"I'm doing a low key solo thing at the Cambridge Corn Exchange on the 25th of Feb.

It's because a friend of mine Tony Juniper (who used to be head of Friends of the Earth and who i went to the Copenhagen Summit with) is hoping to become one of the first Green Members of Parliament in the UK.
And i wanted to help him out somehow.

I think he'd be a great MP as he knows a lot about dealing with the murky brown waters of politics when it comes to the environment, but has a positive energy with a healthy contempt for the way they operate. And wouldn't it be nice to have someone there who is actually doing more than paying lip service to climate change? And maybe rip shit up a little?

Now normally i wouldn't get involved in politics like this... but lets face it.. it aint labour or the tories is it?!? so..
and anyway he bought me a pint and twisted my arm. it's a slippery slope i know.

what else do i have to say? oh yes the proceeds from said event go to the Green Party of which Tony is a member.
and support will be offered by local person Pete Um."

Tickets are now sold out but the Green Party is running a competition to win tickets over at tonyjuniper.org.uk

SPENCER Hagard (Letters, January 18) makes the very good point about the incompetency of the Tory-run county and that of other councils, Lib-Dem and Labour run alike, with regard to gritting.

The issue of gritting should not be one in which local politicians play one-upmanship on each other. The issue is one that affected vast swathes of the country and one that thus far has not, to my knowledge, seen a sensible solution to it.

Our Green councillors have highlighted the lack of minor route and path gritting. This is not isolated to Cambridge but is more relevant than most places as the number of cyclists and pedestrians in Cambridge is far greater than most cities.

Councils, businesses and interested parties must sit down together and sort this mess out together. If they all take some responsibility then we can find a solution to gritting.

Where I will be partisan is when it comes to the inability of Tory county and Lib-Dem city to communicate.

As one pedestrian told me during the cold spell: "I called the city about gritting paths, they passed me on to the county, who passed me on to highways, who said they weren't responsible for paths!"

A unitary council would be an excellent solution to this and the Green Party backs the implementation of one for Cambridge.

However, some caution as to the detail is urged. In Suffolk and Norfolk, where unitary status is being considered county-wide, one of the proposals would be to have just one council for each county. This would mean one elected person for around 20,000 people, and remove the key link between councillors and the communities they represent.

Creating one council for all jobs is a sensible proposal but only so long as we maintain community democracy for the good of all.

James Youd
Cambridge Green Party
Roseford Road
Cambridge

• See it on the paper's site

On his selection he said, 

"the People of Abbey need another Green voice to push through the changes that our ward requires. An additional Green Councillor will ensure better representation locally, and will give us more voting power in the Council to provide the provisions our ward needs. We are a hard-working group of people, and bring a fresh, non-complacent approach to local and national politics. I am determined to get stuck-in, resolving local issues. I enjoy living in Abbey, so am excited to be its Green Party Candidate in order to shape its future."

Cllr Margaret Wright who was elected in Abbey ward in 2008 said,

"I am delighted to have such a passionate man on board. I have no doubt that Abbey residents will warm towards Adam and I sure that if elected he will be a fantastic councillor. It will be a clear choice between him and a tired and lazy Labour Councillor."

How depressing it is to contemplate the current spat between the heads of Britain's armed services as they call for more toys for their boys.

While everyone else is contemplating cut after cut (I write as a county councillor looking at the decimation of budgets to help children, vulnerable adults, the generally disadvantaged and anyone who stirs from their front door as a cyclist, pedestrian, car-, bus- or train-user), the service chiefs want huge aircraft carriers, Trident submarines, supersonic aircraft and tanks enough to see off the Red Army on the plains of northern Germany.

If they were to say, "We need less money, but spent more wisely, more realistically and in line with the true interests of a mid-level European country", we might all take more notice of them.More helicopters, yes.

More investment against cyber threats, yes. More people who would really be useful in Haiti, Sierra Leone and domestic emergencies, yes. But surely not those big-ticket items which hark back to a bygone age and merely make admirals, generals and air marshals feel jolly, jolly important.

