre effect bringing on the demise of the elederly residents.  I must stop listening to late chat shows....}

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Posted by: andydag    in: Latest news

Well we have to hope it might stop raining sometime... so come and listen to some fine local bands and see what local groups and therapists have to offer this weekend.

 "The Festival aims to promote local community and campaigning groups, green and ethical businesses, and complementary health practices. There will be stalls promoting a peaceful and sustainable future, many run by local voluntary groups. We have an excellent line up of live music, a solar powered cinema, DJ area and more. We hope to have food available throughout the event, and children's entertainment is also planned.

Details are on the event's websites http://www.myspace.com/yorkgreenfestival and http://ygf2007.blogspot.com/. The festival is not organised by the Green Party, before anyone asks, although I have got involved as a steward to help make sure it runs smoothly.

PS It is all going to be a great event, but if you do come, please walk or cycle, dont leave your bike unlocked and make sure you recycle your rubbish. Nearby residents have been warned, and if the music is not quite your cup of tea, it is only for a few hours and there will be breaks for belly dancing and other diversions!

The following bands have confirmed for the music stage on the bandstand:

TestTone3

The Falling Spikes

The Station Club

Funkate

The Universals

The Berettas

Red Trees

The moral of today's experience is heaven help us if our ID depends on a computer system! Having booked advance train tickets from GNER website last week I called in to collect them today fom the 'Fast ticket' machine, not wishing to risk them being posted when the posties might be on strike. At 4pm I followed the instructions on the platform based machine, clutching my booking reservation number printed out from the email confirmation of the booking- 'unable to provide your ticket' Go into the booking office and speak to a real person, having first taken bike to cycle parking (bikes now banned from the booking hall on 'health and safety grounds') Real person helpful, but says the machine says there is no record of this transaction! She disappears to back office to investigate. 10 minutes later her colleague says she will try to find where she is, returns saying she is still on the phone trying to resolve it. Eventually she returns giving me a phone number to ring as she has done all she can and I will need to ring and try to trace it through my card details. I thank her for her efforts and decide this is something the customer service section of GNER should sort for me and go to their office. The man in there says its not their job, as the ticket staff are the people to deal with this. On insisting, he reluctantly allows me to use their phone to ring the number myself, which involves going though a few menu options interspersed with helpful advice about all the useful facilities available via their website!! After another conversation in which I have to give the Asian gentleman in the call centre my details twice I am eventually told the reservation number has changed - and I duly note this down and carefully repeat it to make sure it is accurate.

Armed with this, I return to the 'fast ticket' machine- at long last it works and my tickets are issue some 45 minutes after starting. So the moral is that if you book online it may be cheaper, but dont leave it until the day of travel to collect the tickets as you might not catch the train!!

Well today was the Rowntrees Park birthday party, and I was helping to run a stall for 'York Rotters' to promote composting. Tips that surprised many were things like adding cardboard and small (vegetarian) animal bedding, urine (my colleague said it is cheaper than Garotta as an activator!) placing the bin in a sunny spot and turning it (to get air and heat) The 'recycle for York' jute bags sold well at £2 per time - all the big stores seem to be offering 'bags for life' now but this is one of the few that allow you to be green without promoting Sainsbury's Marks and Spencer or Tescos! As for the compost bins they are now only £8 or £10 including delivery from Blackwells.

 Needless to say, come the time for the fair to open the rain started and continued throughout the afternoon, but most stalls had taken the precaution of a gazebo. The scouts showed true British grit and played and paraded in the downpour. Someone told me that it is St Swithen's Day today, so we could be in for a very wet summer.

To find out more about composting go to http://www.ivydene1.co.uk/vamp/stnicks/composting.html

If you think climate change is something that has only been known about for a few years, take a look at this from 50 years ago!!

http://ecostreet.com/blog/climate-change/2007/07/15/a-global-warming-video-from-1958/

This week marks the 'end of an era' for me with my daughter leaving the Steiner School, which was a major factor in our move to York. As it happens, Mark Hill's daughter has been in the same class as mine forthe past six years, and has moved this week with Mark and his family to Hebden Bridge. The Steiner school has a strong sense of community and a very mixed range of people from those with lots of money to those with very little. The Summer Term Festival is an emotional event, with the Class 8 children and their teacher parting company after seven years together. In our case our children spent over a week in Iceland and then worked hard to produce a challenging play by Brecht - Caucasian Chalk Circle in the weeks before their final school day on Friday. Their teacher has a book with quotes, poems and photos as well as recordings of the songs they performed in the show (arrangements found via the internet from an American who is to receive a DVD of one of the performances) I certainly wouldnt have had the courage at 14 to do solos as well as perform in a class play - Im nervous enough now when Im the only one singing one of four parts!

