Category Archives: Politics

December 6, 2021 · 2:46 pm

The government’s plan to ban single-use plastics is too little too late

This article was originally published by Left Foot Forward.

There is a flood of plastic waste entering our rivers and oceans. And we need Government, not just consumers and businesses, to help turn off the taps.

Over the last 20 years we’ve produced more plastic than in the whole of the last century. Global production has increased twentyfold since the 1960s. It is expected to double again over the next 20 years and almost quadruple by 2050.  We now produce over 300 million tonnes every year – up to half of which is single-use. Only 10% has ever been recycled.

This is having a devastating impact. Globally, between 8 – 12 m tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean every year and it is now estimated that more than 150 million tonnes of plastics have accumulated in the world’s oceans.

The recently announced Marine Conservation Society beach clean data starkly tells us that for every 100m of coastline we have an average of 385 pieces of litter – the vast majority of which is plastic.

It is understandable then why many, including ourselves at City to Sea, have welcomed DEFRA’s recent announcement to ban some of the most polluting single-use plastics. Having already banned straws, cotton buds and coffee stirrers, they are now consulting on banning single-use cutlery, plates and polystyrene cups. They declare that this makes them “world-leading”.

Sadly, for our planet, this is far from the truth. What they are proposing is the very bare minimum and does little to answer our concerns about their wider efforts to tackle plastic pollution.

Too late  

In 2019 the EU passed the EU Single-Use Directive which included provision to ban all of these most polluting single-use items. This came into force in July 2021. At this point we had heard nothing from government about their plans and so we launched a petition and dubbed their lack of action a “dereliction of Brexit promises”. After nearly 100,000 signed our petition DEFRA scrambled to announce that they planned to announce a consultation on banning these items.

3 months later – last week – they did finally announce a consultation. To dub this game of policy catch up as “world-leading” is frankly “world misleading”.

And this tardy approach to a very immediate environmental problem has carried on. Despite including positive and welcome measures in the consultation (such as banning harmful bioplastics) they are now not proposing to bring this ban into force until 2023. This is two years behind the rest of Europe and a year later than Scotland’s recently announced proposals.  

We’ve established that this action is too late, but it is, again sadly for our planet, also too little.

Too little

During the Environment Bill we repeatedly challenged Government with cross-party support to introduce a legally binding target to reduce plastic pollution as a whole. We wrote about why this is important for Left Foot Forward. But Government chose to reject this, asserting that they wanted a more ‘ambitions and holistic target’ that deals with all kinds of waste not just plastic.

And so we are left with a big, like an elephant in the room sized big, question. What is government’s over-arching strategy to tackling plastic pollution? Do they have a plan for example for the microplastics from car tyres that are responsible for over 200,000 tonnes of microplastics entering our oceans every year? Do they have a plan for supermarket food wrapping plastics or for plastics flushed down our toilets causing sewage blockages and sewage overspills?

The Environment Act empowers them to use big policy leavers. They can introduce a Deposit Return Scheme, introduce a tax on single-use plastics or forcing greater consistency in recycling standards. But for us to have any confidence in these measures being suitable for the scale of the problem we face, we need Government to commit to ambitious and legally binding targets.

In 2022 they will be setting various ‘waste and resource’ targets – within that needs to be an ambitious target to reduce single-use plastics by at least 50% by 2025. Boris Johnson was right when he said  “we’ve all got to cut down our use of plastic”.

But, and this is important, they also need to explain how they plan to tackle, measure and reduce harmful microplastics that don’t even enter our waste and resource systems. A lot of plastic pollution isn’t plastics we hold in our hands on a day to day basis but it is found in the food we eat, the oceans we swim and even the air we breathe.

No-one ever said this was easy, but if government wants to be seen as ‘world leaders’ these are the policy questions they need to start answering.    

Steve Hynd is Policy Manager at City to Sea, a not-for-profit that campaigns to stop plastic pollution at source.

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July 21, 2021 · 12:28 pm

Plastic pollution; how Britain now trails Europe after ‘Green Brexit’ failure

This article was originally published as an opinion piece for The Yorkshire Post.

Is Britain’s ‘Green Brexit’ falling at the first hurdle? 

Back in 2018 Michael Gove gave a speech declaring “a new era” for our environment. In that speech he categorically said, “we’re planning to go further in dealing with the pollution caused by single use plastics”. Two years on and these promises are starting to ring a little hollow, as the government drags its feet towards the very first hurdle along the route to stop plastic pollution, scratching their heads and idly discussing whether or not they’re going to need a stepladder to get over it.

From July 2021, bans on single-use plastic cutlery, plates, polystyrene trays and other food packaging are coming into force across Europe as part of the EU’s Single-use Plastics Directive. The ban was agreed by the UK when we were part of the EU. It was intended to tackle the most polluting single-use plastics that were also the easiest to replace or do without. In other words, these restrictions are the absolute minimum that the EU expects member states to achieve.

Two years after the ban passed through the EU Institutions, England has yet to even launch a consultation asking if some of these items should be banned – the first step in the legislative process. This stands in marked contrast to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly who have both consulted on a full ban on all of these most polluting items. England is falling behind not just the rest of the EU, but also the other nations within the UK. 

This is why over 20 organisations have written to this government, asking them to take this most basic of steps.

