As I have written before, the old school on Lime Grove has been considered by the Conservative council as a site for a wet-house.

For all the time that the site was the leading contender for a homeless hostel, suitable for alcohol consumption, the plans were kept secret and only leaked out when the cabinet member accidentally referred to them in a council meeting. Currently, the planned location is by Kingsmead Square - although this is also hotly contested.

My ward colleague in Kingsmead has asked for the documentation about the decision and was only able to force access using the Freedom of Information act. This shows that Lime Grove was considered by the experts as the best site, although the cabinet eventually chose Kingsmead because they thought that there would be less public resistance.

Given that the Kingsmead site is also controversial, I asked the Conservative in charge about the Lime Grove proposals. The written quetion and answer are here - scroll to question 6 on page 6. He says that the Kingsmead site decision will not be re-visited and that he has no hold on the Lime Grove site. However, he did not answer my points about the secrecy and lack of consultation surrounding the process.

I have checked with the council’s property team and they are preparing to re-market the site for commercial purchase (you may remember the aborted student housing bid of last year). All indications are that the Lime Grove site will not be used for a wet-house.

The only question remaining - can you trust a Tory?!

This evening’s snow made Bathwick Hill impassible for many drivers including the 18 bus.

The road is normally gritted but the afternoon snowfall resulted in a wet and slippery surface, worst uphill of Cleveland Walk. Many drivers parked where they could and walked home as fellow motorists slid in the slush.

First were also compelled to leave their bus parked on the hill as it could not drive up safely. Passengers had to walk the rest of the journey as the snow continued falling. The bus was rescued an hour later, being gently slid backwards down the hill to turn around at Cleveland Walk.

The ‘Big Freeze Update’ from the council is abridged below for public information purposes. Whether the ‘big’ refers to the length of the update or the severity of the freeze is not made clear.

• it is cold and will remain such for some considerable time; it has and will snow, road and pavement conditions are described as extremely hazardous
• grit was delivered to the council on Friday; it will be used sparingly on major routes and in grit bins, not on residential roads or pavements as per this map
• most schools will be open on Monday, though Bathwick St Mary’s is currently unsure; updates on the council website
• there will be no waste collections on Monday; none was collected on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday so this should be brought back indoors. The Christmas trees left in the street are quite festive though

As the cold snap continues, here’s a public service announcement relayed from BathNES council:

• schools are closed
• main routes (Bathwick Hill, Claverton Down and North Road) will be gritted, roads not gritted now will not be in future
• there are NO rubbish or recycling today; please take the waste (and christmas trees) back in

information and updates are at http://www.bathnes.gov.uk/bathnes, but this has crashed a few times.

Happy New Year

Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, is in Bath this week for a free public meeting. The town hall style event is open to anyone to turn up and ask a question.

Having seen Nick at conference, I know that he is a very impressive public speaker. What’s more, having done almost one hundred town hall meetings since becoming leader, he’s pretty good at them.

The meeting is at St Michael’s, Broad Street (by Waitrose) starting at 6:30pm this Thursday 7th Jan. You can turn up on the night, but seats are being booked fast; you can reserve for you and your friends at http://www.nickclegg.com/2009/12/meets-bath/ for free.

Whether you are an instinctive liberal democrat or a floating voter, he’s well worth a listen.

Two cars crashed while avoiding a badly parked lorry on Bathwick Hill near Tesco.

The accident happened at around 18:30 today (3rd Dec) causing damage to the front of both cars. The occupants are not thought to be seriously injured. The cars collided outside Miles House, just uphill from the canal and Tesco store.

According to the police officer on the scene, a lorry parked on the South (downhill) side of the road stuck out into the carriageway causing drivers to pull out around it. One such driver passing the lorry was struck by another heading uphill. Both cars came to rest on the uphill carriageway and the lorry drove off.

While the exact circumstances are unclear, this accident will have reinforced the fears of residents about this stretch of road. Following the death of a pedestrian in September 2006, Tesco opened an express store on the site against the wishes of the council concerned about traffic safety. While deliveries to the store continue to cause problems, the key issue remains parking.

