Cambridge Lib Dems claim they love trees, really (permanent blog link)
The local and European elections of course bring out electioneering by the political parties. In Arbury, at least, the Lib Dems deliver far more leaflets than the other political parties combined. Evidently they want to bludgeon the voters into submission.
Their latest "Cambridge Herald" newsletter claims that the "Lib Dems fight for more city trees":
Trees are being felled across Cambridge but the Lib Dems are fighting to preserve them.
Following Addenbrooke's decision to take the axe to a line of cherry trees and the County Council's sudden removal of trees at the railway station, Cambridge Lib Dems are trying to stop or slow down the removal of healthy trees.
The Lib Dems have launched a protocol which the City Council will follow, which will ensure that local residents get plenty of time to object to any proposed tree felling.
This is about as dishonest an article as could be written, and it is amazing that the Lib Dems are not embarrassed to be seen publishing such blatantly misleading information. Yes, the removal of trees at Addenbrooke's and the railway station was bad. But by far and away the biggest killer of trees in Cambridge is the city council, run by (surprise) the Lib Dems. So in the past year the city council has massacred trees at Byron's Pool, Hobson's Conduit, Parker's Piece, and elsewhere.
The article mentions a "protocol", by which presumably they mean the proposed council tree works consultation. One thing the city bureaucrats are good at is producing Word documents, and this latest consultation (about consultation) is quite typical.
First of all, this "protocol" completely misses the issue at hand. What the city really needs is a tree department which has some interest in looking after the trees of Cambridge. Unfortunately the current tree department, given their recent action, is not to be trusted with the trees of Cambridge. That is the real issue. Having consultations in which members of the public can waste hours and days trying to force the city bureaucrats to behave is not a substitute for having city bureaucrats behaving sensibly in the first place.
The Lib Dems run the city. They seem to be either unwilling or incapable of controlling the actions of the tree department. If it is the former then the Lib Dems should not be claiming they are "fighting to preserve" trees. If it is the latter then there is something deficient in Cambridge city democracy. Ultimately the bureaucrats should be held accountable to the politicians, and hence to the voters.
The second problem with the "protocol" is that it seems intended to bypass most of the citizens of Cambridge. So what the city should do is set up an email list which anybody can sign up to, and if and when a tree consultation needs to take place, then everyone on that list is sent an email with further information (e.g. pointing to a webpage with details of the proposal). Instead what we get is a suggestion that the city send letters (more dead trees) to interested parties, but the definition of interested party is extremely narrow. So someone is deemed to be an interested party only if they happen to live next to where the trees are going to be destroyed, or if they happen to belong to one of a select list of special interest pressure groups (e.g. Friends of the Earth), as if everybody else in Cambridge has no interest in trees in public places.
It is rather ironic that the city council gets completely over the top hysterical at the thought that some school kids playing under a not significant tree might damage the tree, but meanwhile kills hundreds of trees for no great reason.
David Cameron claims he will hand over power to the powerless (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
David Cameron has pledged to bring "big change" to politics, including looking at introducing fixed term Parliaments.
A Tory government would restore "real people power" through a "radical" redistribution of power from Westminster, he said in a speech.
But he ruled out a switch from the current first-past-the-post electoral system to proportional representation.
...
"I believe there is only one way out of the national crisis that we face, we need a massive, sweeping, radical redistribution of power," he said in a speech in Milton Keynes."I'm making clear that big change and a new politics is exactly what people can expect from a Conservative government.
"We will begin a massive redistribution of power in our country, from the powerful to the powerless, from the political elite to the man and the woman in the street."
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A Conservative government would ask the Boundary Commission to look at reducing the House of Commons by, initially 10% and make sure constituencies were the same size, he said.He also suggested legislation was published online in a more digestible way, Parliamentary proceedings put on YouTube - and said people could get "text alerts" when issues they are interested in are debated in the Commons.
The expenses of all public servants paid more than £150,000 a year would be put online - as would all public spending over £25,000.
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Other issues the party will look at include possible curbs on the whipping of votes - when MPs come under pressure to toe the party line - in considering bills line-by-line at the committee stage.MPs would also be handed the power of deciding the timetabling of bills and backbenchers would get powers to choose the chairmen and members of select committees.
The use of the royal prerogative which allows the prime minister, in the name of the monarch, to make major decisions without the backing of Parliament, would be limited.