Whilst it is the easy, logical first step in a longer process, it is still a significant move. Packaging from take-away food and drinks is a huge cause of plastic pollution and items like plastic cutlery and take-away containers are consistently in the top ten most polluting items found on beaches around the world. Indeed, new research has revealed that plastic food containers and food wrappers are two of the four most widespread items polluting our oceans, rivers and beaches. 

We also know that a full ban on these items would be popular. At the time of writing a petition by City to Sea and Greenpeace calling for this is just short of 100,000 signatures, days after being launched, and polling consistently shows that plastic pollution is one of the UK public’s biggest environmental concerns.

In response, the government will claim to be a ‘global leader’, pointing to their ban of (some) microbeads, plastic straws, coffee stirrers and cotton buds. But we’re falling behind all of our neighbours in dealing with this problem, and we’re still Europe’s biggest plastic pollution producer. 

A genuinely world leading approach to tackling plastic pollution would be one of the following. Either rapidly adopt the EU measures, and then use the UK’s influential position in this year’s international environmental talks to try to get as many other nations as possible to adopt them as a minimum international standard. Or alternatively, implement fully comprehensive, legally binding limits to plastic pollution to their flagship Environment Bill, showing real leadership and providing a more ambitious model for other nations to follow.

Instead, our government is charting its own course, dipping below international minimum standards at times, while also failing to demonstrate a vision for the way forward. What we have is a government that echoes the language of the plastics industry, talking up the importance of recycling while ignoring the ever growing mountain of plastic that will never be recycled and ends up incinerated, in landfill or exported, damaging other countries’ environments and the health of their people. 

If this government was serious about tackling plastic pollution it could and should immediately look to fully transpose the EU’s Single-Use Plastic Directive into UK law and  lobby for these minimum standards to be adopted internationally. At the same time it could and should be working to introduce legally binding targets to reduce plastic production as part of the Environment Bill. Two UK supermarkets have already pledged to halve their plastic packaging by 2025. The hurdles are all clearable, we just need to aim that little bit higher.

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September 17, 2020 · 3:03 pm

COVID-19 testing “an utter shambles”

Last week my two young children, 1 and 3 years old, came down with a cough – one of the Coronavirus symptoms. As the advice states I tried to get them tested, but the nearest available test centre was over 2 hours drive away in Telford. I drove two ill children for hours to the test site, but when we finally arrived, I was told that the whole site was closed because they’d run out of tests. This was awful in of itself. But this is then what happened next.

I tweeted about that experience and honestly things went a bit crazy for a while.


That tweet was shared nearly 9,000 times and reached over 1.5 million people. Hugh Grant shared it. And then Piers Morgan shared it as well. And this was when I got the call from Good Morning Britain asking if I wanted to come onto the show the next morning.

It was very, very, wet in the part of mid-Wales I was staying.

But from here things went really wild. I was getting a dozen answer phone messages every hour from producers and more replies to my tweet than I could read. It had the potential to swallow my whole day when my kids were ill and I was meant to be on holiday. So I agreed with my wife that I would limit it all to a few hours after which I would then go back and be with my ill kids. In that time I spoke to the BBC, ITV News, Sky News, C5 News, the i paper, LBC, Heart FM and more in back to back interviews. In retrospect those few hours were all a bit of a blur.

To my surprise, GMB asked if I would then go back on to give an update the next morning. There were still no tests available (I was offered one near Liverpool first thing which we decided not to take) and the problem across the country only seemed to be getting worse.

What was I hoping to achieve? Well when I posted about my experience on social media and parents, carers and key workers up and down the country got in touch with me to share their experiences. None of them were good. I had an opportunity to speak up for people who were being let down by incompetence and a failing system.

I also mentioned the experience my Dad’s care home had. How they worked in a vacuum of information as they lost residents to coronavirus. I wanted to say – to anyone who would listen – that this incompetence costs lives. I wanted to be able to say to those in power how this was affecting ordinary people day in, day out.

Right now we could and should have a functioning testing and track and trace system in place. This government, this Prime Minister and his health secretary, need to take responsibility for this. Without responsibility being taken, public faith in the programme will continue to diminish. The main take-away from the existing evidence is that you NEED public confidence to ensure compliance.

Instead, people’s lived experience is that of frantically trying to book a test, only to find that there’s none – some have been told to drive 500 miles to the nearest test centre. Essential workers staying home, patients having operations cancelled and students and staff stopped from attending school – simply because they cannot get a test.

This just diminishes faith, not only in government, but in the importance of complying with the testing programme in general. I just can’t get my head round how the PM and his ministers do not see this as a failing they should be taking responsibility for. The Government’s ‘world leading’ testing system is in utter chaos and all they tell us is that they are ‘shooting for the moon’. As the British Medical Journal (BMJ) writes:

“England’s performance in implementing a routine test, trace, and isolate programme doesn’t inspire confidence for upscaling to a moonshot. Missed targets, misleading “facts,” slow results, and false bravado are everyday occurrences.3 Lucrative contracts are awarded to private companies by opaque processes, while money for patients is squeezed, as Helen Salisbury points out.4 All this without accountability or apology for mistakes and missteps.“

This is deadly serious. The number of weekly coronavirus cases in Europe topped 300,000 last week – higher than during the first peak in March. More lives are being put at risk.

