Letters

Letters to the Editor

Headlines in the April 24th. edition in the ” Rotherham Advertiser”, RMBC have fallen 3000 homes behind target in the last decade. One National company is offering to build 200 “affordable” houses in Rawmarsh on “safeguarded” land. What’s “safeguarded”?  That’s doublespeak for Greenbelt and agricultural land, so once again instead of redeveloping derelict areas we are going to build on already disappearing natural areas as opposed to previously developed ones. And a further snag, “affordable” seems to indicate houses for sale, but very few of our homeless families will have the capital to purchase even “affordable” homes, or the collateral to obtain a mortgage, so we are back with the need for rented accommodation. 

I was born and raised in Sheffield, a city with real left wing policies and a thriving rented home policy, and in the late 40s/early 50s almost two thirds of homes were rented and those rents strictly controlled. Successive Thatcher governments savaged the situation, as it did many other “people friendly” policies, so that the availability of rented housing in Sheffield is now less than 45percent, but this is still far greater than Rotherham’s 37percent , so with the RMBCs Labour credentials plus our new Keir Starmer Government’s adoption of the “Labour” title, surely there is room in Rotherham for the rapid provision of economically rented housing.

Planning permission was apparently no problem to one Herringthorpe developer, who built a 3 storey apartment block without it. He has apparently applied now for retrospective permission, but the planning authority is receiving objections from nearby houses, and more importantly from Yorkshire Water Co., who are claiming sewage problems and low water pressure as a result of the development. Also, Herringthorpe apartment block’s low water pressure also highlights another looming problem. Prior to privatisation the National Water Board had earmarked 187 sites in Britain for the construction of future storage reservoirs as demand increased, but in the Water Company’s searches for quick profits most of them were sold off for housing developments. 33 years later, and we now have 1 reservoir under construction and 9 more planned, but in the meanwhile England alone has 8million more people than in 1989, and up to 180 housing estates built on the floodplains where our new water reserves to supply them should be. 

Speaking of floodplains, it appears we are to have more development in the Catcliffe/Waverley area. Lower Catcliffe was always going to have flood problems, built as it was on a natural catchment area, but the straightening of the Rother and the erection of the floodgate at Woodhouse Mill cured the problem for a while. However the paving over and development of the surrounding agricultural and woodlands are recreating the problem. The old rule of thumb measure that says that every square yard of hardstanding needs 4 square yards of surrounding soft earth to drain it still holds true, so unless any new developments include an extremely good piped drainage system, Lower Catcliffe is going to be underwater every winter again.

Much more news, no more space!

C.David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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To start on a Positive note, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Easter, and woke up renewed and ready for the world. 

Next, does any reader know what Donald Trump’s Posterior tastes like?  No, I’m not trying to be rude, I just that, in a speech made at a Republican dinner a week before Easter, President Trump told the assembled guests and attending press reporters that “every country in Europe was lining up to kiss his a**e” over the tariffs he had recently imposed, and since our representatives, PM Starmer and Chancellor Reeves, were already on their way over for that very purpose, I wondered what sort of treat they had in store when they were ushered into His presence. I do hope somebody remembers to ask them on their return.

On a more serious note, and less than 40 miles from Rotherham,  British Steel, Scunthorpe. In the late 60s/ early 70s  the entire 4mile long Appleby Frodingham, as it was then called, was upgraded, its operation fully computerised, and turned into the most modern steel production plant in Europe, if not the World. But even then the writing was on the wall, there was, and still is, just too much steel in the world. A mere 10 years later came the European Steel Authority’s rationalisation of the industry, small steel towns such as Consett in Northumberland became ghost towns overnight, and British Steel, Scunthorpe has since that date never to my knowledge operated at maximum capacity. Since then, the complex has been privatised ,sold to a number of overseas buyers, but in a worldwide buyers market where most steel exports are subsidised by the exporting country was always fighting a losing battle. However the necessity for Britain to have its own Steel production capacity is beyond question, and because of their ability to create iron from their own low grade ore mines mixed with high grade overseas ore, Scunthorpe decided to retain the remaining two blast furnaces, I believe the only ones remaining after the scrapping the ones in South Wales. However the present Chinese owners decided that the plan was unviable and instead planned to close the steel making half of the complex, making over half of the working force redundant, and retaining the rolling mills to work raw steel from China. The situation could be helped by the replacement of the two blast furnaces by electric arc ones, but that will take two years, hence our present situation.

Of course there could be a possible ready market for all our steel, the nations of the impoverished Southern Third World, desperate to upgrade their infrastructure to combat the worsening climate changes, but they are all weighed down by virtual bankruptcy and increasing debt to the Western financial markets, including Britains, and who in authority cares about a few starving third world countries anyway?

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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It’s a Beautiful Day.

The sun is shining, the wind soft. Our  biodiversity destruction has devastated our birdsong, but I can still hear the strident song of a blackbird somewhere and the occasional trill of a robin in the hedge. Easy to forget our early spring heatwave probably comes courtesy of the trashing last year of the essential ceiling of 1.8degrees Celsius rise in average Earth’s temperature for our present already compromised World weather patterns to be maintained. The next ceiling is 2.1degrees Celsius, and ecology experts are reluctant to predict the effect of the changes to the world’s air and ocean currents on our survival if that level is reached. 

