Selling Renewable Energy Back to the Grid

Ofgem, the energy utility regulator, is now saying that households that install energy generation systems such as solar panels and wind turbines could be guaranteed a minimum price for selling their spare power back to the electricity networks. In other words, mainstream electricity suppliers now face the risk of legislation unless they take action to make it easier for households to sell their surplus power.

Programme for Coventry Peace Month

It can be found here.

Some of the first events:

Saturday 14 October

- Multi-Faith Forum's Annual Peace Walk (10am to 130pm)
- an ecumenical service (230pm) at Coventry Cathedral (organised by the Churches Network for Non-Violence)
- Diwali Light Switch on (at Edgwick Park, 7pm)

Sunday 15 October

- Inspiring Peace, Coventry Peace House, 311 Stoney Stanton Road, 11am – 3pm (An exhibition of images and text explores how people promote peace. Against this backdrop a wide range of people with different experiences will tell stories and give testimonies of how they have contributed to peace.)

Jack Straw and the full veil

For such an experienced politician, I don't think Jack Straw realises what he has unleashed. I mean, he may understand that he was talking about the full veil (niqab), but it'll be used by the white far-right as a statement against all Muslim headgear, hijab, everything.

As soon as possible, I think he has to denounce any vigilantism done in his name.

The far-Right British National Party is hoping to cash in on the mounting anger. It is drawing up a battle plan to split Mr Straw’s support at the next election. BNP spokesman Dr Phil Edwards: "We have been saying this about Muslim dress for some time," he said. "It’s all part of the problems of a multi-cultural Britain that he and the Labour Party helped to create."

Ibrahim Master, a member of the Labour Party who played a key role in 60-year-old Mr Straw’s last election victory, said: "We feel it is very difficult to take because it comes from a man who knows a great deal about the Muslim community. It’s like a family member going against us. This is a very sensitive issue and he has said it publicly without any form of consultation. The Muslim community feels angry and let down."

Yesterday’s protest was told how a young Muslim girl wearing a niqab in Blackburn was confronted by three angry youths on Friday night. One of the trio threw a newspaper at the terrified girl and shouted at her: "Jack has told you to take off your veil." And in Toxteth, Liverpool, a 49-year-old Muslim woman had her veil snatched from her by a white man in his 60s. Inspector Saied Mostaghel, of Merseyside Police, said: "She was left feeling shocked and upset."

Aviation Offsets in Bullyard

The Co-Op's travel firm, Travelcare (which is at Bullyard, here in Cov) is starting a pilot programme for travellers who want to "offset" the environmental impact of their flights, i.e. if you were flying to Australia, you could buy a £50 credit towards environmental projects that would compensate for the aviation fuel burnt.

In an ideal world, we need people who make 12 flights year, to shift towards making 8 flights a year in 2007, and 4 flights in 2008, using videoconferencing if you're a business traveller, or seeing more of Britain if they are tourist flights, whilst also buying into the idea of these carbon offsets.

Renewable Energy and Football Stadiums

The City of Manchester Stadium will become the first stadium in the world to be solely powered by renewable energy.

From 2007, it will have an 85m high wind turbine, which will also produce enough energy to power 1250 other homes in Manchester. Any home or business in Manchester will be able to tap into the surplus and buy environmentally-friendly power from Ecotricity at the same price as from their regional supplier.

In a similar way, the new stadiums for the World Cup this past summer had a variety of environmental features:

- a commitment to reducing waste, energy and water use by 20%
- containers for collecting up to 1,000m3 of rain water for watering the pitch areas
- car-park surfaces treated to allow water seepage

Just as every other sector of the economy has to address energy use, carbon emissions and reducing waste, football should as well. I noticed, when in town for the Green Party autumn conference, that Brighton's city council has stars of the Seagulls advertising recycling initiatives. There already is a Green Travel Plan in place for events at the Ricoh, but many of these features could have been incorporated into the stadium when it was built, or they could be retrofitted now. Seeing the Ricoh powered by a wind turbine could easily lead to tens of thousands of supporters considering a switchover to a green electricity tariff as well.