That’s why I’m calling on Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson to take responsibility and urgently sort this mess out. And this is why I set up this Change.org petition. If government is willing to listen, the discontent at the metaphorical school gates is loud and easy to hear. Listening now is the first step to recovery and their only path to align themselves with the mood of the country. If they don’t do this they will loose the public and their track and trace system is destined for further failure.

This is a cost too high for all of us. If you can please do sign and share it.


Update: Here is Jacob Rees Mogg in the Commons today illustrating my concern about how out of touch this government seems to be:

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April 26, 2020 · 7:30 am

More than just part of the coronavirus tragedy

At the time of writing, 20,319 people have died in hospitals in the UK of coronavirus. If you include all those who have died in care homes and in the community, the total number is estimated to be over 45,000. No one knows exactly how many more will die.

At 3:15 this morning, just over an hour ago, my Dad died in Gloucester hospital and was added to this growing and harrowing statistic.

The magnitude of the coronavirus is hard to fathom. There are close to 3 million confirmed cases globally with a death toll close to 200,000. Cases have been confirmed in over 190 countries around the world. It has, rightly, dominated headlines and headspace for months now.

Dad and Mum on holiday in the Isles of Scilly in 2006

It is in this context that the magnitude of my Dad’s life now sits. While my family and I come to terms with this personal loss, I worry about his life being lost in this context. As the virus and its deadly impacts rage on, I see how people focus on this and might, unwittingly, reduce all that he was and is, to the statistical part he played since his covid diagnosis just over a week ago.

I think my initial reaction, as I fail to get back to sleep lying here listening to the unfathomably loud birdsong outside, is that it is this that bothers me most. I have long since been at peace with the idea of my Dad dying – I am not at peace with his life being reduced to a statistic that reflects nothing more than part of this last awful week and the part he played in this wider tragedy.

But strangely today I think I see things differently to yesterday – almost like in death there has been a strange form of liberation. Dad is no longer the stroke patient, the care home resident with worsening vascular dementia or even the latest vulnerable man to be diagnosed with coronavirus. He is no longer any of those things – at least not primarily. Instead, he is now the plethora of memories floating in the minds of eyes of the countless people and lives he touched.

For me, he remains the Dad that showed his love through actions. He enabled me to believe that I could do anything. He drove me both literally and metaphorically to take every opportunity that arose. So much of where I am today is because I started life stood on the shoulders of a giant of a man. A giant with a heart bursting with love who held so little of the vocabulary needed to express it. In my mind’s eye now there are not the words he spoke to me, but the image of the man who stood on the side of my metaphorical football pitch cheering me on every step of the way.

But this is just me. Elsewhere, as the news of my Dad’s death spreads, there will be people reflecting. Sat now watching the sun rise I like to think that as the toast pops in kitchens all over the country there will be people thinking of the man who started his own business and employed dozens of people. As kettles boil there will be thoughts of the man who volunteered to rebuild steam railways. As people head out to walk their dogs there will be anecdotes of the Scot who would always toast the haggis. As people walk out of the door there will be thoughts of him, my Dad, holding the church door open welcoming everyone in… Thinking now, if there is one act of kindness that best acts as a metaphor for my Dad it is perhaps holding the door open for others.

And then there is the family of mine, of his, who are all mourning him in their own ways. But who I hope are thinking of their Dad, Uncle, Brother who has played such a role in their lives over the last 80 years.

And that’s the other thing – 80 years is a really long time. And so much has happened in his life. It cheers me now as the colours take hold on the trees outside and the shades of the night-time grey slip away to think of the multitude of ways he has touched countless lives over the years and how they live on. The love he has left behind stands as a testimony to him, to the lives he touched. All that he was, and all that he is, is still in the hearts and minds of all those who knew him. He lives on through a thousand anecdotes, memories and personalities he has shaped with his love and kind actions. He lives on through his children and his grandchildren but also through every person who takes joy in riding the steam railway he helped restore.

For me, there is so much beauty in that.

The scale of deaths we are seeing from coronavirus are a tragedy. But I think this tragedy only ever makes sense if you understand it to be the sum of its part. When we talk of over 45,000 deaths in the UK, the magnitude of this can only resonate if you break it down to the individuals we have lost and the impact their lives have had on family, friends and the communities we all live in.

The zest for life my Dad held lives on through all of us that remember him for the man he was over those 80 years. No amount of his own death or others will ever, or can ever, diminish that.

This morning the sun is up and so am I. And this morning I’m going to put twice as much butter and marmalade on my toast as normal and smile the way Dad did each morning he did this. Because you know what, there is a lot to be said for the simple pleasures in life – my Dad taught me that.

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November 5, 2018 · 2:56 pm

Podcast: Brexit, Climate Crisis and The Green Party

I recently had the pleasure of talking to the good folk at The Big Green Politics Podcast. If you are in the small group of people who don’t feel that you hear me voice my opinions enough then you can listen again below.