A couple of weeks ago the “Rotherham Advertiser” headlines were dominated by the resignation, from both the Labour Party and the post of Deputy Leader of the RMBC, of David Sheppard, Councillor for Rawmarsh East, due to his disagreement with the present Government policies. He is continuing to represent his ward as an independent councillor, but I presume from the viewpoint of the original Labour Party rather than the Keir Starmer version.

Meanwhile, the MP for Rawmarsh and Chapeltown, John Healey, MP., continues to support the Keir Starmer style Government, and in his capacity as Defence Minister is supplying  aircraft spare parts, weapons, etc, to Israel to assist in their genocide of the inhabitants of Gaza and the Israeli occupied Palestine West Bank. It is to be hoped that the supplies to Israel usually shipped via the US to bypass International Criminal Court Sanctions  are not going to be subjected to the new US Trade tariffs, and we still have to hear of any changes in John Healey’s belief in a “special relationship” between the UK and the USA, following the imposition of those tariffs.

We also read in the “Rotherham Advertiser” that he and his wife love to spend their off-duty time enjoying the joy and tranquillity of strolling peacefully through the local Wickersley Woods, albeit now accompanied by a couple of bodyguards from the Metropolitan Police Special Protection Branch. I did wonder, when I read that, the necessity for a British MP to require protection in his own constituency, but remembering my own Rother Valley MP’s recent reaction to a demonstration by local pensioners about the winter fuel allowance cancellation, I can see the thought behind it. 

I also got to wondering how the four teenagers who made the documentary about life under Israel’s constant bombardment of Gaza, if they were still alive, would also love a weekend of quiet and tranquility just strolling at peace through some woodland countryside, but of course we know that that will never be.

And right now, it is, a Beautiful Day.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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With 15 % of our new Government’s allotted time to the next General Election gone, I decided this weekend to take stock of our progress towards the new deal their Manifesto promised. Of course the rise in the USA of his Majesty King Trump and his tariff war hasn’t helped, nor has the realisation that our “special relationship” with the US is only as good as we can grovel.

Starting with the late National Health Service, our Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, having sold most of the remnants of what used to be the biggest and most successful service in Europe, our Prime Minister announced its final abolition earlier this year. We now await the announcement of what is to be provided in its place. In the meanwhile the mainly US based Private Healthcare businesses will presumably take over NHS duties, including hopefully the Emergency Services that they have previously refused to touch, and maybe one day someone may even tell us how much of our taxpayers money finally ended up in the pockets of the Private Healthcare shareholders, rather than being used to cure the sick.

Of the Great Things promised a year ago about ending the Water and Sewage Scandal, we have now been told that the raw sewage dumping in 2024 is the highest ever recorded, as also is Ofwat’s agreed price increase of 26% to our 2025 Water and Sewage bills, a third of which will be spent, not on improvements to the infrastructure, but on debt repayment and shareholders dividends. The only civil action by our Government (against Thames Water) was staved off by their acquisition of a £3billion loan, which at an interest rate of almost 10% plus fees, will cost customers £800million in interest over the two and a half year term of the loan, but for the management and shareholders not a single fine, penalty, or imprisonment in sight.

A similar story on Energy costs, a 1.2% increase in January 2025 has been quickly followed by a further 6% in April, an average of approx. £1900 per annum in all, and remember we still have the July/ December increases to come. To be fair our new Government’s “Great British Energy” is not due till 2030, but I would have hoped our new clean Renewable Energy system would by now be at least  peeping over the horizon.

But hey, someone’s doing OK!  Our Keir Starmer Type 2 Conservative Government have given themselves and the rest of the Commons a 2.8% pay rise,  about £2500 per year per MP, plus comparable increments to those with titles such as Minister and Secretary etc. I calculate that for the entire House of Commons that only works out at a mere £2million total increase per annum, so they’re still going to need their subsidised restaurants and bars, and the expense accounts with headings we working folks only dreamed of. Now what’s a few freezing pensioners and penniless disabled constituents compared to a thing like that? 

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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A letter in a recent Rotherham Advertiser “Postbag” about Rachel Reeves wrote of this “one term Labour Government”, but we know by now that this is no Labour government, This is the”Keir Starmer Type 2 Conservative” Government that merely used the title “Labour” to get itself elected, in the same manner that it composed its pre election Manifesto, from which in eight short months at least 12 of its commitments have already been broken. When this Government last year announced that it was reneging on our Overseas Aid commitment to Third World countries I read in one comment that a 2% Wealth Tax on estates over £10 million ( .04% of the population) would pay for the  Overseas Aid and leave £18 billion for the NHS.  A Labour Government would do that, but not the present one. 

Our government’s next “soft” target is reportedly going to be the sick and disabled. A relative of mine was one of the first victims of “Long Covid”, badly enough for him to spend time on oxygen in hospital, and he is still after 4 years not fully recovered. Also I once knew a woman who suffered from extreme attacks of migraine, a perfectly competent business woman most of the time but whose only successful “treatment” when attacked was several days of perfect quiet in a darkened room. I shall be most interested to learn what the Rachel Reeves disability police make of cases such as theirs under the new rules, also how they treat the growing cases of mental disability, given that in cases of partial mental disability, such as autism, treatments are already below acceptable standards.