SIMON SEDGWICK-JELL CAMBRIDGE

Action on bonuses is welcome, but we need wider action to bring about the structural changes to the UK economy that are needed to reduce our over-reliance on financial services. One priority must be to build strength in manufacturing, engineering and research and development.

If that could be done through policies designed to encourage low-carbon development, then we would hit several public policy priorities at once - financial stability, economic recovery, energy security, job creation and major carbon emissions reductions among them.

While it was very encouraging to see the proposals for a boiler scrappage scheme, and for £200m more for insulation, and although it is positive that there was a small step for electric cars and modest incentives for some forms of renewable power, it is regrettable that the Chancellor didn't go much further.

Some ideas on what he might have done were presented earlier this week in the second report of the Green New Deal (GND) group. The authors proposed major public investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies at a scale way beyond that set out yesterday. They estimate that £10bn invested in "green quantitative easing" for energy efficiency could create 60,000 jobs while reducing emissions by 3.96 megatonnes of CO2 each year.

The group proposed that £50bn is committed to these kinds of priorities, as part of a joined-up stimulus package. We need to urgently reduce emissions, while restructuring our economy. The economic downturn gives us a unique opportunity to think big and to make change - it's a shame that the opportunity has not yet been seized.

Tony Juniper is an independent environmental adviser and the Green Party's general election candidate for Cambridge

• Independent article

Its an opportunity the Chancellor is likely to miss, according to the Green New Deal Group, of which Mr Juniper is a member. Their report sets out a strategy to tackle public debt, create thousands of new green jobs and kick-start the transformation to a low-carbon economy.

Among their key proposals: bold investment in modernising the UK's energy infrastructure, a financial transaction tax - commonly known as Tobin Tax - raising £400bn a year to help the world adapt to climate change, a publicly owned investment bank to fund companies working towards a low carbon economy, and tax incentives on green savings and investments.

The cuts won't work, the Green New Deal Group's second report shows how, contrary to the policy of the major political parties, cutting public spending now will tip the nation into a deeper recession by increasing unemployment, reducing the tax received and limiting government funding available to kick-start the Green New Deal.

Instead, a bold new programme of ‘green quantitative easing,' rather than simply propping up failing banks, could help reduce the public debt and kick-start the transformation of the UK's energy supply while creating thousands of new green-collar jobs.

Drawing on evidence from the great depression in the UK and the USA, the Group shows how cuts in public spending then, before the economy had recovered, tipped both nations deeper into depression.

Now, the Group says, the Chancellor must announce a plan that updates the lessons from history for the challenges of the modern world, and spend to reduce the public debt by investing in the long-term restructuring of the UK's energy infrastructure needed to meet the challenges of climate change and the inevitable peak and decline of oil.

To illustrate the potential of ‘green quantitative easing', new calculations produced by nef (the new economics foundation) for the Group reveal that:

A sample of £10 billion in green quantitative easing invested in the energy efficiency sector could:

* Create 60,000 jobs (or 300,000 person-years of employment) while also reducing emissions by a further 3.96MtCO2e each year;

* This could also create public savings of £4.5 billion over five years in reduced benefits and increased tax intake alone;

A sample of £10 billion in ‘green quantitative easing' invested in onshore wind could:

* Increase wind's contribution to the UK's total electricity supply from its current 1.9 per cent to 10 per cent (39 TWhe) and;
* Create over 36,000 jobs in installation and direct and indirect manufacturing This is a total of 180,000 job-years of employment - here we have described each ‘job' as providing stable employment for an average of five job-years. Create a further 4,800 jobs in the operations and maintenance of the installed capacity and other related employment over the entire 20 year lifetime of the installation (equivalent to 96,000 job-years)
* And, if this directly replaced energy from conventional sources, it could decarbonise the UK economy by 2.4 per cent - reducing emissions from the power sector by up to 16 MtCO2e each year This corresponds to a £19 billion reduction in environmental damage

Or, a sample investment of £10 billion could:

* re-skill 1.5 million people for the low-carbon skills of the future, bringing 120,000 people back into the workforce, and increasing the earnings of those with a low income by a total of £15.4 billion.