Carbon Emissions and Aviation

A letter in today's Guardian by one of our two Green MEPs, Caroline Lucas:

Ken Livingstone is right (Green moves on buses and fuel , September 28): aviation's greenhouse-gas emissions must be brought to the centre of the debate on climate change, as flying is the fastest-growing source of emissions.

But his party, the Tories and the Lib Dems seem wedded to the largest expansion of British airports in a generation.

The renewable-energy initiatives announced in Manchester last week will come nowhere near solving the problem unless we rein in aircraft emissions, something neither the Westminster parties nor Richard Branson are seriously prepared to do. It seems Branson is just the latest airline executive to promote "green-sounding" measures to ensure the issue is tackled by self-regulation and not mandatory emissions reductions.

To simply add aviation into the current emissions-trading scheme will allow airlines to buy up CO2 emission rights from other industries and prolong the illusion that flying can continue to increase without consequence.

A much more effective way forward is the one I presented to the European parliament, overwhelmingly adopted by MEPs this summer: to establish an airlines-only emissions-trading scheme alongside a package of complementary measures to reduce aviation's non-CO2 greenhouse-gas emissions.

Black History and the Industrial Revolution

Sistertree Theatre Company will show their new work, "Black Inventors - We Were There" at St Peter's Community Centre, in Hillfields, CV1 5NP, 6th October, 730 to 9pm. It will focus on the role that black people played in the Industrial Revolution. To reserve a place, call 02476 632877.

The Amazing Mrs Pritchard

I watched the BBC's "The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard" tonight, since I can't help myself, I'm a political junkie. I was curious as to how plausible it would be, and remarkably, it was. I mean, man-management at a supermarket being applied to a local MP's campaign ... backbench MPs defecting to an insurgent Independent campaign ... a high-profile woman frustrated at the glass ceiling in the shadow cabinet defecting to become the Chancellor-in-waiting ... a Terry Leahy/Anita Roddick amalgram lending £10 million to the campaign ... all reasonably plausible.

Ross Perot did get over 20% in one of his two runs at the US presidency. Insurgent Internet-led campaigns (South Korea, Howard Dean, Jesse Ventura) have all led to success. When you have voter turnout being 60% in general elections and 40% in local ones, there is a vacuum to be filled.

Bus Routes in Cheylesmore

Residents of Cheylesmore are being asked for their views on new bus routes.

The proposals relate to the 21 route along Mile lane, Queen Isabel's Avenue and Daventry Road. The proposals include making bus stops more wheelchair-friendly with raised kerbs for easier boarding, more tree planting and junction alterations to ease traffic flow and make turns easier for buses.

The Centro bus for consultation will be at the following locations:

- John Grace Street on Wednesday 4th October 2006 between 2.00pm & 7.00pm
- Quinton Park/ Cecily Road on Saturday 7th October between 10.00am & 3.00pm

If you wish to give your views about the scheme please telephone Nick Richards on 024 7683 1112.

Adnams Warehouse and its Green Roof

Adnams brewery in Suffolk has built a distribution centre with the largest green roof in the UK.

Solar panels will provide 80% of the hot water, reed beds purify their waste water, and the building blocks are made from lime, hemp and quarry waste. Whilst the cost of the building is 15% higher than normal, they say that the "additional investment is justified in the long term by significantly lower energy usage and greater efficiency."

That's the right kind of attitude, the right kind of leadership, on environmental design.

A New Library for Whoberley

Early in September, I wrote to Gary Ridley, the Coventry city council cabinet member in charge of libraries, to enquire about the environmental features of new libraries planned for Tile Hill and Whoberley.

5th September

Cllr Ridley,

I am pleased to hear of the increased investment inthe Coventry library system, coupled with plans for new library buildings in Tile Hill and Whoberley.

Can you give my party a commitment, in light of the recent city council cabinet decision to sign the Nottingham Declaration, that the design of the two buildings will be as low-energy and environmentally-friendly as possible?