Cameron is just the latest politician to try and divert attention away from the parliamentary expenses scandal to allegedly look at the larger picture. But the expenses scandal has nothing to do with the larger picture. It is just that an expenses system was set in place which encouraged corruption.
At least most of the proposals given by Cameron make some sense, but they are not exactly revolutionary, and it will also be interesting to see how much Cameron actually does once he's in power (talk, as usual, being cheap).
On the other hand, what is ridiculous about the Cameron speech is the claim that his proposals in any way "begin a massive redistribution of power in our country, from the powerful to the powerless, from the political elite to the man and the woman in the street". His proposals just involve shuffling power amongst the political elite. Under the Tories the powerless will continue to remain where the powerless always have been, i.e. powerless. The Eton/Oxbridge composition of the Tory cabinet is the reality, not Cameron's rhetoric. Privilege trumps all in Britain, as it always has, and this is especially true under the Tories, the ultimate party of privilege.
Traffic across the Cam has reduced the past ten years (permanent blog link)
The Cambridge News says:
Claims that a congestion charge is needed to curb soaring traffic levels in Cambridge have been branded "completely unsupportable" by a drivers' organisation.
Car traffic has actually fallen in the past 10 years on bridges crossing the River Cam, a county council report has revealed, and on radial roads as a whole, the number of cars has stabilised.
The council statistics, in a document called the Traffic Monitoring Report 2008, show a big drop in motor vehicles crossing the Cam bridges.
In 1998, a survey found that close to 75,000 vehicles were using those roads, but by 2008 this had plummeted to below 65,000. On the radial roads, a council table shows that peak period car traffic is at the same level as it was in 1998.
The reduction in bridge traffic has followed the introduction of bollards barring cars from several major routes.
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A county council spokesman said figures for vehicles crossing the Cam did not account for all trips into Cambridge, and so were not "a true reflection of congestion".
The "county council spokesman" is of course correct. But needless to say the council bureaucrats have in the past used the reduction in traffic over the Cam to prove that they were doing a jolly good job "reducing" Cambridge traffic. As the Cambridge News points out, the main reason the traffic across the river has decreased is that various roads have been closed. Needless to say the traffic has just gone elsewhere (some of it out of Cambridge completely, as ordinary people get fed up being treated like scum).
The main transport policy of the Cambridge ruling elite is to screw car drivers as much as possible. Closing roads is one example. Making a complete mess of roads (e.g. Newmarket Road) is another. Not offering enough parking and extorting customers in council-owned car garages is another. The so-called congestion charge (i.e. access tax) is another. The best thing that could happen to Cambridge is if all the transport "planners" were just sacked.
Lib Dems want to freeze Mill Road forever in the 19th century (permanent blog link)
The Cambridge News says:
Cambridge could become a "clone town" for shopping unless more is done to support independent shops, say councillors.
Rod Cantrill and Catherine Smart - Liberal Democrat city councillors - want the council to support plans for a designated "independent business zone" to keep its shopping attractions unique, focusing on Mill Road.
...
[ Smart ] added: "We aren”t saying there is no place for chains - there is. But they shouldn”t be the only kind of shopping a town has."John Bridge, Cambridgeshire Chambers of Commerce chief executive, said he was wary of any plan which added to the red tape already facing people wanting to set up a business in Cambridge.
...
"But it is important to get the right balance - but that balance is dictated by the customer, not bureaucrats."
The Mill Road area is a bit of a dump, but the academic middle class people who run Cambridge like it that way, with Ye Olde Shoppes. So needless to say, Bridges is fighting a losing battle. The academic middle class people who run Cambridge (and Britain) are control freaks, and they think they should dictate where the horrid peasants shop (eat, drink, etc.). As at the national level, the Cambridge Lib Dems are not very liberal.
Canterbury should allegedly be required to promote gay activities (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The cathedral city of Canterbury is being investigated over claims it is not welcoming to gay people.
Andrew Brettell of Canterbury Pride has complained the Kent city is a "cultural wilderness" and one of few in England without any gay bars.
He said the city fails to welcome its "closeted" lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
The Local Government Ombudsman is investigating the claims, which have been denied by the council.
Mr Brettell criticised Canterbury City Council for "ticking the boxes" but failing to do anything to attract gay people to the area.
"What we need is for the council to send signals that it's OK to be gay and that they are welcoming gays to the city," he said.
