More consultation on the Arena needed

Virtually everyone agrees that the Arena will be a good thing for Bristol, providing a world class entertainment venue and re-vitalising the area just South of Temple Meads. In particular it should bring jobs to a part of town where there is high unemployment nearby.

It was very disappointing then to hear the Arena planning application being deferred last Wednesday.

The application was deferred largely because the Development Control committee (made up of councillors from different parties) was unhappy with the robustness of the transport arrangements for people coming to major events at the Arena. It is self-evident that bringing 12,000 people to an event in the city centre 20 times a year needs some serious planning.

Personally I'm not sure that it needed to be deferred; the committee could have imposed some conditions on the application but allowed building work to begin.

I am fairly confident that the sudden announcement at Cabinet on Tuesday of a very ill-considered proposal to build a car park on the newly acquired Bath Road site on the other side of the railway tracks played its part in undermining the confidence the committee had in the transport planning of the Arena team. Although it wasn't part of the planning submission it had obvious ramifications and it was hard to see how the two could be separated.

I have always been a big supporter of the plans to have a virtually car-free Arena. This has been pioneered successfully by Cardiff and the Bristol site can only work in this way. It is also very important that the Arena Island provides a good cycle and pedestrian alternative route linking Bath Road to Temple Quarter and East Bristol - the current shared path is absurdly narrow and dangerous. I have lobbied hard for this and we have moved from a position where the Bath Road was being completely ignored to one where we have the potential for a wide walk/cycle way and hopefully a ramp which is open 24 hours a day to wheelchair users and cyclists.

I also have spent a lot of time calling for more information to be made to councillors and residents. We had to fight hard simply to get an ordinary consultation event happen in Totterdown where the Arena is being built!

Hopefully the Arena team will get their act together quickly and satisfy the committee. What I would say is that more consultation at an early stage with residents and their elected representatives would greatly assist in making plans which are robust and workable.

Why Corbynmania is a Win for the Green Party

It's difficult as a Green not to feel a little conflicted about the rise of Jeremy Corbyn. After all the policies he is espousing are pretty much identical in many cases to those the Greens championed during the General Election. Against austerity and fracking; in favour of state ownership of the rail network; cancelling the renewal of Trident; a humane and intelligent response to immigration. Indeed Jeremy's latest soundbite about education is lifted straight from the strapline of the Green Party Manifesto: 'For the Common Good'.

Not only did the Labour Party not stand on this manifesto (far from it), but they also received a lot of votes from the very people who are now excited about Corbyn. Much of this may be due to the electoral system which favours the big parties and the breadth of 'tactical' voting which went on across the country ( in the end to no avail). In Bristol we estimated about 18,000 people may have split their vote, electing Green councillors but 'playing safe' in the national elections, even in seats which were nowhere near marginal such as Bristol East or South.

There is also a wariness in the party that now that Labour's failure to oppose the Tories has been made crystal clear, the people who might have turned finally to the Greens are hanging in with the Labour Party in the hope that Corbyn will be the new leader. It must be true that the Greens are losing out here on potential new members and supporters.

Nonetheless I see the enthusiasm for Corbyn as a success for the Green Party. The Greens (along with the SNP and Plaid Cymru) held the torch of opposition to mainstream neoliberalism and the  austerity programme throughout the General Election. For all the criticism of Natalie Bennett's technique, people on the doorstep told us they liked what she had to say. That torch is - for now- in the hands of a man who might actually be able to set something on fire.

The point of the Green Party is to see its policies implemented. We can achieve this directly through electoral success or through shifting political discourse towards the environmental sustainability and social justice which are our core values. Electoral success and the agenda shift are of course interconnected and voting Green certainly turns the heads of the parties who lose votes in the process. In Bristol City Council the Liberal Democrats demise has co-incided with the Green's rise but the Tories and Labour are also finding it harder to hold their seats.

I am in no way suggesting we should not stand for election. The Green Party is not simply a pressure group. However we have to recognise, with the electoral system we have, that success may not always come in the form of winning seats. Watching a major party shift its position towards our own has to be viewed gladly. After all it is the policy not the party that counts.

Why Suits Don’t Suit Greens

 

In a recent article in the New Statesman, a former Green Party candidate declared that ‘t shirts with slogans and sandals’ were not helpful to the Greens. He was described himself in the article as wearing an ‘immaculate suit’. On the same day the Green MEP, Molly Scott Cato, was photographed wearing a t shirt in the European Parliament, with the slogan ‘No to TTIP’. The Green MP Caroline Lucas made a famous appearance in a No to Page 3 t shirt in the House of Commons in 2013. And, most pointedly, the popular Green political broadcast in the run up to the May election this year was at pains to differentiate the Greens from other parties on this very issue– a quartet of white men in suits was foiled by a more informally dressed young black woman.

