Congratulations on winning the GLA seat for Barnet and Camden from Brian Coleman. You put a lot of energy into this campaign, I know. Being a member of one of the two big parties put you in the best position to challenge and beat the incumbent.

More than 74,600 Barnet and Camden residents bestirred themselves to vote for you. Nearly 18,000 voted Green. You acknowledge that many Greens voted for you. I would venture that all 92,000 people are sending you an unequivocal and resounding message: we didn’t vote for business as usual, and we didn’t vote for a mirror-image of the old politics of slavish party loyalty and questionable expenses.

What we voted for is a new, pro-democratic politics: for government –local and national– that listens to our voices and responds; that prioritises our wellbeing and our livelihoods over profits, cronies, and party dogma.

It’s not entirely clear what you’re going to do on the Assembly. It’s a bit of a cushy number where we won’t be flooding you with requests for help with our immigration applications, housing problems, signing EDMs, or opposing Bills.

So here’s what you can do: take our message back to your people that we in Barnet and Camden can see right through this austerity, that it’s meant to strip us of our rights and our energy, depress our wages and our spirits, and allow the market to trample our dignity and our environment. And we will fight it.

Take this message into the Assembly and then come back and report to us what you’ve done for us – every week or so? You know we mean it. We want open, honest, and accountable politicians, and we won’t forgive those who aren’t.

Yours ever

A M Poppy

on behalf of Barnet Green Party

Barnet Eye interview with A M Poppy, GLA candidate for the Green Party 29th April 2012 from The Barnet Bugle Ltd on Vimeo.

The Barnet Eye website has posted an interview with A. M. Poppy, Green Party Candidate for Barnet and Camden GLA. The original Barnet Eye post can be found here.

A M Poppy comments on Barnet Council topping the Taxpayers’ Alliance’s Town Hall Rich List

Figures released today by the Taxpayers’ Alliance appear to disprove the assurances given to the Green Party last year that Barnet Council has cut the egregious amounts it pays to itself.* Barnet comes top of the Town Hall Rich List – echoing more extensively figures that the Green Party revealed for London last year. At that time Councillor Cornelius assured us that Barnet Council had reduced the number of managers on salaries above £145,000 from nine to three. The new figures set the benchmark at £100,000 and Barnet comes top.

Poppy said: “Barnet’s priorities for spending taxpayers’ money is anti-democratic. It awards itself stratospheric raises while cutting services, closing libraries, making staff redundant and dismissing residents’ complaints with rudeness. This is symptomatic of an arrogance and selfishness that we have seen on the hustings throughout this campaign, where none of the Tories ever showed up. That scandalous approach is unthinkable for Greens. Greens on the London Assembly have already delivered a Living Wage for London, convinced Ken Livingstone to restrain senior pay and convinced Boris Johnson to pay City Halls’ lowest paid a fairer wage. Voting Green on the Assembly in May will elect more Green Members on the top-up list, and help deliver a fairer, more equal capital.”

The Green Party 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. Green Assembly Members caused the London Assembly to introduce its own Living Wage Unit, and to implement a London Living Wage in City Hall (currently £8.30 an hour) and to promote it across the city.

We urged Barnet to adopt both the Living Wage policy and the 1:10 ratio policy. Neither call received a reply.

* Here is a link how we reported it last year.

Here’s today’s link to the Barnet Council figures as digested by the Barnet Times.

The Greens' Darren Johnson (right) meets Pinkham Way area residents

The North London Waste Authority’s own figures show that the proposed 300,000 tonnes a year Mechanical Bio-Treatment plant at Pinkham Way, Friern Barnet, would be much bigger than justified by the rapidly declining waste volumes in Barnet and other North London boroughs.

The already-shrinking need for rubbish compaction plants like Pinkham Way could be reduced a lot more if the NLWA would listen to Barnet Green Party’s 38 proposals for greater reduction, re-use and recycling of waste materials:

Proposals for improved recycling, reduction and re-use of waste materials in Barnet, Enfield and Haringey boroughs:

STOP PRESS: Barnet Council has adopted idea 15. See below. Now there is even less need for the Pinkham Way plant!

