In you can help, come to our stall outside the Co-op in Woodhouse Road, Friern Barnet, any time from 10am.We would like to leaflet the whole of the ward if possible.

The NLWA will resubmit its plan in May, after the London elections.

Labour and Conservative councillors on the authority don’t want Pinkham Way plans discussed during the election campaign.

We do!

Voting Green in May is the only way to be sure of voting against the polluting eyesore.

Green research shows that the plant could be an enormous white elephant. If total rubbish collected in North London continues to fall as it has done over the past four years the Pinkham Way MBT could be completely unneeded by 2016, meaning the NLWA might have to bring in rubbish from other areas to keep it operating.

Barnet Greens have also submitted 38 proposals for Barnet, Enfield and Haringey boroughs to improve their waste reduction, re-use and recycling operations, showing how the total volume of waste could fall more sharply even than current trends.

The NLWA is not expecting to reach a recycling rate of 50 percent before 2020 but many other municipalities have proven that a 50 percent rate can be achieved very quickly with the right systems.

Contact: Andrew.Newby@barnetgreenparty.co.uk

AM Poppy (left) and Jenny Jones at Avenue House in Finchley

Photo call – do join us!

What: London Assembly candidate launch

Who: Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones, London Assembly candidate for Barnet and Camden A M Poppy

When: 11am, 5 December 2011
Where: Hendon Town Hall,NW4 4BG

The Green Party’s AM Poppy will on Monday launch her campaign to become London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden with a call to make London a ‘fair pay city.’

The Green Party’s Mayoral candidate, Jenny Jones, will join Poppy at the event on the steps of Hendon Town Hall to launch the party’s 10:1 Campaign in the two boroughs. The campaign aims to reduce inequality in the capital by calling for businesses, councils and other employers in London to ensure that their highest-paid employee earns no more than 10 times the wages of their lowest-paid.

Barnet Council has recently reduced the number of managers on salaries above £145,000 from nine to three. However Council leader Richard Cornelius has refused to support the 10:1 campaign or calls for him to ensure all his staff are paid a London Living Wage, currently set at £8.30 an hour.

Poppy said: “The economy is teetering, and our Tory-led government says we’re all in this together. Really? Judging from Barnet’s Tory-led council’s practices, that is far from the case. The council hasn’t heard the last of this. Fairness is worth fighting for.”

Speaking about the Green campaign for the GLA, Poppy said: “I want to see London become a more livable, affordable and happy city, that’s what this campaign is all about.”

Mayoral Candidate Jenny Jones said: “The 10:1 campaign is just one example of how the Green Party is tackling the big issues of this election head on. It is a simple, practical step towards reducing excessive income inequalities that are damaging our economy and society. We want to make London the Fair Pay City and City Hall should lead by example in this area.”

“Poppy is a very determined campaigner and a passionate advocate for the Green agenda in her local area. I have been very impressed with the work she has done towards lowering the speed limit on Barnet’s roads to 20mph, which is particularly pertinent given that Barnet has the highest number of road deaths in London. I am sure that Poppy would use this drive and enthusiasm as an Assembly Member to make London a fairer, cleaner and greener city for us all.”

For further information please contact Joe Williams, the Green Party’s 2012 election campaign press officer, on 0207 549 0219 or joe.williams@greenparty.org.uk

1. A.M Poppy has lived in Barnet for many years. She attended East Barnet School and is involved in local arts. Her professional background is in journalism and communications. She is a committed campaigner and played a central role in campaigning for anti-sex discrimination laws in Hong Kong.
2. Poppy is an active member of the Barnet Green Party. She previously stood as a candidate for her home constituency Chipping Barnet in the 2005 general election.
3. You can find out more information about the 10:1 campaign here.
4. Photos of Green Party candidates, including Jenny Jones, can be found here.
5. A list of Green Party London policies can be found here.
6. A full list of Green Party candidates for the London Assembly elections can be found here.
7. A list of achievements by the Green Party in the London Assembly can be found here.
8. The Green Party of England and Wales promotes the policies of ecological sustainability, a fairer more stable economy, a more equal society, a higher standard of democracy and accountability of politicians to the communities they serve, and social justice on the global level as well as in our own country.
9. Caroline Lucas became the UK’s first Green MP in the 2010 General Election.
10. The Green Party is now the largest party on Brighton and Hove Council.