So who is right? Should Greens be wearing suits?

Purists might query whether or not it matters what one is wearing – the policies and principles are what counts. However clothes do matter. As sociologists and communication specialists know, clothes convey meaning – they are signs. The suit suggests business, efficiency, competence and leadership. This is why some Greens advocate its use – they believe that it will enhance their credibility and more people will vote accordingly.

There are significant problems with this approach. The suit itself is a masculine affair: women’s suits are evolving but a woman who dresses in the full jacket, trousers and tie sends out quite a different message to that of a man in the same outfit. The Greens pride themselves on gender equality and suit-wearing may put women at an inherent disadvantage.

But there is a deeper problem. The suit is primarily a sign of the middle classes. It is not something you can wear while doing manual work. Class is an issue at the centre of the Green Party and the Green movement. The party already has a middle class image, which may or may not be deserved. Its policies may be ones that benefit the most disadvantaged – environmental destruction affects the poorest the most and austerity is targeting these groups too, but having the right policies does not mean that people trust or feel an affinity with the party.

Of course, wearing jeans and a t shirt does not make you working class and does not automatically engender the trust of the working class (the opposite may be true). But accepting the status quo and donning suits is to accept and reinforce the desirability of being middle class and alongside it the principle that it is only the (male) middle classes who are really capable of leading and managing our economy and society.

Digital Billboards & Green Economics for Tories

‘Advertising on roadside presents a multitude of street-level opportunities, targeting your audience while they are engaged in some form of transportation. OOH International can provide your campaign with enormous opportunities across many roadside advertising mediums. Surfaces such as phone boxes and lamp-posts can be transformed from outdoor furniture into purveyors of your business, with options escalating as far as fully wrapped buildings and motorway trailers.

The commuter of today spends more time out of their home than previously in history, which means that your publicity will be vastly strengthened by a carefully organised plan. As advertising platforms have the possibility of illumination, there is nothing limiting your visibility – from dusk until dawn, your brand can unavoidably walk alongside the public as they engage in their daily journeys.’

This is an extract from Out of Home International’s website – the company which Mayor George Ferguson wants to install digital billboards in Bristol.*

The Greens were mocked in the Bristol City Council meeting today for their opposition to digital billboards. One Conservative declared that he could ‘not understand Green economics’, on the basis that we were against austerity but also against generating income from digital billboards.

I’ll explain it to him.

Green economics arises from the very simple scientific fact that there are finite natural resources on this planet. Using up these resources rapidly – mining, soil degradation, overfishing – creates a poorer world in the long term. In addition all sorts of complications arise from the extracting, processing and disposing that industrial production and consumption incur. We now have climate change and toxic waste on a massive scale as a result of the accelerated consumption of natural resources.

We depend on our environment to continue providing us with the basic physical necessities of life – food, clean water, warmth and shelter. The famous Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has these as the most fundamental.

Advertising exists to promote consumption. It does exactly the opposite of what we need to do. Along the way it creates a host of other problems for mental and social wellbeing, creating discontent and objectification of people, undermining the next tier of Maslow’s pyramid (for some excellent insights see http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ziad-elhady/the-dogma-of-advertising-_b_2540390.html).

What Green economics offers is the idea of investment in wellbeing rather than in growing consumption (which is the basis of GDP orientated economics). We want enrichment of people’s lives – hence we are opposed to an austerity that cuts vital services and the incomes of people who need help. We want investment in technology and systems which minimise and reverse environmental impact. We believe that a fairer taxation system could provide this. We don’t need digital billboards to fund this investment – that would be counter-productive.

The Tory councillor who could not understand Green economics was operating in a paradigm where profit and income generation are thought to be intrinsically good. It is ‘self-evident’ to him that any profit is good profit. This is part of a fantasy culture where consumption can be infinite. Greens are accused of not living in the ‘real’ world; in fact we are the only political movement which fully acknowledges the limitations of the planet.




*It turns out it is a different company with a very similar name. The principle holds however.

Photo Tim Pierce, Creative Commons Licence

Libraries - a Common Good

Bristol, like many towns and cities across the UK, has recently faced the prospect of major cuts to its library services as a result of the central government's programme of austerity. This has included the proposal to close seven community libraries, principally on the basis of the locations and conditions of the buildings which house them.

Marksbury Road Library faced closure a few years ago and is once again on the list of those libraries under threat. While there has been a stay of execution for a further year for the library, it continues to be vulnerable. The 1930s building is old-fashioned and freestanding, without the benefit of being among other services such as shops. One reason cited for its place on the list of proposed library closures is the absence of a toilet.

The Green Party supports public libraries. Up and down the country Greens have been involved in campaigning to keep libraries open. We believe in local public services, in access for everyone to information and imagination through books and the internet. We cannot hope to improve literacy and education without them. Libraries are a vital part of democracy and lifelong learning. Marksbury Road Library in its distinctive building, with its own garden, is a focal point in a place where there is little other community space. The lack of a toilet is not an adequate excuse to close it down.

