Don't trust Labour with recycling!

Last week saw the launch of the new OnePlace website collating lots of information relating to the performance of the Council and other public services (Police, Fire Service, etc.). There is a mass of information there, including inspection reports, audit reports and performance on national indicators.

One of the pieces of data which is publicly available is the city's recycling rate. And it's a very interesting story, because there is data for the last five years.

I have graphed this up to the right (click to make bigger) and added in little notes about political control. A very clear picture emerges and something I have been highlighting for the last two years. Under Labour (backed by the Tories and the Green Party), the recycling rate in the city completely stalled and even went backwards!

When the Lib Dems first started running the city in 2005, Bristol's recycling rate was "deteriorating" and "in the worst 20%" of councils (the phrases are from the OnePlace website). After two years of "improving" under the Lib Dems, it was "in the top third" of councils. Then, nearly two years of Labour, back to "deteriorating" and now only "average". The money spent on their Citizens Jury on waste seems to have had no impact - it was an expensive deflection and they never implemented the majority of what the citizens told them!

To give context, Bristol is still the best performing large city in the UK for recycling, thanks to the changes brought in by the Lib Dems between 2005 and 2007. However, we wouldn't have been if we'd had many more years of a Labour-run Council! The new Lib Dem administration has a manifesto commitment to hit 50% by the end of 2010 and we are confident of making it. Work is already on-going with areas with relatively low recycling rates and there will be some exciting new initiatives in the new year. Next stop, 60%...

Blair: Iraq War rationale was political, not military

In Tony Blair's interview with Fern Britton, he explains that the presence (or not!) of weapons of mass destruction was not a necessary consideration in his decision to take the UK into the Iraq War. Is it just me, or isn't this a very significant admission?

The rationale that we were given at the time was that Iraq and Saddam Hussein posed a significant and pressing military threat to its neighbours and potentially to the UK. We were told that we had to disarm Iraq for military reasons and that we had to do it immediately because of the military threat that he posed. The so-called 'dodgy dossier' tried to show that he had major weapons programmes and an intent to use them.

In fact, the UN weapons inspectors (including the ill-fated David Kelly) had done an excellent job of ensuring that Hussein had no meaningful weaponry at his disposal. At the time they advised strongly against war and in favour of being allowed to do their job, which they knew was working well to contain Hussein. If there was good evidence for weapons of mass destruction, I could probably have stomached the war. There wasn't and history has proved the inspectors (and the Liberal Democrats) right.

Now we have Tony Blair saying that he was resolved to remove Hussein anyway due to an amorphous and undefined threat to the region. But surely this shifts the decision away from being a military decision to being a political one. Blair is effectively saying that he had taken a decision that Hussein had to go regardless of the presence or absence of WMDs. But when was this debated in parliament or with the British people? This makes the decision to go to war worse, not better. Blair seems to be saying that WMD, so important at the time, didn't matter. Apart from anything else, why didn't he say that at the time? I feel more misled by Blair (and Gordon Brown, who signed the cheques) than ever.

Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not an advocate for Saddam Hussein or his regime. However, if we were drawing up a list of leaders who were some sort of threat to their region and who committed human rights abuses, he would only be one in quite a pack. Why not Zimbabwe? Or Myanmar? So, if there was not a pressing military imperative - something Blair's government pushed so heavily back in 2003 - why could we not have a debate about whether Hussein needed to be removed? Why did we rush headlong into an expensive and ill-advised war which has almost certainly made the UK less safe than it was?

Biofuel plant - update and reference info

Firstly, I just wanted to bring attention to Council Leader Barbara Janke's announcement that she opposes the application for a 50 MW biofuel plant at Avonmouth. I have blogged about this issue before, but my views have been firming up on the back of reading around the subject and I have been working with Barbara on her press release. As she says, though, ultimately the decision is the planning committee's and not hers.

Secondly, I've not been too well this evening, so I have been catching up on my research on the topic. I need to give a big hat-tip to Guildford & Waverley Friends of the Earth for their campaign notes on this topic - you can get to them via the biofuels section of the national FoE website. What these notes highlight is that three biofuel plants have been refused in 2009 in the UK; Ealing, Newport and Portland.

However, what they don't do - and what I have pulled together this evening - is provide a set of links through to the planning officer reports (i.e. the recommendation by the council paid staff) and the planning committee minutes (i.e. the decision by the elected councillors). In all three cases the officers were recommending that the power plant should be approved and the councillors overturned this and refused it. I have also paraphrased the reasons for refusal in each case.


