Category Archives: environment

In praise of Dale Vince and Ecotricity: A green entrepreneur backing Labour

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Labour donor: Dale Vince Pic Credit: ecotricity

Labour donor: Dale Vince gave £250,000
Pic Credit: ecotricity

The disclosure that an entrepreneur has had the temerity to back Labour with a £250,000 donation has led to the usual  scramble in the national media to discredit the man and his company, Ecotricity. The Telegraph has recently done a thorough job  presenting the multi millionaire as a tax avoider, a greedy guzzler of state subsidies set up by one  former energy secretary, Ed Miliband, and owner of a castle. Presumably since Ecotricity doesn’t appear to advertise in The Daily Telegraph they felt brave enough to publish.

What is entirely missing from the article – and this  is surprising as the Telegraph champions competition –  is  support for a company challenging the energy monopoly. No mention of what his company does for ordinary people – which  you cannot get from the big six privatised and mainly foreign-owned giants who make millions from our gas and electricity bills.

I use Ecotricity for both my gas and electricity. One of my reasons is that I would rather spend my money with a company that has a real track record of investing in renewable energy than fossil fuels.

But take that aside – even though many on the right hate wind farms and believe global warming is a myth – Ecotricity has other plus points. Without wishing to act as an advertisement for Ecotricity – this site has no advertising – it seems to me, whatever faults Dale Vince may or may not have, at least his firm tries to offer the consumer a  better deal.

For a start the Telegraph ignores the fact that unlike any of the big six Ecotricity is  recommended  alongside other small companies by Which? as one of the better service providers.It came first for customer satisfaction as well.

Second it employs people in Stroud,its own HQ to deal directly with its customers.This compares with one of the big six I used in the past that had its call centre in India and lost my account when I moved house.. For nearly a year I wasn’t billed for electricity on my  new Berkhamsted home. When I raised this in India the officious   Eon/Powergen call centre worker demanded I sorted out all the paperwork myself – which I refused to do – and then desperately asked for an address   “any address ” he said to bill me. I was tempted to give him a false one in New York City to celebrate the follies of outsourcing and globalisation but honesty got the better of me.

Unlike the big six Ecotricity accepts direct debits for the actual amount of gas and electricity billed – you don’t have to pay a monthly overestimate for what you might use – a great scam allowing companies to take too much money off you for unused energy and use your loan to boost their own profits.

Fourth, Ecotricity is planning to cut prices by 6.2 per cent this May and promising more later in the year  – more than any of the big six and they never raised their prices in the last tranche either. This is something I have to remind the cold callers from the big six desperate for you to switch to them.

Fifth Ecotricity  gives you a good return on the money if you  invest in them.. It offered seven per cent  (7.5 for customers)before tax and its second issue offered six per cent gross (6.5 for customers) on its oversubscribed bonds – far more than the  four per cent  the” generous” George Osborne  is offering  pensioners in the run up to the election.

Some financial advisers have told me they can only offer these good rates of interest because of taxpayer subsidies. But it seems to me that the subsidies for cleaning up nuclear power waste – provide five times more money for the big six energy providers than the sums going to Ecotricity. Even the Telegraph acknowledges that.

But in a pre-election frenzy no right-wing paper  seems to want to acknowledge that anybody backing Labour can offer better value for money.

Fracking by Chevron: Sorry we blew up your village, have a free pizza on us

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The raging fires in Bobtown, Pennsylvania- three days after the explosion. Pic courtesy; dvorak.org

The raging fires in Bobtown, Pennsylvania- three days after the explosion. Pic courtesy; dvorak.org

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A warning to Britain  about the dangers of slip shod fracking  operations is revealed today in an extra ordinary story published on the TUC’s Touchstone blog.

It discloses how  a near disaster hit one hundred residents of a tiny Pennsylvania town where a fracking well exploded lnto a spectacular and deadly tower of flame, killing one person and burning for five days, 

A missing worker (believed to be a contractor) from the Chevron Appalachia site has not been found and is presumed dead. Only a few charred human bones were recovered.The well pad has three natural gas wells. Nineteen workers were on the well pad during the explosion, a spokesman said.

Wild Well Control, an organization trained specifically to deal with natural gas explosions, was called to the site. Investigators finally gained access  to inspect the well pad for the missing employee eight days after the blast when they were able to pull a charred crane off the well pad that was nearest to the still-leaking wells. The wells should finally be capped after a  fires suppressant system was installed.

Chevron’s response to the disaster which terrified people living in Bobtown was believe or not to offer a free pizza voucher and  a bottle of soda. Yes this is true, I am not joking.