Do follow the podcast – they offer an interesting international alternative take on the big (Green!) issues of our day. Previous episodes available here >>> and follow them on twitter here >>>

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April 27, 2018 · 6:58 pm

This is what happens when no political energy is put into Bristol Energy

This article was published on Bristol24/7.

bristol energy 2.jpg

Picture this. An energy company to challenge the big six. A company that puts its profits back into Bristol rather than the back pocket of its shareholders. A company that sees the city’s most vulnerable as those it most needs to help, not an opportunity to exploit for marginal profits. A company set up and is wholly owned by the council but is given an arm’s length structure to be able to operate commercially. An energy company that makes international headlines by working locally to turn local sewage into gas to then heat thousands of local homes.

This is a vision for Bristol that won plaudits internationally. Bristol was seen as a leader in creative thinking and potential answers to the impossible austerity question posed by successive governments: could a council raise crucial revenue through private council-owned companies while at the same time tackling the core issues like poverty and climate change?

This is a question that today I fear we may never know the answer to. When you have an idea that is this ambitious, this trailblazing, this bold, you need to throw your whole weight behind it. You need unequivocal political support. You need political leadership.

Bristol energy
Today we heard the devastatingly sad news that Bristol Energy will no longer supply the city council – its whole owner – which is switching to a British Gas, one of the ‘Big Six’ energy companies. The current Labour administration who made this decision will tell us that they are “obliged to competitively tender our utility contracts” and this is of course, partially, true.

But as Eleanor Combley, the leader of the Green Councillors said today, “Just a few months ago Full Council voted through an updated policy on social value, committing to promote our local economy and environmental sustainability in the Council’s procurement rules”. Despite this, the Council have now chosen one of the Big Six over their own company to supply their energy.

Combley hits the metaphorical nail on the head when she says, “value for money isn’t just about choosing what is cheapest”.

I have no doubt that in the regimented form filling nature of council procurement British Gas ticked more boxes. But this move is the antithesis to the bold alternative vision outlined at the start of this article. It is a regressive move that will see Bristol tax payer’s money going not to the city but to the shareholders in British Gas. It will see our money going to a company that thrives on charging more to the poorest rather than one whose core aim is to support them.

This in and of itself is worrying. But when framed in the context of the choppy seas of cuts to local councils it becomes deeply worrying. What vision does this administration have for steering us as a city through these devastating cuts? Millions are being stripped from council front-line services in short-term budget-balancing moves but the lack of long-term action coming from the Mayor’s Office is deafening. Bristol wants to know if this administration is bold enough in their remaining 2 years to think big and deliver on projects to take forward the anti-austerity vision that it supposedly stands for.

Today’s news that the Council isn’t standing by its own energy company strongly suggests this administration isn’t.

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October 25, 2016 · 3:23 pm

How you can help the unaccompanied child refugees in Calais

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On our doorstep, just two dozen miles from the British coast, is a refugee camp that is being demolished leaving people in the most desperate conditions. There are hundreds of children in these camps, many of whom have a legal right to be in the UK. Due to feet dragging, legal technicalities and lack of political will, their temporary shelters are being demolished and they are being left exposed having to fight not just for their rights, but their very survival.

In the next week or two this camp will be fully demolished. Unless our government acts, unless we act, many of these accompanied children will more than likely just go missing and disappear. This happened before, it is likely to happen again. The thought of the exploitation they will likely face should this happen should be enough to inspire us all into action.

Last week I went with the MEP, Molly Scott Cato, who I work with and visited the camp and met with some of the refugees and volunteers. What I saw was the end result of an uncaring and uninterested government. It was simply awful. A policy to do nothing left vulnerable people with nothing. I saw no government representation, no officials offering support, only volunteers where government agencies should have been.

It is worth noting, that the refugee camp in Calais is not, and never was, actually a refugee camp but just a makeshift camp with refugees in. This distinction is important. The former implies order and support and the latter implies disorder and little sufficient support.

Our government’s limited response to this is in the last few days is shameful. At the last minute they generously offer to accept a fraction of the children they are obliged to support. Too little too late. For too long they have been focusing on building a hugely expensive “security wall”.  Perhaps a wall fits better with this governments fortress Britain mentality, but does little to support the children living in the camp. This whole time, rather than resorting too counterproductive Trump-esque style tactics, the British Government could have been registering the children identified to them by NGOs in the camps, to stop them risking their lives trying to get to the UK illegally.

We now face a ticking clock while the camp is demolished. To stop children disappearing, the UK government must step up and process all children with a legal right to be here. This is either through the Dublin III Regulation which entitles them to be reunited with family members living in the UK or under the Alf Dubs amendment which is supposed to bring the most vulnerable unaccompanied children in Europe to safety in the UK.

There are of course children there who don’t have a legal right to be in the UK and for some it may not be in their best interests to come here anyway. For those the UK government needs to be pushing the French authorities to do more in providing reception facilities to these children so they can go through the appropriate asylum process in France.

Whilst in the camp I heard reports of children being turned away by French authorities when they tried to register to claim asylum. Worse still, I also heard numerous reports of excessive use of violence from the French police. Volunteers talked to me about rubber bullets and tear gas being fired directly into groups leaving some minors with serious injuries.

History will judge our own and the French government’s actions and inaction poorly.

This government behaviour has, to some extent, been mitigated against by an army of volunteers that should be highly commended. Until government steps up to its legal and moral reasonability the goodwill of you, I and volunteers is all some have at the moment. If you have not already I urge you to write to your local MP urging government to act urgently. This cannot wait. There is a sample letter here but more powerfully, you can explain why this is important to you in your own words. Secondly, if you can afford to, please send phone credit to the refugees in the camps. This is crucial all the time but even more so during the up-coming demolition. Lastly, if you have time, volunteer either in the UK or the camps yourself.