Bathwick Lib Dem councillors Nicholas Coombes and Armand Edwards have raised the issue of illegal parking in the vicinity of Tesco three times with the Conservative cabinet this year, most recently yesterday. The same question, “how many parking tickets have been issued; is this satisfactory?” has now been asked three times. In May, the answer was “five tickets”. In November, the answer was “we don’t count tickets in this area”. When attention was drawn to this discrepancy in December, the answer was “we still don’t count tickets in this area”.

At no point has the cabinet member answered the question whether the level of parking enforcement was suitable to address the problem of dangerour parking in the area.

Local residents and councillors have recently heard that their petition for a zebra crossing at the site has been successful; the work is due to begin shortly. Speaking with Cllr Coombes at the scene of the accident, the attending police officer welcomed this development as it would slow traffic speed on this part of the hill.

The council must get on with painting the promised zebra crossing and make sure that the existing parking restrictions are enforced.

Normal service resumes with this pennant stone report:

Bathwick Hill has always had some uneven paving slabs because of its pennant slabs. The Conservative council provides enough budget to the street repairs department to replace pavements every 70 years on average. However, this applies to normal pavements; the real stone used in Bathwick is much more expensive.

The maintenance problem was obvious on Bathwick Hill this afternoon when I walked past this popped paving slab opposite the care homes. I’ve reported this to the council and hope that no one trips in the mean-time.

Today I joined the City Car Club, so I can drive without owning a car.

Since passing my test years ago I have never owned a car; I’ve never really needed one, they are very expensive to run and there’s a huge environmental cost. However, I accept that there are a few occassions when it is very hard to get by without.

I’ve been tempted by the car club idea for a while. Members of the club are able to book one of a fleet for a few hours or days and pay a standard rental charge (about £5/hr or £50/day) including petrol and insurance. However, until recently there have only been a few cars in Bath, in inconvenient (for me) places. What changed this is discovering a new car parked right outside my office this week, in its own designated bay.

I also know of plans to hugely extend the fleet across the city next year; I hope to see a bay opposite my flat on Bathwick Hill in a few months. Bathwick should also have club cars on Sydney Buildings and in the Sydney Place area in the future. From their website and my own customer service so far I would strongly recommend joining.

While I’m giving free adverts, I’d like to write that the Wessex Connect (U18, blue buses) drivers are far friendlier than their First counterparts, plus the service is considerably better value for money. I’d also like to plug the Phone Co-op, a co-operative telecoms provider. Aside from brilliant customer service and being considerably cheaper than their rivals, their phone purchasing policy is very considerate.

I love the site http://glumcouncillors.tumblr.com/ - mostly because I guiltily recognise all of the painful situations. It was, therefore, almost inevitable (yet no less mortifying) that I be featured eventually.

In my defence, writing about potholes seems to maintain an audience of over 2,500 visits each month and that in addition to “remorselessly cataloguing in exhaustive detail every minor ailment” I do get a lot of them fixed. Nonetheless, well done glumcouncillors, I have been caught and will try to be more cheerful in future.

On Wednesday morning, the UK Climate Change Committee issued a report saying that if aviation maintained its current levels of Carbon Dioxide emissions, all other sources in the UK must be cut by 90% by 2050 to avert catastrophic climate change.

On Wednesday afternoon I was asked to judge an application for the expansion of Bristol airport, in which CO2 emissions would more than double.

I will be 64 in 2050; I won’t have reached retirement age. Within my working life, my generation must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 90%, while aviation remains as it is. If we can meet this daunting challenge, then the earth will ‘only’ warm by 2 degrees. Climate will change, but we will be able to cope. If say, we don’t manage to make 90% cuts, or if aircraft emissions rise, then temperature will rise by above 2 degrees, the ice-caps will begin to melt and the planet will be locked into a reinforcing pattern of catastrohpic change.

To save the planet in this model, all airports need to do is not expand. The irresponsibility of Bristol International Airport management is incomprehensible.

