Category Archives: Politics

December 7, 2022 · 11:13 am

For fork’s sake: A whole ‘year of inaction’

This article was originally published on Green World.

Stood alongside colleagues from Greenpeace and 38 Degrees on the steps of 10 Downing Street, I held onto the giant cardboard cutlery that held our campaign City to Sea slogan: #CutTheCutlery. Our ask was simple, for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to ban the most polluting single-use items, like plastic cutlery – just like they have done in every other country in Europe. 

We were there to hand in our petition – which received over 118,000 signatures – to mark the end of the Defra consultation. We had coordinated over 50,000 people to respond to the consultation response. At one point over the Christmas period, we got a slightly panicked phone call from Defra saying they weren’t used to so many responses. So, we summarised it all for them and the findings were clear. 

Steve Hynd and campaigners outside 10 Downing St

Image credit: City to Sea, Greenpeace 

Most respondents backed a ban on all the items being considered – such as cutlery, plates and polystyrene food containers – with support at 96 per cent or above across the board. Crucially, almost two-thirds (64 per cent) said the ban should kick in sooner than the Government’s April 2023 start date, with 35 per cent agreeing with the proposed date. Just 2 per cent said it should be later. 

Importantly, 61 per cent also said that bio-based, compostable and biodegradable plastics should also be banned – something that the campaigners have dubbed ‘critical’ for tackling plastic pollution. The wide-scale use of material substitutes such as bioplastics should be regarded with caution. Bioplastics can be harmful to the environment and won’t shift people or companies away from a culture of throwaway packaging. 

This all seems like a long time ago now. Boris Johnson was still Prime Minister. And I assumed that when the consultation was closed Defra would work through the data, publish a summary and then get to work on their stated timeline for delivery (something which we already said was too slow). Instead, we’ve had a year of inaction – literally nothing. 

I can’t stress this next point enough. The overlapping plastic and climate crises demand action, urgently. Globally, between 8 – 12 m tonnes of plastics leak into the ocean every year and this is likely rising as plastic production from the biggest polluters also keeps on rising. Plastic production has continued to spiral widely out of control (as have the number of Defra ministers supposedly responsible for this!) and we simply can’t wait any longer to introduce these hugely uncontroversial basic first steps.  

England now stands as the only country in Europe without legislation in place to ban polluting single-use plastics such as plastic plates, cutlery and expanded and extruded polystyrene cups and food containers. As I’ve said before, this lack of action is a ‘dereliction of Brexit promises’ and also a dereliction of duty to our natural world.  

In the meantime, Scotland has introduced a law banning these items and Wales has published its draft legislation to do the same. 

This stands in contrast to the origins of these measures. If we think back to the heady days of our membership in the European Union we will see how our political representatives played a key role in agreeing on the EU Sigle-Use Plastics Directive. And for a short time, it looked like the UK was making a concerted effort to be keeping up with these standards. In October 2020 the UK banned some of the same items like plastic straws. 

But alas, that was the last significant shift in this policy space directly looking to reduce the amount of plastic we produce and consume (why all the noise around recycling is a red herring is another article for another day). And that’s why we have once again gone to the media to demand action. And it is why we also need you to join us in our calls. 

If you’ve not already done so, contact your MP asking them the very simple question: “Why has this government not banned polluting plastics like plastic cutlery when; 1) it was promised over a year ago and 2) every other country across Europe including Scotland and Wales have managed to do it.” 

We were promised a Green Brexit. Instead, we’re spending years chasing Defra to implement the very basic environmental standards that have been in place across Europe now for years. Their foot-dragging approach to tackling plastic pollution stands in stark contrast to the rhetoric of being ‘world leaders’ in tackling plastic pollution. It’s time for us to play catch up with our nearest neighbours and then, and only then, can the conversation move to the wider question of how to tackle plastic pollution in its entirety (you can read some of my thoughts on that in the article I wrote for Green World earlier this year).

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March 2, 2022 · 5:35 pm

The plastics crisis: a fork in the road moment?

This article was originally published on Greenworld.

Steve Hynd, Green Councillor and Policy Manager at City to Sea, explores what the next steps are for the Government in tackling plastic pollution.

‘For fork’s sake, ban the most polluting single-use plastics NOW’. That was the message on our placards outside Downing Street as we handed in a petition with over 117,000 signatures calling on the Government to ban some of the most polluting single-use plastic items now, like plastic forks. 

After we launched this petition, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) launched a consultation proposing a ban of single-use plastic forks, plates and polystyrene food containers. There can be no doubt this is a big step forward in our efforts to tackle plastic pollution. In response, over 51,000 City to Sea and 38 Degrees supporters responded to the Defra consultation supporting the ban, arguing that it needs to be introduced asap, not in 2023 as the Government currently plans. 

Megan Bentall, Head of Campaigns at 38 Degrees, who is used to dealing with large public outpourings of support said: “There’s no doubt about it – this is an absolutely massive show of public support for finally banning these unnecessary and polluting plastic items. 

“The fact that more than 50,000 people have taken the time to participate in a detailed government consultation on this issue is the clearest demonstration yet that we are simply done with these plastic items polluting our environment.” 

The UK: a world leader in tackling plastic pollution?