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Posted by: andydag    in: Relax

The hot topic at this Spring conference was the proposal that in order to be treated seriously by the media we have to have someone that has the title 'Leader' This presents a bit of a problem for the Greens who are very keen on participatory democracy, devolved government and doing away with class and hierarchies, and requires us to amend the Philosphical Basis of the party that boldly states that we do not support the notion of leaders, preferring to share responsiblities more equally and empower people to control their own lives.

FOR WORDING OF THE PROPOSAL SEE http://www.greenparty.org.uk/files/reports/2007/CreatingaLeaderandDeputyLeaderorCo-Leaders-Final.pdf

To see the arguments see www.green-empowerment.org.uk

In order to overcome the inability of the Leader lobby to get a two thirds majority for a Constitutional amendment at conference, the constitution has now been amended so that key controversial issues like this can be determined by a ballot of the whole membership, provided that at least 15% of them vote in the ballot.

While some in the party feel strongly that we should ' modernise' and streamline our structures, at the moment the only proposal is to change from having two non voting elected Principal Speakers (Male and Female) to either two 'Co-Leaders' or Leader and Deputy Leader. Once the local elections are out of the way the membership will get until November to debate the Green party equivalent of Labour's 'Clause 4'

Personally it is the political ambitions of the 'Leader' advocates that worry me as much as the change in the structure or title .... We will be in for an interesting debate.

Even Madonna thinks we have to act:  http://ecostreet.com/blog/climate-change/2007/07/04/madonnas-live-earth-video/

'creative commons' copyright: FreeFoto.com principal photographer. Member of Gateshead Camera Club and Beacon Lough Baptist Church. ian [at] freefoto.com (Some amazing photos on website- take a look...) FreeFoto.com is the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet (link back and attribution required). The comprehensive, yet easy to navigate site, offers images that are free for on-line use, with higher quality versions available for sale. Also non-commercial users may download our web size images to use off-line in school projects, church services, cards, leaflets, etc. Basically if your off-line use is not commercial you can download our web size images for free

It seems the floods in Sheffield and South Yorkshire over the past week are yet another sign that we have got to wake up to the fact that we can't continue 'business as usual'.

 Today I attended an 'Integrated Regional Framework' workshop in Wakefield (Yorkshire And Humber Assembly) which presented some stark research findings on scenarios for responding to climate change. Ove Arup, Cambridge Econometrics and Stockholm Environment Institute have worked together to assess changes needed in the region to limit climate change to government targets.

The modelling they have done shows that the 'baseline' (do nothing) scenario would result in a 99% increase in CO2 emissions by 2021, the 'vision' scenario with the currently set targets implemented would produce an 80% increase. To stabilise carbon trends as recommended by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution requires an 80% REDUCTION on 1990 levels by 2050. Based on the assumption that there is no growth in aviation from now on (!) the report suggests we need to 'retrofit' energy saving insulation to 75% of the pre 2001 housing, move to 30% of domestic energy from renewables, and cut the contribution from transport by 35%, all by 2021 (predicted to GROW by 90% on current trends). On Transport, 44% of the savings would come from greater car sharing and 40% by cutting the amount of travel (20% shorter journeys, 14% shift to walking cycling or public transport)

A somewhat different policy landscape from the current outlook driven by assumptions about economic growth projections and growing car commuting trips! If you want to know more about the regional strategies (this report is not on website yet) try going to:

http://www.yhassembly.gov.uk/Our%20Work/Sustainable%20Development/

If you want to watch the debate in the Guildhall this February on Climate Change see  http://www.bbc.co.uk/northyorkshire/content/articles/2007/02/10/climate_change_question_time_york_video_feature.shtml 

THE GREEN PARTY PROGRAMME FOR ACTION IS AT http://www.greenparty.org.uk/files/reports/2005/Climate%20change%20J.htm

The 200 people living at Findhorn maybe have a thing or two they could teach Gordon Brown : http://www.newstatesman.com/print/200706080003#

Did you know there is even a 'ranking' for blogs? Caroline Lucas, George Monbiot and Peter Tatchell are in the top 10..  Mine seems to have made it to number 77, so somebody out there must be reading it! If you are curious to find other socialist / green blogs, go to

http://socialistunitynetwork.co.uk/activate/greenbloggers.htm

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Posted by: andydag    in: Latest news