Cllr Adrian Smith

Two by-election results last night…

Henley: Convincing Conservative win, Labour absolutely thrashed. Bit hard to comment on our result, though I take heart from the fact that our vote went up (absolute, not share) when turnout was down. I wasn’t involved in this campaign so I will refrain from passing comment on our campaign, as it really annoys me when people who haven’t been involved in campaigns I have worked on feel free to judge.

Burbage Parish Council, Lash Hill ward: Convincing Lib Dem win, Conservatives beaten well. I wont claim a shred of credit for this victory, as I was unable the help campaign, but well done to the team.

Lots of interesting news coming up next week!

The BBC has reported today the imminent opening of a revolutionary plastic recycling facility in Dagenham, which is the UK’s first with the ability to recycle plastic bottles.

Anybody who has had any contact with the recycling industry will know that until very recently, plastic bottles were the bain of the business. The problems of different sorts of plastic, the difficulties of collection, the sheer bulk of them and the problems of potential contamination looked insurmountable.

This was a headache because plastic bottles are one of the most abundant forms of packaging in the UK, and were contributing a large amount to our landfill.

Apparently this new facility aims to recycle 35,000 tonnes a year which is a good start to the problem. The recyclate can then be mixed with virgin plastic up to a 50:50 ratio.

The whole facility only cost £13 million, which is cheap for a recycling depot.

I don’t know if bottles from this area will be part of the annual 35,000 tonnes, but I hope so.

At the risk of sounding slightly obsessed with this issue, there has been progress on the development of a single European Airspace.

The European Commission yesterday put forward proposals to cut the current 47 different airspaces across Europe down to 8/9 by 2012. The current situation makes the average European flight 47 miles longer than it needs to be, a senseless waste of fuel.

The proposals have one key obstacle, the one which dogs all European initiatives, that of individual countries not wanting to cede sovereignty to a Europe wide body. Most of this argument in this case is pure cant, but there are some reasonable cautions about the role of national air forces in this new sky space.

There seems to be widespread political and business support for this move - and the cynics among you would quite reasonably suggest that the enthusiasm from business is due to the potential fuel savings of 3 billion Euros a year - so I suspect this could be one European initiative that gets where it intends vaguely on time.

More to come soon I suspect.

I see the Conservatives are displeased with one of our leaflets in the Henley by-election, to the point of instructing their solicitors. This is a very common feature of modern campaigns, and is more a publicity stunt than a serious grievance. In this case particularly, since the subject matter of the complaint is rather hard to prove or disprove.

We shall see…

More news from Bill Newton-Dunn.

Two things particularly caught my eye on his newsletter:

The Waste Directive to increase Recycling
Yesterday, the European Parliament approved binding targets for the recycling of waste by 2020 that the European Union’s 27 member states must include in national plans or face legal action by Brussels. The rules seek to achieve recycling of 50 percent of waste from households and 70 percent of hazardous materials. The sheer fact that concrete targets had been accepted despite strong opposition in some capitals was a victory for MEPs. National governments are increasingly difficult to negotiate with. As the recession bites, they know that this legislation will cost money so they become reluctant to accept the parliament’s amendments. According to Brussels estimates, Europe generates around 1.8 billion tonnes of waste, which is an average of 3.5 tonnes per person, mainly from households, commercial enterprises such as shops or restaurants, industry, agriculture and construction and demolition projects.

Welcome news that concrete targets are in place, but where the EU has often fallen down (In my opinion at least) is turning this political endeavour into equal and fair action across all member states. Many people in my ward, and across the country presumably, often point out that they are not against the green agenda as such, but it pains them to be issued with directives from Europe that we will try our best to comply with, while other members states will just ignore them and get away with it.

An argument that I have sympathy with - I suspect the European project would have much more popular support if the design and implementation of policy felt less like some member states were freeloading off the contributions of others.