Another “leaked” proposal by this Government is that, in order to find room for the affordable housing required to combat our growing number of homeless, Councils are going to be encouraged to obtain existing farmland by compulsory purchase, not at the market price but at the reduced price at which farmland has for decades been held to preserve it as agricultural land. Already seen as yet another smack in the teeth for farming communities, this proposal is also a further blatant attack by this Government on our ecology, our green spaces and our biodiversity. Already threatened by Keir Starmer’s previous edict to rename areas of “Greenbelt” as “Greybelt” to weaken its legal protection, this proposal gives the go-ahead for the wanton destruction of green spaces and home grown food production for no other purpose than to make building cheaper than if the contractor had to clear existing derelict construction from the proposed sites first.

Another recent Rotherham Advertiser “Postbag” letter highlighted the death toll of Racehorses, 214 killed racing and a further 594 sent for slaughter in 2024 alone. But the real problem is not just racing, but that horses today are worth more dead than alive.  Over a year ago an article written by a licenced slaughterer told of Dartmoor and Exmoor ponies being extensively “culled” for sale as meat to local zoos and safari parks. Think of that next time you take the kids to see the lions and tigers. Compared to the living conditions of Moorland ponies, the racehorses lived in luxury.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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This week I have outlived one of the Finest things our Labour Government ever created, the National Health Service.

 Inaugurated in 1948, when I was a mere teenager, I am still here when, over 76 years later, the leader of our present Keir Starmer Type Two Conservative (but labelled Labour) Government announced its abolition. It never had it easy from the start, The GP Practices had to be bribed by Bevan to come aboard, so jealous were they of their “status”. There were the”freeloaders” who took the “free treatment from cradle to grave” literally, like the man who walked into his GPs surgery and demanded a free bottle of Aspirins to treat his hangover. More serious were the affluent foreigners who took advantage of the “visitors” inclusion to take long holidays in Britain and claim treatment  while here for serious ailments that were unavailable or too costly at home.

 But throughout its teething problems the Service survived and grew, and in the mid to late 60s when I was a NHS employee it was the largest single employer in Britain, and covered all aspects of health care. Recruitment was worldwide. Free training for the Nursing profession was offered either in hospital or at 9 specialist colleges, and  Medical and Surgical courses, also free to suitable applicants from a non-affluent background, were available at several universities and Hospitals. At the Sheffield Group where I worked most of the Nursing staff and a large number of the senior Medical and Surgical lived in on site accomodation and available in an emergency. Private Healthcare was available, either through small private clinics or the odd sideward on NHS premises, but medical care was almost always NHS supplied and their qualified staff was then as now “poached” from NHS sources.

But the writing has always been on the wall, even then. Any Service that is free at the point of need has to be heavily dependent on the Government’s willingness to absorb the cost of its provision, and with the resurgence of the Conservative governments of the 70s onwards, as indeed with any regime where Profit is more important than People, any financial  outgoing that did not show an instant profit became increasingly difficult to obtain. The Care for the Elderly and long term Disabled were the first to go, abandoned in the 80s to the Charities and the Private care facilities, and after Margaret Thatcher’s Infamous “the NHS is safe with us” speech of 1982 when the programme for its dissolution was already on her table, it has always been obvious that without the commitment to the ordinary people of the post war Labour government , funding for the NHS would always to be an uphill struggle. Since our pioneering 1948 inauguration, 36 other Nations have started Health Services of one kind or another, and it says much about our respective Government’s performances that, in terms of funding per capita, Britain now ranks 30th out of the 37.  And our Prime Minister Starmer’s answer, scrap it completely. 

As with everything else our Keir Starmer Government has done so far, in the words of the old style school reports,   “Must try Harder”

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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Don’t get around much nowadays, so I didn’t know that  the Hellaby’s Giant Warehouse was finished, but if it is and it’s empty I’m not surprised. As I and dozens of others said at the Planning stage, in letters to this paper and to the RMBC Planners, this project  would be a disaster  without the major widening of Cumwell Lane, a narrow country lane running between the site and Hellaby, totally inadequate for heavy traffic but the only access between the new warehouse and the M18/A631 junction. Still, somebody must have profited from their erection, one way or another.

     The Law Society letter last week to the Rotherham Advertiser reminded me how often legal professionals turn up in the Government. My own MP is a barrister, and our Prime Minister before entering politics was a successful barrister, and for 5 years the Director of Public Prosecutions no less. Maybe that’s why he’s good at gaoling peaceful protestors, but not so hot at repairing and replacing our substandard and derelict prison buildings, so we have somewhere to put them instead of releasing real criminals to make room for them. In the Nineteen hundreds our  Labour Governments had less convicts, but a lot more restoration  and construction of much needed buildings.

