Using shared buying power to drive a harder bargain with energy companies can work.
The Big Switch bid to get cheaper gas and electricity prices for households has accepted Cooperative Energy’s offer. This was the best offer from the various energy companies and looks set to save more than 280,000 households taking part a total of £25 million – with, on average, each household saving £123 a year.
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The Transnational Institute pocket guide to the Eurozone Crisis points out that:
“Much of the so-called debt crisis was caused not by states spending too much, but because they bailed out the banks and speculators. EU government debt had actually fallen from 72% of GDP in 1999 to 67% in 2007. It rose rapidly after they bailed out the banks in 2008. Ireland’s bank bailout cost them 30% of their national output (GDP) and pushed debts to record levels.”
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With the Halifax Courier soon to go weekly – with an online version and a regularly updated I Pad app replacing the daily paper – the House of Commons recently discussed the threat to local journalism posed by Johnston Press cuts, that will affect over 170 local newspapers.
The NUJ reports that the Halifax Courier is proposing to cut 11.6 editorial jobs – about a third of the current total. Clearly this will mean there aren’t enough journalists to report fully on local events and issues.
Ashley Highfield, the new chief executive of Johnston Press who announced the cuts, has said he expects the provision of editorial content to be split fifty-fifty between journalists and “community contributors” by 2020. At the moment, just 10 per cent of Johnston Press editorial content is created by readers.
“That this House notes with sadness the decision by Johnston Press to move many long-established local newspapers from a daily publication to a weekly publication; condemns this unnecessary move and the implications it will have for the jobs of many journalists, printers, newspaper sellers and newspaper deliveries; praises the role local daily newspapers like the Halifax Courier and other titles in towns like Kettering, Northampton, Peterborough and Scarborough play in local democracy and in reporting the news on a daily basis; further notes the knock-on effect this will have on the local economies of the towns affected; urges Johnston Press to protect existing jobs at the newspaper titles affected and ensure that there are no compulsory job losses; further urges them to consult fully with the National Union of Journalists about their proposals; and hopes that local newspapers will continue to play an important role in the life of local communities for many years to come.”
So far, Craig Whitaker MP has not signed the EDM. If you want to ask him to add his support, you can email him.
The ‘Move Your Money’ campaign is supported by a coalition of groups including Co-operatives UK, Ethical Consumer and the New Economics Foundation.
The campaign encourages people to move their accounts from the big banks to more ethical alternatives. It initially focussed on doing this in the month of March 2012 -but even though March has come and gone, you can still switch your accounts. It’s seems like a bit of a hassle but I’m going to give it a go.
The campaign responds to Ethical Consumer’s banking report. The report finds that UK banking is the “most unethical” business sector in the UK, and that the ‘Big Five’ banks – Barclays, RBS, Lloyds, Santander and HSBC – are widely involved in corporate malpractice, greenwash and investments in climate changing industries like coal mining, deforestation, and fossil fuel-based energy generation.
“The 85 per cent of the UK’s population that bank with the Big Five banks will be appalled to learn that their money is being used to support a corporate culture that stands accused of everything from tax avoidance to exacerbating global hunger,”according to Rob Harrison, co-author of Ethical Consumer Banking Report.
Where to move your money?
The Report found that the most ethical financial instititutions include:
This is the view of Stan Cox, a committed, long term food gardener who turned over his lawn to fruit and veg growing, as part of the Edible Estates movement in the USA.
While he says growing your own food is great and he has no regrets about doing it, he also thinks that,
“The corporate agriculture industry would like nothing better than to see us spend all of our free time in our gardens and not in political dissent.”
There is quite a lot of discussion going on in the Upper Calder Valley about various proposed new supermarkets.
A proposal to give local councils new powers on planning applications for large developments, could help communities to reach proper democratic decisions in these situations.
Ask Calderdale Council and parish councils and Craig Whitaker MP to support the proposal
Details of the proposal follow. If you think the proposal is a good idea, you might want to ask Calderdale Council, Hebden Royd or Todmorden town councillors, or your parish councillors and your MP to support the proposal.
1,500 councils in England and several MPs, including the Communities Minister, Greg Clark, support the proposal. But as far as I can see from the list of supporting councils, neither Calderdale Council nor the Upper Calder Valley parish and town councils are among them.
Details of the proposal
The proposal originated in 2011 from Leiston Town Council in Suffolk and the Suffolk Association of Local Councils, as a result of being faced with a massive planning proposal for a supermarket development that was too complicated for Leiston Town Council to assess properly.
They came up with the proposal for the government to strengthen the Sustainable Communities Act, by changing planning guidance in a way that would help locally-elected decision makers. Specifically: the proposal would require applicants of major developments to:
– attend a meeting of the local Town or Parish Council, or of a duly called Town Meeting, to answer questions on the application for development; and
– fund the council or duly called town meeting to commission an independent report on the application and critique of any reports that the applicant has submitted in support of the application for development.
This would help level the planning application playing field, by making sure that the public and their local elected representatives would have the best evidence to base their planning application decision on.
There are more details about the proposal on the Local Works website. Local Works is a a coalition of over 100 community organisations, including Age UK, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Women’s Institute.
Local Works has prepared a downloadable action briefing for MPs (PDF), which contains the full proposal and rationale.
Looking for something to do to tackle climate change AND the Coalition government’s recession-making economic policies?
You can sign the online petition asking the government to “give urgent and serious consideration to the recommendations of the One Million Climate Change Jobs Report”, or you can download a PDF hard copy for people to sign.
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The Carbon Brief blog has an interesting review of how newspapers have put very different spins on a recent study in the journal Science about how fast Greenland’s glaciers are moving. The research by scientists at the University of Washington in the USA analysed data from satellites monitoring over 200 glaciers around the edges of the Greenland ice sheet between 2000 and 2010. The glaciers moved at different speeds, depending on the region, and different types of glacier have grown and shrunk at different rates.
The Carbon Brief blog reports on a range of “wildly differing” interpretations of these facts, with different news agencies creating almost opposite headlines. Reuters reported that Greeland’s glaciers were speeding up, raising sea levels faster than before. Agence France Press headlined that Greenland’s glaciers may melt slower than thought.
It’s worth reading the blog for their analysis of what the research actually said and what it implies, and how and why different media outlets put their own spin on the meaning.
Over 20 South Pennines community centre representatives enjoyed the “Community with Energy” event in Mythmolmroyd on 24th April, where they found out about a range of energy efficiency and renewable energy methods to make community centres greener and cheaper to run.
DCarb Upper Calder Valley is an umbrella group for local organisations that are working to reduce and adapt to climate change. It is open to new members. For more info, contact the secretary Anne Handley, via Hebden Bridge Alternative Technology Centre, tel: 01422 842121.
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