Who will be the next Mayor of Bedford?
Bedford will come together and vote on our new Mayor in the coming days. This article isn’t meant to answer the question “Who will be the next mayor?” nor “who should be the next mayor?”, that’s your choice. It’s a quick temperature gauge on the local political promises around climate change.
I put a question to each of the mayoral candidates via the Times & Citizen; “I see a Local Authority’s approach to renewables as a kind of litmus test to just how seriously you take the issue of climate change, i’m not particularly interested in opinions on climate change, i’d like to know what specific policies you intend to implement to increase renewables in the area?” The Times & Citzen published a written edit of the response in last Thursdays edition. My initial response was one of dismay at how many of the answers seemingly missed the point. However, some of the content is lost in translation which is largely an issue of editing. I’ve since watched the video responses online. I urge you to take a look. The candidates mostly promise significant action. This article is a request that we hold to account who ever gets in.
Due to my personal ideals I’ve never voted in a my life, be it Local Authority of National Government. However, given that we have less than 90 months left before our global atmospheric emissions cross the 450ppm mark, which is widely agreed as being a tipping point, i may put my ideals aside. This next political term needs to be very decisive for Bedford, the nation and the world. Little do most politicians understand the full extent of the challenges and opportunities that will face us in the next four years. No space for floundering, little need for words, it’s action, vision and creativity that is our only true friend.
I do encourage EVERYONE to view all these videos. Extremely informative to see what kind of thinking we will have work with over the coming years.
While I don’t want to cite any one candidate over another here, I do have a couple of general observations:
1) I find it totally bizarre that when asked about how to help the local businessman during the recession, so MANY of the candidates responded by saying they would want to increase tourism (one said from the US, no less). What a complete lack of logic — if the whole world is in recession, what is the likelihood of increasing tourism to Bedford? Not one candidate actually even came close to talking about the fundamental flaws in the economic system (e.g., living on credit, the policy of non-stop growth, dependence on global markets, etc).
2) If (as per Shane’s question) they are all “for” renewable energy, how will increasing tourism and building more parking lots (someone’s suggestion), both of which only increase oil consumption, create a holistic solution to both the economy AND the environment? There doesn’t seem to be much deep thinking going on here.
3) AND… I’m sorry but I simply MUST comment on how ironic it was for one candidate to suggest we bring in heat pumps from China in an effort to save energy. Hmm…
I think the “call to action” on our part is clear: Transition Bedford REALLY needs to educate local government. If politicians continue to look at the issues of energy, community, education and economy as separate, rather than taking a holistic approach, we will simply keep going in circles from problem to problem.
Thanks for this Shane. VERY educational. And like you, and for the same reasons, I have never voted in an election in my life, neither here in UK nor in the US.
I had tremendous difficulty getting the videos to work, and so partly for the benefit of others who also have trouble, and to disentangle the quite cryptic comments already made, here is my summary of the relevant points made (both good and bad)(bits in brackets are my comments).
Eve – Green Party Candidate
Would proactively seek sites for wind generation. Put Solar on all public buildings. Make use of ground and air source heat pumps (by the way, Lynn, unlike Tony Hare, Eve would want them to be made locally). Change council electricity supplier to a supplier that only supplies 100% renewable energy. All new council vehicles should be electric. Renewables on new housing developments. Subsidised bus travel. Support small local independent businesses, and put a curb on out of town shops.
Apu – Independent
Says would encourage people to have solar panels (but says nothing concrete about how). Says is supportive of ZCC. Says the Govt should be doing more on renewables. Would support improved cycleways and walking buses.
Dave – LibDem
Would have a policy to promote growth that is zero carbon. Would have a fund for renewables (mentions Islington and Watford as examples to follow: both are councils with Green Party councillors – is that co-incidence?). Says is supportive of ZCC and would look to use similar groups.
James – Labour
“Number 1 priority” is supporting the bypass. Would promote tourism from US. Says main thing about renewable energy is recycling (eh?). Wants to bring shops like music shops into the town. Wants to improve the bus station and subsidise bus fares for young people, and wants a “completely different attitude to the motor car” (hard to see how that fits with his no1 priority). Supportive of cycling.
Parvez – Conservative
Supports town centre re-development. Would exchange car parking tickets for local shopping vouchers (so those of us that use greener methods of transport into town wouldn’t get them). Would increase car parking in the town center, supports the bypass AND an extra road bridge in town. Supports microgeneration, and would change the planning process to support it (a very good policy, to be fair). Would generate renewable energy on council buildings.
Tony – Independent
Supports river buses. Vehemently opposes wind turbines. An avid filler of orange bags. Supports air source heat pumps, which are an excellent technology (but he’s the one who talks of bringing them in from China).
