Grouse shooting: environmentally destructive big business

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Grouse moor owners, supported by millions of pounds of taxpayer subsidies, brutally kill and maim a huge number of wild animals and leave vast swathes of precious peatland drained burnt dry and scarred with vehicle tracks. This is all so that unnaturally large populations of red grouse can be nurtured as live targets for ‘guns’. Here are some Animal Aid videos about the intensively-managed grouse moor on Walshaw Moor Estate above Hebden Bridge, ahead of the Inglorious 12th August.

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All welcome at Hiroshima Day memorial event, Hebden Bridge on 6th August

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Everyone is welcome to attend and take part in an event to remember those who died when the nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those who still suffer from radiation poisoning, and say Never Again! 

Calder Valley CND for Peace and Justice is hosting an hour-long programme of poetry, readings, songs and reflection, starting at 3pm by the Packhorse Bridge in Hebden Bridge. 

At a time when our government has just voted to renew the UK’s weapons of mass destruction, it is even more important to remember the horror of nuclear weapons.

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“Patient choice” and NHS use of the private sector runs down NHS care and penalises the poor and elderly

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A recent study –  the first to look at the impact on NHS provision of diverting NHS funds to the private sector – shows that private sector contracts are associated with a decrease in NHS provision and an increase in treatment inequalities.

This finding brings home the urgent need for the NHS Reinstatement Bill, which was
successfully reintroduced to the House of Commons by Labour MP Margaret Greenwood on 13 July, with support from Labour, Green, and Lib Dem MPs.

Drafted by barrister Peter Roderick and Public Health Professor Allyson Pollock, the Bill proposes to fully restore the NHS as an accountable public service by reversing 25 years of marketisation, abolishing the purchaser-provider split, ending contracting, and re-establishing public bodies and public services accountable to local communities. Continue reading →

Unable to sleep, eat, breathe since Erdogan’s brutal clampdown – message from Istanbul

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Plain Speaker may be a local news website for the Upper Calder Valley, but sometimes things happen in other parts of the world that are barely reported and desperately need to be brought to public attention.

Human rights abuses in Istanbul is a case in point.

A Turkish person living in Turkey has sent Plain Speaker information about civilian Erdogan supporters’ murder of soldiers on the night of the attempted coup, and horrific photographs that you may not want to look at. These are at the end of this post. Plain Speaker is withholding the identity of the information source, for obvious reasons. Continue reading →

Controversial care.data scheme not exactly ditched after all, says Life Sciences Minister

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Many people are pleased about NHS England’s decision to ditch the care.data scheme to share patients’ confidential medical GP records across the whole range of NHS and social care organisations, because its patient consent and opt-out model was inadequate.

But although the headlines said one thing, the small print said another: it turns out that Life Sciences Minister George Freeman has announced that although the scheme will now be scrapped, work on setting up a system for shared confidential patient data will now be taken forward by the National Information Board.

It sounds like a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. Continue reading →

Butterfly count – here is a nice thing to do in 15 minutes

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If you are in a sunny place outdoors for 15 minutes, you can count how many of these butterflies you see, then enter the numbers in the chart and submit the info together with the date and your location, at www.bigbutterflycount.org.uk Continue reading →

Calder Valley peace group continues campaign for nuclear disarmament after MPs vote to renew Trident

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On 18th July 2016 from 6pm – 7pm, many passing drivers on the main road through Hebden Bridge showed support for a well-attended protest, organised by Calder Valley CND for Peace & Justice, against the renewal of Trident. At the same time, MPs were debating the issue in Parliament. Continue reading →

Calderdale Council Conservative Group motion will not meet the housing needs of local people.

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The full Calderdale Council meeting at 6pm on 20th July will consider a Conservative Group motion on Meeting the housing needs of our local people, that:

“This Council:

Expresses significant concern that the Council’s own targets for building new homes since 2010 have been badly missed. Continue reading →

Please ask your MP to vote No to Trident in House of Commons on Monday 18th July

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On Monday 18th July, MPs will vote on whether to renew Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system. It is made up of 4  submarines – one of which is always on patrol – carrying up to 40 nuclear warheads on board.

Calder Valley people have lobbied their MPs to vote No to Trident

Yesterday members of Calder Valley CND for peace and justice lobbied their MPs Holly Lynch (Halifax) and Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) in Parliament. Continue reading →

Big Brexit question mark over EU legal action against UK government for failing to protect Walshaw Moor

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Following the EU Referendum vote, Linda McAvan MEP has said it’s unclear what effect the vote for the UK to leave the EU is going to have on the EU Commission’s pursuit of the Ban the Burn complaint about the legality of a £2.5 million Environmental Stewardship Agreement (ESA) that Natural England has awarded the grouse-shooting Walshaw Moor Estate.

Linda said that she can’t give a definitive  answer to this question, since all is up in the air, but she guesses that given that EU legal cases are premised on continued EU membership,  she can’t see why the Commission would invest time in pursuing the prosecution if the UK is going to be out of the EU.  

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