Recycling shame of Hampstead Heath

Why oh why is the Corporation of London, which manages Hampstead Heath, not into recycling? The photo below shows a popular part of the Heath early last Sunday morning. The rubbish bin is overflowing and most of its contents could be recycled.

Hurrah for Andrew Thornton of Budgens

I’m not sure at what point Andrew Thornton, the owner of the Belsize Park Budgens franchise, “got it”, but as soon as he did dramatic change became possible at his supermarket. As a result of working with Transition Belsize his stores now:

• Sell over 1,500 local food lines (sourced within 100 miles of the store) out of 10,000
• Send its food waste to be turned into biogas and then electricity
• Put only 6% of total waste into landfill
• Have recycling bins at the till for excess packaging
• Offer excess packaging, mobile phone and cartridge recycling facilities
• Cover its fridges and freezers at night to save energy
• Have a sustainable fish policy using a traffic light coding system
• Use 70% fewer plastic bags than in 2008 and have introduced a charge of 2p for “single use” carrier bags to reduce usage further
• Offer bicycle deliveries to those who live within two miles of the store, both for food if they spend more than £25 in his shop and for moving general stuff around for a £5 charge

In addition Andrew has always said that he will sell any food that Transition Belsize can produce and will help with packaging it if need be. And now, his piece de resistance, he's opened up the roof of his Crouch End store to community groups wishing to grow food which he will then sell in the store. It's called Food from the Sky and it's an absolutely wonderful project so hurrah for Andrew Thornton (pictured below enjoying a picnic on the roof in Crouch End).

New study: gardening makes children happy

New research suggests that taking part in gardening can make a child feel happy and boost their development. Too right it does. I spent Friday evening gardening with five children aged between four and eleven. Their enjoyment was palpable.

The study of 1,300 teachers and 10 schools was commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). It found children in schools that encouraged gardening became more resilient, confident and lived healthier lives. The RHS says school gardening should be used as a key teaching tool, rather than as an extra-curricular activity.

Researchers found that teachers who used gardening as part of learning said it helped improve children's readiness to learn. They also said it encouraged pupils to become more active in solving problems, as well as boosting literacy and numeracy skills. The report said: "Fundamental to the success of school gardens in stimulating a love of learning was their ability to translate sometimes dry academic subjects into practical, real world experiences. For more on this read here...

Of course, adults derive just as much enjoyment from gardening. An innovative new scheme in Totnes in Devon called Healthy Futures has just kicked off which allows GPs to prescribe community gardening. And on Saturday I visited the Secret Garden of the Medical Foundation for the Victims of Torture. Tucked away behind the busy roads of Finsbury Park the Foundation has a beautiful garden where those who are recovering from physical persection can obtain peace of mind through gardening.

Boris's new cycle superhighways

So Boris's new cycle superhighways are about to coming into being. I'm sceptical. They basically amount to a strip of blue paint on very busy and polluted roads.

And what happens when they hit a bus stop? Ah yes - they simply disappear and cyclists are left to do what they always have to do - fight with traffic.

It's not doing it for me, Boris.

Transition - upwards and onwards

The annual Transition Conference took place last weekend at a beautiful old agricultural college - Seale Hayne - near Newton Abbot in Devon (see photo below and note the "green wall"!). It took me a few days to recover from the intellectual overload of having to take part in thoughtful workshops and discussions for three days solid. But what a joy to be with so many people who genuinely care.

We now have seven Transition groups in Camden: Belsize, Bloomsbury, Fitzrovia, Hampstead, Kentish Town, Kings Cross and Primrose Hill. Word reached me today of moves to start Transition Fortune Green. And I'm on to someone who I think will be a great motivator for a Transition West Hampstead. It's an amazing movement and I'm incredibly proud to be part of it. For more on the Transition movement click here.

More PFI-funded roads isn't the answer - not in Sheffield nor anywhere

Very depressing to hear the (Lib Dem) Leader of Sheffield Council on BBC Radio Four's The World At One today saying that his priority was to make sure that Private Finance Initiative (PFI) money was available for building more roads around his city despite the government cuts. More roads? Is that really what he thinks Sheffield and the UK needs - more roads?

