James Barber

At the launch of the new Draft Bill on energy, Liberal Democrat Secretary of State of Energy and Climate Change Ed Davey, writes:

Over the next decade, around a fifth of existing power plants are due to close, against a background of increased energy demand and increasing prices. We need new investment simply to keep the lights on.

But more than that, we need a clean energy revolution to meet our ambitious climate change goals and make this the greenest government ever.

That’s why I am bringing forward a new Energy Bill today.

You can read more about our clean energy revolution here.

We also need to transform our energy market to reduce the risk and cost of low carbon technologies.

That’s what our Bill does.

The UK is fast becoming a world leader in renewable energy, especially in off shore wind. I want us to lead the world in Carbon Capture and Storage too.

And we are also tackling rising energy bills. Without reforming the energy market bills will rise by around £200 in the coming years. Our reforms will mean bills are around 4% lower than they otherwise would have been.

Going green is good for the economy, good for Britain and good for you.

Yours,

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change

(Image licensed under Creative Commons from DECC)

(Click picture to play video)

It is shameful that, despite all the promise on a four or five year old’s first day at school, or the passion of their teachers, you can all too often plot that child’s path just by asking how much their parents earn.

The £2.5billion Pupil Premium was one of the four pledges on the front page of our manifesto.  And now, with Liberal Democrats in government, schools are using the money for things like breakfast clubs; homework clubs; or to provide one-to-one-tuition. These are the sort of experiences many middle class children take for granted but a poorer child might rarely enjoy.

Yesterday I visited a fantastic primary school to see how they are spending their Pupil Premium, highlight our new Summer Schools to ease the transition from primary to secondary, and to set out our plans to reward teachers and hold schools to account.

The Pupil Premium shows that, in tough times, we are implementing Liberal Democrat values and prioritising help for those pupils who need it most.

Best wishes,

Nick Clegg MP

Leader of the Liberal Democrats and Deputy Prime Minister

PS Click here to find out how much money your local school will receive from the Liberal Democrats’ Pupil Premium.

At Southwark Council’s Audit & Governance meeting last week the officers report on anti fraud activities (page 89) states “4000 Single Persons Discount matches were released in February 2012 and work has commenced on these.”
The match is finding local and central govt data records of 2 or more people living at an address where a single persons council tax discount is claimed.

A few months ago Lambeth claimed they found 15,000 such matches by using a commercial agency checking against bank etc address records. (http://www.southlondonpress.co.uk/news.cfm?id=35616)

So either Southwark is failing big time to find all the potential wrong claims for single persons discount or Lambeth is wasting a lot of residents time fighting to keep single persons discount.
Which do you suspect?

But as each wrong discount will be costing circa £300 on average whether its 4,000 or 15,000 that is an awful lot of money not being collected. This means the correct council tax payers in Southwark are needlessly being asked for £11 to £43 per household per year.

This week, Paul Burstow (Liberal Democrat minister at the Department of Health) has launched a national £4 million lung cancer awareness campaign. The campaign, the first of its kind, will use TV, radio and press adverts, and advertising on pharmacist bags and inside GP surgeries, to raise awareness of the disease.

One of its aims is to persuade anyone who has had a cough for more than three weeks to see their doctor.

You can find more information about coughing and lung cancer at the Department of Health website, here: http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/2012/05/coughing-could-be-a-sign-of-lung-cancer-2/

With 33,000 new cases diagnosed each year, lung cancer is a blight on the lives of far too many of our families and an early diagnosis can make all the difference. Please take the opportunity of the Be Clear on Cancer campaign to find out more about prevention and diagnosis, and to visit your local doctor if you’ve had a persistent cough – it is always better to be safe than sorry!

http://www.dh.gov.uk/health/tag/be-clear-on-cancer/

For many months Londoners, who lets not forget are each paying £240 towards the Olympics being held in London, have been inundated with communications to minimise travel. That banned night time deliveries will potentially be allowed. That Zil lanes will be created to whisk non athletes Olympic hangers on with snouts in the 5* trough around London at break neck speeds. Olympic ticketing shambles where applicants appear to have feast or famine with tickets. Sponsorship from companies with no London or UK connection – just dull global brands.

Twenty days ago at the 100days to go mark someone in the Olympic organisers suddenly realised that the Olympics appears a pretty rotten deal for Londoners with even less interest outside London. That a huge glut of Londoners putting their homes up for rent during the Olympics. Many are planning to simply avoid all the crap by being out of London for as much and long as possible.

A sudden plea at 100 days from athletes to enjoy the Olympics and ‘a golden summer’. I hope the Olympics are a roaring success but boy have the London Olympics committee done everything they can to alienate it from Londoners. The London Olympic brand appears very tarnished.