This is a moral crisis. Primarily a crisis of government but one that touches on each of us. As Dr Seuss said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.”

I doubt many in government have read Dr Seuss. But you have, so please act.

 

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June 20, 2016 · 3:30 pm

I want my country’s confidence back

Mo Farah - Jon Connell Fickr

Picture by Jon Connell – Flickr

“I want my country back…”

This is the lazy rhetoric of the Leave campaign. I want my country back…from what, or to when, seem to be questions they are unable or unwilling to answer.

But I think I can though, so here goes.

More than anything I want my country back from the recent poisonous rhetoric of the Leave campaign. When did it become OK in this country to produce political videos depicting refugees as “vicious snakes”? At what point did it become OK to produce political videos that depict a women being raped by a political entity? At what point did it become OK to produce posters so dehumanising, degrading and despicable that they are compared to Nazi propaganda – by the Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer?

I want this to stop. This isn’t the politics of a country that I am proud of. This is the politics of the gutter.

It hasn’t always been like this though. And that’s what I want my country to return to. Metaphorically speaking, I want my country back to that balmy summer of 2012 when the country came together around the Olympic Games to celebrate our role in the international community.

Do you remember it? Kids playing in the street, spontaneous acts of kindness, citizen ambassadors? I remember the image of Mo Farah flying the Union Jack and how it became a symbol of our nation: confident, energetic, multi-cultural, welcoming, high achieving.

After that incredible summer of the 2012 Olympic Games a study was done to explore what impact it had on our international standing. The results were clear, people from around the world saw us Brits as more “distinctive, daring, charming, energetic, trendy and authentic”.

The world came to us and we embraced them confident open arms.

Skip forward 4 years and we seem have retreated further into ourselves. Without the same confidence we have half-turned our back on our neighbours, arms crossed, protective.

So how do we get our country back to that outward looking, confident country we were all so proud to be part of?

I can tell you it is not going to come from either the mainstream Leave or Remain fear based campaigns. While the Leave camp are hell bent on dog whistling on immigration, the Remain record is stuck on the question of “what if” we leave.

I want to be asking a different question. I want to be asking what it is about the EU that has secured peace for decades, secured a higher quality of environment and worker protections. And, significantly, what was the role of the UK in that process?

When we start to dig deeper we can find a proud history. One that stretches from Churchill’s post-war vision to our leadership through the EU in tackling climate change, promoting human rights, and exporting democracy. A role in the UK plays in the EU that we can be really proud of.

This is what we must be focused on and, crucially, asking how can we look to build on these successes?

I will be voting Remain on Thursday not out of fear but because I want my country’s confidence back. I want us to reclaim that outward facing, confident and positive feeling that gripped us back in 2012. I want us to be leading not leaving the EU. I want us to remain a positive, confident, tolerant country.

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March 31, 2016 · 6:24 pm

In memory of Douglas Nicol – former Bath Councillor

Douglas Nicol was a man who greeted with back slaps, booming smiles and sparking eyes but it was the way he gifted the most subtle of kindness that I will remember him by.

I first met him when working for Don Foster MP in Bath and Douglas was a newly elected councillor. He was as hard working a councillor as he was insistent that I join him in the pub after a day’s work. It is a memory of one of these such occasions that resonates as my main memory of him and what I wanted to share now after hearing of his death.

We were walking through the centre of Bath towards the sort of pub you have to duck through the doorway to get into – all low ceilings and eccentric locals. We were going to meet some of Doug’s friends to watch the rugby and enjoy a few beers, perhaps two of the things he enjoyed the most.

Douglas knew me reasonably well by this point and he also knew that at this time I had less than little money. As we walked Doug stopped to get money from a cash machine and handed me a £20 note. I looked quizzically at the note and then him. With sparkling eyes he said it was so I could buy his mates the first round of beers. The only way he insisted, to introduce yourself to his friends.

Everyone, myself included, would have thought Douglas a top guy if he had gone to the bar and paid for a round for me. But this small act which was more about enabling friendships than anything else optimised his endless thoughtful and unassuming kindness.

This anecdote could have been pulled from hundreds of different examples of his kindness. Someone who didn’t spend enough time with Douglas (or someone who had spent too much time with him) might have missed these small acts, but they were littered into his day to day life, into his actions as a councillor and into the very way in which he approached people.

I am sure he will be missed by many. RIP mate.

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March 24, 2016 · 8:43 am

Be outraged! Manchester nightclub hosting ‘free midget’ night

Today I was alerted to the Restricted Growth Association’s Change.org petition calling on the Oxford Club in Manchester to reconsider its decision to host a ‘free midget night’.

I will copy here the reason I wrote for signing the petition so you know why it’s important to me.

“Everyday people with restricted growth get both physical and verbal abuse thrown at them. Part of why this happens is because of a culture that doesn’t value them but instead sees them as entertainment, a point of comedy, a thing for the rest of the world’s pleasure. It is in this mind-set that people think it acceptable to pick dwarfs up, to try and balance a pint of beer on their heads, or in this case, host a “midget night” in an entertainment venue.

