Norman Fay
All of us at South Tyneside Friends of the Earth have been
saddened at the death of Norman Fay in a tragic road accident
at the weekend. Norman and his late wife Marion were
instrumental in the birth of South Tyneside Friends of the
Earth and Norman's personal approach and positive attitude to
getting things done was an inspiration. ST FOE
spokesperson Bryan Atkinson knew Norman:
"It was with great sadness that I learned of the death of Norman Fay.
Norman and his late wife Marion were two of the founding members of South Tyneside Friends of the Earth.
Norman and Marion were very much hands on environmentalists and would get stuck in to all sorts of campaigns - anything form picking rubbish off beaches, to protecting council estates' playing fields from greedy developers.
"Of course Norman will be best remembered in the cycling community for his brilliance as
a cycle engineer. What Norman didn't know about bikes just wasn't worth knowing.
"We'll all miss him at Friends of the Earth and our thoughts are with him and his family."
Get tough on flying and stop us frying
South Tyneside Friends of the Earth has welcomed local MP Stephen Hepburn's backing for a Parliamentary motion which calls for the Climate Change Bill to have more ambitious targets and to include international aviation emissions. Jarrow MP Stephen Hepburn has signed up to Early Day Motion 736, which states that the Bill needs "improving as its targets were not ambitious enough, and international aviation emissions
were excluded, meaning that even if the Bill were applied to every developed country, global temperature would rise well beyond the two degrees Celsius limit and perhaps as high as four or five degrees".
more...
Council needs more than warm words
South Tyneside Friends of the Earth has welcomed a councillor's support for moves to force councils take firm action against climate change.
Councillor David Potts has raised a motion in council challenging councillors to pledge their support for Early Day Motion 678, which gives backing to a bill which would oblige councils across the country to consider carbon emissions in all their dealings.
But more must be done - and locally too, says Friends of the Earth.
more...
No burning in South Tyneside
The Shields
Gazette has reported that the leader of South Tyneside Council
Paul Waggot has made a stand against incineration.
Councillor Waggot said:
"I am not in favour of an incinerator, even if it ends up being the technology that seems to offer the best value for money on
paper... we must all do more to tackle this growing problem, but incineration is not the solution."
South Tyneside Friends of the Earth spokesperson Bryan
Atkinson welcomed the councillor's pledge, saying:
"I'm delighted Paul Waggott is opposed to a waste incinerator in South Tyneside and I hope he extends that opposition to other areas as well.
"FoE is absolutely opposed to incineration, which doesn't do away with the need for landfill and only creates a highly toxic ash from fairly innocuous waste.
"We believe that all the potential sites being looked at for a waste incinerator are council-owned.
"What South Tyneside Council should be aiming for is zero waste, by changing public attitudes towards
waste - a third of all food is thrown out, which is clearly unacceptable."
You can read the Gazette article here.
News from Sunderland
Reproduced with the kind permission of Dan Alliband of BAN
Waste:
"About 30 people were on the public gallery at Sunderland Civic on Wednesday evening of 30th January when the council proposed to eject public and press to allow councillors to look at the ‘Business Case’ for the Joint Waste Management Partnership.
"Despite several Freedom of Information requests, the Business Case has been withheld from the public.
"Sunderland council's argument was based on the argument that it was in the public’s interest as council tax payers to not disclose budget figures for whatever they were planning, because the private bidders would then know what to bid up to. The independents and conservatives put up a case against this to support ‘freedom of information’ and that it was not in the public’s interest for the discussion to be private. Why should people be denied access to all other information about the plans (e.g. locations and treatments etc).
"There was a vote – and 22 voted against the public being ejected, and 47 voted for, at this point the 22 councillors walked out (the council make up is 57 LAB, 1 LIB, 4 Independents and 13 TORY – so this I think this included all independents & tories and possibly the Lib, and odd Lab back-bencher!?).
"While the Labour councollors jibed how undemocratic it was that the Tories not wanting to discuss the item while they voted so solidly against Freedom of Information was laughable!
"The mayor adjourned the meeting for 5 minutes while the public were asked to leave, but a handful stayed, including FOE members, and the police were called. The mayor and his labour chums returned to the chamber and declared that the agenda item would have to be deferred to next month.
"The remainding members of the public then left by a side exit to avoid the police who had seemingly arrived at the main reception!"
News item in the Sunderland
Echo.