With a sympathetic government department, huge public support and a pressing environmental crisis, I am confident that we will see these most polluting single-use plastics banned. Undoubtedly a huge win. Our political leaders tell us then that this positions us as world leaders in tackling plastic pollution. 

This last point is far from the truth. The reality is that we are struggling to keep up with the very minimum standards mandated to EU member states through the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive – the same bans that Scotland has said will introduce a year before England, leaving serious questions about internal UK markets divergence. The reality is that this ban, which is being introduced with dragging feet, is the first baby step on a much longer journey. 

It’s with this in mind that I wrote a letter with Allison Ogden-Newton OBE, Chief Executive at Keep Britain Tidy and Jamie Peters, Interim Director of Campaigning Impact at Friends of the Earth to the Environment Minister, George Eustice, outlining the next steps we felt the Government needs to take if they are serious about tackling plastic pollution. 

The letter argues that the Government needs to go beyond just banning the odd item and instead set ambitious targets in the Environment Act. These, we argued must include: 

  • An at least 50 per cent reduction in non-essential single-use plastics by 2025.
  • An overarching plastics reduction target, including but not limited to single-use plastics. This would ensure a progressive reduction in the overall use of all non-essential plastics, building towards preventing plastic pollution of the environment as far as possible by 2042. This must address those harder to tackle plastics from vehicles tyres and brakes and from clothes among others, and the specific problem of microplastics.  
  • Reuse targets of at least 25 per cent of packaging being reusable by 2025, rising to 50 per cent by 2030. This would guarantee that a large proportion of the reduction in plastic pollution is met by an increase in the market share of reusables, and make sure substitutions of single-use plastics for other damaging single-use materials are avoided. 
The solutions of the future

Let’s take each of these points in turn. The first is to set a legally binding target to reduce single-use plastics by 50 per cent by 2025. Sure, the ban on the most polluting items will go some way towards this. But it is also an acknowledgement that our waste and resource systems are stretched to breaking point and we cannot just recycle our way out of this crisis. We need to reduce the amount we produce. When we are flooding the world with plastics, we can’t just need to mop the mess up – we also need to turn the taps off.  

Secondly, we called for an overarching plastics reduction target, including but not limited to single-use plastics. This acknowledges that a lot of plastic pollution does not come from plastics we can see and touch like bottles and plastic forks. Instead, microplastics and nanoplastics are shed directly from clothing and car tyres. This isn’t a small change either, the microplastics from car tyres are responsible for more than 200,000 tonnes of microplastics entering our oceans every year. A recent study that found nanoparticles dating back to the 1960s at both poles were surprised to find a quarter of the particles were from vehicle tyres. 

This problem needs to be addressed head-on as part of our wider efforts to tackle plastic pollution. And this is why we sought reassurance and sight of the Government’s plan to tackle plastic pollution in its entirety, not just as a waste and resource question. Do they even have one? 

We, politely, pointed out that there was already one in place in the form of the Plastic Pollution Bill that is due back for its second reading on March 18. This isn’t the only way of tackling the issue, but it is a concrete and well thought out example of a legislative approach to tackling plastic pollution in its entirety. At the moment, we don’t know if the Government has an equivalent plan in place. If it doesn’t, it needs one urgently, and if it does, we urgently need to see it to feed into it and make it as good as possible. 

Lastly, we called for a reuse target of at least 25 per cent of packaging being reusable by 2025, rising to 50 per cent by 2030. We simply can’t talk about plastic pollution and a reduction in single-use plastics without talking about increasing the market share of reuse and refillable packaging. For consumers, this could be normalising refilling water bottles from public fountains, drinking coffee from reusable cups or topping up cereals from supermarket dispensers. 

Consumer demands and market movements

These are the packaging solutions of the future that we need to legislate for now. We know from our own research that there is consumer demand for this. Polling by City to Sea and Friends of the Earth to mark World Refill Day, found three out of four people (74 per cent) would like to see more refill options, for things like dried foods, laundry detergents and takeaway coffees, available to them so they can limit the amount of single-use plastic in their lives. While more than half of all people (55 per cent) think supermarkets and big-name brands are not doing enough to address plastic pollution. Crucially, 81 per cent of Brits want the UK government to make refillable products easier to buy and more widely available, as a main priority for reducing plastic pollution.

We also know there is movement in the markets towards these solutions. Coca-Cola recently announced a commitment to 25 per cent of packaging to be reusable by 2030 (something that I welcomed with healthy scepticism here). What we now need is for the Government to commit to legally binding targets to give smaller and medium-sized businesses the confidence and reassurances they need to invest in these systems. This answers not only a consumer demand, but a planetary ecological necessity.

The next six months are crucial and what we have outlined here is a pathway for the Government to take to show it is truly committed to tackling the plastic crisis (before anyone comments “what about the climate crisis?”, it’s important to remember these are two sides of the same coin). 

While some might sneer at the small steps that are being taken to tackle plastic pollution, I see them as important movement. This is a rolling start for a much bigger journey. But if Defra wants to convince us that they are serious they need to show some urgency in these first steps and to also signal that they understand the length of the journey that they are on. 

If they can show they are travelling the right path, we are there as a partner to travel with and to help carry the load. But if they fall from the tracks, we won’t hesitate in telling them where they’ve gone wrong and supporting them to get back on track.