Just imagine if those things happened to any other minority? There would be outrage…I am signing this petition because I think there both should be and needs to be outrage in the scenario, please also sign and share this petition.” Continue reading →

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October 23, 2015 · 11:08 am

The memory of ‘mischief’

MischiefI’d never buried a photo before. I was expecting it to feel awkward, odd even. Burying photographs was, in my mind at least, the past-time of the melodramatic.

But on this overcast autumnal Thursday morning it didn’t feel odd. It felt completely normal, completely natural, and as I found out, remarkably in common with others who have suffered the loss of miscarriage.

To understand how my wife and I got here I need to talk about a few months ago and the joyful surprise shock of finding out she was pregnant. It was certainly a surprise, but a very welcome one. The prospect of becoming first time parents is as exciting as it is utterly daunting. It is the sort of exciting that sits deep in your belly far away from the rationality of your mind.

Immediately however we were given words of caution. The pain in her gut we were told might be a sign of an ectopic pregnancy (we now think it was actually a symptom of endometriosis – a condition impacting around 2 million women in the UK alone and yet remains one of our societies many unspoken taboos).

There were however weeks, after which the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy was dismissed, where we could see a new life embedded into the womb, living, offering the promise of all that life could lay ahead of it.

There was one particular moment. A moment when my heart skipped a beat, when my life seemed to freeze for a second, when this gloop of cells that we had affectionately started referring to as ‘mischief’ showed a heartbeat, perhaps the most definitive sign of life. It is this moment that is both etched into my mind’s eye and also the one that is now printed on a piece of photographic paper decomposing in compost under an array of flowers.

As soon as we suspected a miscarriage was a possibility, my wife and I talked of a need we both felt to plant something, to grow something, to have something to mark this oh so sad possibility. At the time though I thought this was just us – something that said more about my wife and me than about the experience we were going through. It turns out however that this is remarkably common.

One of the wonderful staff at the hospital who talked to us with the patience and understanding that we needed gently dropped into conversation that decades earlier she had planted a tree. Her main reflection now is that she worries she wouldn’t be able to take it with her if she were ever to move house.

The hospital staff also gave us the compassionately crafted NHS literature on miscarriage which has a whole section on the prospect of burying something to mark the loss and that many also marked this by planting something nearby.

And so this is how we found ourselves folding a small photo of a gloop of mischief and placing it down into pot of moist compost. Mischief was measured in millimetres but sits with a magnitude hard to explain in our hearts. I can’t explain why but it feels right knowing that mischief is buried deep in moist compost surrounded by bulbs of snowdrops, daffodils and bluebells with a medley of late summer flowers sitting on top like a multi-coloured crown.

This is just my reflection of something that has happened to my wife and I, but one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage – which left me thinking how I had lived three decades of my life without hearing someone talk about it. I hope that if someone who has experienced a miscarriage reads this that they feel reassured that they are not alone.

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March 30, 2015 · 1:56 pm

Elections 2015 – a mug’s game

Campaigns are brewing in the lead up to the General Election 2015. Have a look at these two mugs produced by the Labour Party and the Green Party respectively:

controls on immigration

In the age of easy photo editing I checked the best I could to make sure this wasn’t a spoof. Apparently it isn’t.

This is what politics in the UK is reduced to – a mug’s game!

 

Update – some asked how I knew this wasn’t a spoof. I don’t know for sure but they both seem to have the product up on their websites (you can purchase either mug from here (Labour) or here (Green)) and I even asked a sitting (Lib Dem) MP (see here).

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February 19, 2015 · 11:04 am

Bristol City Council commits to go fossil fuel free

disinvestment
Bristol City Council has committed to go fossil fuel free! Or, more specifically, to not knowingly invest funds into companies whose primary business is fossil fuel extraction.

Despite the fact that Bristol City Council, to the best of my knowledge, doesn’t currently hold any direct investments in fossil fuels anyway is beside the point. The entrenching of an ethical investment policy by a public institution is more about the potential to raise people’s awareness as it about ensuring that the Council will not fund the industries that are, at least in part, responsible for the dangers facing us and our planet due to climate change.

In short, I think this news is huge and really exciting.

And yet strangely the up-take of this news has been limited.

Bristol’s Mayor, George Ferguson, tweeted it to his 27,000 followers, there was a mention in passing in the Guardian and the campaign group pushing for fossil fuel disinvestment wrote a short blog!

That combined with an excited text message from my friend (incidentally I love that I have friends who get excited about fossil fuel disinvestment) seems to be the only ripples this news has had.

Even Bristol Greens, who played a significant part in securing this, seemed to be oddly quiet having published a general article on disinvestment last Friday that makes no mention of this exciting news coming from Bristol!

I think it only fair that a hat tip goes to Green Party Cllr Charlie Bolton who tabled a question at January’s member’s forum that led to the amendment of Bristol County Council’s ‘Ethical Investment Policy’.

On a related note, I am delighted that another organisation that at some point deemed me employable, the Quakers of Britain, have been really vocal during the recent ‘disinvestment events’ and have adopted an awesome position on the subject:

“Friends have discerned that investment in these companies is incompatible with a commitment made by Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) to become a low-carbon, sustainable community.”

