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

Noel Lynch, Barnet Green Party chairman and a candidate in East Finchley ward

Next Saturday is your final chance to put your questions to local Green Party candidates in a ‘Meet and Greet’ session in East Finchley.

Some of Barnet Green Party’s candidates for parliament and for the Barnet Council election will be at our stall outside Budgens on East Finchley High Road from around 10 am to 1 pm to respond to your queries and hear your views.

If you can’t make it on Saturday you are welcome to send in a question or a comment to info@barnetgreenparty.co.uk and we will reply as soon as we can.

On Barnet Council, our pledges are:

We’ll fight for: jobs, homes, insulation, a 20 mph speed limit, better public transport, good policing.

Nationally, a Green MP from Barnet would:

Save tens of billions by scrapping British nuclear weapons, withdrawing at once from Afghanistan, cancelling ID cards and scaling back other ‘Big Brother’ projects.

The famous archer above East Finchley station

Barnet Greens are telling London Mayor Boris Johnson: “Hands off Tube ticket offices”.

Three years ago campaigning by  the Green Party helped force Ken Livingstone to scrap plans to shut round 40 London Underground ticket offices, including several in Barnet borough.

Now Barnet Greens are ready to wield their placards again to see off reported plans by Transport for London to axe 800 Tube station staff, affecting around 12 ticket offices in Barnet borough among dozens across London.

“This  could be the broken pledge too far that causes so many people to end their support for Boris Johnson that he will fail to win re-election if he stands again as Mayor of London in two years’ time,” said Andrew Newby, Green Party candidate for Hendon.

In 2007 Tube travellers were so keen to voice their objections to Livingstone’s plan that they literally grabbed draft protest letters from the hands of Barnet Green Party campaigners who offered them to people emerging from the local stations.

“Some people told us awful stories of problems they had had when no staff member was around to help them – elderly people who had had to climb over barriers, mothers with children in pushchairs who had had to lift the chairs over stubbornly closed barriers before climbing over themselves, and so on,” Newby said.

Wily Ken backed off from his idea and so will Boris if he has any sense. Despite the impression given by the vociferous road lobby that most people rely on cars, in fact around 80 percent of people who work in central London commute by public transport every day and they deserve improved tube, train and bus services, not reduced.

As many people have already pointed out, the objections to reduced ticket office opening hours are as strong now as they were then – greater risk to everyone, delays to journeys, loss of revenue. Worst of all, the heightened feeling of insecurity when no staff are around might put some people off travelling by Underground altogether.

An artist's impression of the proposed Brent Cross development

Barnet Green Party is urging local people to write in the next seven days to Communities Secretary John Denham to demand a public inquiry into the the 4.5 billion pounds Brent Cross Cricklewood redevelopment.

Objectors have only until March 12^th to make their views known to Denham, who will then decide whether to over-rule Barnet Council’s approval and call in the plan for further assessment.

“The whole scheme is monstrously unsustainable and would have a damaging effect on wide swathes of North London well beyond the boundaries of Barnet borough,” said Andrew Newby, Green Party parliamentary candidate for Hendon.

“The housing programmes need major revision to make them sustainable and the planned expansion of Brent Cross shopping centre should be halted completely, having already been rejected at a previous public inquiry.”

Andrew Saffrey, Golders Green candidate for the party in the coming Barnet Council elections, is particularly unhappy at plans for an incinerator, which he believes will blight Golders Green and spread pollution far and wide.

an incinerator in Sheffield

“The waste incinerator has been dressed up in the consultation material as a “gasification plant” or a “CHP station”. Whatever it is called, it will emit large quantities of harmful pollutants from a 140-metre chimney into the suburbs of North London,” he said.

Newby said in a letter to Denham: “Even supposing the developers fulfill their pledges of high standards for all aspects of their monstrous proposals, the scheme is so enormous that it will have an impact on the national target of an 80 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.

“The BXC plans include only token sustainability measures, so the expanded shopping centre, the new homes and the other buildings are likely to churn out hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2 in their many decades of existence. Residential buildings will only achieve level three (out of six) under the Code for Sustainable Homes although the government’s target is for all buildings be carbon neutral (level six) by 2016.

“This scheme is an ideal opportunity to install energy conservation measures and sustainable power facilities right from the beginning. There is plenty of scope on the site for enough wind turbines, solar arrays and ground source heat pumps to make the whole area carbon negative, never mind carbon neutral. Yet the requirement for 20% renewable energy is proposed to be met entirely by burning domestic waste. Not a single solar panel or wind turbine is proposed.”

Newby also says: “Any expansion of Brent Cross would undoubtedly have further harmful affects on the several shopping areas within a few miles of the development.

“Shopping districts likely to suffer from would include Golders Green, Hendon, Temple Fortune and Finchley Central. Many businesses in those areas are already struggling under the impact of the recession and Barnet Council should not have approved the BXC plans without studying their likely impact on local communities and implementing measures needed to support those communities.

Saffrey said in his submission to the ministry: “With an estimated 29,000 vehicle trips a day predicted to be generated by this development, clearly this project is seriously jeopardising efforts to control and reduce CO2 emissions.”