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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 >>>

https://soundcloud.com/biggreenpoliticspodcast/uk-politics-special-brexit-climate-crisis-and-the-greens-with-steve-hynd

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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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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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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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June 17, 2014 · 1:46 pm

Why Amnesty International is right: Both the village of Kafr Qaddum and Murad Shtewi must be freed

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The village of Kafr Qaddum in the West Bank was the scene of some of the worst violence I saw during my half year working as a human rights monitor there.

The village holds weekly demonstrations to demand that their main road be reopened. It was closed by the Israeli military authorities in 2002 to prevent Palestinians from travelling on roads designated for use only by Israeli settlers and adds on nearly 20km to their travel to the main town.

These demonstrations are violent affairs. This is my account of a ‘not so peaceful protest’ which includes footage of a Palestinian being mulled by an Israeli military dog (see below) as well as multiple protesters being shot directly by heavy metal tear gas canisters. This is my account is of a 17 year old boy who was relearning to talk after being shot in the head by a tear gas canister.

As I said – the demonstrations are violent affairs littered with human rights abuses. It is not surprising then that on a number of occasions the Israeli military tried to stop human rights monitors and members of the press from entering the village. On one occasion before a particularly brutal response to the protest I had to travel through the olive groves to avoid the Israeli military checkpoint to gain access to the village.

In midst of this madness trying to marshal events was the figure Murad Shtewi. Murad is (was) a leading activist in the weekly demonstrations held in his village. I met him on a number of occasions normally over strong Arabic coffee and cigarettes to discuss what had occurred in his village during the previous week. Invariably the conversation focused on army raids and arbitrary arrests (painfully common events across the West Bank) but this was juxtaposed to Murad’s middle-eastern understanding of lavish hospitality and his talk of non-violence resistance.

I liked Murad for having optimism in the face of such continued violence (violence that Murad experienced first hand, in the video of the dog attack you can see Murad being pepper sprayed in the face for trying to intervene in the dog attack on his nephew).

Despite witnessing so much violence Murad was also committed to non-violence. This commitment to non-violence is one of the key criteria for Amnesty International who now consider Murad a ‘prisoner of conscience’ after his arrest at around 3am on 29th April of this year (arrests in the middle of the night are common place in the West Bank – even when detaining minors).

Murad is charged with organizing a demonstration without a permit, causing a public disturbance, and throwing rocks during a demonstration. Amnesty International has responded to these charges saying:

“In Amnesty International’s assessment, the charges of rock-throwing and of causing a public disturbance are unfounded. Murad Shtewi has been persecuted for expressing his non-violent opinions and for his role in the peaceful protests in Kufr Qadum against Israel’s illegal settlements. His arrest and detention are a measure to punish him and stop him and other village activists from exercising their rights to freedom of expression and to peaceful assembly.”

As such Amnesty International is calling for Murad Shtewi to be released immediately and unconditionally, as ‘he is a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression’.

This is a call that I am happy to publicly back. On every occasion that I went to Kafr Qaddum I never once saw Murad throw a stone. On a number of occasions I did see him telling others not to throw stones. I also talked to him at length about the importance of non-violent resistance.

This is also the third time Murad has been arrested (each time released without charge) in the last few years, the first was after the dog attack on his nephew.

Simply put, I can’t see how this latest arrest of Murad has any purpose other than to try and deter him from organizing legitimate protests against the Israeli policy of segregation in the West Bank.

It is in light of all this that I ask you to take a few seconds to send this sample letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that significantly not only calls for Murad’s release but also to:

‘take effective measures to prevent the use of unnecessary and excessive force by Israeli forces against peaceful demonstrators’

Please help me help Murad by taking this small action.

For more information:

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February 17, 2014 · 10:04 am

Mike Assenti on the need to change the political climate around flooding

With half of the Somerset Levels currently underwater and thousands of lives and livelihoods put on hold, a huge argument has erupted around the Enviornment Agency and what it should have done to prevent the situation.  Mike Assenti writes for Hynd’s blog on climate change, flooding and his growing frustration with the political establishment.

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Suddenly, it seems everybody is an expert in flood management.

Why weren’t the rivers dredged? Should the rivers even be dredged? Did the Environment Agency give the government bad advice, as Eric Pickles has claimed? Is the Environment Agency’s policy the direct result of the Treasury’s rules, as the EA’s Chairman Chris Smith has countered?

Frankly I don’t know.

Unlike Mr Pickles, I’m more than happy to admit that I’m really not well versed on the evidence on the effects of dredging, and I’m most certainly not an expert in flood defences. But, if you’re interested, George Monbiot wrote a fascinating article on the subject last month for the Guardian.

The media is understandably mostly concerned with the striking images of the effects of this weather, and with the terrible personal stories of those affected. (Now that it is the Home Counties which are facing some serious flooding, the tension seems to have ratcheted even higher…but this is a subject for another, more cynical post.)

Much of the focus has been given to the short term effects of the flooding, and even to the medium term causes and preventative measures. Of course, the fact that there is now a political row attached to this aspect will undoubtedly drive further superficial analysis.

What has had far less attention though are the long term causes of this extreme weather. Whether or not this current batch of weather is definitively linked to climate change is almost impossible to say for certain, but the MET Office Chief Scientist, Dame Julie Slingo has stated that, “All the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change“.

