a quick plug

Some shameless promotion here for an event coming up this Saturday.

Freshly re-elected Green Party Principal Male Speaker Derek Wall will be speaking this Saturday at Bristol's Green Future, a community day organised by Bristol Green Party at the Trinity Centre. Derek is a former resident of Greenbank, and his talk on 'Greening Bristol' is sure to be a highlight, but there's much more to the day, including workshops on community growing & permculture, transport, local politics, Transition Bristol, planning & housing, and alternative education, as well as apple pressing, tasty vegetarian food, and children's activities.

Recycled politics

The last three weeks in politics have been so exciting, even a Greengage couldn't fail to wake from its summer slumber. More (perhaps) later on election fever, the Tories' great green climbdown, and some inconvenient truths about climate sceptics.

But the mills of Bristol politics - rather like this blog - grind a little more slowly. It may seem like we've been talking about rubbish for years now, but the Lib Dems just don't want to stop. So enamoured are they by this topic, they want a special council meeting on the subject.

What's to discuss?

The waste management scheme introduced by the Lib Dems is still in place.

We have been told that the Citizens' Jury set up by Labour largely endorsed the status quo - as has been pointed out elsewhere, a rather expensive exercise in sham democracy at £45k. (Although the full report has its highlights. More on this in my next post.)

Of course it is fun to see Labour climb down from their ill-advised local election pledges about weekly collections in inner city areas like Easton - and we can only hope they will be soundly punished for this at the next round of elections. But it's hard to imagine that a special council meeting on waste will do anything other than give the Lib Dems gloating rights, and allow Gary Hopkins to mount his corn-starch hobby horse.

Hopkins is puzzlingly infuriated that his wrong headed demands to introduce corn-starch liners for kitchen waste bins have not been acted upon. Lib Dem freesheet The Bristol Reporter quotes him as saying 'Professional advice about how they [liners] would improve composting rates and please residents has been rejected'. But both the environmental benefits of these bags and their popularity are illusory. Hopkins has yet to rebut the Green case against these bags. And his e-petition in favour of the liners has collected a grand total of 17 signatories since August. Hardly a ringing popular endorsement.

There are real issues about waste and recycling in Bristol, but whether the Lib Dems will raise them is another matter.

Comhaontas Glas: half empty or half full?

Never work with children or animals? Think again. The cutest party political broadcast in recent history paid off, and the Irish Green Party entered government last week, in a coalition with Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats.

It's hard to know how to feel about this. As someone who grew up in Ireland in the dark days of the 1980s, it's a thrill to see Greens in power in a country which, for all its plastic bag bans, still has a long way to go.

On the other hand, Fianna Fáil? Party of endless corruption scandals? Of personal condolences to the German embassy on the death of Hitler? Led by a man who was recently forced to admit that he did not have a bank account during his time as Minister of Finance?

As a friend of mine put it: 'Can they really put manners on the bricks and cement party?' It's hard to see how.

Bashing the bishop

Revealing interview with the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, in the Guardian today.

The dear old Bish got a lot of mileage out of his announcement last year that flying on holiday was 'a sin'. Now, I'm no fan of organised religion, but it seemed at the time to be quite a useful contribution to the debate.

Today's piece sheds a somewhat different light on the matter. (The fact that it's penned by Leo Hickman, as part of a seemingly endless stream of advertorial for his book on flying, is probably a subject for another post.)

It seems the Bishop only pledged to refrain for flying for one year. Even this, he moans, 'has produced all sorts of inconveniences'. These inconveniences, it transpires, consist of having to turn down invitations to speak at international conferences. But despite such cruel and unusual hardship, the Bishop remains stoic: 'The year comes to an end at the beginning of November, but I don't resent it because it's a fast.' So great is his concern for the environment that he's even considering cutting out recreational flying altogether.

Whoa there! Either flying is a 'sin' - religious or environmental - or it isn't. I'm not exactly up on the latest theological developments, but I wasn't aware that the church advised giving up sin for a limited time, only to return to one's wicked ways with a clear conscience. (Unless you're a Catholic, of course.) Surely cutting out recreational flights should be an absolute given for a man with such strongly stated environmental beliefs. And how much flying is really required in his line of work anyway? I wouldn't have thought that participation in international jollys was an essential part of tending to his metropolitan flock.

What irritates me is the implication that giving up flying is so difficult. Plenty of people have stopped flying. If the Bishop can't take this step, let's not judge him. But to set him up as a spokesperson for the anti-aviation movement is ludicrous.

Needless to say, the toothless Hickman didn't pick him up on any of this. He did, however, probe further on the environmental implications of the Bishop's decision to have four children. The Bish admitted that there were 'probably too many people in the world'. He then went on to add:

But we live in a continent which is not, on the whole, reproducing itself. There are so many people who are so bloody selfish that they don't even want one child. There is nothing that converts you to this cause more than your children nagging you at the breakfast table wondering what sort of life they are going to lead in the world that we have devastated.

What I love about this statement is that it contains three of my all-time Pro-Natalism Myths:

1. What the world needs is more Europeans. Not too hard to pick the holes in that one.

2. Those without children are selfish. There are all sorts of reasons for not having children. Infertility, allergy to garish plastic toys, love of expensive foreign holidays, environmental concern, and voluntary human extinction are just a few. Equally, people have children for all sorts of reasons: a workforce for your subsistence farm, a tribe of environmentally aware Monbiots, a reason to shop at Baby Boden. Selfishness or not doesn't really come into it.

