Stamp Duty horror for millions!!!

Do you think the Stamp Duty holiday which ended in January 2010 will drastically effect the sale of one's property or the affordability for new or first time buyers?? Let me know your thought by logging onto http://www.bathbroadcastingcompany.com/ and having your say on the official 'web poll' which will be submitted to council in May.... Mandana. :p

Air Quality Plans Omit Basic Solutions

BANES has started a consultation on Baths air quality action plan have your say by looking at the proposals and making a comment. http://tinyurl.com/yjsgsd3; www.bathnes.gov.uk/airquality.

Many of the sites that are subject to very high levels of nitrogen dioxide pollution are in central Bath, the highest levels were recorded at Lambridge (london Road) followed by Broad Street, Walcot Terrace, the bottom of the Wells Road, Bathwick street, The Paragon and St James Parade. What do all these areas have in common? The answer is stationary traffic. Cars sitting still with their engines on produce much higher levels of pollution than moving traffic but nowhere in the Action Plan is this problem addressed.

There are worthy ideas about improving freight transport, improving bus services and hiring bicycles and these are all to be applauded. The proposition that the Bath Transport Plan will help air quality by reducing congestion is unrealistic and seems to have been included in the Action Plan as a PR ploy by the Conservative administration to get some support for its daft scheme. But where in the Action Plan is there any proposals to stop stationary traffic spewing out all the pollution that is causing such poor air quality?

In Switzerland 30 years ago many cantons passed bye-laws requiring stationery vehicles to turn off their engines and as a consequence pollution was reduced dramatically. In many cities throughout Europe there are signs at traffic lights requesting drivers to turn off their engines, why is this not possible in Bath? Parcel Force recently undertook a study at how to improve the fuel efficiency of their vans and reduce pollution, they found by the best way to achieve this was to fit engine cut systems to their vans. Once car drivers get used to turning their engines off in queues it becomes second nature and they can save 10% of their fuel costs. Next time you are sitting at the Broad Street lights turn off your engine and give us all a chance to breath.

Jay Risbridger 20.11.09

Action not words!

Sometimes we just need to look within and question ourselves, are we talkers or doers? This is an open letter to all concerned. If one really cares about one's community then one does something about it...take action, come up with solutions, support fellow fund raising events and/or join volunteer groups...Quit complaining about council's actions, come up with solutions and submit it!...No matter what the topic may be...if it concerns you and your community do something about it!..well, have a great coming week everyone...

Your Abbey Community Activist

Mandana ;p [the one wearing a cap & backpack!lol]

Rates to Rise because its Fair

To add to the woes of struggling businesses in Bath the valuation office has sent out revised rateable valuations to all Business in Bath. You would have thought that since commercial rates are related to commercial rents and these are falling, that rateable values would also fall. No I am afraid this would be too sensible, commercial rates are going up between 15% and 40% for most Bath businesses. The explaining letter clarifies the matter by saying that the rates are in fact not going up, its just that they are being redistributed in the name of fairness. All the businesses I have spoken to have large rate rises, so where is this money being redistributed too? Perhaps to this Conservative "business friendly" administrations surplus budgets, which they will use to bring down Council tax bills in 2011 in the vain hope of being re-elected. Meanwhile its just a shame about supporting small businesses and local employment but you have to understand its all in the name of fairness.

Jay Risbridger 09/11/2009

Bath Centre Pact Meeting

No Wet Room for street drinkers in Victoria Park.

The latest PACT (partners and communities together) meeting for Bath centre took place in the Guildhall last Wednesday 4th November. Items of discussion were street cleaning, HGV's and street drinkers.

While the new machines purchased by the council will do a much better job of cleaning Bath's streets, several residents complained about the dreadful noise these diesel powered machines were making. From an environmental view as well as noise electric vehicles would have been preferred.