 I’ll tell you a Story. In 1970 the United Nations Organisation passed a resolution that all rich Nations of the World should, by 1975, try to give 0.7percent of their annual GDP towards the support and improvement of the World’s  impoverished and undeveloped countries. Only 5 nations in the World (all European) have ever succeeded in meeting that annual target from 1975, but in 2013 Great Britain joined them, and in 2015 passed the International Development Act which placed upon our Nation a duty to to continue to do so and report annually to Parliament any failure to meet the target, Fast forward to 2021, and Boris Johnson announced amid loud Labour condemnation that, due to Covid, the Overseas Aid was going to be “temporarily” reduced to 0.5percent of GDP. Fast forward again to February 2025 and our new Government announced that our Overseas Aid  was to be cut to 0.3percent in 2027. It was further revealed that the cost of housing overseas refugees, including those from Ukraine and the families of Afghans fleeing the Taliban because of the help they had given to the British armed forces, were already being paid for out of our Overseas Aid budget, so by 2027 our actual spending on UN Overseas Aid will be nearer 0.15percent. As Sir Keir Starmer said of Boris Johnson’s overseas aid cuts in 2021,” Development aid, and we all know this, reduces conflict, disease, and people fleeing from their homes. It is a false economy to pretend that this is some sort of cut that does not have consequences”.      Couldn’t have put it better myself.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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The Labour MP for Rother Valley Jake Richards’ main concern about the rise of the far right seems to be the possibility that the Labour Party’s electoral fortunes might mimic those of the German SPD (Labour MP warns party of ‘uncanny’ parallels with Germany’s defeated SPD, Guardian, 9th March). This is instructive as party self-interest by Labour and the Tories is precisely what has driven the rise of the far right in the UK.

For over a decade immigrants, refugees and those using the benefits system have been blamed for pretty much everything wrong with our country, and the race to scapegoat these groups which began with Cameron and Milliband has only persisted and increased throughout the various crises engulfing us since: through the Brexit disaster, lockdown and the cost of living crisis.

The reality is that benefits fraud and the cost of housing refugees remains a tiny proportion of the amount lost to the country each year by the very rich avoiding paying their fair share of tax, and that we are still far more likely to be treated in the NHS or in a care home by an immigrant than be behind them in the queue. 

To blame our society’s most vulnerable members for the problems caused by the ultra-rich and our political elite is like holding Chinese takeaways responsible for the spread of COVID.

Like many local residents I’ve seen the practical impact of allowing the far right’s lies to go unchallenged: Rotherham has once more seen an increase in hate crimes against those who look different or are perceived as ‘other’, and of course it was only last summer when racist thugs took the logical next step and stormed and set alight a hotel in the borough housing families who fled to this country thinking it was a safe haven. 

It is sickening that Labour MPs, especially those here in the north, want the party to forget the most vulnerable and to pander to the far right in order to cling on to power. Luckily, there are plenty of us, in Rotherham and beyond, who won’t let them get away with it and will continue to stand up to racism, hatred and division wherever we see it.

Yours,

Tony Mabbott

Rotherham Green Party

(Submitted to The Guardian)

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High News these days, statements by USA’s new President Trump have reminded me of 2 recent comments by our Rotherham MP and Defence Minister Dennis Healey, one welcoming the formation of a new Steel Council, and the other saying we should do nothing to upset our good relations with the USA. Given that Trump has criticized our support of Croatia and slapped a 25percent tariff on our exports of steel to the US, I wonder if our MP is still of the same mind, also whether he is on our Sir Keir Starmer League 2 Conservative Government ( Known currently as “Labour”) delegation about to go “cap in hand” to the US, presumably to gather up the crumbs that Trump is willing to throw  off his table.

Of course there is another potential market for our exports, the Global South, but they are so impoverished by multiplying debt to our Western Banking and Financial Systems that there is little chance of that market ever opening to us without major changes to the system, and in that system Britain’s own Big 4 banks alone have declared a £46 billion profit in 2024.

A report that the Yorkshire Water Authority on the 18th February polluted a rare chalk water stream near Kelham with raw sewage reminds me that the Thames Water Authority, already over £11 billion in debt, has just escaped dissolution by negotiating a further £3 billion loan at an eye-watering 9.75percent interest and fees (equal to £800 million over the two and a half year loan term). As a taxpayer I would be interested to know from our Government who will eventually be paying  that interest, and also what the loan will be spent on, given that 12 years ago a £2 billion loan to Thames water Authority was spent entirely on increasing share dividends.

 When a commercial development is either projected or approved on what is designated Green or Agricultural land, banner headlines always appear in the media that “thousands of jobs” will be created. Does anyone ever check the result for the accuracy of these claims? My own experience is that the numbers finally employed, unless the site is filled by factories engaged in high intensity manufacturing, are more likely to be in the mid hundreds rather than thousands, mainly in low pay or casual occupations. An article of this type is printed in the 20th February edition of the “Rotherham Advertiser”. A second caption reads “but skylarks suffer”. So, we have the destruction of the Environment, the loss of an unspecified area of Agricultural capacity, and, according to the article, noise disturbance to local houses, traffic disturbance and pollution in a local village, significant loss of air quality over the entire district, and the local loss of a red listed bird species.  All “to provide jobs” in a county where the unemployment rate is recorded as 5 percent, probably more due to lack of accommodation than to employment opportunity.

And on the subject of housing, a read through the local newspapers has revealed numerous plans for small building erection and conversion projects, but still no move towards the provision of affordable housing for the still growing numbers of homeless people and families.  My feeling is that such families are unlikely to have the money to buy, so the real need is for rentable housing, but otherwise the letter by Paul Doughty of Anston in the 20th February edition of “The Rotherham Advertiser” says it all.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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A letter in a previous “Rotherham Advertiser” from a privately renting tenant  saying she may be evicted if her landlord is charged Selective Licensing on her home. Interesting License this, it is levied on landlords in unsightly areas (in this case by fly-tipping) leading to possible antisocial behaviour.  In short, a landlord in the area, or the tenant if the charge is passed on, is charged up to £80 a month for the Council’s inability to maintain the area, and the Police’s inability to maintain the law as a result.  One buck legally passed on !