Quakers are once again leading the way showing the role religious institutions can play in ethical investment, as Bristol is for local authorities.

As I say, I think these are some of the first pretty exciting yet tentative steps in tackling the entrenched carbon intensive norm that currently operates within our society.

You can read more about Quaker’s disinvestment here and more about Bristol’s disinvestment here.

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February 13, 2015 · 7:14 pm

Why the recent silence on Hynd’s Blog?

The observant amongst you would have noticed a near unprecedented month’s silence on Hynd’s blog. What can I say other than sorry?

Well lots…I can give you an explanation and my plan ahead.

In the last month I have packed my bags and left Uganda, meandered my way through East Africa and ended back here in the place I will always think of as home, the West Country of England. Specifically I am in Bristol (aka Brizzle).

And what brings me back to these wet and windy shores I hear you ask? Well…politics of course!

I have accepted a job as (and this is a job title that I cringe at slightly) ‘Head of Mayor’s Office’ in Bristol City Council with the independent Mayor, George Ferguson. More about this in a second – promise.

This last month’s virtual silence has been filled with a whirlwind of activity including climbing Mt Kenya, Africa’s 2nd highest peak (after a particularly severe bout of food poising), a 32 hour train ride between Nairobi and Mombasa (an “experience”), packing and unpacking houses back in the UK and now, finally, the completion of my first week in my new job.

Never has the phrase ‘no rest for the wicked’ been more apt.

While much of the above adventures could have been something to blog about in itself I simply have not had the time sat in front of a computer to translate experiences into blogs – let alone to keep up my near obsessive following of British politics that formulates itself into so much of the content.

What can I say other than sorry?

Oh yes – the plan ahead…

Working for the Mayor means that I will have to make a few shifts in how Hynd’s Blog operates. Firstly, I think it is important to say that I can’t be quite as impartial as I was before. I have always written things as I have seen them – laying praise on those I thought deserved it and criticising actions that I thought deserved criticism. Although the Mayor is an independent he (and by extension I) have to work across the political spectrum. This means trying my hardest to not piss people off (the anti-thesis to some bloggers’ objective). This means at times holding my virtual tongue.

Secondly it is to say that if my first week in the job is anything to judge life by, I am now working in many of the hours that I have traditionally set aside for blogging. Even when in full-time employment before I have always found occasional lunch-times, breaks and after work hours to smash my opinion into the keyboard. Lunch-meetings and evening functions make it look like this will be quite hard to keep going. This means less regular blogs.

But on the positive side this new position exposes me to a whole word of fascinating progressive projects and politics that I am sure I can and will take great pleasure in sharing, analysing and responding to. Just today I have visited the incredible Knowle DGE school in south Bristol (an amazing school for kids with – very different special needs), Elm Tree Farm (a super impressive social enterprise) and this evening I will be heading to Bristol Youth Mayor’s election results.

I hope you will be as interested in reading about these sorts of things as I will be to keep writing.

And so the coming months will see Hynd’s Blog take a less regular format but one that I hope will still inspire people to come back and read, respond and share the content of Hynd’s Blog.

I am as passionate as ever….just busy!

Oh, and as always, if anyone’s is interesting in blogging on a subject to thousands of readers then please do read the ‘Contribute’ page.

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January 14, 2015 · 1:19 pm

What is a ‘major political party’? Greens to overtake UKIP in membership size

leaders
It is expected that in the coming weeks the Green Party will become the fifth largest political party in the UK by overtaking UKIP in terms of membership.

According to new figures collected by Adam Ramsay at Open Democracy, the Green Party are now just a few hundred members short of UKIP and a few thousand short of the Liberal Democrats.

Labour  190,000
Tory  149,800
SNP 92,000
Lib Dems 44,576
UKIP 41,514
Greens 40,879
Plaid  8000
BNP  500

This latest twist in membership size will only add weight to those who are calling for the Green Party to be included in the TV leaders debates. What would constitute a ‘major party’ (what Ofcom deems them not to be) if it is not more members than UKIP, beating Lib Dems in some polls and getting more votes and MEPs than the Lib Dems in May’s European Elections?

Of course, the political elephant in this very Westminster room is the SNP that currently have roughly double the membership of the Lib Dems and are being tipped by some to wipe out Labour in Scotland.

Are the SNP not a ‘major party’ in UK politics?

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January 13, 2015 · 11:01 am

The time is now for young people to revolutionize British politics

The Green Party of England and Wales have huge support among young voters. The problem for the Greens is that it is traditionally these young voters who do not make it to the ballot box.

YouGov

22% of 18-24 year old voters recently told YouGov that they plan to vote for the Greens. That is the same figure as those who intend to vote Tory, 50% more than those who intend to vote UKIP and more than four times those who plan to vote Lib Dem.

The obvious problem for the Green Party is that these voters, who they are so popular among, are also traditionally the ones who fail to make it to the ballot box on polling day.

Indeed in the 2010 General Election less than half of young voters eligible to vote took up the opportunity. One poll suggested that 60% of the UK’s 3.3 million first time voters in 2105 will not vote.

In contrast, about 70% of over 65s will vote.

If young people voted in similar proportions to the older generations our political landscape would look very different to the tired two-party-politics we see today.

The fact that young people don’t vote in large numbers is depressing not just for Green Party activists but also for our democracy in general.

