Dewsbury Candidate, Adrian Cruden speaks out on the planned Kirklees cuts

The news of the £250 million cuts facing Kirklees Council comes as no big surprise. With much local spending and revenue directed by central Government and with the leaders of the three main parties falling over themselves to talk tough about “savage” spending cuts (in Lib Dem Nick Clegg’s macho words), it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that local authorities, including our own, would eventually face the axe, regardless of who wins the General Election next year.

The challenge locally will be to protect the most vulnerable – especially services for older people, young people and disabled people. But I hope the Council will look as well at imaginative ways to raise money, such as from European sources, as well as dropping the harebrained schemes like the doomed Stayton plan.

 
Kirklees also must preserve schemes which create jobs and skills in our area – such as the Warmzone, originally proposed by Green Party councillors which has the multiple benefits of cutting costs for residents, reducing carbon output and creating local jobs for smaller business such as plumbers and joiners. Especially at a time like this, keeping these businesses going will do more for sustainable, skilled, local employment than any number of national high street stores councillors are trying to attract through the Stayton plan.

Council jobs too are jobs which keep money raised and spent in our town – defending jobs from cuts, and getting Labour to follow up on Shahid Malik’s promise to bring council posts to Empire House, will be vital. It is easy to knock Council services, but the staff will be missed in more ways than one of they are made redundant (not an inexpensive process in itself).

Adrian Cruden , Green PPC Dewsbury 21 September 2009

The Erosion of Liberty

Tony Bunyan, Director of Statewatch, an organisation which monitors justice and home affairs in the EU, spoke at a meeting of Kirklees Green Party at Dewsbury Minster on Tuesday 15th September.

Mr Bunyan warned that protocols on policing which will be introduced if the Lisbon Treaty, which is supported by the Government and the Liberal Democrats, goes ahead. Almost unnoticed by politicians and the press, these will give sweeping new powers to security services and police in the UK and other countries to monitor and spy on citizens' across the EU. Bizarrely, this could even mean being monitored by foreign police for activities which are perfectly legal here.

For example, Mr Bunyan explained, the Italian police would be able quite legally to hack into the computers of people in Dewsbury without having to inform the UK authorities, let alone the individual being monitored. Likewise, big businesses will be able to gain access to more information about their customers which could be cross-referenced with other data held, for example, by the health service to assist in targeting a particular group of customers.

Dewsbury Green Party Parliamentary candidate, Adrian Cruden, said after the meeting that given the Government's enthusiasm for the Lisbon treaty there was a real danger of us sleepwalking into a "Big Brother" nightmare. "It has nothing to do with improving child protection or fighting terrorism," he said, "but rather everything to do with a State that seems to want to monitor us all more and more closely just because it can - with potentially frightening consequences for us all."

The Greens invited local MP and former Justice Minister Shahid Malik to the meeting, but he declined citing a previous appointment. He did not respond to an offer from Mr Cruden to read out any statement about the subject to the meeting."

21 September 2009

Save Council Jobs by Reducing Hours - Cllr Andrew Cooper blogs
"Whichever government we get after the General Election we know that to pay for the bankers we will have a huge contraction of the public sector. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are under threat. It will be the next dip in the recession within 12 months. If the choice is cut jobs or cut hours my vote goes for hours. To have potentially thousands of breadwinners becoming unemployed is unacceptable. The question for Kirklees Councillors will they take the 'we are a service not an employer approach' (yes someone has said that) and put thousands of families on the dole OR can we find another way. A 35 hour week would save the Council millions yet preserve jobs. It would also drive efficiencies in the way Kirklees operates.

Is it possible, politically, to acheive a 35 hour week? We'll see. If I manage that I may try the more difficult problem of getting the other Party groups to abandon the £2000/year party groups hospitality allowance. Stop free beer for Councillors now that would be an achievement."

21 September 2009

Slaithwaite greengrocery co-op and bakery opens

At the end of May the greengrocers in Slaithwaite village centre closed. "A greengrocery business has been in operation on this site for at least 50 years, and we believe this closure will be a major loss to our community", said local resiednet and co-operator, Graham Mirchell.

As a result of community initiative a new organisation has been established to run an exciting new shop in the same premises, with the aim of providing fresh, locally grown  produce, and other healthy & interesting foods to people in the Colne Valley community.

Slaithwaite Cooperative Limited trading as Green Valley grocers is now open, providing good quality fresh  fruit and vegetables, fresh fish, freshly baked hand made bread, wholefoods  and a range of other goods, with an emphasis on locally grown and made food.

"If the idea of eating fresh food that uses less fossil fuel and lower packaging is interesting, then you can be a part of Slaithwaite Cooperative by becoming a shareholder", said Graham.

A community share issue was launched in May and has raised the minimum £15000 in share capital to enable this new social enterprise to launch.

The store re-opened as a co-op on July 10the with the Handmade Bakers from Marsden moving in too. After a busy first few weeks a formal opening by the Mayor of Kirklees, Cllr Julie Stewart-Turner took place in mid-August - see pictures and latest news

To register your interest in the Slaithwaite Cooperative Limited e-mail graham@mc3.coop or phone
01484 844417 or mob: 07906 318677. To find out more use the web site. http://www.slaithwaite.coop

Big questions over need for huge stores
Supermarkets and their satellite convenience stores are on the march. Your correspondent, Richard Huddleston (Examiner 25 May) wants to see a proper debate on the future of the town. He is worried that campaigners are asking awkward questions about supermarkets’ plans. They are, he hints, standing in the way of “progress”.

But it is thanks to the “campaigners” that we are having a debate and challenging the assumptions that the supermarket plans are based on.