Regardless of the provenance of this current batch of storms, climate scientists broadly agree that one effect of climate change is likely to be the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather.

We have spent years hearing the horror stories of climate change, and even seeing what are supposedly some of the early effects. Agreements have been made as to how best to tackle it, carbon targets set, carbon targets postponed, reduced, and missed. Subsidies have been introduced to encourage the development and installation of renewable power sources, said subsidies then reduced or removed. The leader of a government which came to power claiming to be ‘the greenest ever’, has since been quoted demanding the removal of ‘all the green crap’ from utilities bills.

As an Engineer, I am reluctant to point out a problem without also suggesting a solution. However, in this case my frustration with the attitudes of those in power (both politically and commercially), as well as with a large part of the general public has spilled over from indignant rage into resigned apathy. I don’t know how more clearly the scale of the problem and nature of the solutions to climate change need to be stated before we start to take it seriously. Dozens of solutions to this problem have been mooted, but all of them require a fundamental shift in thinking by those in charge.

Instead of paying lip service to those campaigning for solutions to climate change, we need to start seeing some real action. We need to see real investment in renewables and local storage, rather than incentivising fracking. Countering the assertion of the energy companies that green subsidies are to blame for increasing bills not with (the totally accurate) explanation of how little these subsidies are, but with an explanation of why it is fair that they are paid. Taking more control of public transport, to make it economical to travel by train or bus rather than driving. Appointing an Environment Secretary who isn’t a climate change skeptic would be a good start, not to mention ditching a chancellor who wants the UK to be behind Europe on tackling climate change.

For years now the images of the effects of climate change have been of floods in Bangladesh, typhoons in the Far East and rising sea levels in the Maldives. Now that affluent villages in the South West of England are under water, will we start to see a shift in attitude?

Sadly, I suspect that we will continue treating the symptoms rather than the root cause.

I recently heard an excellent description of climate change skeptics who cite the cold weather in the US as evidence against climate change as standing on the Titanic, claiming, “The ship can’t be sinking – my end is 500 feet in the air”.

Here in the UK, we are ignoring the oncoming icebergs while we argue about drying the bed linen.

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January 9, 2014 · 10:13 am

Working with Don Foster MP

For about a year and a half I worked for Don Foster MP who today announced that he would not be standing for re-election in 2015. Here a few reflections on what it was like working for him. 

Don

Don was first elected to the Bath seat in 1992 when he beat the then-chairman of the Conservative party Chris Patten. He was then re-elected with sizeable majorities on four separate occasions serving Bath over 5 parliamentary terms.

I am happy to debate the legacy of his 18 years in opposition and the last three years in government. For now though I wanted to write a little on what it was like working for Don as I think this hits at the heart of why so many consider him to be a fine MP.

The first thing that jumps to mind is his formidable work ethic. 80 hour working weeks became a norm for him spending his weekends back from Westminster attending both public and local Liberal Democrat events in the constituency.

I remember once slumping into the local leisure centre at 7:30 in the morning to go for a swim before work. On the way in I bumped into Don bouncing out of the gym with a huge smile on his face cracking some joke about having a running start to the day.

And this was perhaps the second thing that springs to mind about working with Don – his sense of humour was superb…even in the face of cock ups from his staff.

In the lead up to Christmas 2011, the local press failed to spot a spoof press release about Don’s renowned ukulele playing. The press release intended to invite them to Christmas drinks but in jest invited the press to Don’s launch party for his bid to become Christmas number one. Failing to spot that this story was a spoof it spread rapidly all over Europe with articles appearing in major national and international media – ‘Liberal Democrat MP in Christmas number one bid’. This story was then replaced with the ‘Liberal Democrat MP forced to deny he’s releasing Christmas single’ stories.

A bit of a cock-up.

It would have been understandable for an MP to be pissed off in such a situation. Instead Don took it all in his stride. That year, all his staff received big Christmas presents wrapped up – we all got our very own ukuleles.

To clarify, I am not saying he couldn’t be a grumpy git, he of course could be. But more that considering how hard he worked and the nature of his work he was impressively good natured about it all.

This good humour gave him a foundation on which to interact with people on a very personal level. Watching him interact with a room full of strangers – all of whom would normally know him – was impressive. He just had a way with people that didn’t stem from that stereotype that politicians have of ‘smoothing’ people, but from a genuine interest in people.

I remember sitting with Don just before he was due to go live on BBC Radio 4’s World at One. I was sat holding, and inexplicable reading to myself, a sheet of paper about key lines for the interview. Just before going on air he turned to me and started asking, not about the upcoming interview on national radio, but about a constituent whose case we working on at that time.

Casework for Don, it felt to me, wasn’t just an obligation or even an election strategy like it is for some MPs, but a reflection of his commitment to his constituents and actually caring about what happened to them.

This trait – of giving a shit about people – reflected in the way he showed interest in his staff. I left working for Don to work as a human-rights monitor in the West Bank. When I returned I had been back in London less than a week when he invited me in to have a chat about what my plans were for my next employment. He was eager to help and to ensure that working for him was a building block for me to go onto whatever I wanted to do next.

Don’s politics differ to my own but after working for him for 18 months I can say with certainty that he is a nice guy, an exceptional MP and that the constituents of Bath are lucky to have had him at their service for the last 21 years.