Barnet shares with Wandsworth the dubious distinction of having the greatest number of council employees earning over £150,000 pa (nine of them) according to figures analysed this week by the Green Party. The chief executive’s pay is 12 times more than the London living wage. He earns £200,976 – only four boroughs pay their chief exec more.

With so many proposed cuts, how does Barnet justify these fat cat salaries? Enfield, our neighbouring borough, has only one employee – the chief exec – on more than 150,000. They might like to ask themselves, do we actually need a chief executive? Soon after Leo Boland went to work as the GLA’s chief exec, they decided they didn’t need him and abolished the role altogether. The Telegraph has revealed this week that Leo Boland, the former chief executive of Barnet, enjoyed an afternoon tea at Fortnum and Mason on expenses. Need I say more?

Alexis Rowell with Maya de Souza (second left) and other Camden Green Party campaigners

If can help in the campaign contact Alexis at alexis.rowell@greenparty.org.uk

The Green Party has chosen former Liberal Democrat councillor and Camden Eco Champion, Alexis Rowell, as their candidate for the Highgate by-election on Thursday 15^th September.

The Green Party’s Maya de Souza topped the poll in Highgate ward in last year’s council elections and the Greens are going all out to get Alexis elected so that he can help Maya with the great work she does.

The by-election follows the resignation of a Labour councillor who was only elected last year.

Alexis was a leading Lib Dem councillor in Camden from 2006 to 2010, and is widely credited with having significantly raised the profile of environmental issues in the council and across the borough.

But, shortly after winning a national Sustainability Councillor of the Year award, he stood down at the May 2010 elections.

Alexis said: “I have been growing increasingly disillusioned with the Lib Dems since the party joined the coalition government. My principal reason for leaving was Chris Huhne’s support for nuclear power, but I have also been completely unimpressed with the coalition’s overall environmental record and appalled by what their policies and cuts are doing to the social fabric.”

In the past the Greens have held all three seats in Highgate.

Maya de Souza said: “We are delighted to have such an experienced and energetic candidate standing for us in Highgate. It is largely thanks to the work Alexis did last time he was a councillor that sustainability is such a key concern at Camden Council. But he’s also got a great track record as a ward councillor responding to residents’ concerns. His energy, enthusiasm and hard work will be a great asset to Highgate.”

The Chair of the Camden Green Party, Natalie Bennett, said: “At a time when the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are creating havoc nationally, and Camden Council’s Labour administration is closing libraries and playgroups, Alexis is a strong candidate for anyone who cares about the environment and progressive issues generally.”

The leader of the national Green Party, Caroline Lucas MP, said: “Alexis’s move from the Lib Dems to the Greens shows that it is the Greens who are leading the way on progressive and environmental politics in the UK. I encourage all Lib Dems to take a long hard look at what the coalition is doing and to ask themselves whether they really support what’s happening.”

A Barnet Green Party delegation will of course be taking part in the national anti-cuts march on Saturday March 26th.Let’s help make it the biggest march in London since the protests against the invasion of Iraq.

You are welcome to come with Barnet Greens. Some Barnet Green Party members will meet up at Finchley Central station at 10.30 am. You’re welcome just to turn up there on the day or you can check details by calling Gardi Vaswani on 020 8445 6312.

For full details of the march see: March for the Alternative

For more details of the involvement of Barnet people in the march see: Barnet Alliance

Let’s just summarise a few things:

Are the cuts necessary? No, there is no indication that investors are worried about Britain’s debt in the way they are concerned about Greece or Ireland. Britain should instead be investing for the future, like Germany, France and the United States, where President Barack Obama has set aside 600 billion dollars to invest in developing new technologies, new industries and new jobs.

Wouldn’t it be good for Britain to reduce debt? Yes of course. The Greens have proposed more cuts that any other party but our cuts don’t include cutting welfare payments or starving health and education services. For instance, we would scrap plans for Britain to buy a new generation of nuclear missiles, saving up to 100 billion pounds in coming years. We would bring British troops back from Afghanistan immediately, saving 5 billion pounds a year – every missile fired by British forces costs 1 million pounds. etc etc

Barnet Green Party's 2010 council candidates at our campaign launch at Tally Ho corner

Barnet Green Party are calling for the introduction of congestion charges in busy and polluted areas such as Brent Cross and Tally Ho Corner. This is just one of the many ideas the party is putting forward to show how Barnet Council could balance its budget without resorting to welfare cuts or closing libraries.

