Retail impact statement for proposed Mytholm Works supermarket now on Calderdale Planning website

The Belmont Homes retail impact statement went up on the Calderdale Council planning website on Friday 12th July. Predictably, the statement claims that the proposed supermarket would not damage the vitality and viability of Hebden Bridge, or the areas of Halifax and Todmorden where the proposed supermarket would draw trade from.

No supermarket intends to set up on the site

Because so far no supermarket wants to be involved in the development, the retail impact statement is based on 2 different scenarios. One is for the impact of a “Top 5” supermarket on Hebden Bridge town centre shops, and the other for a discount supermarket, like Aldi or Lidl. Continue reading

Study finds low risk that arctic tundra melt methane will add to global warming

If the science is right, here’s some good news on the climate change front. A downloadable open source scientific paper concludes that permafrost melting in arctic places will not increase methane (CH4) emissions enough to add to further global warming.
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Who speaks for the environment? Two Guardian writers slug it out

In the Guardian, George Monbiot and Steven Poole have recently put forward contesting views of environmental writing.

Monbiot’s riposte to Poole’s critical review of a Romantic strand of contemporary nature writing is pinging round t’internet. Affronted by Poole’s criticisms of his book Feral,  Monbiot asserts that Poole is some kind of Tory/Mao Tse Tung/Red Guard hybrid, a humanities graduate dupe of postmodernism and, above all, a philistine.
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Hebden Bridge residents start to create model for reducing flood risks

Under the guidance of PhD geography student Shaun Maskrey and the Environment Agency’s John Woods, Hebden Bridge residents and organisations last week attended the first of five workshops, where together we’ll create a model for reducing flood risks in the Hebden Water catchment.

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Protecting homes from flood damage

The Environment Agency website has advice for households on:

The Environment Agency also has advice on preparing a flood plan for your business.

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Feral – another midlife crisis story, or a way forward for conservation politics?

George Monbiot’s Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding is worth dipping into – unless you are one of those bourgeois escapists whom Steven Poole’s recent Guardian Review article identified as the likely readership for this genre of nature writing. In which case, you’ll probably want to read it from cover to cover.
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SOURCE – urgently seeking landowners and volunteers

If you own land that could do with ecological restoration, though tree planting or moorland restoration – or you’d like to volunteer over the summer to carry out ecological surveys on Upper Calder Valley uplands or rivers,  the SOURCE  Open Evening on 16th July is for you.

Just turn up at Hebden Bridge Town Hall Terrace Room on Tuesday 16th July at 7 p.m for a free buffet, followed by presentations from all the SOURCE partner groups.  Treesponsibility, the Calder and Colne Rivers Trust, Calder Future, BlackBark and other organisations will be there with information about how landowners and volunteers can take part in the SOURCE project. The event will close at 9pm.

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Our NHS is Precious – We’re relying on Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group to Protect It

This was the message from Calderdale 38 Degrees NHS on 4th July, when they presented a petition signed by nearly 1200 Calderdale residents, to Matt Walsh, Chief Officer of the Calderdale Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).
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Future Labour government will repeal Health & Social Care Act 2012

The joy of Twitter: Calderdale Council Leader Tim Swift tweeted from the Local Government Association Conference on 3rd July, where Andy Burnham MP was talking about the NHS and committing a future Labour government to repeal of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.
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