A blog by Green Party Councillor Andrew Cooper about Kirklees Council and our activity to improve the local and global environment (and also anything that I fancy talking about)
Another terrific Growing Newsome event today. Over 170 people came today to collect seedlings for their allotment plots and gardens. For our plot myself and Karen Allison got courgette plants, sunflower seedlings, tomato plants and other bits and pieces. All this was finished off with a good wholesome vegetarian lunch. Lots of chatting with local folks and plenty of people catching up with each other over a cuppa and home made cakes. Council officers call this 'community capacity building'. It is certainly locally led by a group of committed enthusiastic volunteers who obviously get a real buzz out of doing it. This is the good stuff.
My role today was putting signs on street furniture (and taking them down afterwards!)
9.45am - Seedlings deployed, more under the table, ready for the punters
The Growing Newsome gang posing for the Huddersfield Examiner
There's a lot that has been said about UKIP in the last few days, probably too much. How can yet another right wing free market party make a real difference to British Politics. Do people really want another party that wants to make the rich even richer than the Coalition are doing? Will their Councillors who have been elected so easily be any good or do they merely represent a snapshot in time of dissatisfaction with the current larger parties by voting for one which in reality is very similar to them if more unpleasant with a speciality in being against UK membership of the European Union? Any envy here? You bet there is. I very much wish the Green Party were celebrating as many gains in UKIP rather than the steady progress we make at each local election? Our steady progress may be more lasting and sustainable but it is darned frustrating.
What I'll concentrate on is UKIP and climate change. For one thing they don't believe it's happening. They are in the late stages of 'Canute Syndrome' - see earlier post. They fit into the 'climate change is a left wing green theory to damage our economy' camp. Classic conspiracy theory folks with all the contrived unscientific un-peer reviewed 'evidence' to back up their stridently expressed views. "Climate Change? as harmless as smoking in pubs" they might say. This has led to a 'policy' urging Councils to get rid of 'useless Climate Change Officers'. It exhibits a total lack of understanding of the fact that many of the staff with these titles have already been made redundant not because they were 'useless' but simply due to the financial pressures Councils have been under . Kirklees itself has lost many staff in the Environment Unit in the last few weeks. Staff working on climate change don't simply sit at their desks musing about global climate change most would be running programmes to improve the energy efficiency of council buildings, reducing energy costs and saving money as well as carbon emissions. They would be in charge of projects drawing in millions of pounds of finance to insulate homes saving householders money and tackling fuel poverty.
The UKIP stance on climate change officers is just one example where prejudice drives their policy rather knowledge or experience. In reality their view on this reflects a lot of Tory grassroots and backbench views and you can imagine a lot of defections of Tory activists who prefer UKIP populism to what they regard as 'political correctness gone mad!" - wipes foam from mouth.
Rehman remains - Karen Allison and Andrew Cooper mark the anniversary of this 2012 Labour posterboard
I've had a few phone calls asking me why people have not received polling cards and understandably people don't all realise that we only vote in Kirklees elections 3 years out of 4. With 3 Councillors in each ward each having a 4 year term this gives one year in 4 without an election. In the Counties we do have elections but not in Metropolitan Districts like Kirklees. There is however 1 election posterboard up on a lamp column in Kirklees. It is a Labour poster on Colne Road which has now been there for 1 year. I guess they must have forgotten all about it when the Labour campaign left the Newsome Ward after the last local elections and this one got left behind. It is not an unusual phenomonen for Labour to leave a board or 2 behind and I tend to refer to these as Zombie posterboards as they continue to stalk the area long past their lifetime but this one is certainly one with long life. We were talking about getting it a birthday card and a cake with a candle on it. I did tweet about this board still being up months ago but nobody came to take it down. I guess it will disappear fairly quickly now.
The recent Newsome Community Survey identified litter and mess around the area as a big concern for many households. Over the years the Green Party Team has arranged many volunteer clean ups and also got Kirklees in to carry out. This latest clean up was of Bluebell woods near Taylor Hill. 6 of us did about an hour and got the woods pretty much clear. Strongbow cans seemed to be the favourite piece of litter in the woods. It now looks prety much clear. Nipped in The Lockwood Pub for a quick pint afterwards and crawled in home at around 10.30pm
Karen Allison putting up our Clean Up notice
Cllr Julie Stewart Turner in the undergrowth
Job Done! The team sporting our Green Party Hi Vis vests
This is a day for unity in our opposition to the creeping
privatisation of our NHS, but I will say this. It would have been more
difficult for the Coalition Govt to introduce these changes if a previous
government hadn’t opened the door to privatisation. By changing the NHS from a
services provider to a commissioner of services it gave a far greater role to
the private sector in the NHS. Hospital Trusts increasingly contracted out
services to the private sector. Public money supported the extortionately expensive
Private Finance Initiative used to build hospitals with no reasonable
alternative funding source provided by govt. Unfortunately there are many other
examples of the creeping privatisation of the NHS allowed under a previous
govt.
The Coalition’s view of the Health service is very narrow
and infact NHS to them stands for a Narrow Health Service. One where the Health
Service delivered by the public sector narrows and one where the private,
profiteering sector just keeps on growing.
The Green Party is 100% behind a publicly funded,
publicly managed and publicly delivered National Health Service focused on
prevention of illness, the promotion of good health and the treatment of those
in need whatever their income or background. Such a National Health Service is
the hallmark of a civilised society. One which invests taxation to the benefit
of the public not one which uses peoples taxes to pay the profits of
shareholders .
We know that when the private sector gets involved in the
delivery of public services that there will always be a tension between the
need to deliver good quality care and the need to provide a dividend to
shareholders. Something will have to give be that staff wages, specialist
equipment or even lifesaving drugs. Will we be faced with a situation where
increasingly the cost of delivering vital health services will be the deciding
factor to an even greater degree than it is at the moment.
We now need to broaden the Coalitions narrow vision of the
NHS to one which inspires and fits with the expectations and values of our
nation
The National Health Service is a whole and holistic
service not one where the public sector picks up only the parts which the
private sector finds too difficult, problematic or simply unprofitable
The National Health Service is a public service not one
for private profit
The only ‘shareholders’ who should benefit from the
National Health Service should be the public who fund it.
The initials ‘CCG’ should not stand for Clinical
Commissioning Groups. In the NHS ‘CCG’ should mean Citizens Care Guaranteed.
I am a Green Party Councillor on Kirklees Council and have been since May 1999. I was the Green Party Candidate for the General Election in the Huddersfield Parliamentary Constituency. I work in the energy efficiency/microgeneration sector and have done for the last 20 years or so.
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