Today Don has been quick to remind everyone that he still has another year and half left to go until he steps down in 2015 and I don’t for a second think he is going to take his foot off the peddle in that time.

I wonder though when that time comes whether he will remember how to put his feet up or whether he will find something new to throw himself into?

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December 6, 2013 · 10:46 am

Brian Oosthuysen, on the birth of the Rainbow Nation and the death of Mandela

This is a guest post from Brian Oosthuysen on the death of Nelson Mandela. Brian is a Labour Party Gloucestershire County Councillor in Stroud and he is also a consistent campaigner for freedom, fairness and human rights both locally and internationally. Brian tweets @BrianatRodboro. 

Mandela 2
Apartheid was an evil, vicious system which saw the death of many thousands and the incarceration of even more. It dominated all aspects of life and was one of the reasons I left SA as a young man.

Nelson Mandela was one of those sent to prison and he suffered in many different and horrible  ways during his 27 years behind bars.

In the 70s and 80s I often addressed meetings as a member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in England and I always ended my talk with a look into the future, which I saw as unbearably bleak.  “It will”, I would say, “end in bloodshed and the deaths of thousands of black and white people”.

And then Nelson Mandela (Madiba) was released and almost immediately transformed the political and social landscape in South Africa, and the Rainbow Nation was born.

His act of forgiveness to his former warders, his call for reconciliation and his setting up of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee showed the people of South Africa and the world that he was a man of towering stature and amazing integrity.  The constitution which his new government brought in is recognised across the world as one of the most progressive, and his stamp is clearly on it.

South Africa has many problems but the South Africa we now have is a country more at peace with itself than it has been since before 1945 when the Nationalist government came to power and Madiba is the reason for this.

Madiba once said, “No one is born hating another because of the colour of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

He lived out that maxim and his death leaves the world a darker, colder place.

Hamba Kahle, Madiba.

 

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December 6, 2013 · 9:22 am

Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel

This is a cross-post from Musa Okwonga. 

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Dear revisionists, Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view. Right now, you are anxiously pacing the corridors of your condos and country estates, looking for the right words, the right tributes, the right-wing tributes. You will say that Mandela was not about race. You will say that Mandela was not about politics. You will say that Mandela was about nothing but one love, you will try to reduce him to a lilting reggae tune. “Let’s get together, and feel alright.” Yes, you will do that.

You will make out that apartheid was just some sort of evil mystical space disease that suddenly fell from the heavens and settled on all of us, had us all, black or white, in its thrall, until Mandela appeared from the ether to redeem us. You will try to make Mandela a Magic Negro and you will fail. You will say that Mandela stood above all for forgiveness whilst scuttling swiftly over the details of the perversity that he had the grace to forgive.

You will try to make out that apartheid was some horrid spontaneous historical aberration, and not the logical culmination of centuries of imperial arrogance. Yes, you will try that too. You will imply or audaciously state that its evils ended the day Mandela stepped out of jail. You will fold your hands and say the blacks have no-one to blame now but themselves.

Well, try hard as you like, and you’ll fail. Because Mandela was about politics and he was about race and he was about freedom and he was even about force, and he did what he felt he had to do and given the current economic inequality in South Africa he might even have died thinking he didn’t do nearly enough of it. And perhaps the greatest tragedy of Mandela’s life isn’t that he spent almost thirty years jailed by well-heeled racists who tried to shatter millions of spirits through breaking his soul, but that there weren’t or aren’t nearly enough people like him.

Because that’s South Africa now, a country long ago plunged headfirst so deep into the sewage of racial hatred that, for all Mandela’s efforts, it is still retching by the side of the swamp. Just imagine if Cape Town were London.  Imagine seeing two million white people living in shacks and mud huts along the M25 as you make your way into the city, where most of the biggest houses and biggest jobs are occupied by a small, affluent to wealthy group of black people.  There are no words for the resentment that would still simmer there.

Nelson Mandela was not a god, floating elegantly above us and saving us. He was utterly, thoroughly human, and he did all he did in spite of people like you. There is no need to name you because you know who you are, we know who you are, and you know we know that too. You didn’t break him in life, and you won’t shape him in death. You will try, wherever you are, and you will fail.

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November 22, 2013 · 10:09 am

Learning to kayak the Nile

Waves crashes over the front of the kayak. All around, white water sprays up into the air. The relative calm of the flat-water section that follows this 100 meter long rapid seems like a long way off. Every wave that hits the side of the kayak holds the potential to knock this novice kayaker out of the boat and into the white-water. A few minutes later, the perilous waves that were surrounding the kayak are replaced. Now, all around are the ecstatic grins of the other first time white-water kayakers who have just completed the grade three rapid, aptly named, ‘Jaws’. This is just day one of the introduction to white-water kayaking course on the river Nile in Uganda run by Kayak the Nile.

Located a few kilometres to the north of Jinja, arguably the adventure tourism capital of East Africa, the Bujagali Lake offers a more tranquil start to the beginners learning experience. This large section of flat-water provides a picturesque area for first-time paddlers to practice their kayaking skills. The course begins with an introduction to basic kayaking techniques as well as safety and rescue techniques.