Talking rubbish
South Tyneside Friends of the Earth has branded a senior South Tyneside councillor Jim Capstick "irresponsible" over his
support for waste incineration. At the East Shields Community Area Forum meeting on Thursday 5th July, Progressive Party leader Councillor
Capstick gave his full support for an incineration process known as "Energy from Waste with combined heat and power", even though South Tyneside Council's Draft Waste Management Strategy admits
the incineration option "will generate additional hazardous waste".
more...
Waste not
South Tyneside Friends of the Earth has been involved in the consultation over the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy, which will direct waste management for South Tyneside, Sunderland and Gateshead as a joint initiatve for the next 15 years.
South Tyneside Friends of the Earth has submitted a response to the strategy, calling for less waste, more recycling and an avoidance of incineration. South Tyneside Friends of the Earth also prepared a matching
proforma response (pdf) for members of the public who wanted to respond to the strategy but were concerned about the skewed questions used in the consultation's official documentation.
Climate change - the talk of the Tyne
Friday 12th January will see South Tyneside host a conference on climate change at the Littlehaven Hotel
on the banks of the River Tyne in South Shields. Chaired by South Shields MP and Environment Secretary David Miliband, the conference will "bring together leading figures from public, private and voluntary sectors to discuss how we can respond to the challenge of climate change in a way that extends economic opportunity and deepens social justice."
Friends of the Earth chief executive Tony Juniper will be one of the guest speakers, along with Chris Bywell, Head of Innovation & Integration at One North East.
Another speaker will be the chief executive of Woking council, Ray Morgan, oversaw a cut in Woking council's CO2 emissions by more than 70 per cent since 1994. Hopefully South Tyneside Council will
learn a thing or two from Mr Morgan, and replace South Tyneside's feeble 5 per cent over 5 years with something more ambitious.
As Mr Miliband said, "I believe this conference will be important for South Tyneside, but also offers new ideas for the wider region."
From coal ships to ghost ships
South Tyneside shipyard company A&P's proposal to break up ex-Navy ships at it's Hebburn yard has caused a lot of consternation from local residents. Whilst there are some similarities with the 'Ghost Ships' situation at
Hartlepool, there are some striking differences too. STFOE spokesperson
Bryan Atkinson told the
Journal:
"Although we object to America exporting it's ships for breaking, we would also object to the UK exporting it's ships to developing countries. We realise there's very real environmental concerns, but we also need to look at the wider picture."
It's better to break our ships here in the UK, where health and safety and environmental issues will be closely monitored, than to send them off to countries like Bangladesh, where the rotting hulks of ships are being beached and broken up on beaches and river deltas, where the waste is wrecking local environments and communities. After a long history of shipbuilding, it must be recognised that South Tyneside has the skills to handle ship breaking.
However, both South Tyneside Council and A&P should listen to and act on the concerns of the people of Hebburn, and if work goes ahead, it should be closely monitored and residents kept involved at all times.
Miliband's toxic food folly
Environment Minister and South Shields MP David Miliband has certainly
jumped into the frying pan when he made comments in South Shields fish and chip shop
Colman's, where he said that "there isn’t any evidence either way that’s conclusive" that there's health advantages of organic food. In Pesticide Safety Directorate's report for 2001/2002 found that for lettuce alone, nearly one in five lettuces sold in the UK were found to exceed the maximum residue levels and nearly 6 per cent were contaminated with pesticides not approved for use in the UK. Groups like Friends of the Earth regularly carry out their own sampling, and always find fresh food with pesticide residues on sale. Findings like this have
prompted many people to look for food without dangerous chemicals in them.
However, organic food isn't just good for consumers. It's better for the environment and better for the animals raised under organic standards. STFOE's spokesperson Bryan Atkinson said in the
Shields
Gazette:
"Whatever the evidence on health, the evidence on organic food being better for the environment is overwhelming.
There is certainly evidence that when farmland is converted to organic culture, biodiversity increases, it is good for the soil, and you don't have pesticides running off into rivers."
Council misses opportunity
South Tyneside Council has failed
to meet the challenge of climate change in it's recent
adoption of a new target for reducing the council's carbon dioxide emissions.
At only five per cent over 5 years, the target is well below
the minimum national Big
Ask target of at least 3 per cent a year. It looks
like even this target will be reset higher when the Tindall Centre for Climate Change
releases it's findings about the targets we should be going
for, not the politically expedient ones politicians want.
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