“Suggestions that a light-rail system is sorely needed to serve Brent Cross have been derided by Conservative councillors yet providing light rail has been enormously successful in other large-scale development projects, notably Canary Wharf,” said Saffrey.

Newby said: “With a general election coming up and a number of marginal labour seats nearby there is a good chance of Denham calling in the plan if enough people write in.”

If you want to ask the minister to call in the plans, send a message to: john.denham@communities.gsi.gov.uk

or send a letter to:

The Rt. Hon John Denham MP
Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government
Eland House, Bressenden Place
London
SW1E 5DU

A bus on the test run of route 324 at Brent Cross Tesco

A new bus route serving part of Barnet borough has been announced, to the pleasure of local Green Party members.

Route 324 will link Brent Cross Tesco to Stanmore via Hendon, Colindale and Kingsbury every 20 minutes during the day time.

The new service will use a stop within the Tesco grounds, providing new links for residents in the Marble Drive and Whitefield Avenue areas.

Colindeep Lane, in Colindale, will also be served by a bus for the first time, increasing public transport options for those who wish to leave their car at home.

Zain Sardar, the Green Party’s local election candidate for Colindale, was pleased at the news.

“It’s brilliant” said Zardar.  ”People in Colindale, and in particular around Colindeep Lane, can now enjoy better access to the public transport network  in London.”

“This new service will help everybody – from commuters going to Hendon Central and shoppers at Brent Cross, to students at Stanmore College and patients at Kingsbury Community Hospital – this route benefits so many” Sardar added.

Andrew Newby, the Green Party general election candidate for Hendon, also welcomed the new service.

“Coming hot on the heels of the re-routeing of the 186 via Grahame Park and Aerodrome Road, this is another piece of good news for public transport users in Colindale” said Newby. “Providing areas with new services really gives people a choice and is an added incentive for people to use forms of transport that are more sustainable.”

Andrew Saffrey, the Green Party’s candidate for Golders Green ward, praised the new route.

“Until now, bus links to the north and west from this part of Golders Green ward have been poor” said Saffrey. “Instead of having to walk to Brent Cross bus station, or change buses, residents in the area around Mapledown School will be able to get to Hendon Central and Kingsbury much more easily.”

“The consultation showed very strong support for this route, particularly in places like Colindeep Lane where previously no bus route served” Saffrey added. “This can only be a good thing as it means people are desperately crying out for bus services to reduce their dependence on the private car.”

Transport for London (TfL) plans to commence services in Autumn 2010 with single-decker minibuses.

More info:
* TfL press release
* Hendon Times article

Steve Norman and Candy but where's that bus?

Barnet Green Party has selected East Finchley as its target ward for the borough council elections on May 6^th and will officially launch its campaign in the ward this coming Saturday, February 13^th.

The launch will take place outside Budgen’s supermarket on the High Road. We invite all local people to come along at about 11.00 am to meet ward candidates Noel Lynch, Steve Norman and Andrew Newby.

The Electoral Reform Society calculated that the number of votes achieved by Barnet Green Party in the last borough election in 2006 could have won six seats for the Greens under a fair system of proportional representation.

The present first-past-the-post system and the fact that our votes were spread widely across the borough meant that we were denied any seats, so this time we are focussing our campaign effort on East Finchley, the ward where we have greatest support.

In the London Mayoral election in 2008, around 25 percent of East Finchley participants voted Green as either their first or second choice. We only need to boost that score by a few percentage points to win the East Finchley council seats and secure a much-needed Green presence on Barnet Council.

Greens in several London boroughs, including neighbouring Camden, have won council seats by targeting certain wards and Barnet Greens are aiming to match that achievement this time.

The launch in East Finchley will be part of an action day that will also include canvassing around the ward and a stall outside Budgen’s. At the stall we will be collecting signatures in support of our campaigns for a new bus service between East Finchley and the Royal Free Hospital and for a 20 mph speed limit in East Finchley’s Church Lane as well as other local streets. We will also be collecting supporters for our call to Barnet Council’s pension fund to sell its BAe shares.

Our general election candidates Donald Lyven (Finchley & Golders Green), Kate Tansley (Chipping Barnet) and Andrew Newby (Hendon) will all be at the target ward launch.

Green Party's Darren Johnson, Deputy Chair of the London Assembly

The Green Party’s Darren Johnson will be aiming to freeze bus fares when he seeks to amend Mayor Boris Johnson’s draft budget.

The £75m that the Mayor is raising from the 12 percent bus fare increase would instead be raised mostly from motorists, with the reinstatement of the £25 emissions charge on gas guzzlers and retention of the western extension of the congestion charge.

Responding to the London Mayor’s consultation budget proposals for 2010/11, Darren Johnson said: “I will seek a reverse of this year’s fare rises on the buses by urging the Assembly to support an amendment to the mayor’s budget.

The Mayor’s budget proposals will mean less money raised from car drivers, whilst public transport users are paying more. I want to see the Mayor protecting the poorer Londoners by freezing bus fares and making those who pollute more, pay more.

The Mayor claims that he has to increase bus fares whilst cutting bus services in order to fill a financial black hole, but a large part the deficit is created by for vanity projects such as scrapping bendy buses and dropping charges designed to discourage polluting cars.”