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For those who don’t know what they are, heat pumps work like refrigerators in reverse. Professor David MacKay says “The best heat pumps, recently developed in Japan, have a coefficient of performance of 4.9; this means that using 1 kWh of electricity, the heat pump delivers 4.9 kWh of heat in the form of hot air or hot water.” see his book “Sustainable Energy – without the hot air”, see http://www.withouthotair.com/synopsis10.pdf p8.
Eve, the Green Party candidate didn’t say it on the T&C clip (she wasn’t asked), but on Look East last night you could have seen her giving the arguments against the bypass. Today only you can catch it online at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/england/realmedia/lookeast/cambridge/cambridge?size=16×9&bgc=C0C0C0&nbram=1&bbram=1&nbwm=1&bbwm=1
Its at 19.32 – 19.47.
She also supports cycleways and walking buses: see http://www.eve4bedford.org.uk/transport_and_traffic.htm
For more chance to compare and contrast the candidates, you could watch the BBC Politics show online
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/the_politics_show_east
from 31’00 to 49’00
I think legally I am required to say: published and promoted by N Ben Foley, 70 Spenser Road, Bedford on behalf of Eve Robinson-Morley, 21 Ford End Road, Bedford
Thanks for this great summary report, Ben!
Ben, thanks for the summary. i too had to persist to watch the videos. why they don’t use a flash player or 3rd party systems such as vimeo i don’t know.
Lynn, you said;
“If politicians continue to look at the issues of energy, community, education and economy as separate, rather than taking a holistic approach, we will simply keep going in circles from problem to problem.”
i have to agree. Unfortunately, even though we’ve had a mass of new quality of life (social) and sustainability (environmental) indicators appear in government, they still all define progress under 1 indicator and that’s GDP. In fact GDP is currently the only relevant indicator for the people too. Amazingly you could add up all the indicators and demonstrate a steady decline in quality of life. but that will probably only reach page 7 in the odd newspaper but a decline in GDP and the very fabric of society is shaken for months/years. Bizarre as surely GDP is supposed to be an indicator of quality of life. As long as we hold this deep routed belief that GDP equals progress, the centre of the political holism is money with some environmental and social add ons. so from an economic perspective most of the candidates probably think they’ve got it pretty rounded.
Absolutely agree with Shane that GDP is the wrong way to measure whether things are going well or not. See EC310 and EC311 at http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/mfss/mfssec.html for official Green Party Policy on this.
Lynn complained that “Not one candidate actually even came close to talking about the fundamental flaws in the economic system”. I can tell you a lot of the reasons why the Green Party candidate, Eve, didn’t, since I produced briefing documents in advance of her being filmed by the T&C.
For a start, the questions hardly invited such a response. Secondly, we were being asked to do something that was talking to camera without visual aids, and with very limited time. Third, this is an election for a mayor of Bedford, who has virtually no control over the economic system: a little on how Bedford gets blown about by the economic winds, but nothing much beyond that. Finally, the audience of the videos is those readers of the T&C who have computers and take a look at the videos: it is reasonable to assume that very few of them, unfortunately, are economically literate enough at the moment to be able to understand a challenge to the hegenomic view that GDP growth is good – against that background, it would be tactically silly to use the time to baffle most viewers. Much better to use other ways (web, seminars, even leaflets) to challenge the hegenomic view. What we did, instead, was to argue for policies that voters could understand that were compatible with a challenge to that economic orthodoxy.
Published and promoted by N Ben Foley, 70 Spenser Road, Bedford on behalf of Eve Robinson-Morley, 21 Ford End Road, Bedford
well it’s a done deal;
http://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/bed-news/Mayoral-race-The-result.5740680.jp
here’s the new Mayor’s pledge on renewables that we want him to deliver on and much more;
http://www.bedfordtoday.co.uk/bed-news/Mayoral-race-Councillor-Dave-Hodgson.5725467.jp
levels of engagement in politics means that only 9,428 of 145,000 people, less than 10%, voted for the current Mayor. i heard recently that when 5% of a population take on an idea, the idea becomes embedded, when 20% take on the idea it becomes unstoppable. so perhaps a rough target is to convince 7,250 people simply of the need to transition to a vibrant and resilient community (by say 2011), get the idea embedded and then work from there. with a view to hitting the 29,000 mark by the end of 2012….
i’m going to put a poll on this site saying something like;
Do you think we need to transition to a vibrant and resilient community? YES / NO
what do you think? good poll? different question maybe?
if we get more than 9,428 we’ve got more support than the mayor. no hurry like.