Specifically, will features, such as a living roof(http://www.livingroofs.org/), natural lighting, solarpanels, and a miniature wind turbine be incorporatedinto the design?

The good news of his response: whilst the Tile Hill design is finalised, the Whoberley one is still at the "briefing" stage, which sounds unfinalised. He also mentioned pilot projects in local schools to incorporate a green roof and rainwater harvesting.

The less good news: he didn't give any details of the Whoberley library design, and his letter was peppered with phrases such as "sustainable methods of design and construction that are both energy and cost efficient" or "operating within the available resources."

When we are being inundated with reports each fortnight that say we only have 5 years to turn the carbon emissions "supertanker" around, it's this short-term cost focus. Environmental designs are more expensive, since less people use them! If everyone used them, the extra demand would lower costs.

Francis Maude and Investing in Adult Entertainment

Francis Maude has a bit of a problem. How do you square being party chair of the Conservatives with being an investor in porn DVDs? In a company producing porn DVDs that had a "condoms optional" policy for its filming?

The party boss is the £15,000-a-year non-executive chairman of Jubilee Investment Trust plc that bought into the sordid business of US porn star Jill Kelly.

Mr Maude is a leading figure in the campaign to get more women into the Tory party, and boasted only last week: "Our party is changing. We’re more family-friendly."

Confronted by the Mirror on the opening day of his party's conference, the 53-year-old Tory party chairman tried to claim his company's investment was “ancient history”. He was left speechless when we pointed out that Jubilee had actually increased its stake in the Kelly business from 5.6 per cent in 2003 to 21 per cent by last year.

Despite once owning more than 4,000 Jubilee shares and signing off its annual financial statement, Mr Maude blustered: "It's not my company."

Top Gear and National Road Safety Week

Stephen Ladyman is Labour's roads safety minister. He's been dropped by the organisers of the launch of National Road Safety Week, since he made comments saying that Richard Hammond was an "adventurer" and that Top Gear doesn't encourage speeding amongst young men. Turns out that Ladyman has been caught three times by speed cameras and once had nine points on his licence.

I think that the BBC, as a responsible employer, shouldn't allow its employees to drive at 100 mph, let alone 300 mph, as part of programme production. The BBC receives a huge whack of license fee to avoid the need to chase ratings, so why do they chase ratings by having ever-more extravagant stunts on Top Gear?

The Dangerous Idea of Non-Violence

One book to watch out for in the coming months is Mark Kurlansky's "Nonviolence: The History of a Dangerous Idea" ... Societies promote warfare and glorify violence. But there have always been a few who have refused to fight.

Governments have long regarded this minority as a danger to society and have imprisoned and abused them and encouraged their persecution. Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and, most impressively, the Menonites and the Quakers - all have passages in their major teachings rejecting warfare as immoral. In this brilliant exploration of pacifism, these points of view are discussed alongside such diverse non-violence theorists as Tolstoy, Shelley, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Aldous Huxley, Erasmus, Confucius and Lao Tse to show how many modern ideas - such as a united Europe, the United Nations, and the abolition of slavery - originated in such non-violence movements.

The Conservative Vision for the NHS

Have you noticed how David Cameron never mentions privatisation? It's all about a "revolution in social responsibility" ... or "trusting people" or "look at me in my kitchen on my videoblog."

In contrast, Oliver Letwin has been a bit too honest about what "social responsibility" means for Conservative plans and the NHS.

Oliver Letwin has outlined plans for a huge increase in the use of private companies in healthcare provision. His vision would reduce the NHS to a commissioning body, with many patient services provided by a range of businesses. Letwin, chairman of the Tories' policy review, said that contracting out healthcare was in the best interests of patients ... Letwin said the Tories would have “no hang-ups” about use of the private sector in healthcare, although the NHS would remain free of charge.

Asked if there would be any limits, he said: "No limits, no. Let the commissioning bodies decide where patients can best be cured. If people can provide services under the NHS which are good services — social enterprises, private bodies or NHS foundations — if they can satisfy the commissioners within the NHS that the best way is through them, then they should be part of the show."