1. Councils should bring in incentives and/or penalties to encourage businesses to recycle, to comply with Defra’s latest recommendations (Government Review of Waste Policy in England 2011 Action plan). Business waste contributes up to half of the total and most boroughs have made little effort.
2. Councils should ensure that recycling arrangements for small and medium sized businesses and other organisations are no more expensive or complex than throwing recyclable material in the bins. It could be that the most efficient way to do this is for councils to set up their own business recycling services. Evidence has been supplied of current poor practice, eg social clubs throwing bottles in the general rubbish to avoid commercial charges for recycling them.
3. Councils should start recycling all recyclable plastics, instead of just a small proportion, eg in Barnet plastic bottles only and in Enfield only plastic of grades 1 to 3.
4. Standardise and improve the recycling arrangements for blocks of flats, eg by provision of small recycling caddies for individual flats that can be emptied into bigger ones outside for collection, as operated in Camden. The boroughs of Barnet and Haringey have failed to take public funding to encourage recycling at flats.
5. Encourage recycling by flat occupants by harmonising recycling arrangments with rubbish collection arrangements where necessary, ie having all the bins in the same place.
6. Seek volunteers in blocks of flats or housing developments to coordinate recycling, eg by ensuring bins are put out in the right place for collection on the right day.
7. Make businesses take back packaging, which would encourage them to use less packaging to start with.
8. Provide more neighbourhood recycling centres, like Summers Lane in Barnet.
9. Improve the recycling lorries so that crews are better able to take larger items, eg cardboard from large packages.
10. Provide the recycling lorries with special padded compartments so the lorries can take common but potentially hazardous items, eg fluorescent light bulbs and aerosol cans. Specialist recycling firms that process spent fluorescent lamps can recover and recycle over 99% of the mercury.
11. Bring in reduced charges for small amounts of rubbish in the traditional dustbins, eg by putting a line in bins and lowering fees if the rubbish is below the line, or by charging less to empty smaller dustbins.
12. Implement penalties or disincentives for putting large amounts of rubbish in the traditional bins. Even better than recycling is keeping your waste to a minimum in the first place.
13. Empty traditional bins only once a fortnight instead of once a week. Councils which have tried this (often Tory ones aiming to save money) say that it does lead to increased recycling rates and to smaller volumes in traditional bins.
14. Empty all recycling bins more frequently than general rubbish bins, eg once a week for recycling and once a fortnight for general rubbish. This encourages householders to recycle since materials, eg smelly food waste, will be removed sooner if recycled rather than just thrown into the dustbin.
15. Provide separate sealable recycling bins for food scraps, as it would appear many people don’t like putting food in with green garden etc waste. Some councils such as Camden already do this. Barnet Council says a lot of food scraps still go into the general bins. STOP PRESS! Barnet Council has announced it will introduce separate food waste caddies, though not until the end of 2013. Hooray! Let’s hope they soon adopt some of the other ideas.
    
16. Encourage people to use kitchen bins with separate compartments so that different kinds of waste can be kept separate, making it easier to recycle all of them. Perhaps sell such bins through the council.
17. Adapt planning guidelines and building regulations to ensure that new housing and commercial developments are designed with recycling in mind, eg via allocation of specific space for small recycling bins in kitchens and bigger ones at kerbsides, to ensure that recycling can be carried out easily and efficiently by occupants of the premises and to ensure that recycling bins can be easily moved to and from the kerbside on collection dates. This would also encourage people to regard recycling as a normal part of everyday life.
18. Provide more recycling bins at bus stops, stations, in parks etc and set up a system to empty all public bins regularly. This would also help keep litter down.
19. Do more to encourage and promote schemes that re-use bottles, such as door-to-door milk delivery. Many people seem unaware that milk delivery to your door is still available. http://www.findmeamilkman.net/
20. Reintroduce (ie reintroduce in Britain though they are still current elsewhere) deposits on glass and plastic bottles and jars to encourage people to take them back to the shop.
21. Alternatively or additionally, shops and supermarkets could give loyalty points, charity tokens or ‘neighbourhood currency’ for returned bottles.
22. Encourage more repair facilities for the general public so that items can be re-used instead of recycled or scrapped. Eg www.barnetfurniturecentre.org . As well as furniture, some English councils and many in other countries support repair shops for cycles, electrical and electronic equipment and many other items.
23. Encourage the teaching of repair skills so that people can provide repair services either as professionals or volunteers, whether in their own home, customers’ homes or in small workshops.
24. Set up facilities for exchange of wood and construction materials so that craftspeople and builders can have easy access to reusable materials. This could also help avoid the needless destruction of old, traditional and attractive fittings.
25. Amend planning and building regulations to encourage the re-use of old wood and construction materials.
26. Allow controlled public removal of appropriate items from neighbourhood recycling centres, as happens in other countries.
27. Allow people to help themselves from skips unless the skips are marked otherwise.
28. Inform residents about recyling levels in their ward, street or lorry collection round, eg by leaflets and letters Create a competitive spirit by encouraging people to exceed past performance.
29. Reward wards/neighbourhoods with high levels of recycling by discretionary spending, priority on other green initiatives or the distribution of ‘neighbourhood currency’ to spend with local businesses.
30. Encourage people, including supervised children, to have garage or table sales outside their homes for unwanted items instead of throwing them away. Such events could develop community spirit by bringing neighbours together. Perhaps have a page on council websites to advertise such sales.
31. Promote annual street ‘mini-markets’ at which people can buy, sell and exchange items among local people.
32. As some other boroughs have done, nominate volunteers to be neighbourhood promoters of re-use and recycling, to explain recycling services to new residents and to encourage all residents to reduce, repair, re-use and recycle.
33. On request and where appropriate, eg for elderly or disabled people, assign recycling staff as part of their duties to assist with removal of recycling material for collection.
34. Do more to encourage charity shops, Freecycle and other services which enable goods to be re-used instead of thrown away. Eg, with extra publicity such as a website where people could look to see which local organisations will take the books, furniture or whatever items they no longer want.
35. Develop and expand council schemes to encourage home composting. Eg: http://www.barnet.gov.uk/composters
36. Reward and encourage people who recycle garden and food waste by offering them the resulting compost at a discount price.
37. Educate people in ways to minimise their waste at home and work, eg by promoting and developing schemes such as http://www.barnet.gov.uk/finalwebpledge.pdf
38. Make paid advisers or volunteers available to visit homes and workplaces for a “rubbish audit” to assess what further steps householders and employees can do to reduce, re-use and recycle waste.

