350 day planning
Saturday 24 October is international 350 day, to highlight the importance of returning atmospheric levels of CO2 to 350 parts per million – the most that scientists say is compatible with avoiding runaway catastrophic climate change. The date is planned to put pressure on politicians ahead of the crucial Copenhagen international climate talks in December.
We will be having an event in Long Ashton on that day, featuring as many variations on the number 350 as possible, eg 350 peals of the church bells.
If you can help in planning what will happen on the day and organising it, please let me know, and I’ll arrange a meeting. billroberts@blueyonder.co.uk
We also plan to show The Age Of Stupid in the week leading up to this day.
For a 4 minute video of the wonderful Bill McKibben, who is at the centre of the 350 movement, go to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4nZNPnmZAo
Green Energy Open Doors
Help will be needed on the day to set up from 9 to 10 am at the community centre, to run the cafe and stalls and to clear away at 3pm.
Visits will be arranged to houses with renewable energy systems in the vicinity and advice will be available on home insulation, grants and renewable energy.
There will be children’s activities, a Grow It Group stall, bicycle repair advice and much more. Please all come, help if you can if only for an hour or so and make it a really good ‘Transition Day! Offers of help to Ian or Margaret on margerian@btinternet.com please.
Open Meeting at the Village Club (British Legion)
An opportunity to air anything you’d like to, and to find out more about what’s happening.
Transition news 16 July 09
The Energy and Food groups will be running a ‘GREEN ENERGY OPEN DOORS’ event on Saturday 12th September from 10am to 3pm.
Help will be needed on the day to set up from 9 to 10 am at the community centre, to run the cafe and stalls and to clear away at 3pm.
Visits will be arranged to houses with renewable energy systems in the vicinity and advice will be available on home insulation, grants and renewable energy.
There will be children’s activities, a Grow It Group stall, bicycle repair advice and much more. Please all come, help if you can if only for an hour or so and make it a really good ‘Transition Day! Offers of help to Ian or Margaret on margerian@btinternet.com please.
350 day planning
Saturday 24 October is international 350 day, to highlight the importance of returning atmospheric levels of CO2 to 350 parts per million – the most that scientists say is compatible with avoiding runaway catastrophic climate change. The date is planned to put pressure on politicians ahead of the crucial Copenhagen international climate talks in December.
We will be having an event in Long Ashton on that day, featuring as many variations on the number 350 as possible, eg 350 peals of the church bells.
If you can help in planning what will happen on the day and organising it, please let me know, and I’ll arrange a meeting. billroberts@blueyonder.co.uk
We also plan to show The Age Of Stupid in the week leading up to this day.
For a 4 minute video of the wonderful Bill McKibben, who is at the centre of the 350 movement, go to: www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4nZNPnmZAo
Open Meeting – Monday 28th September at the Village Club (British Legion). 7.30pm
An opportunity to air anything you’d like to, and to find out more about what’s happening.
New Village Directory
The Long Ashton directory is being updated and expanded, to include as many local businesses and activities as possible. This is an opportunity to have the various Transition-related activities mentioned – eg bee keeping, chicken keeping, cycling and others I haven’t thought of, as well as the Grow It Group, Energy Group, Food Group, Transport group. All of these need a contact person and very brief summary, so that anyone interested can linik up with others in the village who are involved. If you’re willing to be listed as contact person for any of these or more, please let me know as soon as possible, as I’m being asked how transition would like to be included in the new directory.
Transition Nailsea in the making
Coming out of the Green Drinkers evenings and people who have got in touch with us, next Tuesday July 21st there will be a meeting of people interested in forming a Transition Nailsea group. Email Sally Tarr if you or anyone you know is interested in this: sally_tarr@hotmail.com
(Un)Happy Planet Index unveiled by the New Economics Forum
The HPI measures how efficiently each nation uses resources to produce happiness – in other words it measures happiness against ecological footprint per capita. Costa Rica comes out on top, with 9 of the top 10 nations being in Latin America. The top European nation is Germany at 51st, UK is 74, just ahead of Iraq at 79, and the USA is 114. For more info go to www.happyplanetindex.org.
