On Thursday (19th June) the government announced a scheme investing £100m into 12 chosen "Cycling Towns/Cities" to improve cycling infrastructure and facilities in those urban areas. But it appears that the money is going to places that already have good cycling infrastructure (like Cambridge)! Friday's EDP newspaper was very critical of Norfolk County Council for failing to even bid for a share of this funding, despite both Norwich and Yarmouth being qualified and Kings Lynn expressing an intrest, because "funds would have to be taken from other transport budgets to match any funding award made" (quoting EDP article).
Rupert Read (Green Party Transport spokesman) says in the EDP that "its about time we took the initiative on getting the key improvements made to road junctions. The more people we can encourage on to their bikes, the less congested the road network will be - and the more people will be saving money, by travelling in a way that is immune to fuel price increases."
SO WHAT IS Norfolk County Council playing at??? We need serious investment into forms of transport (like cycling) that do not depend on damaging and dwindling fossil fuels like oil. Dereham is wofully lacking in cycling infrastructure like cycle lanes/paths, cyclist priority at junctions, and good sheltered cycle racks around the town.
I regularly cycle to the City College learning Station at Trafalgar Business Park, Rashes Green. But there are no proper bike racks there at all! So I have to lock my bike to some rather exposed railings. Service providers (like the Learning Station), employers, and particularly planners at Breckland must do far more to ensure that the infrastructure is there to facilitate cycling. And if there is money out there that the County Council can go for to help fund this then they really MUST GO FOR IT!
The County Council (and others) must get their act together and start investing into our carbon-free transport future, rather than linguring in our dying, oil-adicted transport past! Lets see safe dedicated cycle routes being developed to link Dereham town centre to all the surounding housing areas and on out to all the surounding villages.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been swanning around in Jeddah over the weekend trying to talk Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich countries into giving us back some of the trillions of dollars that we're spending, buying their oil. But Gordon wants them to invest all that money that they're making out of us due to soaring oil prices, back into the UK by financing new nuclear power stations! IDIOT! Nuclear is clearly NOT the solution!
Frankly we would much sooner solve these problems if we were to stop pouring our money away to Saudi's in the first place by not buying their oil! Then we would instead have that money ourselves, to invest into finding zero-carbon solutions, reducing our energy use and rebuilding more resillent and re-localised economies.
Showing posts with label EDP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EDP. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Monday, 16 June 2008
Shopping locally
Saturday's Eastern Daily Press (14th June 2008) has the right message. Its front-page headline says "WE'RE STILL GOING LOCAL; Consumers say it's more economical".
Highlighting their own "Shop Here" campaign, supporting locally owned independent shops, the EDP cites its own new survey which says that "consumers still back their local shops - and say it is actually more economical to shop locally, cut back on trips to out-of-town supermarkets and conserve their own fuel." The article includes comments from a number of local Norfolk producers who all appear to be reporting growing demand for their produce despite having to increase their prices to pass on some of their rising fuel costs to their customers.
The EDP article by Kathryn Cross also reports that "Russian oil giant Gazprom predicts that the price per barrel [of oil] could hit $250 before 2009 is over, which would catapult the cost of a
litre of unleaded petrol to an incredible 230p and push energy prices sky-high." I'm not at all surprised at these figures! But it should make everyone think; how will we cope IF in a year from now fuel prices are nearly twice what they are today (on Saturday 14th at both Morrisons and BP prices are 117.9p for unleaded and 130.9p for diesel)?
Will we all half our car use? Will we be wasting less good food and buying less heavily processed (energy intensive) food in less excessive, oil based and environmentally damaging packaging? Will we all be growing more of our own food in our own back gardens or in a vast number of new allotment plots that the council is going to have to provide for us somewhere (probably instead of the possible 3500 houses that the Breckland LDF has identified space for around Dereham)?
We WILL ALL have to change our ways to adapt to the soaring cost of energy. Is it not far better to start planning for these things now and begin to implement the changes we need to make, rather than wait until crisis forces us to react? And if we wait for the crisis the resources and options we have to deal with the issues will be severely limited.
With the Shell tanker drivers strike this last weekend and the threat of another 4 day stoppage this next weekend, coupled with increasing road haulier demos against high taxes, I suspect that it may not be long before we get at least a short taste of what life after oil will look like unless we do something about it!
The EDP's Shop Here listing is here
The EDP article mentioned above can be read on their website here
The EDP website www.edp24.co.uk
Highlighting their own "Shop Here" campaign, supporting locally owned independent shops, the EDP cites its own new survey which says that "consumers still back their local shops - and say it is actually more economical to shop locally, cut back on trips to out-of-town supermarkets and conserve their own fuel." The article includes comments from a number of local Norfolk producers who all appear to be reporting growing demand for their produce despite having to increase their prices to pass on some of their rising fuel costs to their customers.
The EDP article by Kathryn Cross also reports that "Russian oil giant Gazprom predicts that the price per barrel [of oil] could hit $250 before 2009 is over, which would catapult the cost of a
litre of unleaded petrol to an incredible 230p and push energy prices sky-high." I'm not at all surprised at these figures! But it should make everyone think; how will we cope IF in a year from now fuel prices are nearly twice what they are today (on Saturday 14th at both Morrisons and BP prices are 117.9p for unleaded and 130.9p for diesel)?Will we all half our car use? Will we be wasting less good food and buying less heavily processed (energy intensive) food in less excessive, oil based and environmentally damaging packaging? Will we all be growing more of our own food in our own back gardens or in a vast number of new allotment plots that the council is going to have to provide for us somewhere (probably instead of the possible 3500 houses that the Breckland LDF has identified space for around Dereham)?
We WILL ALL have to change our ways to adapt to the soaring cost of energy. Is it not far better to start planning for these things now and begin to implement the changes we need to make, rather than wait until crisis forces us to react? And if we wait for the crisis the resources and options we have to deal with the issues will be severely limited.
With the Shell tanker drivers strike this last weekend and the threat of another 4 day stoppage this next weekend, coupled with increasing road haulier demos against high taxes, I suspect that it may not be long before we get at least a short taste of what life after oil will look like unless we do something about it!
The EDP's Shop Here listing is here
The EDP article mentioned above can be read on their website here
The EDP website www.edp24.co.uk
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