The credentials for the instructors passing on their knowledge couldn’t be higher. Out on the water on this morning offering instruction was Emily Wall, two times British Champion.  Perhaps more importantly than her experiences of competing at the highest levels of freestyle kayaking though, is Emily’s patience and obvious enthusiasm for teaching beginners.

Photo by Sim Davis

Out on the water, metaphors are used liberally to explain the movement and science behind kayaking. Whether it is through skiing or surfing Emily finds an analogy that relates to each of the would-be kayakers. Joanna Reid, a British nurse volunteering in Uganda, said after the session that, “Emily was world class and has a gift for teaching. She always made us feel safe. It was Emily and the team that made the day really enjoyable…”

But it’s not just the instructors who make learning to kayak at the source of the Nile special.

To start with, the water is dam released, making the rapids accessible, fun and relatively predictable 365 days a year. Every day you can expect an impressive 1600 cumecs meaning that you know you will have big volume rapids to learn on.

Secondly, the average monthly temperature in Uganda varies by less than two degrees meaning that most days you can expect the temperature to rise to the high twenties, but significantly, little more!

In short, it’s always shorts and t-shirt weather and not wet suits.

Lastly, the range of rapids on the river offers everything from grade 1 to grade 6 with an almost infinite number of lines into the rapids. With the right instructor there really is something for everyone, regardless of confidence and ability levels.

Explaining why she chose the Nile as her home for teaching kayaking, Emily said, “I have kayaked across five continents, yet I’ve chosen to call the Nile home because of the awesome training ground it provides for kayakers of all levels. The white water we have here on the Nile is unique; not only are the rapids warm and deep (with no rocks or crocs), the sun shines and the water flows all year around!”

Photo by Emily Wall

Photo by Emily Wall

In the afternoon then, the beginners head out to explore what this ‘training ground’ downstream of Bujagali Lake has to offer. Of course, fresh faced kayakers are not thrown straight into a grade three rapids. Most of the afternoon is spent practising breaking in and out of fast flowing water (and invariably putting rescue and swimming skills to practice).

But, as the afternoon draws on so the sense of excitement in the groups grows. The group of first-time white water kayakers paddle to a few hundred meters short of the ‘Jaws’ rapids. The river’s immediate horizon has spouts of white water kicking above it and there is the unmistakable sound of water crashing against rocks. Emily, with an ever calming voice gives the internally good advice, “whatever happens, stay calm”. Before adding, “Just keep an active paddle in the water and you’ll be fine”. And that was that.

With a healthy dose of luck and everyone vehemently following Emily’s suggested line through the rapids every learner kayaker comes out of the rapids the other end. Most, if not all, of them are still in their kayaks. But everyone, without exception, has the unmistakable grin on of someone who might have just stumbled across their new passion, white-water kayaking.

Photo by Emily Wall

Photo by Emily Wall

More information:

Visit: www.kayakthenile.com/
Follow: www.twitter.com/kayakthenile
Email: Info@kayakthenile.com

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August 9, 2013 · 10:12 am

Eugene Grant: “I prefer the term dwarf”

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Eugene Grant is a dwarf and the founder of the viral site EveryDayDwarfism that chronicles the day-to-day experiences of what it is like to be a dwarf in 21 century Britain. Despite his experiences, Grant is optimistic that he can contribute to changing people’s understanding of dwarfism. Steve Hynd caught up with him to find out more.  

For many readers the term ‘dwarf’ is one they are not familiar with. I know some people are nervous about using it, afraid that it is derogatory. Can you tell us what the word means to you?

I personally much prefer the term ‘dwarf’ as opposed to others like ‘midget’, which many dwarfs I know find offensive. But, for me – and this is where the whole idea of political correctness becomes redundant – what’s more important are the intentions behind the terms used.

People can be ‘politically correct’ but employ such words with malicious intent; others may use quite derogatory terms without any idea or intention of insulting or hurting a person. It all depends on the way such terms are framed.

Can you tell us a little about why you set up EveryDayDwarfism?  

The aim behind EveryDayDwarfism is to document and present just some of the things that I – and my partner who also has dwarfism – go through during our day or week. Its purpose is to try to make people just that little bit more aware as to the things we encounter as dwarfs.

A lot of what we experience, I would put down to stigma and discrimination still being relatively acceptable to lots of people. The whole tone of the site is not supposed to be angry or ‘martyr-ish’, but relatively neutral, matter-of-fact and informative.

It’s to say: ‘these things happen, quite regularly. I just wanted you to know’.

Within the EveryDaySexism movement, there is a strong feeling of finally ‘shouting back’. Within EveryDayDwarfism it also feels like there is quite a lot of rage, is this an important element of responding to discrimination?

It depends what you mean by rage. Rage is very important but it needs to be channelled in the right way and used very carefully.

Leaving out abuse in the form of physical violence, I think when responding to discrimination it’s vital to ask oneself: ‘what is it that I want to achieve here?’ and, more importantly, ‘how will I get this person to change the way they think and act towards me and others like me’.

Can you tell us a bit about how you coped with the attention and discrimination before you started chronicling it on EveryDayDwarfism?

It really depends on two things: the type of abuse, attention or discrimination, and the intentions behind it.

Some abuse – e.g. an individual shouting insults from a moving car – is best left ignored. What can you achieve when they’re 100 metres down the road by the time they’ve finished their sentence?