The Group recommends:

§ A £50 billion programme in ‘green quantitative easing' in the short term to rebuild the economy. This is the amount of annual spending recommended by some of the most comprehensive analyses to date of the amounts needed to re-engineer the UK economy to meet the challenges of a low carbon future;

§ Begin planning for all the new forms of bond finance detailed in the Group's report to ensure the long-term stable funding needed for the long-term transformation of UK infrastructure.

Once spending on the green economy of the future has breathed life back into the deflated economy, the Green New Deal will require a whole new savings and investment infrastructure to meet the long-term investment needed to underpin the Green New Deal and to meet the needs of a new generation of investors who are fed up with all that has gone before.

This means secure new forms of saving which promise stable returns over the longer-term. The Group put forward a range of new measures to help public borrowing and encourage public investment by individuals, local authorities and companies in greening and reviving the economy. The foundations for these must be laid now. These include:

Measures on tax that are explicitly designed to re-gear the UK economy and transform energy infrastructure:

§ Tax incentives on green savings and investment, so that future ISA tax relief - costing more than £2 billion a year - is only available for funds invested in green savings (tax relief for ISAs was more than the whole green stimulus package announced in the 2009 Budget, estimated to be worth just £1.4 billion).

§ A general tax-avoidance provision to end the abuse of tax allowances. If just half of the tax avoidance in the UK was stopped by this provision, it would raise more than £10 billion a year.

§ A Financial Transaction Tax, commonly known as a "Tobin Tax". Such a tax, applied internationally at a rate of about 0.05 per cent has the potential to raise more than £400 billion a year. This could be the basis for a Green New Deal in the Global South, playing a significant role in enabling the majority world to adapt to climate change as well as breaking the carbon chains of fossil fuel dependence.

New savings mechanisms that support the greening of the economy now, create thousands of new jobs and guarantee stable returns into the future:

§ Green bonds, which will be issued by the government with the explicit guarantee that the funds raised will be invested in new green infrastructure for the UK. The bonds will carry conventional rates of return for bonds.

§ Local authority bonds, to invest in energy efficiency and provide renewable energy for each of the country's three million council tenants, as well as for all other local-authority-owned or -controlled buildings, such as town halls, schools, hospitals and transport infrastructure.

§ Carbon linked bonds, to align investment returns with carbon saving and create a significant body of investors who will take the risk on there being carbon savings that can be secured.

A new publicly owned ‘Green New Deal Investment Bank' to allocate the capital provided by green quantitative easing, and new bank lending to government:

§ Green New Deal Investment Bank, a publicly owned bank to hold and disburse capital provided by ‘green quantitative easing'. It will be used exclusively to fund companies and projects designed to accelerate the transition towards a low carbon economy.

§ Treasury Deposit Receipts, like those issued during the Second World War, a mechanism whereby banks were forced to use their ability to create credit to lend to government.

The Green New Deal group believe that despite the appearance of calm, the need for the implementation of the Green New Deal is greater than ever. When the Group launched their first report, new analysis suggested that from 1 August 2008 there were only 100 months, or less, to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before we hit a potential point of no return. The climate clock is still ticking and nothing like the scale of reform needed to rapidly re-engineer the economy has been implemented, anywhere.

The opportunity for action is even more pressing than it was when President Franklin Roosevelt instigated his bold New Deal programme that touched almost every aspect of economy and society. The timescale is limited by the urgent need to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before the risk of uncontrollable global warming increases significantly. Today, there is a plan on the table that could revitalise our damaged economy while also radically restructuring it for a low carbon future. Now the vision is needed to implement it before it is too late.