Newport, South Wales :

• Officer report : recommendation GRANT
• Planning committee minutes : decision REFUSE (9th Sept 2009)
• Reasons for refusal : overdevelopment of site; environmental concerns (unspecified); health/safety (apparently air pollution)
  

Ealing, London :

• Officer report : recommendation GRANT
• Planning committee minutes : decision REFUSE (2nd Sept 2009)
• Reasons for refusal : air quality; health & safety; traffic congestion
  

Portland, Dorset :

• Officer report : recommendation GRANT
• Planning committee minutes : decision REFUSE (16th Sept 2009)
• Reasons for refusal : insufficient information about local environmental impacts (mainly air pollution); appearance of coastline; impacts from long-distance fuel transportation

I need to have a good read through (it's over 200 pages of stuff!) to see whether there are any specific lessons that can be applied to Bristol. In particular, the Portland one seems well-recorded and argued. It's important to remember that others have been approved too - it's not one-way traffic by any stretch of the imagination. What I don't know yet is whether any of these are going to appeal or not - I will try to find out in another spare second.

Copenhagen, e-mails and the climate

It is a real shame that the start of the Copenhagen summit will be partly overshadowed by the silly controversy about the leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia.

To the climate change denying mischief-makers, this story was gold dust. They found initially plausible evidence that the whole idea of climate change was being made up by a secret cabal of scientists - to what end, who knows! However, to anyone with any knowledge of practical science, there is simply no story. The UEA e-mails change nothing - man-made climate change is real and urgent.

The seemingly incriminating e-mails are refer to statistical approaches to correcting the raw data that they were analysing for a variety of known errors and quirks. Yes, they are written in offhand language. Yes, they look a bit silly when taken out of context. But they also look like dozens that I've sent in my 'real life' occupation as an academic. When I am analysing data I often talk about 'playing with data', 'fixing data', 'having a fiddle', 'trying a little trick', 'slicing and dicing', 'separating sheep and goats' and so on. It doesn't mean I'm making stuff up. It's just silly stats slang! In particular, it's something I do when I am e-mailing people less numerate than me as if I explained what I was doing properly, they probably wouldn't understand it. Thankfully, my casual e-mails aren't the subject of Freedom of Information requests and they aren't posted on the internet.

There is a great demolition and explanation on the New Scientist website. Even if the UEA were falsifying evidence (and it does happen in science and academia occasionally), they are only one small piece in a worldwide agreement about climate change. It wouldn't make it a sham or a lie, as Daily Mail journalists and Saudi Arabian politicians say. It would be a small group of fraudsters in a big pond of good scientists. But there is no evidence that this is the case anyway - just scientists doing their jobs.

One of the major challenges of dealing with climate change is that we are all (and especially us politicians) very reliant on scientists. The basic concept is simple and compelling, but the detail is mucky, complex and often contradictory. Scientists with different views are pitched against each other in the media and this is used by those with a denial agenda to undermine climate change - and the whole of science. Barely a day goes by without a story about one scientist disproving another's work... so who do you believe? But the key thing is that if you asked climate scientists the simple question of "Is our climate changing and is it caused by humans?", over 95% would say "yes" twice.

There is, of course, a chance that the vast majority of scientists could be wrong - it's happened before. Maybe. But with this issue, the perils of a false positive are more than outweighed by the false negative. It must be better to do something now than to wait and see and find it's too late. Especially when the 'doing something' is simply about good housekeeping of the planet anyway. And, as someone pointed out to me the other day, even if you deny climate change, we will run out of cheap fossil fuels in my lifetime and that is undeniable. By definition, they are finite.

I do confess to having two climate change heresies that will anger purists. Firstly, I believe in the Great Technological Solution. I think humankind will solve climate change and find ways of maintaining our standard of living without some of the catastrophic shifts that some commentators predict. As a species, we have solved countless big problems before and I see no reason why we won't this time. Secondly, we're actually overdue an ice age, which could make all this stuff irrelevant anyway! Predicting ice ages is a pretty imprecise science and we might be 5,000 years either way. Maybe we're actually in an ice age already, but global warming has overtaken it. Something in the back of my mind tells me that humankind will need to turn its attention to warming the place up in the next little while (in geological timeframes). Our planet is in a 'Goldilocks zone' for life and it doesn't take much in either direction to disrupt the status quo. In the long game, humans are going to have to become adept at managing global temperatures lest we go the way of the 95% of species that have ever lived!