At the heart of the shopping debate is “need”. Do we need more supermarkets in Huddersfield when we have a lot of empty town centre retail space? The retail studies done by consultants for the council in 2008 are out of date, but they are used to show we “need” more large supermarkets.

Combining additional retailing capacity with town centre regeneration should be the priority. There is land and low quality building inside the ring road – some of it was part of the Queensgate plan. 

As a University town Huddersfield must recognise that its largest employer will need land to expand, or for new jobs in the knowledge industries to be developed close to it. This raises an issue about the use of the Broadbent site for an ASDA supermarket.

If Tesco and ASDA Walmart get planning approval we, the “campaigners”, will have raised important issues that will still need addressing: on the need for a “local food” policy; on how to regenerate the town centre after the demise of Queensgate; on bringing jobs into the central area; on traffic and access on the ring road; and on air quality in Leeds Road.

Finally, through Kirklees Council’s LDF consultation, we have been asked to comment on future land use that will affect our lives in the next decade. If we want to be far-sighted we must plan now to adjust to the constraints and opportunities of a low carbon economy.

As energy costs continue to rise (due to waning oil reserves) we will soon get back to $150 a barrel oil that we reached last year - and more. Carbon use will need to be reduced for economic reasons and to tackle climate change. Through a mixture of behaviour change and technology, our lives, our settlements, shopping and food sources will change.

We could and should take these factors into account in our planning process now, rather than wait until it’s staring us in the face. 

Cllr Andrew Cooper - Green, Newsome Ward

Lead Letter in Huddersfield Daily Examiner 1st June 2009

17th October - for details see www.townfirst.co.uk

Kirklees students rise to global warming challenges

Over 1000 people from West Yorkshire joined leading international scientists and regional politicians to discuss global warming at a Climate Change Convention at Batley Girls’ High School (BGHS) over the weekend 3rd–5th July. .

Formally opened by Councillor Julie Stewart-Cooper, Mayor of Kirklees and Mike Wood MP for Batley & Spen, the Convention developed unique links with different world cultures. Batley students spent weeks preparing to interview five prominent women internationally engaged with global warming issues. 

Interviews, carried out via the Internet, filmed and screened by BGHS’ E-Learning manager Richard Price, were with Dr Vandana Shiva (India); Dr Helen Caldicott (Australia); Clare Short, MP (UK); Caroline Lucas, MEP (EU) and Polly Ghazi (US) at the World Resources Institute Washington DC.  All five, struck by students’ probing questions on their professional lives, research and approaches to climate change issues, often paused for thought before responding clearly respecting their interviewers.

Another dialogue underpinned the weekend’s ‘Great Debate’.  For 90 minutes students’ questions and insistent follow-up points kept the panel and a large audience engaged. 

Paul Hudson, the BBC’s only Climate Correspondent; Councillor Andrew Cooper, a manager with Yorkshire Energy Services and Kirklees Green Party Leader; Councillor Ann Denham, Chair of Kirklees Highways Committee; and Professor Paul Rogers, Peace Studies at Bradford University; provided argument and counter-argument – skilfully chaired by Dr John Loughhead, Executive Director of UK Energy Research Council. 

Hot topics included pro- and anti-nuclear energy generation, floods, rising tides, transport issues and whether global warming was a fact or not.

Colin Challen, MP for Morley, Founder and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change group, led a workshop on parliament’s inability to provide leadership on climate change.  He feared too little was being done, too late; he believed that bottom-up, non-parliamentary action, was now urgently needed and that catastrophe would play a role in creating policies adequate to the task.

Dewsbury Urdu poet Mehjabeen Ghazal Ansari and Barnsley bard Ian McMillan opened the weekend.  Her lyrical, rhythmic poems exploring migrant people’s feelings contrasted, yet complemented McMillan’s sure-footed characterisations of Yorkshire people, life, humour and attitudes, culminating in a performance poem developed with the hundred-strong audience.

The final day was a cultural festival:  Bradford-based street band, The Peace Artistes, provided rhythmic welcomes as hundreds of parents, families and residents flowed into the school. 

Shipley-based Hugh Jart got everyone involved in an immense 20ft x 6ft mural, with footprints, slogans, ideas, solutions and challenges related to global warming, now to be a permanent feature at the school. 

Linda McAvan MEP for Yorkshire and Humber opened BGHS’ new Science Garden, complete with a monumental Periodic Table in what may be an unique learning arena.  She also presented awards for high achievement in Art studies gained during the last six months during which BGHS re-developed the curriculum to focus on global warming. 

The closing event, hosted by Ann Finlayson, Education Commissioner for the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) brought the year-long programme to an appropriate conclusion. 

Birkenshaw and Fixby children combined to perform their songs accompanied by junk instruments, silk flags with global warming images, Cate Clark and Andy Burton – environment and community artists working with the schools. 

Ann Finlayson presented a song book with a CD recorded earlier in the week to all the children.  They reciprocated; Samira Hussein from Fixby gave her a personal copy. 

Closing the weekend, Ann Finlayson said, “In my work I meet people concerned and worried about climate change.  But these children are different, confident and inspiring; I take that with me.  I need more copies of your songs to give to those people I meet who don’t have your hope and confidence that we can positively resolve these issues.” 

The following day Ann Finlayson closed a National Schools Conference in Preston with the children’s songs and plans to use them systematically in the future. 

Organised by BGHS with KEP, the weekend concluded work started with two other Kirklees schools at Birkenshaw and Fixby, Huddersfield almost a year ago.

For more details of the Convention and Kirklees Environment Partnership:  contact David Browning at browning707@btinternet.com 

July 2009