Author Archives: jenny

Review Horton House sell off, says Calderdale SOS

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Today, Wednesday 6 February at 6pm, Calderdale Council Use of Resources Scrutiny Panel is to consider Calderdale Save Our Services’ request for a public consultation on the future of adult education in Halifax.

Adult learners who study at Horton House, Halifax’s Adult Education Centre, have been left in the dark about Calderdale Council’s decision to sell the Centre. And so far, the Council has no clear idea where it will relocate adult learning.

Horton House_photo:Calderdale SOS

Calderdale Save Our Services (SOS), a group of trades unionists and members of the public who are working to defend jobs and services against privatisation and Government-enforced cuts, says the decision to “dispose of” and close Horton House was buried in the Halifax Town Centre Office Strategy Report last Summer.
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Growing Futures

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Growing Futures – A cooperative food growing and retail business that’s also an education centre, visitor attraction and eco-hotel.

This is Incredible Edible Mytholm’s vision. Their imagination is free-range, and their feet are on the ground.

Growing Futures will be much more than a great day out in Hebden Bridge. It will also be:

  • an innovative, sustainable food growing business that provides living wage jobs
  • an education and training resource for all ages – from three to 103 – that attracts sustainability students from far and wide
  • a retail market for local food producers
  • an innovative eco hotel, which also has glamping pods and yurts
  • a venue for eco-themed arts and music

Copyright Chris Sherwin

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Book review – Local Shops for Local People?

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Greg Sharzer’s 2012 book No Local: Why Small Scale Alternatives Won’t Change The World, may not be what advocates of re/localization want to hear. As the Danish proverb says, “To tell the truth is dangerous. To hear it is boring.”

Despite the best efforts of The League of Gentlemen, it’s an article of faith for many green groups (and the ConDem government, using the rubric of localism) that decentralised, small-scale organisations, businesses and networks will solve our environmental, economic and social problems. For example, Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful
and the Transition Network’s REconomy Project. Greg Sharzer questions this belief.
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20’s Plenty For Calderdale Campaign Launches

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Activists for 20 mph speed limits for residential roads, without speed bumps or other physical calming, have launched a Calderdale campaign.

Myra James, the 20’s Plenty for Calderdale lead activist, said,

“Experience from areas which have 20mph speed limits shows that this brings 22% fewer casualties and means a 12% reduction in fuel use – which also reduces pollution and climate change gas emissions”

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Petition Education Secretary to WITHDRAW decision to impose Sponsored Academy status on Calder High School

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You can download and print out a Petition regarding Calder High. (Use back button to return to this page once you’ve downloaded the Petition).  Guidance on printing out, filling in and returning the petition to the organiser is at the end of this post.

Or you can email the petition organiser for more information and/or to ask her to send you a copy of the petition.

The Petition invites signatures from Calder High School parents, staff and students, and local residents within the school’s catchment area which is from Halifax to Todmorden, before the deadline of 18th February. This will allow time to get it to Gove before the sponsor matching process is finished.
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Ban The Burn On Blanket Bogs online petition needs 65 more signatures

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Please sign the online Ban The Burn petition, if you haven’t already. 335 people already have, and we only need another 65 signatures. Then we will present the petition to Natural England and Defra.

This is what the petition asks:

BAN THE BURN ON BLANKET BOGS

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Stop ROC subsidies for palm oil-fuelled electricity

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Alert reposted from Biofuelwatch
Please write to your MP today with a new Parliamentary Briefing and urge him or her to call on the Department for Energy and Climate Change to drop their plans for long-term subsidies for biofuel/palm oil electricity.

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Watershed landscape is key to environmental, social and economic development decisions

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The Aarhus Convention guarantees the public’s right to information about, and participation in environmental decision-making by public bodies. 

As a member of the public, Fiona Hesselden attended the 29th January Pennine Prospects/Natural England Workshop on Working with National Character Areas : Profiles in Practice .

She reports on it here.

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