In the same edition a letter suggested a novel cure for juvenile knife crime, convicting  parents of guilty juveniles as well. Unfortunately, we have an already present problem, where to put  offenders in the first place. Our Government’s solution of finding cells for Protesters by releasing long term prisoners to make room for them has been highlighted, but the same problem exists in Juvenile establishments. Our lack of accommodation for our thousands of homeless is again being mirrored by an equal neglect in the provision of adequate prison and Juvenile offender establishments, and in the maintenance of those we have, and for Juveniles there would also be the need of schools, training facilities and later follow-up  services to ensure an offender can survive outside the system after release.

 The same neglect is also too frequently observable in our Health, Care and Welfare provisions, and indeed all the disciplines for which a good Government should be responsible. Our current Keir Starmer League 2 Conservative Government (also known as Labour) has a well publicised buzz word for its aims, “The Economy”. Maybe in the interest of public standards they should try another one, “The Infrastructure”, combined maybe with “The Ecology”,  In the late 1940s and 1950s vast sums of money and energy were expended in rebuilding and repairing the results of World War destruction and neglect.  Today it should be obvious that the same money and energy needs to be expended in rebuilding the results of decades of neglect, disinterest and even outright discouragement ( the term ” not financially viable” can be used at any level) by successive self serving Governments.  Once again, the money is in the wrong place and the Government and Financial authorities making every effort  to keep it there.  In 1954, due to equalising taxation, we had only 39 Millionaires in Britain, in 2022 we listed 178 Billionaires, and our top100 CEOs were being paid more in a day than an average man’s income for over a year.

On Friday 21st February our local Rother Valley MP, Jake Richards, is holding a public meeting in Woodsetts Village Hall at 5.30pm to discuss local issues. Maybe he’ll have time to explain his Government’s actions on other matters as well.

C.David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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On the right to Peaceful Protest. The right to show dissent to a government or authority decision is a fundamental freedom, and particularly in this day and age on matters of Climate and Environmental destruction, but I’m sorry to say our Government disagrees entirely. Our record for the imprisonment of peaceful protestors is about 17 percent, the highest in the world, with the possible exception of Australia, the World average being 6.7 percent. 

A young “Stop Oil” protester was given 22 months for throwing soup at a glass protected Van Gogh painting. I agree with any reader who is confused at what hurling a canful of over-processed tomato juice over a picture of a bunch of flowers has to do with Oil, but 22 months! Another group of would be protesters was imprisoned for a total of 21 years for merely “planning” to climb up a Motorway gantry, and a further woman gaoled for standing silently at the side of a jury box entrance with a sign saying “You have the right to disagree”.  The further disgrace of this matter is that, such is the state of overcrowding in the prison population, and state of disrepair of prison buildings, it was reported that long term prisoners were being released with shortened sentences cut short  to make room for them, and sent out with no provision for “halfway” housing or Probationary supervision.

It seems every other page of the “Rotherham Advertiser” lately reports on plans for the demolition of derelict structures, new housing developments, conversions, etc. What seems to be missing is the provision of affordable rented accommodation. For decades now the planning regulations for Domestic accommodation has included a requirement for all schemes to include the provision of 25 percent “affordable” rented accommodation, but where is it ?. Granted the regulations contain enough loopholes and “get out” clauses for any such inconvenient requirement to be avoided, but now we are served by a “Labour” council under an alleged “Labour” central Government surely such a needed requirement should be bearing fruit , but where? Meanwhile the Homeless Family lists keep on increasing. 

Finally,  the failure of the Climate and Nature (CAN) Bill. Two weeks ago, at a time when we learned that the 1.5 degree Maximum world temperature rise had been irrevocably smashed for the entire 2024 year, that our attempts to control the increase in climate destroying CO2 emissions had again failed, and facing us across the Atlantic, the rise of a  Climate Change Denying US government, the CAN Bill came up for its second Reading. The cardinal aims of the CAN Bill are to place a duty on the Government to achieve set Climate and Nature Targets (not estimates, or broken promises but actual achievements), and to reduce Emissions in line with our Nationally Declared contribution as per the Paris Agreement. But rather than allow a  debate, or even a free vote, our Government ordered a vote to delay the Bill until July earliest, and ordered a return to Parliament and a 3 line whip to enforce it.  So now we know, goodbye Labour party and Green credentials, from now on our Keir Starmer league 2 Conservative Party will govern our lives.

C,David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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In the 1950s/60s, under our old style Labour Government, all Britain’s Building and Essential Services were overseen by Inspectorates who ensured that minimum standards of work and service were maintained. Then came a Government which preached that the 1900s Labour “government for the masses” was wrong, that Essential Services should be “privatised” and  Inspectorates scrapped in favour of “Self certification” with no independent Control of Minimum Standards and everybody their own arbiter;

Tower blocks were built with cladding that burned with loss of life and property

Schools erected that crumbled in 30 years

Water services neglected and the Floodplains earmarked for new Reservoirs and Flood control sold off and bought by developers to build Houses

Sewage services left to disintegrate and sewage released into the environment

Energy supplies sold off to offshore cartels that scrapped Renewable Energy development in favour of Polluting but far more Profitable Gas and Oil, and a World beating Health Service starved of essential finance to make it easier for takeover by offshore Health Insurance companies. 