The Police carried out stops on large lorries going through Bath, they are prohibited from entering the city,unless delivering. A third of the stopped HGV's were not delivering and were given warnings, this level of transgression suggests there is a problem. many residents were more concerned about the impact of large coaches which are not covered by the scheme.

The issue that took up most of the evening was the proposal to set up a wet room or area where street drinkers would be allowed to drink. There was great concern among residents that this should not be placed in the brown shed at the entrance to Victoria Park, this idea was abandoned to great relief. The best site seemed to be next to the police station and the night shelter behind Manvers street car park but much concern was expressed about whether a "Wet Room" would work at all to get street drinkers away from sensitive areas. In general the meeting accepted it was probably worth trying as nothing had worked so far to deal with the issue, and doing something was better than doing nothing.

The next PACT meeting is on Jan 27th and will deal with coach parking and parking on pavements and at my suggestion, the problem of commercial food waste on the streets, which seems to be a good food source for our Seagulls. Jay Risbridger 09.11.09

350 CAMPAIGN IN BATH

400 Bath residents marched through the city centre on Saturday to support the 350 limit on atmospheric CO2 levels. The marched went from The Royal Crescent to Parade Gardens, where local MP Don Foster called on everyone

to sign up to the 10:10 initiative aimed at reducing CO2 emissions by 10% in 2010. Don Foster had recently campaigned to get Parliament to sign up to the scheme but it was opposed by Labour and Conservative members. On Monday 60 people enjoyed diner at the Eastern Eye addressed by Jay Risbridger a former Green parliamentary candidate and Abbey business owner. These events were Bath's contribution to a week of action taking place across the world.

Full text of Jay Risbridger's address to the 350 climate diner:

Most people see environmental issues as a series of technical problems with technical solutions.This view is reinforced by the media ande environmental campaigners that focus on newsworthy environment stories. So we have had problems like dwindling energy resources, road building, acid rain, de-forestation, intensive farming, full landfill sites, GM and Global warming. But the definition of these problems is often in dispute, some groups have an interest in highlighting one problem over another. Why are there climate camps outside airports and not farms? Methane release due to the increase of meat eating in the developing world is adding much larger amounts of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere than any increase in air travel.

The solutions are also not just technical; some are much more in the interests of some people th than others. Bald middle managers can say they have a low impact life style compared to long haired Eco warriors because they do not use hair dryers or shampoo. Environmental issues issues are political questions that impact above all on our individual economic interests. Gr Goucho Marx summed up the problem of individual interests he said “Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?"

When you look at these environmental issues closely it soon becomes clear that they are just the s symptoms of an underlying illness. That disease is called economic growth and this is the engine engine that drives the degradation of our global environment. During the last 10 years Germany has built 17,000 wind turbines yet its Co2 output has risen steadily. In the last 12 months of economic recession, Germany’s Co2 emissions have at last started to fall?

F For most Greens and Ecologists our global economic system is fundamentally flawed because it does not recognize that we live on a planet with finite resources. Economics also t treats the environment as an external factor, when in reality the human economy produces n not hing it just converts what nature provides. Because the world is finite nature works in s sustainable cycles, like the carbon cycle, nitrogen cycle, oxygen and water cycles. The modern economy on the other hand uses up the earths capital resources of oil, gas, minerals, m metals and soil and then discards anything without an economic value as waste and pollution.

B because western market economies do not put a cost value on the consumption of the earth's n natural resources or to the effects of pollution, individuals and companies are able to exploit these resources for free, enabling them to make massive private profits.

R Ralph Nader pointed out, “The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun”

An economic model like this cannot grow forever on a finite planet; this is the real problem of sustainability. Not whether Pepsi Co and Standard oil can offset their carbon emissions and claim to be Sustainable business. Keneth Boulding the pioneering process philosopher said

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

At present 1/3^rd of the world in the developed economies use 2/3rds of the world’s resources. If the other 2/3rds of the global population develop using our economic model then we will need 2 planets. Everyone knows that no mater what Climate Change targets the worlds leaders agree, Co2 levels will continue to rise, if China, India and Brazil achieve the levels of economic activity enjoyed by the developed world.