I have been fortunate in the ballot and have tickets for two Olympic and one Paralympic events. This is solely for my children to enjoy the buzz. I’m prepared to cover up for their sakes as much of the rubbish as I can to make it the best possible experience. They wont realise we’re conforming to the petty debranding of their cloths to avoid any embarrassment.

Oh why oh why couldn’t the London Olympics have kept the original Olympic type spirit. Even the London 1948 Olympic austerity games would have been preferable to the complete sell out and apparent incompetence we’re experiencing.

The coalition government has made all local councils make public all payments of over £500.

You can see Southwark’s here.

Sadly the barest minimum is provided – the title of the supplier and the amount spent in that month. No archive of months, no past years, no running total, no categorisation or cost centre making  the order, order raiser, or even a description of what is being purchased from the Purchase Order. In fact no context at all. It’s also presented as a pdf file making manipulation a little trickier. This really isn’t the open government intended.

It’s so bad that National Audit Office is getting involved. It is now pushing for a new central body, the Open Data Institute, to lay down standards about how to present such data. Hopefully Southwark wont wait until then and will finally publish data in the spirit that was meant rather than its current obfuscation.

This outstanding school, located adjacent to the Bricklayer’s Arms roundabout, has sports grounds in East Dulwich – just of off Greendale north of the East Dulwich railway line.

What a long way to come to play sports. It also means their grounds are not available to other local schools or as open green space to residents.

I’m sure the school would rather not have the extra expense of a remote playing fields and the dislocation and expense of busing pupils all that way – it must really eat into the school timetable.

How to fix this.

The Bricklayers Arm Roundabout is an urban disaster created when local politicians thought Southwark was only good to be knocked about to make space for urban motorways. When writing the 2010 Lib Dem manifesto we said this roundabout needed to be replaced with something that serves Southwark residents not just car commuters from Kent.

Replacing the Bricklayers Arms roudnabout with traffic lights, removing the ridiculous flyover could mean St.Olav’s & St.Saviours having local playing field added onto the school site.

The then surplus playing field in East Dulwich could become part of a local park and create green space for local East Dulwich primary schools such as Goose green school to have near direct access to green space.

What do you think?

Southwark Liberal Democrat councillors have this week proposed Parish Councils as the solution to fill the void left by Community Council mergers. The eight Southwark Community Councils will in May be cut to five bodies with significant loss of powers, as Southwark’s Labour administration further claw local decision-making back to the centre.

Parish Councils, which can take decisions away from the local authority under power granted by the Local Government and Public Involvement Act 2007 and the Localism Act 2011, can be called for by the signatures of 10% of the electorate in a given area. With near unanimous opposition to planned mergers at both Borough & Bankside and Bermondsey meetings in recent months, it is clear there is appetite for an alternative to undemocratic plans from the Labour leadership. Liberal Democrat councillors in Southwark have therefore identified legislation, enacted under the former Labour government and bolstered by the Coalition Government’s Localism Act, which devolves power to local authorities to establish Parish or Community Councils where there is demand.

At the final meeting of Borough & Bankside Community Council on Wednesday night, and the final meeting of Bermondsey Community Council on Thursday night, councillors Adele Morris and Mark Gettleson respectively proposed the idea of application for Parish Council status and began collecting signatures to that end. The petitions call for new bodies to be established in the boundaries of existing community councils of Borough & Bankside and of Bermondsey, where issues discussed at meetings will be of more relevance to all attendees than at the proposed merged areas which will include 5-6 electoral wards instead of the current 2-3.

Petitions for a parish council in Borough & Bankside and Bermondsey are on the Southwark Liberal Democrats website and will be circulated in hard copy by councillors.

Councillor Anood Al-Samerai, leader of Southwark Liberal Democrats, said:
“Labour Southwark are consistently and cynically attacking local democracy and accountability in Southwark. Liberal Democrats will continue to stand up for Southwark residents and their right to make decisions about their own communities.

“Parish Councils, set out in national legislation, allow local residents to make decisions about the future of their communities. It’s up to the electorate to decide on the future of their community. If the community want to set up a Parish Council, Southwark Liberal Democrats will support them all the way. Labour meanwhile are hoarding power and squeezing scrutiny and accountability, seeking to further centralise local decision-making.”

This week the 200m2 Edgware Road Bakerloo line Green Wall has finally settled in and looks fab. It was planted last November by Transport for London being funded by £5M Department of Transport.

It’s part of a London trial to re-prove the already well known peer reviewed research that vegetation help remove PM10 particulates from the air. And London is one of the dirtiest cities in Europe for this type of pollution. Imperial College will re-confirm the evidence for London.

Even if such Green Walls were not fab for helping relieve air pollution they look so much nicer that blank walls.

We have exactly the same type of wall on the side of the E&C Bakerloo ticket hall building.

Greening this blank wall would be an excellent start to making the E&C a greener cheerier place.

What do you think?