Leeds Trinity Uni Hustings

This was a really enjoyable event - thanks to LTU for hosting it.  The Green vote jumped from 5th to 2nd place (a before and after vote was held) so that was great.  However, I would have thought a room full of young people couldn't fail to vote Green since it's the only party which fights for genuine fairness, for the common good ( not the good of the few), and is firmly on the side of people and planet instead of profit for mega-business.  I think I took too much for granted and didn't spell out the the fact that social justice is fundamental to Green policy,  so Labour retained their first place even though they support the TTIP, neoliberalism, infinite growth on a finite planet, fracking, and Trident!!

ERYC should go - NOT the trees

My letter published in Beverley Guardian today:

 The felling of the trees on New Walkergate is one of the latest in the long list of crimes against nature brazenly committed  by ERYC (East Riding of Yorkshire Council) in our name and with our money.   Why?  Perhaps they have a contract with a company which fells trees so they have to find jobs to keep them busy? Is someone profiting from the wood?    Or is it simply a corporate mechanistic  mindset which wants everything - including nature - to be ‘tidy’?   The unevenness in the ground made by the tree roots was not a hazard to the footpath and it could have been  made into an attractive feature.  The wall could have been strengthened.  Does London remove its fantastic old plane trees which have grown  through and around the railings in the parks?  No.  

Saying they will replace the trees with ones 'specially chosen and sourced for the site'  is the newspeak we have come to expect from ERYC meaning 'you know nothing: we ‘experts’ know best'.   Most people instinctively protect trees - and they are right because the older a tree is the more biodiversity it hosts,  the more carbon it sequesters and the more beautiful it becomes. 

Nature thrives on diversity. It is beautiful because it is NOT tidy.  Beverley is an ancient town which should not look like a Milton Keynes.  ERYC has a biodiversity action plan, but does ERYC itself take any notice of it?  What ERYC  displays is a complete lack of understanding of nature, heritage, beauty, and people - in fact most things which matter.  Machine- chemical- newbuild - and road-obsessed ERYC is the thing which should go, not the trees.