As far as I'm aware every study of road building capacity has shown that building more roads simply leads to the traffic increasing by more than the new available road capacity. And what's the point of building more roads if in five years time nobody will be able to afford the petrol to run their cars. He, and Sheffield, would do much better to put their money into car sharing, car clubs, buses and other forms of public transport.

As for PFI - that was Gordon Brown's way of taking investment off the books to create the illusion that government borrowing was lower than it was. In the long run it costs public authorities more.

PFI, roads - these are old "solutions" for another age and I'm shocked that a Lib Dem council leader should be supporting them.

Daily Mail tries to break wind

The Daily Mail has published a letter by former BBC correspondent Michael Cole in which he attacks wind power and the appointment of Miriam Durantez, the wife of the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, to a job in the renewables industry. Unfortunately for Mr Cole, his claims about wind power bear little resemblance to reality. Frankly a newspaper like the Daily Mail should have a duty to check claims like this before they print them. If Michael Cole had written something as inaccurate as that during his time at the BBC, he'd have been fired on the spot.

Here are his claims followed by answers from RenewableUK (formerly the British Wind Energy Association):

Cole: "[Wind Turbines] can't run without power from the National Grid and need their own generator to keep them constantly supplied with electricity."

RenewableUK: "Mr Cole here appears to be getting confused about how wind turbines generate power. Because wind speeds are variable, turbines use an induction generator to extract as much energy from the wind as possible. Induction generators could be considered to be a form of reversed electrical motor: when the wind turbines' blades are turning faster than the speed of the equivalent electrical motor, the generator produces power. This doesn't mean they drain it when the wind speeds are low - when they are, the turbine is switched off. However, to turn the generator back on again it requires an initial burst of electricity to create the magnetic flux which allows it to work - a jump start, if you will. Stand-alone wind turbines get this from a bank of capacitors, and grid-connected turbines take it directly from the grid. This means that Mr Cole would be right if he wanted to say that if all the generators supplying power to the National Grid failed simultaneously you couldn't use a wind turbine to start it up again, but given that a typical coal or nuclear plant requires about a seventh of the electricity it generates, it seems odd to focus only on wind turbines."

Cole: "Billions of pounds have been spent in Britain on more than 2,000 turbines - and yet they contribute barely one per cent of all the electricity that we need. The combined output is less than one medium-sized conventional power station."

RenewableUK: "This is simply wrong. Wind capacity in the UK is 4.5GW, and the total capacity of all generators in the country is 80GW. Owing to wind's variability, wind turbines typically produce about 3% of the country's electricity. However, we actually only use a maximum of 63GW - the remainder is backup for when thermal power stations 'trip' and fall off the grid. About 1GW of conventional power trips every week on average. In terms of cost, it's true that over the last ten years the Government has spent approximately £1billion on supporting the wind industry via the Renewables Obligation system, and another £270 million on research and development. However, in the same period the Government has also spent £200 million on the National Opera, and last year alone around £35 billion on defence. Yearly Government spending on renewable energy is extremely low and easily affordable compared with other areas of state activity."

Cole: "They are an ever-present eyesore and are blamed for killing bats and birds that accidentally fly into them."

RenewableUK: "As Bill Oddie knows, before a wind farm is built the developers have to conduct an environmental impact assessment to ensure that local wildlife won't be adversely affected. Large wind turbines actually have less of an impact on wildlife than comparable structures like communication masts or road traffic - and certainly less than cats!

"It's true that some people dislike the look of wind turbines, but they're in the minority - surveys have repeatedly shown that the majority of people support the expansion of wind energy. Their concerns shouldn't be ignored, however, and during the planning consultation process people have the opportunity to ask developers to ensure that the visual impact of a proposed farm is minimised. This can and has led to developers moving the planned sites of turbines so that they're less visible to people who dislike them.