Yet despite all this our new “Labour” Government Chancellor last month told an Assembly of the World’s most influential Heads of State, CEOs, Financiers and Trillionaires, gathered in Davos, Switzerland, that Britain’s problem was “Too much Control !”

So, citizens of Rotherham, what of your Government now, and no mistake it is yours, all 3 of our constituencies are now represented by dedicated Party MPs that have voted in favour of everything the Government has so far proposed, and so far almost everything reneges on pre-election stances or commitments. The cut in Winter fuel allowance, the increase in Employers national insurance (charged to their employees and customers), and the under review reductions in Sickness and Disablement allowances are all taxes on working class people, the takeover by Private healthcare of the NHS is accelerating and is already costing the taxpayer several millions per year.  The new Water (Special Measures) Bill, is in progress, but still allows 3 figure increases to the private customer, and currently allows for the cost of remedying neglected infrastructures to be additionally charged to the same future customers.

The obscene profits by Fossil Fuel companies is still not being addressed, nor the hold they have on our Energy system, but it is rumoured that the reduction of costs to businesses by passing some of their costs on to the ordinary customer is being considered. The changes to Farmland Inheritance tax is still being disputed, but not the probability that any land sold to pay it will not remain as farmland but will be bought by offshore developers to the detriment of our national food production.

The list goes on, so do we now have a Labour government by the People, as conceived in the 1900s and funded by Workers  and Union subscriptions, or are we now governed by an alternative Keir Starmer style Conservative Party.  To my mind the Jury is still out.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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So let’s see what’s been happening since Xmas.

I decided at Xmas to wait before commenting to see whether our new Government is really a “Labour” one as they claim, or just a “League 2 Conservative” one in Labour disguise, and as it will be 6 months old by the month’s end,  with all three Rotherham MPs dedicated members of it, we should by then have an idea how the citizens of Rotherham are going to fare under it.

The cancellation of the Energy Grant to anyone not poor enough to qualify for Pension Credit was our first shock, as was the reaction of both our new Government and our own Rother Valley MP to any objections to it.  Prior to 2019 the Rother Valley had been represented for over 30 years by an old style Labour MP, Kevin Baron, who several times during his tenure had expressed an opinion against his Party’s stance on a government matter, but the Party of that time had shown the moral integrity to recognise that either an MP’s own beliefs or those of his constituents could vary from the Party line, and had taken no action against him, whereas our present Government’s reaction to a legitimate objection was to take action against the dissenters that was barely short of Fascism . Also in all that tenure I know of no time when a petition or demonstration at a constituency office, however rowdy, had been met with a call to the police  and a door slammed in their faces.  Clearly we are dealing today with a “Labour Party” of very different complexion to the one us “old timers” have been placing our confidence in since the 1900s, and whose actions need to be examined in a far more critical light.

On the subject of local MPs, a recent letter to the Rotherham Advertiser lauded the actions of our last MP, Alexander Stafford, and expressed a hope that he would return, so I must express my opinion that his performance as a constituency representative was exemplary, his efforts in regard to any local problems first class, and the extraction of highly needed capital for the restoration of Dinnington and Maltby town centres outstanding, as was his campaigning for the upgrading of transport links and other prospects. The problem was that away from his constituency and in Parliament he was a different person and his total support for many of the environmentally and socially destructive aims of his party was equally avid, and since we cannot have Stafford the local benefactor without Stafford the supporter of offshore destruction I have with regret to disagree.

 The disagreement over the emptying of the Rotherham Hospital Accommodation blocks still continues. When I was a Hospital employee, I remember subsidised on-site Medical and Nursing Staff accommodation was common, and training for vocations in Care and Healing was free. Nowadays anyone wishing to enter such professions either has private means or completes their training at least 5 figures in debt, and must compete for accommodation with Britain’s 400 thousand Homeless. However, some of our MPs that have an additional income as landlords may be able to help.

Oh dear, my list of subjects has barely started. Maybe next time?

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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There has been talk of the Prime Minister ruining our Nation using the “2030 Agenda”, so I brushed up my political history to try and figure out how we got here.

In 1992 in Rio de Janeiro,  the United Nations Assembly  Agenda 21 called for a comprehensive plan for the Future Sustainability of the World. It took some time, but in 2015 the entire 178 nation strong Assembly adopted the “17 Sustainable Development Goals to End Poverty, Protect the Planet, and Create Prosperity for All”.   A plan for the Future of the Entire World, to be achieved by 2030.   

They even made up a mnemonic to remember it by  “PEACE AND Justice FOR ALL Good Partnerships”, each Capital letter being a Goal.

The goals were simple : 

1) P.  no Poverty, World access to all  basic necessities, food, clean water and sanitation.   

2)  E. End Hunger  ensure food security, nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. 

3)  A.  All in Good Health, disease prevention, universal healthcare.

4) C. Clean Water and Sanitation   

5)  E.  Education for all.   

6) A.  Affordable Clean Energy from renewable energy generation   

7) N. No further Climate Change or Global warming. 

8) D.  Decent Employment and Economic Growth.   

9) J.  Justice and Equality for all.