3. That parenthood makes you more environmentally aware. In some cases, this may be true, and let's give the Bishop the benefit of the doubt. But look around you, dude. Plenty of those 4x4s have children in the back. And did Swampy have a kid? I think not.

promises promises

So. People are saying that Labour might reintroduce weekly rubbish collections. It's certainly true that promises were made during the election campaign. But it's hard to see how they could justify the expense, or defend weekly collection in some parts of the city and not in others.

What's often forgotten in the increasingly hysterical press coverage of rubbish and recycling is how well the new collection schemes can work, and how quickly people have adapted to them. First thing in the morning on rubbish collection days, I marvel at people's fastidiously arranged recycling bins and neatly stacked piles of cereal boxes. Incredible as it may seem, what other Europeans have been managing for years is not beyond us either.

But of course, in Daily Mail land, RECYCLING WORKS is about as attractive a headline as WOMAN SUCCESSFULLY COMBINES WORK AND FAMILY or SICK MAN GOES TO HOSPITAL: GETS BETTER.

Ray stopped play

So now the Tories support academies too. Let's not dwell on the exquisite irony of David Willetts pleading that "academic selection entrenches advantage". Surely, chorus the Tory faithful, that's the whole point of grammar schools? How far Cameron can drag the party with him is one of the few interesting questions left in national politics.

What's maybe more pertinent here is how this will play out closer to home. There's much debate about whether academies really do raise academic achievement. The disadvantages of taking control over children's education out of public control are certainly well rehearsed. But the effect on the broader local community rarely gets discussed.

The City Academy in Bristol - formerly St. George Community College - was the first academy in the South West. As a flagship project, it's got tonnes of positive press coverage, not a little government spin, and a visit from David Beckham. The headteacher, Ray Priest, is by all accounts a fine and inspirational man, although why he couldn't be equally inspiring within the state sector has never been fully explained.

The Academy opened in 2003 and quickly found itself in dispute with sections of the local community over the use of Packer's Field, a local green space. Originally used by the workers of the Packer's chocolate factory, it was sold to the city council in the 1930s, with the proviso that it should be used for the recreation of local people. In 2002, however, Bristol City Council handed the field to the newly fledged City Academy on a 99 year lease.

To cut a long story short, the Packer's Field proposals divided the local community down the middle. A consultation in 2003 saw 58% in favour of the plans and 42% against. Those in favour pointed to the problems with drug dealing and dog mess - that constant of local government - and the fact that the plans would give local primary schools access to the field. Those against wanted to see the field given town green status, and open access preserved.

Unsurprisingly, the City Academy won the day, and was given permission to go ahead with the developments, subject to a Community Use Agreement, which would give locals access to the field.

Since then, progress has been slow. The field has languished as a wet and muddy morass for much of the intervening period. The contractors given the job of remodelling this space went bankrupt. Not only were the large lakes in the inadequately fenced field a danger zone, the boundary with neighbouring Whitehall school was not properly maintained, creating a security hazard.

Work has now restarted, but a recent stroll around the field reveals that any child could easily squeeze through the gates. Standing water remains a problem, and a Community Use Agreement has not yet been finalised.

This tale of woe shows how divisive academies and related developments can be. Perhaps even more worryingly, it shows just how acrimonious such disputes can become. Opportunity for some can be loss for others. In inner city areas, with precious little green space, it's easy to understand how access for all vs. sports facilities for kids can become a zero sum game.

Such divisions are easily exploited. Once an academy is established, they become a disproportionately powerful player in local affairs. Unlike schools under local authority control, their governing bodies do not have to include representatives from the local community. In any case, a majority of governors can be appointed by the sponsor, giving them effective control.

We in the environmental movement are quick to see community and localism as the answer to almost everything (the Transition groups are a prime example of this). But we also need to recognise that locals can disagree vehemently, and that, even without an academy to stir things up, communities don't always want the same things.

Easton folkie Eirlys Rhiannon's song* about Packer's sums it up nicely:

"It's got so local's just a badge you wear
To show that you know how to care."

Rather than romanticising the "power of community", perhaps we need to start thinking about community competition too.

*(You can listen to it here.)

I snooze, you lose

To: sepp.blatter@fifa.com
From: Greengage
Subject: Something must be done

Dear Herr Blatter,

Even from your Alpine eyrie, it surely must be obvious just how boring so-called top-level football has become. We need not waste time thinking back to the negativity-fest of last year's World Cup. Saturday's FA Cup final and the ongoing snoozesome Champions League final should be enough to refresh our memories. Luckily, the valuable minutes and hours of my life spent watching overpaid primadonnas losing the ball in midfield have not been entirely in vain. I have formulated a plan to save world football, which I am prepared to share with you. For free. Contrary to my usual practice, no brown envelopes bulging with Swiss francs need change hands.

My plan is a simple one. Any cup match which ends in a draw should go to extra time. If, after extra time, the scoreline is still drawn, both teams should be eliminated from the competition. The result: positive, forward play and the sense that the match actually means something.

No need to thank me, virtue and innovation are their own reward.

Yours,

Greengage

P.S. I think it goes without saying that the group stage of the Champions League should be abolished forthwith.