The letter enclosing the free voucher says:”

“Chevron recognizes the effect this has had on the community. We are committed to taking action to safeguard our neighbors, our employees, our contractors and the environment.”

I don’t what crass overpaid public relations firm advised them to do this but it is  the equivalent of saying to the local yokels let them eat cake. Given the gravity of the situation it is demeaning and insulting. I wonder if the dead man’s family will get a life supply of pizzas and sodas.

 More worrying Chevron – which also facing protests about fracking in Romania  where it is riding roughshod over protestors  – is an active player in the UK.

To be fair it has a good record in the North Sea oil industry with interests in 10 oil and gas fields – and an excellent safety record according to its own website. But if it starts cashing in on the fracking boom – given the Coalition’s view that workplace safety is mainly just red tape – I for one would not like them in the vicinity. Still  it might be boon for pizza delivery drivers – it gives a whole new meaning to the warning to beware of pizza vans.

 

Shamed by Japan: Britain’s pot holed roads to ruin

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Pothole in London borough of Haringey: Pic Credit: Alan Stanton -Creative Commons

Pothole in London borough of Haringey: Pic Credit: Alan Stanton -Creative Commons

You couldn’t make this up. Britain’s potholed and noisy roads have such a bad world-wide reputation  for damaging new cars that a Japanese manufacturer has  replicated a British road  to test them before they can be sold in the UK.

Yes Honda has built four miles of rough British road -including British road signs and a roundabout -in Takasu, Hokkaido in Japan because they cannot find a main road bad enough to test car suspension in the 5500 miles between Japan and London.

Evidently  Britain is unique in building roads with porous surfaces which mean that every winter  they crack, break up and create pot holes. Nobody else in Europe would dream of building such roads which are noisier and can’t cope with bad weather.

As  a spokesperson for Honda  put more diplomatically: “The road surface in continental Europe, especially in the North, are paved with hard material which doesn’t absorb water. This is because in severe winter, absorbed water in the material may freeze turn into ice and destruct the roads.

“In England, we don’t tend to suffer with this severe winter and so the surface is made with softer materials with many pores to absorb rain to prevent a slippery surface. As a result, UK roads have a rougher surface which creates more road noise than other European roads. What Honda wanted to replicate in Takasu was this type of road surface. Rough does not mean badly maintained or pot-holes. It means the different material.”

Honda has also created roundabouts because as Honda put it:” In certain rural UK areas, roundabouts create a situation where high stopping power, agile acceleration response and high manoeuvrability is required. There is no such situation in Japan as there are hardly any roundabouts.”

So now we know why we are having to put up every year with multi million pound bills, legal claims for compensation from councils. Instead we need to buy cars which have to be tested abroad on replicated British roads because they can’t find any like ours in  their country.

The full story is on the Exaro News at http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4921/japan-recreates-rough-uk-roads-in-test-track-for-new-cars . If you want to see the spiralling costs of pot holes see February’s Which/ magazine (http://bit.ly/11T0Lfn) . The outstanding bill for repairs is £12.93 billion.

Or if you are really fed up why don’t you e-mail the roads minister, Norman Baker at norman.baker@dft.gsi.gov.uk and tell him to start bitmac ( the replacement for tarmac) roads with surfaces that are bound to crack up every winter.

The Green Man of Wark

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Battlesteads Hotel: An ordinary country pub on the outside, but with a beating green heart inside

Just to show this website is not all doom and gloom  here is a heart warming story of a man who is showing how to  combat climate change.

Up a B road in a remoter part of Northumbria is the Saxon village of Wark. In this small community is the Battlesteads Hotel. As you can see above, on the outside it looks a very pretty ordinary country pub.

But this hotel is a pioneering green business and having just stayed there, I am more than impressed by the amazing efforts of the owners Richard and Dee Slade to create a comfortable environment that helps to save the planet.

Richard Slade preparing to pluck a rather large courgette for the pot!

This is not just the case of using low energy light bulbs and asking you to  reuse your towel – the normal lip service to ” green ” policies employed by Travelodge and other chains. Practically everything in this place you use is green or local.

The hotel is centrally heated and the hot water plentiful. But there is no gas or oil-fired boiler. The source is a large biomass boiler in an outbuilding fed by wood chip from  a sustainable forest less than mile away. A rainwater system  feeds organic vegetables , flowers and salads grown all the year round in polytunnels.

Breakfast and dinner also tick many of the low food miles boxes – with different cheeses coming Northumbria, Cumbria and Durham- beef from Northumbria  farms and low salt kippers smoked in the same county. And there are lots of real ales and some English wine.