"Constructive engagement like this on both sides of the debate is crucial to ensuring we can use renewables to help prevent dangerous climate change and secure our energy supplies - while at the same time ensuring that people who will be impacted by new renewable energy projects have the chance to have their say. Unfortunately, what Mr Cole has written does not constitute constructive debate."

Hear hear!

Transition, deep green thinking and the Big Society

As the Joint Coordinator of a Transition Initiative – Transition Belsize in North London - I am instinctively drawn to the concept of David Cameron's Big Society. It has a lot in common with the aims and ambitions of the Transition movement. Cooperatives, boosting social entrepreneurs, time banks, community-owned assets – these all fit neatly with Transition thinking and indeed a lot of deep green thinking.

The Big Society takes a lot of interesting ideas - cooperatives, boosting social entrepreneurs, time banks - but what worries me about the concept is that I see little understanding of the real underlying problems of our society - materialism (ie capitalism), globalisation of production (as opposed to the spread of ideas) and an unwillingness to live in tune with nature leading to depletion of natural resources. The Big Society takes a lot of interesting ideas, but it never really grapples with the problem of Tesco (which I use as a metaphor for big business).

In an interview with Transition Culture the man credited with the Big Society concept, Red Tory Philip Blond, said that Tesco would have to change so that local businesses can exist cheek by jowl with Tesco:

“I think tackling the ‘Tesco-isation’, if you put it like that, is part of the answer, but also the dominant supermarket players are also going to be part of the answer. I think the point with supermarkets isn’t that they are going to be eliminated, not least because many people wouldn’t want that, but it is actually getting them to operate differently, and to operate differently in a way that works with locality and with other needs, diversification of the food supply, more localised provision, market making rather than market dominating, and I think everybody will have a role, and they will go from big to small.

"We don’t want to get in a position of just defending the small against the big, what we want is all modes present, in a way that one mode doesn’t dominate other modes, so we don’t have a purely local economy, because that isn’t sustainable, nor do we have a purely global economy because that isn’t sustainable. We need the inter-penetration of each order or each sphere by the other.”

Later in the conversation he said: “There’s no turning the clock back, no opposing globalisation. The point is rather to orient globalisation towards augmenting the local rather than eliminating it.”

I don’t see anywhere in that interview, or in anything Phillip Blond or David Cameron have said before or since, any convincing explanation of how you can make Tesco and local shops work well together. All the evidence is that out of store supermarkets destroy town centres, that supermarkets lead to money and resources leaking out of local economies, that town centre supermarkets lead to the closure of independent food shops. How would the Big Society prevent that? By educating residents to want to buy local? That’s a lovely idea but it’s naive.

Breaking up the banks and going back to small regional banks or mutual societies is another laudable intention, but how do you restrain 21st century capitalism and the destructive force that is maximisation of shareholder value so as to allow small financial institutions to thrive? How do you change the values of society back to something where "Small is Beautiful"? How do you prevent international capital from taking highly leveraged bets against countries and companies?

I’m all for smaller classes and smaller schools that are closer to where children live, and I’m a big fan of community clinics providing all but emergency services (as in much of France), but if all schools and hospital departments are set free to run themselves and charge whatever they like, then how is that different from the old Thatcherite approaches - privatisation, trickle down and get on your bike?

I don’t want to throw out the Big Society concept. I think there is something there. But at the moment it feels like a collection of ideas floating on the surface with no real understanding of why we are in crisis and no real framework for solving the crisis.

The problem isn’t a dichotomy of socialist big government versus rightwing libertarianism, which Phillip Blond says he’s trying to get away from - the problem is the underlying values of the consumer society. And the solution is not to give those who are at the margins of society more assets so that they can play at the materialist roulette table - the solution is to change the underlying values of society. Where for example is the Big Society analysis of the gap between needs and wants which has been created and exploited by the advertising industry in the modern capitalist era?

So this is, I think, where Transitioners and other deep green thinkers part company with the Big Society. We see climate change, resource depletion, globalisation of production, maximisation of shareholder value, industrialised food, debt overhang, asset bubbles, financial crisis, oil wars etc as symptoms of a society running out of control, whereas the proponents of the Big Society simply want to tweak the model to allow a breed of New Victorian social entrepreneur to take their place alongside the Murdochs, the Leahys and the Trumps of the world.