If we are going to achieve Co2 emission reductions we have to deal with the inadequacies of our present economic system and move towards a steady state economy. We need an economy that is based on the quality of life rather than just the quantity of output. Simon Hughes the Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change spokesperson recently said: “The Economic polices heralded by the likes of Reagan and Thatcher left behind a legacy of unbridled greed within business and industry. This legacy must now be brought to an end. We need a new economic order which is based on indices of sustainability rather than indices of simple economic expansion.”

What does this mean in practice, certainly not the recent car scrapage scheme that was heralded as a green policy? Making new cars is not good for the environment repairing old ones is. So why didn’t the government come up with a repair or make your old car more fuel e fficient scheme. This would have supported thousands of local small garages instead of global car corporations. Why do governments always support big multinational businesses and not the small businesses that employ more than half of their citizens?

Y You may think this view of economic growth is an extreme position only held by the anti globalist campaigners. But here is something written by an activist who was bought up in Indonesia, he is pointing out that the benefits of economic growth bought about by the arrival o of multinational businesses can be short lived and cause more harm to local communities that good. He writes:

“ For how long could we go stitching a culture back together once it was torn? Longer than it took a culture to unravel, I suspected. I tried to imagine the Indonesian workers who were now making their way to the sort of factories that once provided employment in the US, joining the ranks ranks of wage labour to assemble the radios and sneakers that sold on Michigan Avenue. I imagined those same workers ten, twenty years from now, when their factories would have closed down, a consequence of new technology or lower wages in some part of the world. And then then the bitter discovery that their local markets had vanished, that they no longer remember how to weave their own baskets or carve their own furniture or grow their own food; that even if if they remember such craft, the forests that gave them wood are now owned by timber interests, the baskets they once wove have been replaced by more durable plastics. The very ex existence of the factories, the timber interests, the plastic manufacturer, will have rendered thei their culture obsolete, their values of hard work and individual initiative turn out to have depended on a system of belief that’s been scrambled by migration, urbanization and imported TV reruns. Some would prosper in the new order. Some would move to America. And the others le left behind in Djakarta, or Lagos or the West Bank, they would settle into their own deeper despair.”

Barak Obama, The President of the United States.

Nationally and internationally societies must assert their rights to the earth’s resources against those who would use them for private profit. This is ultimately a question of extending democratic rights to all the people of this planet. The worst examples of environmental damage are happening in dictatorial states where human rights do not exist.

Locally we need to care for and nurture our local economies. We need to stop pursuing the short term economic expansion of our cities and towns and pursue a better quality of life for t the people in them. We don’t need more supermarkets, we do not need high rise developments we don’t need more pub and restaurant chains on our high streets and we don’t need to tarmac over our green spaces for car parks. Too often local people and the local environment ar are paying for the costs of economic expansion that only benefit outside interests. Local o government should support local markets and businesses with social rents and grants for local entrepreneurs. The farmer’s market initiative is typical of the type of economic activity that should be encouraged.

I It is only this type of national and local resistance to economic growth that will bring down our CO2 emissions and create a sustainable environment. We all need to be politically active i in our local communities and to resist policies that are just aimed at economic expansion without any regard to the costs of that growth. Local action can keep this planet hospitable for h human life, we are all on this planet together and in the end our only economic interest is to preserve its beauty.

FUNdraiser with LEGENDS!!!

Come and support a great weekend of events called LEGENDS ALL STAR WEEKEND in Aid of four local charities Bath Abbey Church Homeless Initiative, The Genesis Trust, RUH Community Radio and Shape Youth Housing. Log onto http://www.legendsdirect.co.uk/ then click onto 'events' for more info! Produced by yours truly Mandana! :p