Gay Pride events were held in the city in 2005 and 2006, but none has been held since.
Canterbury Pride is calling for the council to fund a community drop-in centre for the LGBT community, and to make more reference to gay people in its culture.
They also want a gay bar to be opened. Mr Brettell added that the council could be missing out on substantial revenue.
This reads like an April Fool's joke. Hopefully the Local Government Ombudsman will treat this case with the derision it deserves. Why should Canterbury be required to promote gay-specific activities in any way whatsoever? Brettell is in effect just trying to force the rest of society to subsidise his lifestyle, which of course is the real point of most special interest pressure groups. And if Canterbury loses this case, then presumably blind French-Canadian Buddhist plumbers between the age of 29.5 and 29.7 will be the next minority to claim it is being ignored.
US government refuses to use polar bears as an emissions pawn (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The US government has opted to retain a Bush-era rule that limits protection for polar bears from the effects of global warming.
Environmental groups had been calling for the rule to be lifted, and the US Congress had given Interior Secretary Ken Salazar the power to do so.
Mr Salazar said lifting the rule would create "uncertainty and confusion".
The rule means the government will act only against threats to polar bears that arise in their Arctic habitat.
The US Environmental Protection Agency designated polar bears an endangered species last year, because their habitats were disappearing as ice-caps melted.
Environmentalists seized on the ruling, arguing that endangered species were entitled to heightened protection under US law and that the government was therefore obliged to crack down on the carbon emissions causing global warming.
The Endangered Species Act bars federal agencies from "taking actions that are likely to jeopardise the species or adversely modify its critical habitat", and lays down civil and criminal penalties for people that kill or injure designated animals.
But the Bush administration passed a rule exempting "activities outside the bear's range, such as emission of greenhouse gases" from prohibition.
It is this rule that the Obama administration has decided to let stand.
"The Endangered Species Act is not the proper mechanism for controlling our nation's carbon emissions," Mr Salazar said.
"Instead, we need a comprehensive energy and climate strategy that curbs climate change and its impacts."
But the decision has angered environmental groups.
Mr Salazar's move "only serves to cement the Bush administration's legacy of ignoring global warming science, thus putting the polar bear at further risk of extinction", said Melanie Duchin, a Greenpeace campaigner in Alaska, in a statement.
"Regrettably, it seems to reflect an emerging willingness by the Obama administration to ignore clear scientific imperatives on global warming in the face of industry pressure."
Salazar (and so Obama) has it completely correct and Greenpeace is just taking the piss. Greenpeace wants a ridiculously wide rule because it wants to achieve through the courts what it cannot achieve by democratic means. But the logic of what they want is that because polar bears are going extinct, nobody should be allowed to build a new power plant, or indeed drive a car or ... (pick your favourite activity you don't happen to like if you're a so-called environmentalist). And for Duchin to claim that there is allegedly an "emerging willingness by the Obama administration to ignore clear scientific imperatives on global warming in the face of industry pressure" is worthy of the kind of idiotic and emotional nonsense put out by the right wingers on climate change. She has no evidence for this claim at all, and indeed, all the evidence so far points to the contrary.
UK goverment car scrappage scheme allegedly unpopular (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
There is growing evidence that the government's forthcoming scheme to scrap hundreds of thousands of old cars is not that popular with motorists.
A new survey suggests most people who have studied the scrappage scheme have decided not to take advantage of it.
Researchers from car price guide Parker's questioned 600 people online.
It found that 70% of respondents said the scheme was not generous enough, and overall 81% said they would not be taking advantage of it.
The scrappage scheme starts on 18 May. If your car is at least 10 years old you can scrap it, in return for a substantial discount on a new car.
The government will provide a £1,000 subsidy for each car purchased, and manufacturers will provide at least a similar amount.
But Kieren Puffet, the editor of Parker's Guide, said many motorists have managed to find much larger discounts under existing deals.
The BBC gets this story wrong on several levels. First of all, the survey by Parker's is relatively meaningless (as most surveys are, especially online ones). But far more importantly, it is good news for the country if this poorly thought out car scrappage scheme proves to be a failure ("unpopular"), because it means the government will not be throwing (too much) money away subsidising car companies (for no great reason). And the story perfectly well indicates that there is no need for this scheme. The greatest reason that people are not buying new cars is that they cannot get credit, not that the price is too high. Unfortunately the BBC, in their desire to bash the government and/or give free publicity to Parker's, completely misses the point.