Here are a few of the ideas we are submitting to Barnet Council:

Major ideas to bring in large revenues or save substantial sums of money:

• Introduce a road congestion charge in busy or polluted areas such as Brent Cross and North Finchley. This would have the double benefit of bringing in money and reducing pollution, with big health benefits. Average annual nitrogen dioxide levels at Tally Ho Corner have been above the World Health Organisation recommended maximum ever since a pollution monitor was installed there in the 1990s. The central London congestion charged had net revenues of 148 million pounds in the 2009/10 financial year, so Barnet could expect income of several tens of millions a year from congestion charge zones.

• Raise revenue from electricity feed-in-tariffs by installing solar panels on Barnet Council’s office buildings, schools and social housing. Payback can be 10 percent a year, so Barnet Council could envisage income of 10 million pounds a year if it invested 100 million pounds a year, the amount Birmingham Council is spending on solar power and energy efficiency. Or it could perhaps even avoid any capital outlay by outsourcing the scheme in return for annual rent on the council’s roofs.

• Save hundreds of thousands of pounds by seeking the advice of local community groups instead of issuing valuable contracts to consultants. The only reason Barnet Council’s administration won’t like it is that the community groups will tell them the truth whereas the consultants say things the Conservative administration are pleased to hear, such as: “How about putting some money into Icelandic banks. Form selected panels of volunteer advisers, like the former Community Health Councils.

Some other ideas for more modest savings and new revenues, among the many possibilities:

Barnet Green Party's Andrew Newby checks the solar panel at his former home in Nicosia

Here’s Barnet GreenParty’s proposal: Abandon the dogma about ‘cuts’ and about ‘privatisation’, which might end up costing more money rather than creating savings. If they want genuine buzz words we suggest ‘sustainability’ and ‘solar panels’.

Birmingham Council has agreed a 100 million pounds scheme to create jobs and sharply reduce the city’s carbon emissions. The project will start by giving an energy efficiency upgrade to 10,000 existing homes and energy savings in the retrofitted homes will generate funding for similar work on thousands more homes in the city. Solar panels are already being fitted to homes in four areas of the city. (http://birminghamnewsroom.com/?p=12704)

Birmingham is a Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration so why can’t Barnet’s Tories come up with a similar plan that would create jobs, improve the lives of occupants of the improved homes and lead to a sharp reduction in energy costs and carbon emissions?

Before anyone asks where Barnet would get the initial funding, can we point out that Birmingham Council itself is only putting up 25 million pounds, ie roughly the amount that Barnet Council handed over to Icelandic banks.

Banks (British not Icelandic ones please!) would be eager to lend Barnet Council the money for an equivalent energy savings scheme and there might be ways of reducing the council’s proportion to an even smaller percentage of costs.

The feed-in-tariffs which energy companies pay for power from sustainable sources mean, for instance, that photovoltaic panels can generate surplus electricity every year worth up to 10 percent of the cost of their installation. After ten years the panels are paid for and the electricity is pure profit.

Companies and syndicates are starting to spring up to develop rooftop “sun harvesting” operations and Barnet Council’s thousands of homes, schools and other buildings would be an extremely attractive resource.

That’s the kind of project that Future Shape should be looking at: dynamic, exciting, forward-looking, job-creating, sustainable and potentially highly profitable after an initial investment.

Barnet Green Party chairman Noel Lynch asks 'Where's the sense in Future Shape?' Green MEP Jean Lambert's insulation block at least HAS a shape.

Barnet Green Party calls on Barnet Council’s Conservative administration to cancel its notorious Future Shape strategy after auditors Grant Thornton criticised the policy as lacking direction.

The damning report to the council’s audit committee by a team of expert professionals highlights that council leader Lynne Hillan and her cronies don’t have the faintest idea how much money Future Shape might save, nor do they have a serious programme for implementing the scheme.

“Grant Thornton’s report shows that Future Shape, better known as easyCouncil, is a complete mess,” says Andrew Newby, who was Barnet Green Party’s candidate for Hendon in this year’s general election.

“Barnet Conservatives’ concept seems simply to be: ‘Let’s privatise as much as we can and hope it saves money’,” Newby said.

“I call on Barnet Council to cancel Future Shape and go back to the idea that local authorities exist to provide accountable, democratically-controlled services, assessed according to the needs of local residents rather than treated as a trial ground for baseless political dogmas.”

Grant Thornton’s report spells out clearly that the easyCouncil idea is all talk and no substance. The experts wrote: “The council needs to develop and agree a more fundamental mandate for the programme by developing a programme level business case that sets out the planned costs, benefits, time scales, risks and outcomes of the programme.”

