Local residents stunned by City Council’s bulldozer threat

Local residents and MSPs have reacted with disbelief to news that Glasgow City Council is threatening to bulldoze the North Kelvin Meadow, a green space created by a local community group on unsightly derelict land neglected by the Council for over a decade.

The destruction of the Meadow, currently slated to take place from Monday, 21 September, comes ahead of a proposed sale to a property developer. The land has never had building on it and has always been a community resource.

The threat to destroy the Meadow follows a court action brought by the Council in July, whereby it sought an interdict to prevent Douglas Peacock and Karen Chung from the North Kelvin Meadow Campaign from putting up bat boxes on the Meadow, and planting flowers and vegetables. The Council has now raised separate proceedings against the ‘Occupiers’ of the Meadow by way of a summary cause action and has been granted a decree for ejection.

The group was given no notice of the new action, although Ms Chung is appealing the interdict against her. Papers concerning the matter were not addressed to a named individual or sent to a proper postal address. The group only learnt what was afoot because the postman delivered the papers to a well-known local personality, who passed them on.

Frances McCartney, solicitor for Ms Chung, has written to Glasgow City Council asking it not to take any further steps with an eviction until a meeting has taken place. She has also asked the Council for details about the separate eviction action it has raised.

Commenting, Robert Brown MSP said: “This action seems to me to be astonishingly heavy-handed. It is sad when the interests of developers are preferred to those of local people and of attractive environmental projects. It is time for the Council to rethink its priorities.”

Patrick Harvie MSP said: “Glasgow City Council has gone too far this time. Labour Councillors and their officials should be ashamed of themselves for threatening to use force against the community here. Local residents have made serious efforts to improve their local environment, and should be supported by the Council, not intimidated. Even at this late stage we would urge the City to think again. If not, Greens will join the North Kelvin Meadow campaigners in a peaceful protest and do our best to prevent this wanton official vandalism.”

He added: “Allotments, raised beds and community spirit around the North Kelvin Meadow replaced broken drink bottles, drug-dealing, litter and abandoned furniture. If the Council succeeds with this eviction, a thriving green space will be at serious risk of reverting to the squalor and social disorder that preceded it. Is that really Labour’s vision for Glasgow?”

The North Kelvin Meadow Campaign was set up last year by local residents fed up with having a rubbish-strewn eyesore on their doorstep. The community group has cleared the land of rubbish, planted flowers and vegetables, and cleaned up and secured a syringe-strewn disused shed. In July, Meadow supporters packed out Glasgow Sheriff Court when Mr Peacock and Ms Chung appeared to defend the interdict sought against them by the Council. A paper and online petition protesting at the Council’s decision to sell the land to a developer has attracted over 800 signatures.

Notes for editors:

The NORTH KELVIN MEADOW CAMPAIGN was launched on 13 October 2008 after Glasgow City Councillor, Jim MacKechnie, rejected out-of-hand the results of a survey conducted in August 2008 by Douglas Peacock, chairman of the NORTH KELVIN MEADOW CAMPAIGN. The survey showed local residents overwhelmingly supported the creation of a green space on the former Clouston Street pitches and opposed the Council’s plan to sell the land to a property developer for the construction of 115 flats.

Since its launch the NORTH KELVIN MEADOW CAMPAIGN has worked to transform the former pitches, which have been disused for over two decades, into a multi-use community green space comprising allotments, an orchard and a wild meadow. Members of the local community have come together to clear the land of rubbish, repair and paint fences, and install composting facilities and raised-bed allotments.

A ‘Big Lunch’ event (part of the nationwide Eden Project) at the North Kelvin Meadow on 21 July attracted support from over 100 local residents. An online and paper petition protesting against GCC’s plans to sell the North Kelvin Meadow to a property developer has attracted over 800 signatures.