A M Poppy - Barnet and Camden Green Constituency Candidate for 2012 Greater London Assembly, GLA elections

A. M. Poppy, Barnet Green Party member and Barnet and Camden Green Constituency Candidate for Greater London Assembly (GLA) elections will be attending hustings on the following dates:

THURSDAY 12TH APRIL
AgeUK and Barnet 55+
1.45 (doors open at 1.30)
The Meritage Centre, Church End, Hendon NW4 4JT

TUESDAY 17th APRIL
Cricklewood Community Forum
8.00-9.30pm (doors open at 7:30)
The Sala room of the Crown Moran Hotel,
142-152 Cricklewood Broadway, NW2 3ED.

THURSDAY 19TH APRIL
Hampstead Garden Suburb Residents Association
at 8pm
The Free Church Hall, Northway, Central Square; Hampstead Garden Suburb; London; NW11 7AG

Please come along, ask questions and find out more about the Green Party’s policies.

The Green Party has released its hard hitting party election broadcast for the 2012 London Mayoral and Assembly elections. The stylish black and white film was directed by Rebecca Frayn, screenwriter for The Lady, Luc Besson’s biopic of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi – and produced by Christina Robert, founder of Bright Green Pictures.

Jenny Jones (right) with AM Poppy at Avenue House in Finchley

Jenny Jones visits Barnet to pledge action on road safety
Green mayoral candidate meets voters in borough with second worst road casualties in London

Photocall
Who: Green Party Mayoral candidate Jenny Jones, 3rd London-wide candidate Noel Lynch, candidate for Barnet and Camden AM Poppy
What: launch of policies to improve road safety
Where: outside East Finchley High Road (meeting at East Finchley Underground Station)
When: 11am, Tuesday 3 April 2012

Green Party candidate for Mayor of London Jenny Jones will visit East Finchley on Tuesday to meet local voters and lay out policies

In 2010 Barnet suffered more road casualties than any other borough except Westminster.

Although casualities in Barnet were decreasing until 2008, they have increased under the current Mayor.

Jones’ visit was made in support of Green candidate for Barnet and Camden, AM Poppy.

Jones said: “London’s transport policy should focus on the safety of those living on our streets, not just the car users that pass along them.

“Too many people are dying or being injured on Barnet and London’s roads. These incidents are tragic and avoidable. London needs a Mayor that will end the excuses and take the safety cyclists of all road users seriously—including cyclists and pedestrians.”