However, this could be balanced if I had the views of a German to hand - they recycle a significantly larger portion of their waste than we do, and have done so for years. What do they make of our recalcitrance over developing our refuse systems? Perhaps they feel we are not pulling our weight.

The second bit that caught my interest, on a green theme also:
IATA (the world association of airlines) gave a briefing today to the parliament. Their goal is a 25% efficiency gain by 2020. Rising oil prices are a strong economic incentive to them. Every possibility is being explored : for example, British Airways has calculated the one tea-bag airborne for a year uses a litre of fuel. A unified European air space with a unified air-traffic control system would save over 10% of aircraft emissions. IATA’s nightmare is that the world’s governments may fail to work together but develop different conflicting solutions.

I cant make up my mind whether 25% is a bit ambitious, or a rather poor effort. I don’t know by how much the motor industry has reduced its fuel efficiency since that last oil crisis (not that we are in one now), but I would speculate that they have improved by more than 25%. I also have no idea whether air engine makers have improved their efficiency since then, but I suspect not. Perhaps someone could furnish me with some of these statistics.

I posted the bit about a 10% saving by unifying air traffic control systems across Europe, and while I think IATA’s nightmare is cynical, I’m inclined to agree.

What I know for certain is that if British Airways stopped buggering about working out the impact of tea bags on their MPG, they wouldn’t have made such a cock up of Terminal Five. How did they work that out?

 Answers on a postcard.

Just watching the BBC and caught the news about David Davis.

Very interesting situation this one, and one that presents a mortal danger to the Conservative Party - while most of the Conservative Parliamentary Party (most!) have worked hard to present themselves as more liberal than in the past, there remains a very large part of the general membership who take law, order and security as the backbone of their party.

A by-election fought on that issue could damage the party badly, especially given that it is the Shadow Home Secretary that has resigned.

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out….

Hinckley Carnival seemed a tremendous success last Sunday.

The organisers had done a splendid job, and the weather came through for them, as it was a gloriously sunny day. I was alternating between the Lib Dem bottle stall and the Youth Council’s pitch at the bottom of the field.

Once the parade had finished, I have never seen a more crowded carnival field. The queue for the ice cream van was absolutely massive near us, and all the stalls seemed to be doing a roaring trade - our bottle tombola certainly did!

The Youth Council had their battle of the bands stage set up early on, and their hard work seemed to pay off with the number of young people who were there watching easily into the hundreds - this allowed them to advertise the youth council to a huge number of young people that they would not normally have access to, and I’m sure it will pay long term dividends. The bands were splendid too - a surprising mix of old, new and original material though I was disappointed none chose to cover Whitesnake.

The press seem determined to pursue the Conservative party over alleged misuse of public funds. Now, the Cconservatives have done some disgraceful things in the past - Douglas Hurd for one - but how long should they spend paying or their problems in the early 90’s?

The press need something to do. If they had half a whit between them they would focus on the inability of the Conservatives to commit themselves to anything except headlines.

Cameron has a big height to fall from.

I see that Boris has confirmed that he is stepping down as MP for Henley, as he promised when he was running for London Mayor.

Still no date for the by-election but an announcement must be imminent. Most people are expecting a resounding victory for the Conservatives, given their national improvements. I wouldn’t be so sure myself, by-elections are strange beasts and the usual form book is useless.

I have laid a gentleman’s £10 bet that the Liberal Democrats will win with a majority of 2500 - some may see that as reckless confidence, but it seems clear that the dynamics are different to the Crewe election, and the Conservatives will have a different set of problems to overcome.

I suspect they will have some difficulty mobilising their troops for a potentially safe seat - it is hard to motivate people to go to something they think is a foregone conclusion. In Crewe, they knew they were in with a chance of a historic victory and so the masses came.

The media are another unknown quantity - they can’t paint this one as a Labour/Tory fight, so they might look for new targets, and the Tories are the easiest one.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the weather could play a role.

I should be going down to help, and I shall report back on the vibes in due course.