The online petition can be found at: www.gopetition.com/online/28274.html

SNP’s budget would set Scotland on the wrong track

The Green MSPs described today’s draft Budget from the SNP as a substantial missed opportunity, and a spending programme apparently unrelated to the social, environmental and economic pressures facing Scotland. (1) Ministers are proposing £87.2m worth of cuts in public transport, alongside an increase in roads spending of more than £30m. (2)

There has been no improvement in the funding allocated to energy efficiency and fuel poverty, and Greens also rejected the Carbon Assessment of the 2010-11 Draft Budget published today by Scottish Ministers as a misleading charade. (3) The Government’s assessment skews the carbon costs of infrastructure, making it look as if the Scottish Public Pensions Agency is more than twice as polluting as the entire trunk road budget. (4)

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“This is a budget which does next to nothing to boost sustainable employment or tackle the economic, social and environmental crises facing Scotland. The SNP’s spending plans have been squeezed, true, but their response is simply to cut public transport like GARL and divert ever more money into the additional Forth Road Bridge. This is money down the drain, taxpayers’ money being wasted on projects so unsustainable that we wouldn’t build even if they were free.

“Two years ago, the SNP agreed to a Green request to carbon cost future budgets, and today we see what they meant by that commitment. The carbon assessment they have published today is bogus. The largest road-building programme in Scotland since the 1960s is apparently less polluting than administering Scotland’s pensions – this is a charade, and a world-leading document only in its dishonesty.

“Savings needed to be made, but the axe is falling in the wrong places. Investment was needed to boost sustainability and employment, but Ministers appear not to have listened. Simultaneously, Parliament is being asked to approve a programme which would waste taxpayers’ money left right and centre. As things stand, this Budget would set Scotland on the wrong track, and the hard work starts now to turn it around.”

Notes

1. The Draft Budget

2. See p31.

3. The Carbon Assessment of the Scottish budget

4. See p26.
Total GHG from Motorways and Trunk Roads = 213,100 tonnes CO2e
Total GHG from the Scottish Public Pensions Agency = 504,900 tonnes CO2e

Why wasn’t the cycle tax idea killed off on day one?

Scottish Government spokespeople have been busy denying that the proposal for a road tax for cyclists is going anywhere. Indeed John Swinney appears to be issuing a personal and very clear denial.

It’s a welcome turnaround, and has even prompted a few voices from the SNP’s loyal fanbase to complain that our decision to object in the first place was an over-reaction.

It’s easy to get annoyed when politicians just milk a story for the sake of some coverage, but that’s not the case here. The issue isn’t really about a realistic prospect for a bike tax – because there is no chance that they’d ever have got away with it. You don’t need much imagination to come up the bones of a kick-ass non-payment campaign, and I doubt that the Government would have been able to collect a single payment. Success for that campaign would have been pretty much in the bag.

No, what’s genuinely worrying is that this notion even made it into the consultation on the otherwise pretty decent Cycling Action Plan for Scotland. I don’t doubt for a moment that the cycling organisations who helped to draw it up were never shown this question, which was probably a late addition at the suggestion of a civil servant. But at some point this addition must have been signed off by Ministers. What was going through their minds at that moment?

One suggestion has been that the question was included in order to ‘rule out’ the idea. Which is even odder. If it needed ruling out, it must have come from somewhere. Somebody somewhere must have been serious about this, or there would have been no need even to mention it. And if this was an attempt to rule it out, surely a simple “The Scottish Government does not support this proposal” would have done the job.

So in short, the SNP deserved to look silly for this even if they knew that the idea was doomed from the start.

At some point in the next few months the Government will have to respond to the cycling consultation, and if that response is going to be meaningful there will need to be a real shift in the spending priorities. I’ve no doubt that Swinney will spend the next few months pleading with opposition parties not to demand new spending in a difficult year, but he’s never short of a billion or two for building new climate-busting roads and bridges. If just a fraction of that was spent on cycling infrastructure, or on other measures to make our streets feel safe for walking and cycling, it would be utterly transformational.

Holyrood’s Transport & Climate Change Committee will also be holding an inquiry this year into active travel, and I’m hoping that it will lead to much clearer recommendations than we’ve made before. I’m sick of looking at each year’s budget and criticising the outdated transport priorities, only to see the very same thing repeated in the next one.

Party politics aside, I hope most of us want the same thing – a big increase in cycling and walking to help hit environmental targets, improve heath, and make just Scotland a nicer place to be in. But it won’t happen by wishing, and it won’t happen by publishing a consultation document. If it’s going to happen it means agreeing a significant change in government policy, and the sooner the SNP recognise that the better.