Let’s not throw out the Big Society model just yet. It has lots of good elements in it. But we need to be aware that it is far from fully formed. Therein lies the real challenge and opportunity – how to create a model that picks up where the Big Society leaves off and which deep green thinkers and Transitioners can agree with, a model which doesn’t simply mutate into a reworking of “sink or swim” Thatcherism wrapped in a shiny new language of community.

Camden Green Fair

The Camden Green Fair is this Sunday 6th June from 12midday to 7pm in Regents Park. It’s a fantastic showcase for all things green so please do go along if you can. I’m talking at the Bird Table Debates at 1.30pm on “The rise of the Transition Town movement and its place in David Cameron’s Big Society and deep green thinking”.

Insulating a private block in Belsize

Here's something that made me smile - a private block in Belsize being cavity wall insulated. The guys on the crane are injecting polystyrene beads into the cavity. When I saw this I thought it was the result of Camden Council's new policy of helping blocks like this to do the work because it's so hard to get all the individual flat owners to agree on what needs to be done and who should pay for it it. But no - the owners of this block - Lowlands in Eton Avenue - managed to agree among themselves that the work needed to be do so all credit to them.

Camden pub with green wall

Here's one of my favourite green walls. It's on The Driver pub in Wharfdale Road in Camden. Well worth a visit. It was designed by Patrick Blanc, the French green wall specialist who's done so much to raise awareness about vertical planting, although I would describe most of his walls as being mainly about aesthetics rather than more functional stuff like insulation, cooling, food growing and enchancing biodiversity.

Growing food on the roof of Budgens

This was a great way to spend part of my Bank Holiday Monday - helping to install a food growing site on the roof of Budgens in Crouch End! The aim of owner Andrew Thornton and his partner Azul Thome is to give local people the chance to grow food and then to sell any surpluses in the store. After a fun afternoon of planting we tucked into a freshly picked salad and an excellent bottle of Sancerre. Next year I'm hoping for a vin de Crouch End!

BBC reporters implying manmade climate change is a scientific debate is irresponsible

Last Saturday the From Our Own Correspondent programme on BBC Radio Four broadcast a report by Roger Harrabin about a gathering of climate change sceptics in the US. He mentioned the University of East Anglia researchers implicated in the so-called "climategate" scandal again and again, but completely failed to point out that they had been completely exonerated of any wrongdoing by an independent Royal Society inquiry.

Last night an Analysis programme by Justin Rowlatt, also on Radio Four, repeatedly tried to suggest that there was still some debate about the basic science of climate change.

These two journalists in particular spend their time making it seem like the jury is still out on manmade climate change in the scientific community when it patently isn't.

Every major institute that deals with climate-related science is saying manmade climate change is here and real and dangerous. The translation of what the science is saying into the language of the public is this: global warming is definitely happening; it is happening because of human activities and it will ontinue as long as CO2 and other greenhouse gases (like water vapour trails from jet planes!) keep increasing in the atmosphere. (For more on how to answer the climate sceptics see here.)

It is utterly irresponsible of the BBC to run stories that suggest that there is some sort of debate about this. We can have a debate about how high temperatures will go, about the possible consequences of climate change, about how fast we might get to mass extinction of species (which is of course already happening), but not about the basic science.

As an ex-BBC journalist I perfectly well understand the need for a "good story" or a "controversial debate". But the BBC is supposed to be a public broadcaster with duty to inform and educate as well as entertain. On climate change it is failing to do that. Indeed, as I've said before, I think the BBC bears much of the responsibility for the confusion about climate change in the minds of so many.

What does success look like in the context of the new Conservative-Lib Dem coalition?

I've been slow to judge the new Con-Lib government because I wanted space to think about what it all meant first. I know Lib Dems who instantly left the party because of the link-up with the Tories. I know others who've pronounced themselves more Lib Dem as a result of seeing Lib Dems in government. I'm not yet 100% sure what I think so I've decided to wait and see what actually happens.