Bristol Cycling Campaign
The next Discover Bristol bike ride is on this Saturday 25 July meeting at 10:15 at Redland station. We will visit Clifton and Redland where we will meet local historian and author Julian Lea-Jones.
Places are limited so if you would like to join please register now by email to rides@discoverbristol.org.uk (if you have household membership please give the names of all those who wish to join in, and their ages if under 18). I will email you a map and an entry form for you to complete and bring with you.
The ride leader will be Martin Tweddell, who says (and I quote): “You’ll join an intriguing short tour of Bristol’s best known suburbs, known for their wealth of history (and the wealth of their residents!), and experience from your bicycle the sights, sounds (and smells) of the area. We’ll be stopping regularly to take a look at fascinating architecture including an old country mansion and its chapel, some rare species of plant (including a painted tree) and of course some well known and not so well known feats of Victorian engineering.” Plus more – Martin and Julian will show us Halley’s Comet, Fosse-way & Via Julia Roman roads , a Neolithic stone, a unique thatched cottage, a monument to men who fell in Indian wars, a deportation to Botany Bay , where Princess Eugenie (of Napoleon III) went to school, Birdcage Walk, and Clifton Churchyard.
We’ll get the big hill out of the way early before heading over the Downs, have an ice cream perhaps, and around to Clifton Village for a cup of tea.
A Life Cycle trainer accompanies each Discover Bristol ride. Please tell your friends about Discover Bristol. Non-members need to join the Campaign to participate. Details are at www.discoverbristol.org.uk.
HOLA news 2 July 2009
Petition
Our petition has been presented to parliament and is on its way the Minister. We anticipate his response with interest but without any hope that it will mean much. I have also written on behalf of HOLA to John Denham.
SOGS leaflets
HOLA has purchased 1500 leaflets and these have now been distributed to the deliverers. We cannot cover all of the village but most households will get one. Please encourage your neighbours to complete them and, either put them in a collection point or post them back to SOGS.
Dundry Information Day
I was pleased to be able to attend this and to see a very good turnout. Liam Fox gave a short talk and answered questions. He seemed more positive about the prospects for stopping the RSS than at the last meeting in February.
SOGS Newsletter
The newsletter is included at the end of this article.
Things to Do
It is never ending, but important that we don’t give up, that is what “they” want. Airport planning application consultation. CPRE green belt survey. New EIA application for the university land. Promote the SOGS leaflets.
Airport Planning Application
A message from Bill Roberts:
Bristol Airport expansion plans are now lodged with North Somerset Council, and there is just 6 weeks for people to object to the plans. In addition to causing increased noise, smells, chemical fallout and traffic, the expansion would increase the airport’s carbon footprint by 300,000 tonnes a year (their own figures), and support the draining of money out of the region by people taking their wealth to spend abroad. – for fuller information see the email from the campaign group below. I will be picking up leaflets encouraging people to object in the next few days, for myself and a couple of other people who are up for distributing them around their local streets. If you feel able to distribute some too in your street/s, please let me know how many you’d like, and I’ll get them and drop them round to you. My email is billroberts@blueyonder.co.uk or phone/text me on 07932 623672
I’m aware that we are busy with the Save Our Green Spaces leaflet distribution, and you may not want to distribute both at the same time. But as the airport issue is at the stage of Planning Application, I feel it’s important to act now, and the bigger the action the better.
Bristol International Airport (BIA) has applied for planning permission to expand. This development aims to increase passengers by 60% by 2016, increase passenger flights by 40%, summer night flights by 50%, car journeys by over 2m per year, and carbon emissions by at least 40%.
This will mean more traffic on country roads, more noise day and night, more countryside eaten up by car parking, and more climate changing impacts.
A message from Stop Bristol International Airport
It is argued that expansion will be good for tourism, but between 6 and 10 times as many tourists are outbound rather than inbound, leading to £700m being drained from the UK economy each year. Expansion will make this worse. Recently, the weak pound has caused passenger numbers to drop by 15% or more, but local tourist destinations have seen more visitors than last year.
BIA claim that expansion will create 3500 jobs in the region, but only 900 of these are within the airport and the rest of the jobs appear to be wishful thinking. The outflow of tourism spending destroys far more jobs than this. Even 800 jobs looks high when the expansion is based on no-frills airlines.