Others – the attention from a small child for example – is normally fine; although, as I wrote on the site, it’s often the reaction – or lack thereof – from the parents that is the most frustrating thing.

Some abuse though might manifest itself in the form of totally unprovoked physical violence or confrontation.

Have you been in contact with other dwarfs, how do they feel about EveryDayDwarfism? Do others relate to your experiences?

It’s very important that people don’t think that EveryDayDwarfism or my own experiences reflect those of other dwarfs; I can’t speak for them. Not even my partner.

However, I do know that lots of people like me experience such things – sometimes less so, sometimes more so.

If you had one message to the metaphorical guy in the street who tries to take a photo of you with his phone, what would it be?

Just stop, for a moment, and think: What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why would you or your friends find that photo or film to be of any value or interest? What does that say about your character, as an adult, and how you think about and respond to people who are different? What if I was your brother, son or cousin? How would you see it then?

A bit of a long message!

You wrote for the Guardian about the portrayal of dwarfs in the media, do you see EveryDayDwarfism as an effort to counter some of that through the illustration of agency?

Not really, no. Sadly, but also deliberately, EveryDayDwarfism documents some of the negative things that happen. And in this way, there is a negative tone to the blog.

What I was trying to say in the article you mention was that there needs to be more boring, regular, neutral representation of dwarfism in the media – weather reporters, Masterchef contestants, Question Time panelists, kids on CBBC – whatever.

Basically, more portrayals of dwarfism that do not limit that person’s identity to ‘a dwarf’ but reflects what they really are: a citizen, a parent, a doctor or lawyer, a voter, someone with views, ideas, etc.

What has been the reaction of family and friends to EveryDayDwarfism, are they shocked to hear of such day-to-day encounters? 

It was actually as a result of encouragement from friends to set up EveryDayDwarfism that I did.

Often friends have no idea of the things that I – and lots of others like me – encounter on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Some have even been in situations with me when there has been abuse or something happen. Quite often, they are absolutely shocked at the way some people behave. It’s not a question of going looking for abuse or discrimination – that’s not a productive or positive way to live – it’s that, a lot of the time, this stuff finds you – seeks you out, interrupts your day, your evening, when you’re just trying to live your life. And that’s what I wanted people to realise.

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May 6, 2013 · 10:10 am

The State of Play: Education in Uganda

This is a guest post by Anya Whiteside who is the Education Advocacy Officer at the Forum for Education NGOs in Uganda (FENU).  She is also my partner and her blog can be found  here. 

I ask students what they think about their education in a learners workshopBack in 1997 Uganda was proud to lead the way in the provision of universal primary education. Enrollment boomed from just 2.5 to 8.8 million and this was seen by many as a major success.

Despite this seemingly rosy picture, Uganda is a clear example of how focus on access to education alone is not the be all and end all and is not the same as a good education.

It is generally recognised that in Uganda education is in crisis, a crisis that needs urgent action.

Although enrollment has remained high the drop-out rates in Uganda are also high. Uganda’s completion rates in primary education are only 25%. This is compared to 84% in Kenya, 81% in Tanzania and 74% in Rwanda.

Even for the minority of children who stay in school in Uganda the picture is not much better. A report recently released by the government confirms what teachers, politicians, parents and children already know; that even children who stay in school are not learning.

The NAPE report states that for P6 pupils who are at the end of primary school, only 45% of them have reached proficiency in numeracy and only 41% in literacy. As the report starkly puts it ‘less than a half of the P6 pupils have mastered most of the competencies in the P6 curriculum’.

Most worrying of all the results show that education results aren’t improving, and are worse than the results in 2009.

There is not doubt that Ugandan education faces many challenges. Uganda has the second youngest population in the world with 55% of the population under 18 years. When universal primary education was introduced children flooded in to access ‘free’ education with schools and teachers overwhelmed. There are no-where near enough teachers, classrooms, books or sanitation facilities to teach all these children.

It is not uncommon to have teachers attempting to teach classes of over 100 and children taking it in turns to use a pencil. Children often come to school without lunch and so are sat all afternoon hungrily waiting for the end of the day.

But political will is also an important element in this. The percentage share of the Uganda national budget dedicated to education has fallen from 17% in 2007/8 to 15% for 2013/14.

This situation is likely to only get worse after aid donors pulled out after allegations of corruption by the prime ministers office, leaving sizable holes in the education budget.

Funding to government primary schools comes in the form of a grant given per child, per year to each school. On average this is 5,000 Ush (about £1.25) per child per year, so it is unsurprising schools charge parents significant, often unaffordable extras for books and uniforms.

Unlike other countries, where even if they are not paid enough teachers are afforded at least some degree of respect in the local community, in Uganda teachers are considered socially at the bottom of the pile. In government primary schools teachers are paid an average of 260,000Ush a term (£65 a term).

To give you some context, VSO gives me a stipend of 895,000Ush (£223) a month which is meant to cover my basic living costs, excluding accommodation. So you can see that being a teacher is not exactly economically desirable.

When you add to that the appalling delays that teachers experience, waiting months for their salaries due to inefficiencies, it is unsurprising that teachers often don’t turn up or have additional jobs on the side.