Out on the streets of Haverstock ward where there's a Camden Council by-election next week it's been difficult to explain what's happened in the requisite 30 seconds, even for me, a former salesman and broadcast journalist. It's easy to knock the national coalition - "you've sold out to the Tories", "I voted Lib Dem and got the Tories", "you had a chance to form a once-in-a-lifetime coalition for progressive change" etc. But it takes about ten minutes to explain to someone why the outcome is the least worst option, to coin a phrase used by Winston Churchill to describe democracy, and why, if it goes well, it could be the most progressive government since 1945.

Someone asked me what I meant by progressive at a dinner party on Saturday night. He was talking about politics in terms of right and left which I, like most Lib Dems, eschew. By progressive I mean the agenda I fought for when I was in the Labour Party (until I left over the Iraq War) and that has been part of the Lib Dem DNA since before I joined the party:

- a fairer political system where votes have meaning, parliamentary terms are fixed and the House of Lords is elected
- a fairer tax system where the poor pay less and the rich pay more
- a fairer education system where class and cash don't define outcomes
- an economic system which values and protects the environment rather than destroying it
- a more liberal approach to civil liberties instead of the surveillance society, detention without trial, ID cards and the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" attitude of the outgoing Labour government
- a multilateral approach to international affairs rather than endless armed interventions in other countries
- a decentralisation of power to the lowest possible level of decisionmaking

Labour had 13 years to do some or all of that but they didn't. It beggars belief to imagine that some or all of that was on the table in the last 24 hours of Gordon Brown's administration. Especially given the noises off from elsewhere in the Labour Party. There was no progressive coalition on offer, Labour is no longer a progressive party and anyway, the maths of a Lib-Lab coalition in terms of seats in the House of Commons simply didn't add up.

Then look at what's actually in the coalition agreement - virtually all of the Lib Dem manifesto ie fairer politics, fairer taxes, fairer education and a greener society. There are some notable fudges such as nuclear power (which I'll come back to another day), but, if the coalition holds together, it's actually quite impressive and progressive - especially on the environment. If Labour had put together a programme like this it would have been hard for most progressives not to have supported them.

Of course the question of whether the Con-Lib coalition will hold together is the key one. If it does, then we get a lot of good policies like the break up of the banks, an end to outrageous banking bonuses, a proper post office network and a focus on renewable energy rather than "clean" coal. And maybe, just maybe, the British public will learn to love adult politics, as the Scottish and Welsh already have done - where politicians talk to each other and compromise rather than squabble like children.

But perhaps the biggest thing in favour of the new government is this - surely it's better to have Lib Dems in government than having the Tories going it alone.

By the same token I have offered to help the incoming Labour administration in Camden on environmental policy. They probably don't need my help but if they do, then I'm there for them. Some things - particularly the environment in my view - are far more important than party politics.

Tories & Lib Dems share spoils in Belsize - Labour win back Camden Council

Here are the results of Thursday’s local elections in the London Borough of Camden's Belsize ward where I was a councillor from May 2006 to May 2010:

Jonny Bucknell, Conservative – 1,969
Claire-Louise Leyland, Conservative – 1,969
Tom Simon, Lib Dem – 1,949
Nigel Rumble, Conservative - 1897
Anne Ward, Lib Dem – 1,746
Paul Perkins, Lib Dem - 1727
Samantha Gunasekera, Labour – 1,094
Sada Deshmukh, Labour – 1,051
Luca Salice, Labour – 1,027

So congratulations to Jonny (who's reportedly cried several times in public because he's so happy I didn't stand again!), Claire-Louise and Tom, and commiserations to the others.

Across Camden there was a Labour surge on the back of the unexpected increased vote for the borough’s two Labour MPs. Labour now have 30 councillors and have regained control of Camden Council, which seems a bit tough when you think that the Audit Commission has rated Camden as the best run council in the country for the last few years.