Marks and Spencer caves in over larger bra price (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Marks and Spencer has agreed to end its policy of charging more for larger bras after a campaign by customers.
The store took out adverts in Friday's newspapers admitting it had "boobed" and promising to standardise prices.
The "Busts for Justice" campaign was led by Beckie Williams, a 30G. Her Facebook group attracted more than 13,000 supporters.
Marks and Spencer had added an extra £2 to bras larger than a DD cup on the grounds that they cost more to make.
It is bringing all prices in line permanently, and as a goodwill gesture between 9 and 25 May will be offering a 25% discount on all bras.
Miss Williams, 26, from Brighton, was so angry that she bought a £3.40 share in Marks and Spencer to allow her to confront chairman Sir Stuart Rose at the next annual meeting in July.
She labelled the surcharge "unfair" and "ridiculous," while other members of the Facebook group called for a boycott.
Marks and Spencer initially said bigger-busted customers were happy to pay a small premium for the specialist work needed to ensure a suitable level of support.
But on Friday the company backed down.
The BBC laughingly gives the headline to this story as "Victory for customers in bra war". This shows how little the academic middle class people who work for the BBC understand about economics. The only "victory" is for the narrow partisan (indeed, selfish) group that evidently thinks the rest of Marks and Spencer's customers should subsidise the purchases of this group. And it indeed will (eventually) be the other customers who pay for this. That Williams called the "surcharge" "ridiculous" is itself ridiculous. Of course Marks and Spencer backed down not because Williams was correct but because it was not worth the grief (from the academic middle class people who run the media) to stick with their original (sensible) policy.
Amory Lovins gives a talk in Cambridge (permanent blog link)
Amory Lovins (of the Rocky Mountain Institute) gave a talk in Cambridge today at the Engineering Department (but sponsored by the Cambridge Network). Being American and being fairly successful in his line of business (a consultant on energy matters) it is not very surprising that he is a good salesman. But even if you believe only half of his sales pitch, he's still doing some wonderful work in energy efficiency.
The main point of his talk was that if you look at energy systems end to end and design things intelligently, then you can save 40% and more (so even up to 90% and more) of the energy currently required in these systems. So he stressed in particular looking at both capitol expenditure (capex) and operating expenditure (opex), because it is always too easy to ignore one or the other when designing something. Well that is obvious but unfortunately most of the academic middle class never get that far. (So a related point is that even though some things might be "zero carbon" emissions from an operating point of view, that ignores the considerable carbon emissions to build and install everything in the first place.)
And the proof is in the pudding. And he showed real life cases, which hopefully are representative and not just cherry-picked. Most of the slides he used were just ones he presented in some lectures at Stanford (and no doubt before that), and those contain the real life cases he mentioned.
This is a big departure from the usual sales pitch of UK so-called environmentalists, who seem to spend all their time and effort trying to claim that the workers "consume" too much and therefore the solution to the world's environmental problems is to make the workers poorer (i.e. consume less). Lovins, to his credit, did not even come close to pushing that line. His interest genuinely seemed to be to make the world able to accomplish more for less, and he was putting his money where his mouth was, again in contrast to most UK so-called environmentalists, who are very good at writing Word documents but are incapable of actually doing anything useful.
At the end there were some questions. Someone (well, the head of the department) asked whether energy was "too cheap". Again, this is a fixation of the UK academic middle class. So the idea is that if only energy could be made expensive (so they are happy if oil prices sky-rocket) then emissions would be less. Unfortunately making the world poorer is not really an attractive proposition (except to the academic middle class), and Lovins gave this idea short shrift. He would rather just make the world more efficient.
Ont thing Lovins did not mention is that even if, say, the energy requirements of all current systems were reduced by 50%, it does not mean that the energy usage of the world would drop by 50%, because of course people would have extra money to spend on consuming energy in other, novel, ways. Well, there is nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, given that energy will unfortunately probably get a lot more expensive in the longer term, making our systems a lot more efficient might just mean that we break even.
Biodiversity is allegedly not being treated seriously by the world (permanent blog link)
Barry Gardiner (a Labour MP) says on the BBC:
Every form of life on this planet stands not on its own but is supported by, and supports, other living things.
Lose one species and you lose a vital part of some ecosystem.
That means you lose not just a plant or an insect but a service: you lose the medicine that comes from that plant; you lose the pollination of crops which that insect provides.