"David Howarth has done a good job for Cambridge, and indeed the country as whole, in backing many progressive causes and helping to keep key issues high on the agenda. I would like to thank David for all that he has done."

"I do hope the people of Cambridge will see this as a major opportunity to create change by electing the country's first Green MP. There are issues of pressing importance to the city, country and indeed entire world that need to be taken to Parliament. I will be working hard to convince the voters of Cambridge that I will be able to do that job on their behalf".

The petition will be presented to the Leader of the council , Iam Nimmo-Smith in the Guildhall at the start of Full Council on Thursday 22nd October by Green Abbey city councillor, Margaret Wright and the Rev. Roger Williams, vicar of the church of Christ the Redeemer, Newmarket Road.

At the public meeting held in August, 2008 in a bid to halt proposed closures , it was acknowledged that, while no area should suffer reduction in service, the area most in need of a new post office was in the east of the city. Here, a combination of factors including lower than average wages, poorer health and lack of direct bus services to a post office in a neighbouring area puts extra strain on a community which deserves better than average provision.

Not only did almost all the closures proposed in 2008 go ahead , but since then the possibility of saving post offices has become even more difficult.

Cllr Wright said,
"At a time when the post office and its workforce are experiencing great strain , we need to look at re-vitalisation , not reduction in services. There is ample evidence that a thriving post-office keeps money circulating locally so helping local shopping centres stay alive. While we are open to all suggestions as to how this might be achieved, my experience is that Post Office Ltd. is less than helpful and that the understanding of the post office as a public service has been severely undermined. There are as many reasons to fight for this provision of service as there are signatures on this petition. I trust all authorities will work together to bring it about."

Cllr Sedgwick-Jell who represents Abbey on the County went on to say, "It is very much a Green issue as to whether there is a locally accessable post-office, especially in a poorer area such as Abbey. Instead of being able to walk to their post office reseidents are driving to the closest branch on Vinery Road and older people are being left dependent on relatives or friends. We believe that the post office should be a public service and thats why we are calling upon the City Council to bring this situation to its logical conclusion. We want our post office reopened."

• Read the Full News Article

Royal Mail management are using the 10% fall in postal communication relative to digital to force through cuts to postal workers earnings often using threats and intimidation and wrecking conditions of service. This is a difficult time to be a postal worker, but postal workers continue to deliver a vital public service. They are through their Union willing to negotiate reforms but are not prepared to be bullied.

The national agreement that resolved the 2007 dispute stipulates the continuing provision of reasonable local earnings levels and that to assist development of a fourth Phase of Royal Mail modernisation, consultation and negotiation will take place. Management are not currently complying. Green Party Trade Union therefore supports the CWU decision to ballot on national strike action.

In this, the event of a CWU postal workers strike we support those who are striking and call upon all party members to do the same"

County Cllr Simon Sedgwick-Jell
Chair, Cambridge Green Party

James Youd
Coordinator, Cambridge Green Party

For further comment please contact (01223) 474557 or 07961695882

Steve Richards (Opinion, 16 October) quite rightly sees some of the contradictions in the Tory enthusiasm for localism. He could usefully have added that the normal time lag between an opposition party pledging to give away power, that party's election to government and its subsequent rediscovery of the virtue of central control, is around the 48-hour mark. It is instructive to remember both the Thatcherite assault on the metropolitan councils and the gleeful rediscovery of rate capping by messrs Blair and Brown. Read more......

Having opened the Convention of the Left conference in Brighton on Saturday, Caroline Lucas yesterday addressed meetings of both the Fabian Society and Compass, a progressive group within the Labour Party. Gavin Hayes of Compass told The Guardian: "If you look at our No Turning Back document, of the 10 policies we proposed, six were Lib Dem, nine were green and none were New Labour."

Locals and vistors look on at the Apple Press in use. Margaret and Stephen clean the press up after its highly successful first outing.

• Read the Evening News Article about the Stourbridge Fair. 
• More information about hiring the Apple Press