From this I take a simple message. If you are looking for a pragmatic, realistic and effective way of revolutionizing how we do politics in the UK, you could find worse ideas than supporting initiatives that encourage youth engagement.

There are various movements and campaigns around but the one that seems to making the difference this time around is ‘Bite the Ballot‘. They have done an online Q and A with each of the party leaders (you can watch them here), placed young people in the heart of our local government, and pushed for wide-spread voter registration.

In short, I think they are doing important work at an important time.

If you want, you can follow ‘Bite the Ballot’ on twitter by clicking here. You can also donate to their work by clicking here.

Supporting initiatives like these should draw cross-party support. Greens and Labour might have the most to gain tactically from better democratic engagement with young people, but ultimately we will all benefit from a healthier democracy.

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January 12, 2015 · 11:39 am

Tell Cameron and Obama to let Shaker Aamer home to his family

Shaker AI
If you, the wonderful reader of Hynd’s Blog, have a spare 30 seconds I would urge you to support an issue close to my heart. Click here to sign the Amnesty International petition calling for the release or trial of Shaker Aamer, the one remaining British resident in Guantanamo Bay.

The petition simply calls for Obama and Cameron to:

  • Secure the release of Shaker Aamer and return him to the UK without delay, if he is not to be charged and brought to fair trial
  • Give Shaker Aamer immediate and regular access to independent medical assessments and care
  • Immediately investigate all allegations that Shaker Aamer has been subjected to torture and other ill-treatment and ensure that anyone found responsible is brought to justice

I, alongside 12,860 people have already signed this petition. Please join us. Then please do also encourage friends and family to do the same.

Together we can raise a voice loud enough that will force the authorities to listen.

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January 12, 2015 · 9:54 am

Awesome cartoon column from Cheltenham MP, Martin Horwood

A hat tip to Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood and the local rag The Echo for publishing this cartoon column in light of the attacks in Paris last week.

Jan2015_MartinHorwood_JesuisCharlie 1
Jan2015_MartinHorwood_JesuisCharlie2

 

Nice to see a MP thinking creatively about how to communicate important messages around freedom of speech and thought

 

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January 7, 2015 · 10:58 am

Green Party Deputy Leader to take on Labour Party Deputy Leader at General Election

Amelia Womack

In a small quirky twist of British politics the Green Party today announced that their Deputy Leader, Amelia Womack, will be standing at the General Election in Camberwell and Peckham against Labour’s Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman.

Womack, who previously unsuccessfully stood to become a MEP and local cllr, was elected Deputy Leader last September. She holds a BSc in Environmental Biology and an MSc in Environmental Technology.

Harman was elected MP for Camberwell and Peckham in 2010 with a huge 59.2% of the vote. The Greens stood the high profile London AM Jenny Jones in 2010 and received just 2.9% of the vote.

Although unlikely to win, or even stop Harriet Harman from being returned to parliament, Womack might well preside over a significant increase in the Green vote in the constituency as large amounts of the 22.4% of Lib Dem votes will be up for grabs.

The challenge for Labour will be to pick up enough of the former Lib Dem votes to stop a significant rise in the Green support that might place them as an awkward and credible threat for future elections.

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January 6, 2015 · 9:40 am

Labour lead but support dropping as Greens continue to grow

The Labour Party Hold Their Annual Party Conference - Day 5

Ed Miliband has every reason to be looking glum as despite seeing Labour leading in the polls he has hit an all time low in personal ratings and his party has dropped support throughout 2014. 

To support their latest polling, YouGov have produced this neat little chart that tracks voting intention over the last three months.

3 month voting intention
Some in the Labour Party have got all excited that, despite those embarrassing glitches in December, this poll shows them ahead of Conservatives. The Green Party are also delighted that, once again, this poll shows them ahead of the Lib Dems.

The problem for the Labour Party though is illustrated in this other YouGov chart which looks further back at voting intentions across 2014.

voting intention 2014

Here we can see the long-term trend of Labour support dropping throughout 2014.

What is equally interesting is how this drop in support for Labour correlates with Miliband hitting an all time low with his popularity ratings. Is Labour’s drop in the polls a reflection of Miliband’s all time unpopularity, or vice-versa? A chicken and egg question.

Miliband

And so the question remains – where are these Labour supporters from the early coalition years going? And thus we move onto the relative growth of the Greens.

YouGov paints a nice picture of Green Party support consistently growing through 2014 which resulted in YouGov proclaiming ‘Greens ahead of Lib Dems in longer trend‘ in an article in December 2014.

While Greens are only picking up about about 4% of the 2010 Labour vote two additional points have to be made:

1) Labour dropping another 4% from their 2010 low point to the Greens is significant.
2) Labour, in the last year, have continued to drop in popularity when, while in opposition, they should be riding high on anti-government sentiment – they are not.

Before Green readers get too excited though it is worth pointing out that this growth in support is unlikely to result in any additional seats. In Norwich South (feasibly the Green’s second target) a Lord Ashcroft poll showed them doing well but considerably behind Labour.

As with many seats, the battle to pick up former Lib Dem voters between the Greens and Labour may well prove crucial.

The General Election in 2015 will bring more of the same in terms of overall outcome but it might, just might, also go down in history as the start of the breakdown of two party politics.

 

 

 

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