Climate change matters, not because the world mustn't get any hotter, but because the rate of change is too fast for species to keep pace.
As species die, so biodiversity is depleted and with it the ecosystem services that such biodiversity provides.
How ridiculous then that over the last three months, climate change has had 1,382 mentions in British national newspapers.
Yet, during the same period, biodiversity was mentioned just 115 times.
Well lots of important things get mentioned even less than biodiversity. It's just an indication of what stories the mainstream media wants to push, or not. Gardiner's line seems to be that if only the biodiversity crowd were better at marketing and spin then the world would be a better place. Unfortunately, although the article sets out the usual complaints of the biodiversity crowd (and it's pretty amazing to find an MP coherent enough to even do that), Gardiner doesn't offer any solutions except the usual platitudes that biodiversity should be treated more seriously. Well, any solution almost certainly involves a reduction in human population, which nobody wants to talk about (this certainly rates no mention in the article, but again, he doesn't make any real suggestions at all, so this is not surprising).
Traffic on UK roads has decreased because of the recession (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
The number of lorries on UK roads has fallen dramatically, with the cut being linked to the recession, Department for Transport figures show.
The total fell 12% in the first quarter of this year on the same period in 2008, and 7% in the previous quarter.
...
Overall traffic levels fell 3.5% year-on-year in the first three months of 2009, with motorway traffic down 5%.
It is obvious that transportation levels are closely correlated with economic activity, so this reduction in traffic is hardly surprising. Of course in turn this means a reduction in the amount of money that government extorts from motorists in the guise of the petrol tax ("fuel duty"), which is perhaps why the government has decided to again increase the tax rate at above the rate of inflation (the government being addicted to the idea that motorists for some reason should hand over billions of pounds each year to non-motorists).
UK government is allegedly not going to meet its own emissions targets (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
UK government departments are not on course to meet their own targets for reducing carbon emissions, according to the Sustainable Development Commission.
The government's environmental watchdog warned that more needed to be done if emissions were to be cut by 12.5% from 1999-2000 levels by 2011-12.
In an assessment, it called on the government estate to "lead by example".
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It added that a £4bn investment in wind and solar energy generation on the government estate would "immediately cut emissions from offices by 68%".
The government could make a significant reduction in its own carbon emissions by getting rid of all the useless quangos, like the Sustainable Development Commission, which contribute nothing to the nation. And the SDC (and the BBC) is wrong that "a £4bn investment in wind and solar energy generation on the government estate would 'immediately cut emissions from offices by 68%'". It would immediately represent a huge increase in emissions, because all that kit needs to be built and installed, and that represents a lot of fossil fuels being burnt. Afterwards, ongoing emissions would (hopefully) be cut, and in the (very) long run total emissions might actually be reduced, if the chosen technology happened to be appropriate (and solar energy in particular is dubious in Britain, and wind energy is dubious in many parts of Britain).
More light allegedly means more biodiversity (permanent blog link)
The BBC says:
Scientists have identified why excessive fertilisation of soils is resulting in a loss of plant diversity.
Extra nutrients allow fast growing plants to dominate a habitat, blocking smaller species' access to vital sunlight, researchers have found.
As a result, many species are disappearing from affected areas.
A team from the University of Zurich, writing in Science, warned that tighter controls were needed in order to prevent widespread biodiversity loss.
Estimates suggest that the global level of nitrogen and phosphorous available to plants has doubled in the past 50 years.
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[Co-author] Professor Hector's team, led by PhD student Yann Hautier, fitted lights to the understory of grass in boxes containing fertilised soil."Additional understory light compensated for the increased shading caused by the greater above-ground biomass production," they explained.
The supplementary light "prevented the loss of species and maintained... levels of diversity".
The findings led the team to conclude that it was the lack of access to light that affects diversity, not an increase in the strength of competition.
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"If it all depends on light levels, then if you put the light back then you should prevent a loss of biodiversity."
All very well. But it's one small experiment in a laboratory. It's not the real world. So the suggestion that "if you put the light back then you should prevent a loss of biodiversity" is just fanciful. Further, are these people really claiming that they can predict exactly the "correct" level of light so that the maximum amount of biodiversity is achieved? And they are also treating biodiversity as a benefit just in itself, pretty much by definition (which to be fair to them, is the attitude of most of the academic middle class).
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