Business passengers can already use BIA to reach anywhere in the world through Paris, Amsterdam and Newark. Expansion would not bring any significant change to this, it is targeted at outbound tourists.
We have 6 weeks to tell North Somerset council why this expansion is not needed, and why it is bad for the economy as well as the environment.
You can object to the expansion in the following ways:
- You can visit our website and use the email form www.stopbia.com/objection.php
- You can email the council yourself at dccomments@n-somerset.gov.uk, referring to planning application number 09/P/1020/OT2, please copy your email to email@stopbia.com
- 3) Write a letter to:
Neil Underhay, re: application 09/P/1020/OT2
Development Control
North Somerset Council
Somerset House
Oxford Road
Weston super Mare BS23 1TG
You can also help us in the following ways:
1) forward this email to any people you think may be interested
2) help to distribute printed leaflets (please contact email@stopbia.com
3) make a donation at www.stopbia.com/donate.php
You can find lots more details on what BIA are planning to do, and why we believe the impacts far outweigh the benefits by visiting our website: www.stopbia.com
You can find what the airport says about its plans at
http://www.bristolairport.co.uk/about_us/our_future/planning_application.aspx
In addition, if you are concerned about developments in the countryside and the greenbelt, particularly in the area around Bristol, please visit www.saveourgreenspaces.org to see how you can help fight the implications of the housing and other targets of the Regional Spatial Strategy.
University Land
Another stage in the environmental impact assessment has been lodged with North Somerset,.(09/P/0978/EIA). This seems to be a progress statement, asking NS to comment on whether the content of the proposed EIA. The period for comment is very short, but it would be worthwhile commenting, if you have time to read the document.
SOGS newsletter This is for those of you who have not yet requested the SOGS newsletter directly. (Which you should do, as I have probably messed up the formatting in transferring it)
Issue 2, sent out on June 26, 2009 National news.
Minister responsible for SW RSS
After some gentle hounding, the Department of Communities and Local Government have told us that the Minister responsible for the SW RSS had been agreed, but was then promoted to the Treasury, so they are back to square one in dividing it up again between the available ministers. They have confirmed they will be publishing a new timetable for Local Authorities, and as soon as we have that, we’ll let you all know. We do know that we have a new Minister responsible for the South West – he is Jim Knight – we are hoping to arrange a meeting through our Dorset contacts.
Action against RSS
The South East have also launched a legal challenge to their RSS– people seem to be moving to fight the housing numbers all over the country – this should add credibility to our campaign too, as it becomes clear that the general feeling of the public is against top-down decision making on homes.
Early Day Motion
We are chasing all MP’s who haven’t yet signed Annette Brookes’ EDM – click here to see if your MP has signed it. All MPs in the region will be receiving an e-mail from SOGS, either thanking them for backing it, or asking them to sign it.
Local news
More signed letters needed: We must use the extra time we have now to ramp up the pressure, not waste it – let’s bury the GOSW in letters and postcards. More leaflets are available – we are doing a second print run – please let Jo know how many your group would like. They will be available for collection in Central Bristol from Tuesday 30th June at a cost of 6p/leaflet. Don’t forget to spread the e-mail letters word wide – send the letters link to everyone in your address book. We need leaflets and letters back to us by 18th July for us to collate into a database, so that when we need to rouse people again, we already have their details. There is a petition underway as well, as sometimes it is easier to get people to sign a petition than write a letter – use this link .
Bristol City Stadium
thisisbristol has published an article on plans for the Bristol City Stadium. At the bottom, there’s a chance to add your comments – support other SOGS members with your comments on the development of a new stadium which would involve housing on green belt land.
Ron Morton from Shortwood has written an explanatory piece for us about the Stadium and the issues surrounding it. You can find a link to a copy here.
There is a public meeting about forming a group to fight the Tesco plans for the stadium on Friday 3rd July at 7pm at the Southville Centre, Beauley Rd, Bristol. Do pass this newsletter onto all your friends and get them to sign up through the website. To have news from your group included here – please contact Nicky.
from Save Our Greenspaces
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