10) F.  Financial Inclusion. Adequate financial provision for All Nations, including cash poor Third World countries. 

 11) O.  Open infrastructure and Innovation. Creation of sustainable Cities and Communities, with proper planning, and affordable housing and transport.

12) R.  Responsible Consumption and Production.  Waste Reduction, efficient use of Resources and sustainable practices.   

13) A.   Action on Climate.   Immediate action on Climate change reduction, raising awareness, transition to Clean Energy.

14) L.  Life under Water.   Conservation and sustainable use of Marine resources, protecting marine Ecosystems, prevention of Marine Pollution.   

15) L. Life on Land.   Halting Biodiversity Loss, fighting Desertification, restoring Land Degradation,  Sustainable Use of Land.

16) G.   Good Partnership.  Promoting Peace, Justice, and strong accountable International institutions.   

17) S.   Sustainability for all.  Collaboration of Governments, businesses and civil societies, and sharing of knowledge and resources essential to the achievement of  all  these  goals and SGDs.

Unfortunately, the United Nations Assembly of 2015 left out of this plan one essential heading, the Letter G for GREED, the glue that holds together every Bank, Financial Institution, Government Treasury, or other Finance organisation in this whole World, and controls the hearts and minds of every financier and politician with a finger on the purse strings.  It is this ingredient that has, in my lifetime, destroyed without thought any attempt at curtailing the destruction of our World, or belief in the rights or sanctity of any living creature upon it, and has without any compunction trashed every attempt however well designed to combat the annihilation of every good thing upon it . The time for the fulfilment of the 2015 UN Assembly plan is this year half over, and we have accomplished NOTHING. not of this Agenda or of  any other subsequent plan for the continuance of life on earth . We still have 6 years left to achieve the 2030 agenda, but don’t hold your breath.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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Both our current Rother Valley MP, Jake Richards MP and his predecessor, Alexander Stafford, have in a recent edition of the “Tizer”  written of abuse, threats, and criminal behavior towards them and their families. Why? Granted Jake Richard’s reaction to protest has not been what we should  expect from someone elected to represent us, but Alexander Stafford is long gone, so why the baboonish, destructive and immature behavior. I have been a voter now for over 70 years, and in all that time, never, except maybe for a short period, still to be reviewed, during the miners strike, have I seen the like. Have we totally lost all confidence in politics, or has the country become so thuggish and brain-dead as to be ungovernable. The next few years will tell. 

Glad to read the Battery Storage Facility near Wickersley has been shelved, for all its alleged green credentials. Trouble with building on Green belt land is 1 building after erection always seems to become 10 a few years later, and goodbye Greenbelt.

Not such good news are the Solar Farms proposed on Green and  Agricultural Land throughout the Area. Agriculture has taken a battering already this year from the Government’s ill thought out Death Duty changes, and as for “solar farms supporting many of the same goals as green belt for wildlife and recreational facilities”, forget it . There are erection methods and spacing designs that could support agriculture on the same site, but the solar farm designers would have to accept increased costs and the problem of allowing public access on the sites. Solar generation is badly needed if we are to achieve anything like our Clean Energy targets, but the way to achieve them is to integrate them into other designs, not look at them in isolation. We just need to stop always looking for the easy way out.

Look up  “Ofwat” in the media and it tells you that “it works in the interests of the Consumers by making sure the companies are properly run, the system resilient, and the market competitive”. It also tells lies. Faced with the lack of care and maintenance of the infrastructure and the continuing sewage scandal, our new Government was going to take the industry to task and ensure it did its duty. The result?  The companies supplying the “Services” are exactly the same, and on the 18th.December 2024, Ofwat is expected to announce increases to the Consumers Water and Sewage bills approximately twice that of the increases approved in July, and already expected to create affordability problems to 40 percent of its customers. To the residents of Rotherham, those billed by Yorkshire Water Authority can expect an increase of +35 percent, and those by Severn/Trent, +46 percent.        So much for the Keir Starmer style Labour Government, and an “Ofwat” that works in the interests of the Consumer.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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So COP29, the Global Conference upon the outcome of which, believe it or not, our future depends, is drawing to a close, but this time not without some wrangling among the assembly, so much so that the final debate is still going on and the end report delayed. To any who have not been following this conference, the dispute is from the representatives of poorer mainly Global South nations, who have been bearing the brunt of the Climate Change devastation, but due to their low finances have been, and still are, unable to make the changes needed to combat it, and nations such as the rich G7 countries, including ourselves, who so far have gotten away with it mainly unharmed. The Global North’s initial offer, to the poorer nations, of $250million by 2025 was described as an insult by the Developing Countries, who countered that a sum of $1.3trillion per annum by no later than 2030 would be needed if they were to stand any chance of meeting their commitments. (I have just read that this dispute has been ended with a commitment by the Global North of $300billion per annum from 2025, hardly a satisfactory answer to the Developing Countries stated needs.)

All this bickering would be laughable were the subject of the dispute not the very survival of the Planet on which we all depend. Already this year our previous target of not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise has been breached, as has our aim to reduce CO2 pollution, with the news that in 2024 our Atmospheric Pollution Emissions have  already exceeded those of previous years. Nobody is listening. The news is full of news about loss of life, global catastrophes, storms and tidal anomalies of ever greater severity and in places never before affected, and everyone apparently wants to believe they are isolated cases and could never happen to them. The richest nation of the Western world, the United States of America, is now totally in the grip of a Climate Change denying Government for the foreseeable future,  making the fight to preserve the life of our home Planet even harder for the rest. 