The Lib Dems and Tories both lost councillors and now have 10 each. And the Greens were reduced to one seat in Highgate. Three seats are still up for grabs - because of the death of Cllr Syed Hoque during the campaign the three Haverstock councillors will be chosen in a by-election on Tue 25th May (which the Lib Dems won making them the official opposition). So it’s all change.

For what it’s worth my analysis is that there was a strange Nick Clegg Rebound Effect going on. The TV debates propelled him into the spotlight and made a lot of people think about voting Lib Dem. But the other two parties ran very effective campaigns warning that a vote for the Lib Dems would mean letting in Labour or the Conservatives.

The turnout was the highest for years and most people voted the same way in the national election as they did in the local poll. The net result was a squeeze on the Lib Dems and the loss of more than half our council seats. Exactly the same thing happened in Islington. However at the national level it meant a hung parliament and Nick Clegg is currently negotiating to be in government. Strange times indeed!

New orchard at the Rosary School

I'm delighted to hear that Camden Council recently helped the Rosary School to install an orchard. Volunteers helped plant the orchard and make space for food growing areas in the adjacent nunnery. Pupils helped to plant plum and cherry trees, apple espaliers (apple trees growing up walls), rhubarb, redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries and gooseberries. Food growing tools have also been provided so that the students can maintain the space and council officers are working with the school to integrate their interaction with the orchard into the curriculum. Fantastic - let's have more of this!

Installing a bee hive in your back garden

This is my friend Matt taking delivery of his new bee hive. Two weeks later he had to deal with a bee swarm in a neighbouring garden. A swarm occurs when a new Queen bee takes some of a hive's worker and drone bees off to start a new life elsewhere.

To the untrained eye a swarm can look utterly terrifying as a dark cloud of bees whirl around noisily looking for a temporary resting place - in this case on the branch of a tree. At that point you have up to 48 hours to "rescue" the bees. If you don't, they'll find a new home for themselves. The trick is to shake the bees into a box and transfer them to a new hive overnight when they're asleep.

Collecting a swarm is a delicate business which usually requires an experienced beekeeper. So you've got to be impressed with Matt. He's only just done a two day beekeeping course but he's already tamed his first swarm and now has two bee hives!

Impressed by cycling mums

I was impressed by these mums collecting their children from a school in Belsize. I watched in awe as they launched themselves into the Swiss Cottage gyratory system. Ow!

Nettle quiche, steamed hop shoots and foraged salad - yum!

How's this for a delicious looking homegrown and foraged meal? It's nettle quiche, steamed hop shoots and a lettuce, lime, hawthorn and mint salad! Thanks to Mark Stonebanks for sending that in. Mark's a member of the Transition Belsize foraging group who are learning to becoming expert foragers.

The battle of disinformation goes on

I'm grateful to Tim Drewitt for emailing me the quotes below from Al Gore's new book Our Choice in reply to my post about the University of East Anglia climate scientists being completely exonerated by an independent inquiry:

"The process of deception by the biggest carbon polluters started in the years prior to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio - it grew to become the largest effort of its kind the world has ever seen. Their aim was to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact.

"These professional climate skeptics have had an outsize impact on the politics of the issue. The reason for their devastating impact was clearly understood by the denier network from the outset of the campaign. One of their advisers (to the Bush government) described the strategic rationale in these words: 'Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.'

"Brain scientists have identified the specific parts of the brain within the frontal cortex that keep us on course once we decide to pursue a value-based goal over a long period of time. Significantly, they also note that that particular part of the human brain - the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (or DLPFG) - just above the temples may weaken in the presence of high stress and that the mental effort necessary to maintain its crucial function may be exhausted by excessive distraction and anxiety.

"The DLPFC keeps us on track by coordinating our ability to recall things from memory, plan for the future, and juggle all of the things competing for our attention. Take the DLPFC offline - with constant excessive levels of stress, for example - and we become locked in the here and now, with little care for the past and an ambivalence for the future. Unsurprisingly, there is overwhelming evidence that modern societies routinely generate much higher levels of stress than was common in previous centuries."

Al Gore, Our Choice