But I might well be wrong on either or both of these - and in any case, neither are a reason for not believing the science on climate change and not acting on it now. The stakes are just too high.

Rant over!

It was only a little thing, but I was very nervous about it for some reason. I've just done my Speakers Corner session at the Arnolfini as part of their climate change programme. There were about 20 people there listening at different points, which was nice - I was really frightened that I would be talking to myself and seem like a complete loon! I guess I might still have done. Thanks to Mark, Lena and Nat for coming along to support me too.

Flyposting crackdown for Cotham

I have been complaining for the last month or so about the upsurge of illegal flyposting on Whiteladies Road. There is always an increase around the start of the university year, but this year it hasn't declined back again. I spoke with the manager of the Council's 'streetscene' department today and there is going to be a crackdown starting in the near future, focusing, among other places, on Whiteladies Road and Gloucester Road. We should therefore see some improvement.

Enforcing on flyposting can be difficult as it isn't always obvious who the culprit is. The Council is looking at some innovative ways of stopping people from making the place look a mess while still allowing clubs, bars and promoters a reasonable opportunity to market themselves. More soon...

Use it or lose it

I've found out a little more about the slashing of fares on the 8 and 9 bus routes. They have cut a return from Cotham to Temple Meads from £3.20 to £2.60 (a 20% drop), but it's even better from Temple Meads to the City Centre, falling from £2.60 to £1.50 at peak times.

This is a pilot experiment by First Bus to see whether cutting fares will generate the extra passengers that people say it will. So we are in a 'use it or lose it' situation - except more positive, in that if it works, we will see other fares coming down. The 8 and 9 service isn't a particularly useful one for me personally. Although it goes from the end of my road, it then goes into Clifton rather than into town - I take the 1, 40 or 54 instead. I will try to take it for other trips, though, to boost their passenger numbers.

This is the first time I can remember the Council successfully pressurising First Bus to reduce their fares - let's hope it's a sign of things to come. Certainly I am told that they are more open to innovation and ideas than they have been in the past.

Neil rants in public

I have volunteered to do a piece at the Speakers Corner at the Arnolfini on Friday 4th December at 1pm. It's part of their 100 Days programme of events in the run-up to the start of the Copenhagen climate summit.

I am going to be speaking about the challenges of trying to take action on climate change as a local politician and how national policy and targets get in the way. I'll be speaking for about 15 minutes, I think, and I am going to try to make it as light-hearted as possible, but it'll probably be a little ranty too.

I'm going to talk about many of the things that I've posted here on my blog before: trying to get a Merton Rule in place, the government's daft housing targets, biofuel plants and planning regulations and the balance of heritage and sustainability. Do feel free to come along if you're interested in hearing about the tribulations of being a climate politician.

Christmas Dress campaign

A quick plug for a charitable enterprise that I think is really worthwhile and clever.

Bristol Prom Project help schoolgirls from less wealthy homes to get dresses for the formal balls that are becoming ever more common. They take in used balldresses and adapt them for a new wearer, ensuring that as many girls as possible get the chance to go to the ball and that the poorer families are not unnecessarily disadvantaged.

As the scholarship boy at a private school myself, I knew what it was like having to get my dinner suit from Oxfam in order to try to fit in. Now the practice of formal balls has spread out to state schools as well, I'm delighted that people like Jan and Heidi at the Bristol Prom Project are doing something to help.

More details are available on the poster on the left - click to make it bigger. Please have a look in your wardrobe or attic and see whether there is something there that you could donate!

Making microgeneration easier

It was pointed out to me last week that VAT is charged on household energy efficiency and production equipment - things like solar panels, heat exchangers and so on. Given that we need to be encouraging people to take this sort of thing up, wouldn't a very easy step be to axe the VAT on them, cutting the cost by 15% instantly? The amount of VAT this generates for the government must be tiny in the big scheme of things, but it could well make the difference for a houseowner between fitting them and not. Stephen Williams, my friendly local Lib Dem MP, has agreed to ask a parliamentary question of the Chancellor to find out whether this could happen and, if not, why not. I will report back in due course...