Policies include:

1.  Introducing 20mph limit on all streets where Londoners live, work and shop,
2. Creating dedicated, safe spaces to cyclists on main roads and rebuilding London’s most dangerous junctions.
3. Banning HGVs from narrow main roads, and pushing for registration and training for all HGV drivers.
4. Put a walking and cycling representative on the TfL Board
5. Reviewing traffic lights to ensure they give pedestrians and cyclists enough time
6. Creating a pedestrian zone extending across central London from east to west

Jean Lambert MEP (left) and AM Poppy (right) talk to a trader on North Finchley's Lodge Lane market

Jean Lambert, the Green MEP for London, called on Barnet Council to take positive action to to help recession-hit local businesses. Jean visited North Finchley with A M Poppy, the Green London Assembly candidate for Barnet and Camden, on Friday to talk to market and high street traders.

The party is supporting local traders who are calling for improvements to the high street, including changes to the council’s current parking policy which has added further problems to small businesses already struggling in the straitened financial climate.

During the visit, Jean spoke with High Road traders about the problems they are facing, and the importance of ‘buy local’ schemes.
Jean said: “During times of economic uncertainty, local businesses, the life blood of any vibrant independent high street, need all the support they can get. The parking charges are really affecting businesses.  The traders’ message is clear – businesses and jobs are under threat unless this policy is reversed.”
Noel Lynch, third on the Green Party list for the GLA election and a shopkeeper himself, said: “Local shops are the glue that hold the community together. Talking to the traders in North Finchley, one discovers a sense that the council is chasing them out.”

Poppy added: “My heart breaks to see the demise of favourite hangouts and the suffering of friends’ businesses. Just when we need to strain every sinew to ensure that vibrant community centres – our shopping streets – are supported, we see the opposite happening. The Greens understand this, which is one reason I’m standing for the party.”

Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London

Come and meet London’s Green MEP Jean Lambert in North Finchley on Friday, 9th March.

Jean is expected to arrive at about 11 am, making a first call at Lodge Lane, to tour the hidden-away stall market and see the car park, half empty because of Barnet Council’s crazy new parking policy.

Jean and AM Poppy, our Green London Assembly candidate for Barnet & Camden, will then visit shops in the area, ending up at Buzz Cafe at about 12.30 pm.

Everyone is all welcome to come along to the visit. This visit is one of very few that Jean will be making to areas of London during the campaign ahead of the London Assembly elections on 3rd May.

Jean has done great work in the European Parliament on a wide range of social and environmental issues, from workers rights and access to healthcare to climate change and animal welfare.

The previous evening, 8th March, Jean will give her Spring Lecture 2012 “Climate Change – from South Asia to London: Impact and Responses” at Senate House, University of London. Time: 6:30 – 8:30pm. Registration from 6pm, followed by a drinks reception. More details on her website: www.jeanlambert.org.uk

Green Party research shows that Bae Systems shares have underperformed the benchmark FTSE-100 index on a one year, three year and five year basis and at the start of 2012 were down around 44% – or almost half – from early 2007, compared with a 10% fall in the FTSE.

During 2007 the council gave a valuation of more than £3 million pounds for the fund’s Bae shareholding and that holding is now likely to be worth less than £2 million.

We have asked council leader Richard Cornelius and pension fund committee chairman Anthony Finn if they challenge those figures, or to give a current valuation. So far no information has been forthcoming.

Barnet Greens have several times urged the council to divest the fund’s stakes in weapons exporters such as Bae and Cobham and other unethical firms like cigarette manufacturers.

To take the example of Bae, not only does it sell weapons to unstable countries, which could use them against British citizens, but it has been fined for illegal conduct in two major contracts.

In the US, Bae had to pay $400 million for infractions connected to the Al Yamamah contract in Saudi Arabia and it has accepted a fine of £30 million in Britain for infractions in a contract in Tanzania.

The council’s excuse for retaining BAe shares has always been that the fund’s managers have a duty to get the best returns for investors.

However, Bae shares have underperformed the stock market for many years and it is surely now time for the fund to sell up.

There are many less unethical stocks available which have a better track record.

Some recent research has indicated that companies which seek to operate ethically, eg by adopting fair corporate governance principles and acting on environmental concerns, produce on average slightly higher profit than the corporate sector as a whole.

Comparative performances, including May Gurney as an example of a less unethical company

One year (end-Dec 2010 to end-Dec 2011):

Bae down 16.7% / FTSE down 7% / May Gurney up 15%

Three years:

Bae down 30% / FTSE up 20% / May Gurney up 243% (243%)

Five years (since before the 2008 credit crunch)

Bae down 44% / FTSE down 10% / May Gurney down 17%

View Bae’s historic price chart here.