Teachers are also not given good training and the style of teaching is extremely reliant on teaching by rote. A colleague of mine told me how she sat in on a teacher training course where the lecturer, with no irony, started by saying ‘in teaching the most important thing is to be interactive and not just talk at students’ and then proceeded to talk at the teachers for several hours.

Teachers are rarely, if ever, inspected and there is little support or ongoing training. On top of this they are blamed consistently for the poor state of education in Uganda – no wonder no one wants to be a teacher!

So is there any hope for education in Uganda?

I would argue that there is, based on all the people I have met who are dedicated to improving education. Everyone knows what the problems in education are and the buzz-word at the moment is ‘quality’ education.

The organisation I work for (FENU) helped to set up the new ‘Parliamentary forum on quality education’. A few weeks ago FENU coordinated the first ever ‘Quality Public Education Week’ which saw Anglican, Catholic and Islamic leaders (70% of schools are linked to religious institutions) come together with trade unionists and politicians. This focus on quality is important, especially as it moves away from only focusing on getting more children into school and also looks at the education those children are receiving.

There are so many different challenges to education here, and I haven’t even touched on child labour, gender inequalities, capital punishment, secondary schooling or vocational training.

Nonetheless there are inspiring people working for change, and no end to the children keen to learn if they are only given the opportunity to do so.

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April 21, 2013 · 2:45 pm

Artist Richard Woods is “unashamed to be political”

This interview was originally printed in New Europe.


Richard Woods describes himself as “more social commentator than artist” and has been compared to the likes of Peter Howson. Woods is famed for his grotesque caricatures and macabre take on places, politics and people as he explores the “absurdity of human existence”. On the back of another critically acclaimed exhibition at the Garden Gallery in the UK, Steve Hynd met up with Woods to find out what drives the painter behind the canvas. 

Can you tell us a bit about your background – where did you grow up  and where did you study?

I was born in Harrogate, but moved with my family to Cheltenham when I was seven. My parents would often take me abroad, so from a young age I had already seen a lot of the world. As an only child I had a lot of time on my hands and spent most of my time drawing and watching cartoons, leading to an extremely active imagination.

Is there any one person that inspires you?

The artist Peter Howson has been the biggest inspiration on me. He’s the official war artist for Bosnia. I remember going to Art College aware of the fact I wanted to paint people but was unsure of how I wanted to do it. When a tutor showed me Howson’s work for the first time I was blown away. That’s when I knew the type of artwork I wanted to make -Distorted characters and stories which are rooted to real issues within society. All of a sudden I felt I had a real sense of purpose, that I was doing something greater than just painting a picture. Perhaps that sounds a bit egotistical, but I don’t really mind that to be honest.

Would you describe your art as political?

Yes certainly. When I first began creating social commentaries I was really focusing on the darkest aspects of the world. I was tackling the ugliest problems in society head on with huge dark boldly painted canvases.

But I was young and full of enthusiasm then, I somewhat reckless with my choices. I soon realised what I was painting could alienate some people more than inspire them – although all those early paintings are now in private collections. I wanted people to reflect on my art but also to enjoy my work visually. I wanted people to be inspired to also try and fix the problems I paint about

Are you an artist first, social commentator second, or vice-versa?

I think at one point I was more social commentator than artist, but over the past couple of years I would say I’m more of a visual artist.

Most of my imagery begins with the idea or the inspiration which can be a news headline or something as simple as a personal experience. That’s the foundations of a work before I indulge my imagination and build up a composition. As an artist my experiences and surroundings mould my perspectives on life. Artists create work in response to these whether consciously or not.

Is there a message or ethos behind your art? If so, is it important to you that people understand that message?

Yes I would like them to but at the same time I’m just like anyone else, I need to make a living and I want people to want to hang my pictures on their walls.

Visual art is essentially about creating something unique and aesthetic that visually people can enjoy. I am always trying new things out. At my recent solo show in Cheltenham I had quite a diverse exhibition to show people what I can do with a paintbrush. Quite often artists develop a comfort zone (including myself) which is actually quite anti-creative. To find true originality you need to experiment.

I have even been painting landscapes outdoors recently. I know, a bit of a cliché.

How have the UK’s coalition years affected your art?

The coalition creates a lot of interesting imagery. I did one painting of Cameron and Clegg titled “Cutting Corners,” which interestingly got a lot of attention in Scotland. It was sold along with some of Peter Howson’s paintings from The Braewell Galleries. I think people value a visual representation of the political issues that they cannot always articulate themselves.

Your art is often a grotesque reflection on life, does this reflect your personal take on life?

It’s definitely how I view the world. I always loved looking at the German expressionist paintings, like Otto Dix and Max Beckman. They were so grotesque and surreal yet held so much truth about the world in their content.

I really thrive on making work which has a cause or purpose. With my early work some people seemed a bit shocked by it but for me I didn’t see what was so shocking, it was just normality to me.

In complete contrast my more recent work which has seen huge ice cream cones filled with fluorescent ice cream has been really appealing to people, especially children. Yet they actually represent a number of dark topics including The Fukishima nuclear disaster and the idea of economic meltdown. This is a good dynamic, having people enjoy the visual imagery then afterwards can discuss the politics.

For more information on his art please visit http://www.art-spaces.com/richardwoods/

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