And if you don’t finish your meal the residue from kitchen waste goes into a modern composter which produces the loam for the next generation of courgettes  and lettuces.

And there is more to come. He is planning to resurrect an old spring from a nearby farm helping drain the land. This will feed a new pond, to be the home for slug eating toads, frogs and Ken Livingstone note, newts.

And he has even  done his bit to thwart cuts ( despite bureaucratic opposition) from Northumbria Council by taking over the contract to supply Wark primary school with school dinners – after the authority withdrew the hot meals service to its schools. So a new generation of young Warkians are being sustainably fed – just like Saxon times. Jamie Oliver should approve, Michael Gove may not!

For the future this hotel is one of the few in the country – with an electric charging point for cars – beating Nissan’s planned production line for the vehicle by a year.

Up the road from Wark at Rothbury is the historic home of  Lord Armstrong, Cragside, home of Victorian arms manufacturer , innovator, who over a century ago as every Geordie should know- powered the first light bulb from hydro-electric power. The home is run by the National Trust (see http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cragside/).

Lord Armstong’s Cragside estate – on a slightly grander scale.

Lord Armstrong and Richard Slade have one thing in common – both are pioneers. One is historic, one is very twenty second century. No doubt climate change sceptics like Lord Lawson would think this is a waste of time., though I bet his daughter, Nigella , would enjoy the food!

One day all hotels will all be like this, but in the meantime if you want a comfortable break with good food and beer and don’t want to help destroy the planet. Visit! The website is http://www.battlesteads.com/.

PS – for the cynics among you – we paid out own way to stay!

Compare the Meerkat: Whipsnade Zoo Experience

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Zoo Keeper Rosie instructs me on how to handle the meerkats

It is the silly season so now for some fun and frolics. I spent the pre Bank Holiday weekend being a Whipsnade zoo keeper for a day! My wife Margaret brought it for my birthday and I must say Whipsnade deserve a big accolade for organising the whole experience. I would recommend it to anyone who likes animals.

compare the meerkats

We were given a perpetually cheerful keeper, Rosie, to take us around and make sure we didn’t get into any danger when we were less than a metre away from tigers, chimps and rhinos.

A wolverine – not cuddly – it can kill a moose with no trouble

As you can see we got really close to some animals – including feeding the meerkats – diet live crickets- and letting elephants take apples from our hands. I am now an expert on rhino poo having shovelled a few kilos of it and know how to hide elephants and chimps food  in trees, tyres and on ledges.

my prehistoric Tory friend at close quarters

I have hand fed rhinos, giraffes and penguins and thrown dead chicks to wolverines.  I have watched at close  quarter a tiger devour a meat joint in just 15 minutes.They are all very demanding, pretty publicity conscious, and  they love playing to the gallery, just like MPs really!

So  to take your mind off the grim world of politics, government spending cuts, Brian Coleman and  Andrew Lansleyfor one moment, here are the equivalent animals. I let you guess who should be who. No prizes offered.

elephant feeding time with keeper and fellow day tripper

An Alpha Male with the strength of eight humans. Ed Balls? Not Nick Clegg

Those magnificent recycling men and their flying machines

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Jumbo jet awaits its fate in the Cotswolds

 Pictures:Tony Hutchings

In the depths of the countryside in the Cotswolds there is an amazingly good story about a recycling success that no-one has noticed. Jets as young as seven years old from major airlines like easyJet are being ” parted out” and 100 per cent recycled in a green revolution started as a family business.

Your Boeing 737 is having its engines, flying gear, brakes, seats re-used as spares for other aircraft. The lightweight aluminium is being turned in beer cans and artists and sculptors are buying plane spare parts to turn into standard lamps, mirrors and coffee tables.

another jet awaits its fate

The full story is in this week’s Sunday Times magazine but here are some of the amazing pictures of the people taken by my Berkhamsted friend and photographer Tony Hutchings. He can be contacted at www.tonyhutchings.co.uk.

Planes at ASI's scrapyard in the Cotswolds

Politically this an extraordinary good news story. The firm ASI (Aircraft Salvage International ) -see their website at http://www.airsalvage.co.uk/  is run by father and son team Mark and Bradley Gregory and has created some 40 or more jobs from scratch. The ” green ” revolution enables all the  plane parts to be reused and means that passengers are now flying in brand new more fuel-efficient jobs when they go on holiday.

Star Wars feel to the stripped inside of a jet

The author pretends to be a pilot

The government should be shouting this success from the rooftops, the environmentalists should be pleased and questions should be asked why the much larger motor industry has recycling rates at much lower recycling rates and still a blight on the countryside.

 At the moment there is just silence on these remarkable achievements.