The COP28 United Nations pledge to divest itself of Fossil Fuels “in a just and orderly manner” is now also under attack, an Organisation having been launched in Azerbaijan by the oil rich Arab countries with the express purpose of reversing the COP28 commitment.

And all the while the Nations of the World continue bickering, prevaricating, and dragging their feet, while the Bankers and Financial giants continue hoarding the World’s riches and erecting themselves grander tombstones in the Cemetery that they are rapidly making of  Earth.

Maybe, the way we are presently performing, we don’t deserve our World, and Adam Laycock’s prediction of its end is getting closer.

C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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As I write this letter the delegates for the next COP are assembling in Azerbaijan. Once more, as with COP28, a country virtually floating on oil and dependent on fossil fuel sales for its existence, and again as at both COP28 and the recent Biodiversity COP the number of delegates and supporters  are totally outnumbered by Oil cartel representatives. Even before the event had begun it was reported that the Chief Executive of Azerbaijan’s COP team, Elnur Soltanov, was using his position to discuss possible new Fossil Fuel contracts, and President Ilham Aliyev has told delegates in his welcoming addresses that oil and gas were “a gift of God “.   

Still, this is the only COP on Climate Change we have this year, so we need to make the best of it, although we will be lacking several significant faces. Outgoing US president Joe Biden has declined to attend, and US president elect  Donald Trump, a dedicated climate change denier, will certainly not be there. EU president Ursula von der Leyden has declined to attend, as has China’s president Xi Jinping, India’s PM Narendra Modi , and Argentina’s Javier Milei, and after being accused by president  Aliyev of “brutally killing” citizens of New Caledonia  during recent protests, and France’s Pacific territories being described as “colonies”, France’s president Emmanuel Macron and his delegation have also left.

Those remaining will have plenty to discuss, the average global temperature in 2024 now the highest on record, the breaching of the 1.5C temperature rise threshold established in Paris in 2015, the estimate by Climate Analytics that the world is on track for a temperature rise of 2.7C overall as present policies stand with little action or improvement during the last three decades. Increasing rainfall and flooding in many areas, but also drought and famine in other previously fruitful ones. The increasing wind speeds and changes in Climatic and Oceanic patterns.  All demonstrably linked to man’s persistent use Fossil Fuels over the last 150 years and the inexorable buildup of pollution from the burning of the same.

A fellow subscriber to the Rotherham Advertiser’s “Postbag”, Adam Laycock, wrote several weeks ago that God had revealed to him that the World would end in twenty years from now.  I have no wish to dispute with him the omnipotence of God, but from my observations of man’s increasing selfishness and lack of charity to others, I am of the firm belief that if our world comes to an end it will be from no act of God, but rather the result of the arrogant and unconcerned activities of Man

C.David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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I always believed holding conferences calling for reductions in Oil consumption in countries floating on the stuff was crazy, so when a conference on Biodiversity was to be held in the most diverse country in the World, surely this time it was going to go right ?   Wrong!!  Everyone wants Climate Change and Loss of Biodiversity to stop,  but only if someone else pays for it.  

“A Matter of Life or Death” was how the situation was described by Colombian President Petro at the start of the conference, speaking of the 73 percent decline in the planet’s Wildlife population in less than 50 years. Nor are the deaths reserved to wildlife, as a result of the nation’s efforts to curtail illegal logging there were 79 murders of indigenous wildlife defenders in Columbia last year, 40percent of cases worldwide. The biggest problem is the reluctance of the rich nations of the North to pay their share. A package of $20 billion promised by 2025 has so far raised a mere $163million, a drop in the ocean compared to the United Nations estimate of $700billion that will be required to properly manage Diversity and halt its present World destructive decline. Think that sounds a lot ? It’s actually less than the USA spends each year on  military spending in support of actions like  Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian arabs, in short the richest Nation of the Western World spends more on the murder of Mediteranean Arabs than preservation of the World’s essential Biodiversity.

But just because the USA is the largest player in the game does not make it the only one. Biodiversity is the variation in natural resources that creates the world conditions that all life relies on, and our blind assumption that it is someone or something else’s problem to provide it is no longer valid. It manufactures the air that we breath, it creates the conditions that supply the food that we rely on, the movement of the atmosphere carries water vapour to the places where for millennia we have been supplied with water to drink, it is a global phenomenon that has across the entire planet been the controlling feature creating the conditions for life in all its unbelievable variations to exist and interact.  And for generations the human race has been altering those conditions and diluting that diversity for reasons that we believed were to our advantage, without really understanding the implications of what it was that we were doing, so we have now stretched the limits of that biodiversity to beyond its capacity to recover without drastic action to help that recovery. Recovery that has to be paid for, despite the reluctance of the World’s bankers to open their coffers to the World in the interests of mere survival, because survival is the end game of this present crisis, like it or not.

 Whether Great Britain is any better than the rest of the Western nations we shall hear when we are given the reports of our Representatives at the COP, Environment Secretary Steve Reed and Nature Envoy Ruth Davis.

C.David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party

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C. David Foulstone

Rotherham Green Party