The BIA planning application will be decided by North Somerset council, but Bristol City and BathNES Councils have been asked to make recommendations. The expansions plans are to double the size of the airport terminal building, to provide 16,000 car parking spaces and build capacity for 10,000,000 passengers per year. This would result in CO2 emissions of 948,680 tonnes per year; an increase of 125% on current levels. The entire of Bath and North East Somerset is responsible for 1,072,000 tonnes per year. Bristol airport wishes to expand to a level at which it will emit almost as much CO2 as 170,000 people in 72,000 homes; 77,000 cars on 690 miles of road; 7,400 businesses and 220 sq miles of land.

At the planning committee meeting, I moved that: “Bath and North East Somerset considers the causes and effects of climate change to be the principal consideration in a development of this nature and recommends that North Somerset refuse the application on these grounds.”

Those who have watched me will know that I am a vigorous public speaker; I’m rather gratified by this review: “I just wanted to write personally to congratulate you on your speech on climate change at yesterday’s DCC meeting. It as good to hear a graduate of this University express himself so well and so much to the point. It set the tone for the debate at a level from which it hardly ever slipped.”

All Liberal Democrat and Labour councillors voted with me, as did two Conservatives, to prevent the expansion of the airport. The motion was passed 8 to 4; the objection of BathNES council will be sent to North Somerset.

However, with the Conservatives running BathNES council, it is very worrying that the majority of Tory councillors voted against the motion, for airport expansion. Conservative policy on airport expansion is ‘mixed’ at best. While the party leadership claims to be against a third runway at Heathrow, the Telegraph quotes a Conservative shadow cabinet member who expects the policy to be “revisited” after the general election. As is often the case, Cameron and the PR people say one thing, but Conservative MPs and councillors (such as ours in BathNES) do another.

As reported in the Bath Chronicle, the airport bosses are not pleased: “The discussion at the B&NES council meeting centred on emotional arguments relating to aviation’s contribution to climate change… We are confident that North Somerset will put much more weight on the employment, economic and tourism benefits generated by the airport.”

In response, I would argue that climate change is the greatest long-term challenge facing the world today (as does the UK government) and it was quite right that the debate centred on this; that’s why I wrote the motion as I did. Naturally, the potential destruction of our civilization within my lifetime does give rise to some emotional arguments, but these are no less compelling than the warnings presented by the world’s scientists. Suggesting that climate change is an emotional issue rather than a matter of science fact is not something I can agree with.

Then there are the percieved short-term employment, economic and tourism benefits of the airport. So far as jobs go, there is direct employment for cleaners, car park attendants, baggage handlers, shop assistants, caterers… the list of badly paid, low skilled jobs at anti-social hours is varied, but, given the shift to budget airlines, quite short. We are told that during the recession, the airport will keep Bath in business, but the development won’t be ready for several years and actually, Bath is doing quite well in this recession.

The supposed benefits to tourism are the real irony here, with over 80% of all BIA flights taking UK residents on holiday away from the region. The residents of Biarritz, Kefalonia, Venice, Faro and Tenerife do not welcome direct flights so that they can visit Bristol. Each of the airport’s 16,000 car park spaces represents a family leaving the South West to spend their money elsewhere.

Interestingly, there are some attempts to mitigate the environmental impact of the airport. BIA will attempt to double the proportion of passengers using public transport to reach the airport, from 8% now to 15% in 2019. In the best case scenario 8,500,000 people would drive to the airport each year. 12 wind turbines would be erected which would resuce the airports CO2 emissions by 48,000 tonnes, leaving only to 948,680 tonnes emitted per year. Finally, there is a suggestion that expanding Bristol will reduce the demand on other airports. This doesn’t really work considering that Heathrow are planning a third runway anyhow.

In conclusion, this is my website and I can write a long rant if I want to. Climate change is the most serious problem facing our civilization; it angers me when airport bosses and Conservative councillors place economic gain ahead of “emotional arguments” about the environment. I am proud of the Development Control committee this week; we have taken positive action now to reduce climate change.

I trust that when Bathwick elected a Liberal Democrat they knew that they were getting an environmentalist!