Councillor Brian Coleman this week launched a typically childish tirade of insults against the organisers of the Barnet Alliance for Public Services but his outburst was no more than a desperate bid to distract attention from the fact that Future Shape is a shambles.

Newby said: “Grant Thornton’s report provides proof if any were needed that Future Shape is merely an attention-grabbing attempt to implement political dogma without a scrap of evidence that it could achieve real savings and efficiencies. Future Shape? It is definitely Shapeless and let us hope it has no Future.”

Even Coleman might be taken aback if he had any real idea of what happened at Thursday’s launch of the Alliance at the North London Business Park. Not only was the meeting well organised with a panel of prestigious speakers including film director Ken Loach, but more than 200 local people crowded the Emerald Suite to express their anger at the current threats to local schools, hospitals, social services and libraries. Hardly the “lone voices” imagined by Coleman.

Everyone went away fired up to campaign to save our vital local services and facilities.

“It became clear to me that though Tory councillors are eager to slash jobs and cut budgets, what really motivates them is privatising as many of the council’s services as possible. Council workers told the meeting of how they had asked fruitlessly for details of how outsourcing their particular operation would save money – it was obvious that there were no details,” Newby said.

Unfortunately, outsourcing privatisation often leads to greatly increased costs rather than savings, as Private Eye magazine spells out in case studies in almost every issue.

“It is far from proven that Barnet Council needs to make the humungous spending cuts that a being talked about but even if savings are necessary the first priorities should be to save jobs and avoid any hardship to people who use council services. Those are definitely not uppermost in the minds of Barnet’s Conservatives, who simply want to make a name for themselves with massive privatisations,” Newby said.

The Green Party has won an extra seat on Norwich City Council, maintaining the progress it has made at every local election since 2002.

Norwich now has 14 Green councillors, the party’s highest number ever on any UK council.

Yesterday’s election gain came in Thorpe Hamlet ward, at the expense of the Lib-Dems. The Greens also saw a substantial increase in their vote in Lakenham ward.

Councillor Adrian Ramsay, deputy leader of the Green Party nationally, will be taking news of the positive result to the party conference which begins in Birmingham today (Friday). He said:

“I am delighted that the Green Party has once again moved forward in Norwich. We have successfully defended all our seats that were up for election and made a fantastic gain in Thorpe Hamlet. It is clear that lots of former Lib-Dem supporters have voted Green this time. They voted for hard working local councillors and a constructive opposition on the city council.”

Andrew Newby, Kate Tansley and Donal Lyven, our local Green parliamentary candidates

Barnet Green Party urges local people to follow your conscience and vote Green both in Thursday’s general election and in the Barnet Council election on the same day, May 6th.

“We know Green policies are popular. Our national policies are in first place in the giant survey of more than 250,000 people on vote for policies, way ahead of Labour, LibDems and Tories. Our main challenge is to persuade voters that there is a chance of us being elected and that a Green vote is a worthwhile vote,” said Noel Lynch, Barnet Green Party chairman and a candidate for the target ward of East Finchley in the council election.

In the parliamentary elections, Donald Lyven is standing for the Greens in Finchley & Golders Green, with Kate Tansley the Green candidate in Chipping Barnet and Andrew Newby the Green man in Hendon constituency.

Newby said: “We call on local people to vote Green in all three constituencies. There is no point in trying to be tactical in order to achieve a hung parliament. You will just end up with an MP from one of the three tired old traditional parties.”

Only the Greens among the national parties would scrap Trident and all British nuclear weapons, saving up to 100 billion pounds. The Greens would also pull out of Afghanistan immediately, saving five billion pounds a year, and would cancel ID cards and other wasteful ‘Big Brother projects’, potentially saving as much as 50 billion pounds.

The Greens are the originators of the Green New Deal project which aims to create a million new jobs by investing in sustainable industries such as renewable energy and insulation.

Locally, the Greens are very much targeting seats on Barnet Council after achieving a strong score last time which would have brought them six seats  if the vote had been held under proportional representation.

“We believe we have a particularly strong chance in East Finchley ward,” said Lynch, who is campaigning with Newby and local stalwart Steve Norman for the three East Finchley seats on the council.

Hopes are also high for Mill Hill ward, where twins Dilan and Dilem Kurt have teamed up with former Barnet councillor David Williams to mount a strong bid for votes.