Bristol Green councillors are working closely with the Mayor to find resources to keep the libraries open. It is a difficult task, because the funding will have to be taken from another area of council activity. What we really need is a government which invests in people via public services and which sees the provision of local libraries as excellent value, engaging people of all ages individually and in groups in learning, as a common good.

MiguelB https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

A Green-leaning woman asked me at a stall today about our immigration policy.

She was concerned about the impact a growing population will have on the countryside.

Unfortunately a growing population will risk creating negative environmental impact wherever it happens. As soil degradation and sea levels increase, the population pressures on the land are going to be greater. The greater the poverty in a region, the greater the risk of conflict. Both contribute to migration.

We need to stop thinking ‘us’ and ‘them’; ‘our’ country and ‘their’country. The essential point of ecology is that the world is a single unit, that what happens in Antartica or Syria or China happens to us all.  We have become accustomed to think of countries and nations, but these are not natural occurrences. When we are concerned about environmental impact we need to think across borders.

At a philosophical level too, every human being is born on Earth and surely has a right to be anywhere on this planet.

As Natalie Bennett, Green Party leader, says over and over, we need to solve the environmental crisis first and foremost. We also need to spread consumption evenly, so that the poor consume a little more and the rich consume a lot less. These two achievements will have a much greater impact on migration than a few laws about who can and can’t cross a particular political border.

The air you and I breath is unhealthy

Met with Jenny O’Donnell a resident in the St John’s Lane area who got in touch concerned that the air quality in her area was unhealthy. 

I walked with Jenny and her young daughter on 24 Feb along their usual early morning route to Victoria Park Primary School taking pollution measurements with a monitor.

We know there is an air pollution problem in Bristol (see today's news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31965769) and in particular along places like St Johns Lane, with its busy, frequently backing up traffic, because we can all smell it, see the vapours and occasionally get a horrible taste of it!

The data we obtained on the route from house to school showed that climate change causing carbon dioxide levels ranged from 420ppm to 480ppm, with an average of 435ppm (pre-industrial levels were 285ppm and the UN originally had a target of keeping levels below 400ppm on average across the globe to limit climate change!).

Carbon Monoxide pollution levels we measured were below the legal limit, ranging from 0 - 6 ppm when the EU limit for an 8 hour average is 8ppm. This is due to more efficient combustion in each new vehicle, with old cars, vans and lorries now far less common on our roads too.

I collected nitrogen dioxide pollution data from the nearest council pollution monitoring station for the same day we took our measurements (24 Feb, 8.30 - 9.00 am), at Parson St just down the road. This data, presented in the graphs here, shows that there is certainly a problem with this pollutant.

One graph (the hourly one, left) shows how the gas builds up at just the time when children are going to school and being picked up. The other graph (the monthly one over a one year period from Feb 2014 to Feb 2015, below left) show that nitrogen dioxide levels easily and frequently and on average exceed the EU limit value of 40 micrograms per cubic metre where Jenny and her daughter live.

This means that on average the gas is persistent in her area and will have health impacts. See

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/air/quality/standards.htm 

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/

http://www.bristol.airqualitydata.com/cgi-bin/introduction.cgi 

http://www.bristol.gov.uk/page/air-quality-bristol

As well as collecting more data over a longer period of time it would have been preferable to be able to collect data on a range of other pollutants, like particulates and ground level ozone and various hydrocarbons, but the council is not monitoring these at Parson St. In fact the existing monitoring stations across the city are threatened with being reduced due to the cuts agenda (we need more data not less!!). 

I'm looking into being able to make some further measurements of our own at the end of March or beginning of April and will report about this. Since nitrogen dioxide pollution is high, on average, it’s likely that particulate pollution is also high on average - and in certain weather conditions ozone levels may become high too.

The data collected was shared by Jenny with Victoria Park School. They may want to talk to other schools in Bristol eg Parson St School at the other end of St Johns Lane about the air pollution problem (if they haven't already).

Greens have campaigned against air pollution in Bristol for over 30 yrs (see newspaper clip from 1989, click to enlarge). I'm  working in particular with Knowle Green Campaigner Glenn Vowles, featured in the clip, and Tony Dyer, Bristol South Green Candidate on air pollution. It’s a big public health issue so it’s important to keep going on it and try to get full and proper pollution monitoring, more walking, more cycling, cheaper, cleaner buses - and bring a cheap/clean ultra light rail system to Bristol to provide alternatives and lessen the need for car use. 

See http://tonydyerforbristolsouth.org.uk/ and http://sustainablecitiessustainableworld.blogspot.co.uk/ - all Greens have air pollution very high on their list of policy priorities.