Report confirms need for tough action on aviation

Today’s report on aviation from the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee must be taken seriously if Scottish or UK Ministers are to have any chance of meeting carbon emissions targets, Greens argue. (1) The report confirms that even holding aviation pollution to 2005 levels will require reductions in emissions of 90% in other parts of the UK economy by 2050, not 80% as Ministers had proposed.

Urgent change is needed across transport policy if Ministers are to meet their emissions targets, yet both Governments remain committed to a business as usual approach. This report follows the publication by the Scottish Government of their long-awaited Carbon Account for Transport, (2) a document which was billed as setting out the real environmental consequences of Scottish Ministers’ transport policy, but which Greens believe has been heavily spun against public transport and in favour of the motoring lobby.

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“This landmark report from the UK Committee will force Ministers to decide – do they want to limit climate change, or will they instead press on with airport expansion? The time for pretending they can do both is now over forever. They must also stop pretending that expanding airport capacity won’t increase pollution. The third runway at Heathrow may get all the publicity, but Scottish Ministers are also guilty here too, with plans to approve extra flights at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Prestwick, Aberdeen and elsewhere across Scotland. Governments of all parties are terrified to take on the aviation industry, but this is a crucial test of their commitment to tackling climate change, and one they seem determined to fail.

“Across the whole of transport policy the other parties remain incapable of facing the real issues. Scottish Ministers recently published their own long overdue carbon account for transport, a depressing, inconsistent and pessimistic document. It should be a clear way to measure the climate consequences of all their transport decisions, but it’s been heavily spun, based on old information and deliberately designed to be virtually useless. The whole document assumes substantial increases in road traffic, and then skews the case in favour of road schemes.

“For instance, the additional Forth Bridge is listed as saving CO2, but only because they compare it to sending all the traffic via the Kincardine Bridge: cheap ways to fix the existing bridge aren’t even on their agenda. The reality, conceded by the Scottish Government just months ago, is that any additional bridge across the Forth will result in a substantial increase in transport emissions.

“Conversely, the trams are damned in this paper because Ministers have chosen to assume major developments along the route will entice people to drive more. However, they ignore the effects of car journeys to out-of-town shopping centres, journeys which they themselves suggest would be likely to grow without the trams.

“A thread runs through this carbon account: if it’s a road project then Ministers will want their photo-op in hard hats, and the facts are twisted to make it look sustainable. If it’s a public transport scheme they campaigned against in opposition, the fiddle goes the other way.

“It’s no surprise that Ministers continue to listen to the road and aviation lobbies and ignore both the green movement and their own scientific advisors. Some say the SNP don’t understand either their carbon reduction targets or what’s needed to achieve them. The truth is worse, I fear: they have no real interest in climate change, because it doesn’t appear to relate directly to independence.”

Notes

1. See the Climate Change Committee’s release and their letter to UK Ministers

2. Carbon Account for Transport

Speech from the Megrahi debate

SNP’s agenda offers one step forward, then one back

The Scottish Parliament today debated the SNP’s legislative programme for the year ahead, which includes twelve Bills on topics including a referendum on independence and an additional road bridge over the Forth. (1)

Patrick Harvie MSP said:

“The SNP’s programme for the year ahead contains some small sensible measures, a dose or two of pointless posturing, and next to no progress on social justice or the environment. The First Minister promises a lot, and no-one can doubt the confidence he has in himself, but the bills announced today are not an adequate response to the economic, social and environmental difficulties Scotland finds itself in.

“The SNP’s legislative follow-up to the Climate Change Bill has just one element: the bridge Ministers wish to ram through the middle of it. As Scottish Ministers know, and as Labour are starting to realise, they cannot meet the 42% interim carbon reduction target set by this Parliament and simply continue with a transport policy straight from the 1960s.

“Parliament will also spend a little time debating the sole purpose of the SNP, a referendum on independence. There’s a clear democratic principle here, that the people should decide, and even those who have a different view of Scotland’s constitutional future must eventually accept the need to test their ideas in a referendum.

“On the environment and social justice the SNP take a small step forward then a giant stride backward and still try to call it progress. What’s required is nothing less than the radical transformation in our society, our economy and our politics. It’s clear from history that progressive and radical change happens because people demand it, not because Government offers it. This will be a crucial battle for Scotland’s environmental credentials, one which will require grit and determination from all the campaigners who fought so tirelessly for that target.”