It's a funny old game (2)

It's been a long run in to the local council elections 2008, which started the day after the 2007 elections with recriminations over the rejected ballots. Over the past few weeks the BNP carpet-bombing of the letters page of the Gazette and the Independent Alliance stunts in the council chamber illustrated that things were heating up.

However, election season doesn't really start until we start seeing election leaflets hitting doormats. Well, I got my first one today, from the Labour candidate for the Harton Ward Neil Maxwell. It seems Maxwell is following Rob Dix's successful campaign tactic from last year: "slag off the Progressives".

The leaflet slams the Progressives as "lazy", and accuses them of refusing to support Rob Dix. Perhaps this is an example of the "Punch and Judy politics" that David Potts finds so distasteful.

I've some disagreements with Progressive Jim Capstick, but his work output hasn't been one of them.

I only hope that the Progressives don't stoop to Maxwell's level.

The con-sultation trap

Curly's Corner Shop recently remarked on the waste of time that is the Downing Street e-petition website, and I agree. Most petitions are just a protest on paper, carry little weight and are easy to ignore. Perhaps reasonably so - they only represent the feelings of the core constituency affected by the issue at hand, and those people who could be bothered to put their name to paper and/or wish to show some solidarity with the petitioners' cause. As long as it doesn't take too much of the signatory's time of course.

Some consultations rely on this kind of apathy, and quite often you can tell by the questions asked which way the authors of the consultation want things to go. So it was with the consultation for the South Tyne and Wear Waste Management Partnership strategy. Some campaigners saw the pointed manipulation that was designed into the consultation response questionnaire so instead formed their own responses.

The consultation document asked things like whether ‘obtaining benefit from rubbish by modern treatment facilities’ was a good idea - but didn't state what ‘modern treatment facilities’ people would be supporting. Hence the interpretation of the results to the consultation assumes that respondents would be happy with any ‘modern treatment facilities’ - irrespective of cost - financial or environmental.

Today's meeting of the exclusively Labour cabinet of South Tyneside Council will discuss/rubber stamp the future of the waste strategy, drawing on the interpretation of results of the recent consultation. The review of responses to the consultation holds no surprises for those with some experience of consultations.

But I suppose at least the council appeared to attempt some level of openness.

Now we discover that the councils which are part of the partnership - South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland, are trying to keep us all in the dark about what is really being planned.

Initially, there were nine treatment options to deal with residual waste, but this has recently narrowed to three options:

Mechanical biological treatment (MBT) of waste through aerobic digestion
A combination of mechanical recovery of recyclable materials with a biological treatment to produce a soil conditioner/compost.

Autoclaving
Recovery of recyclable materials, sterilising biological waste and producing a material that can be used as a refuse derived fuel (RDF or secondary incineration).

Energy from Waste with Combined Heat and Power
Recovering recyclable materials before burning the residual waste to generate energy in the form of electricity and/or heat (otherwise known as incineration - and Councillor Capstick's preferred option).

It's assumed that one of these options will be put forward as part of a PFI project.

A reasonable assumption, because in July 2007, DEFRA approved the initial ‘expression of interest’ for a PFI bid for cash to build a mega waste facility somewhere in the South Tyne area. The expression of interest was originally submitted by the Partnership to DEFRA in March 2007.

Remember, this was all before the consultation ended in August. So it would be nice to know what type of treatment infrastructure was in the expression of interest.

Back in September local waste campaign group BAN Waste asked DEFRA what type of waste treatment infrastructure was being proposed as part of the PFI bid. After six weeks of wrangling DEFRA refused to grant a Freedom of Information request, on the grounds that "the councils involved do not wish this type of information to be made public".

Wow. It's worth saying that again.

"the councils involved do not wish this type of information to be made public."

That's right - our councils want to keep us all in the dark about a policy which will affect us and our children for at least the next thirty years.

What are they concealing?

Burning ambitions

South Tyneside Council has launched it's consultation process covering the new Draft Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy which will take us to 2020. Among the commonsense "three R's" (reduce, reuse, recycle) proposals, the council is raising the subject of incineration.

South Tyneside Council has entered into a partnership agreement with Gateshead and Sunderland councils to establish the new waste strategy.

Incineration is proposed as one of the possible methods of disposal for the waste which we cannot (or we can't be bothered to) recover. Since the terms 'incineration' and 'burning' aren't easy to sell, the process comes under the wizzy euphemism of "Energy from Waste" (EfW) or "energy recovery".

If incineration is selected there's a rumour that the preferred site is on the site of the former incinerator at Wrekenton, on the border between Gateshead and Sunderland, although it should be noted there is no official documentation supporting this.

So soon after seeing off the industrial park on the green belt at Fellgate, and the rehabilitation of the Monkton cokeworks site it seems that residents in that part of South Tyneside may be faced with another dark environmental cloud. Not to mention the people in the Wrekenton area who thought they'd seen the last of local waste incineration.

Dioxins are a pretty nasty bunch

Incinerators release dioxins and heavy metals, which can cause cancer, birth defects and endometriosis.

The rise of endometriosis – a painful condition possibly afflicting as many as ten per cent of British women – is linked to emissions of dioxins. British mothers carry in their breast milk levels of dioxins which significantly exceed the World Health Organisation’s recommended “tolerable daily intake”, partly due to the widespread incineration of hazardous waste.

Studies have repeatedly linked dioxins to both breast and testicular cancers.

A study by the US Environmental Protection Agency suggested that as many as 7 per cent of all cancers are caused by dioxins, mostly from incinerators.

Progressives - the crazy bunch?

At the East Shields CAF meeting on the 5th July Progressive Councillor and Progressive Party leader Jim Capstick nailed his colours firmly to EfW (yes, that's incineration) as his party's preferred method of disposal for the waste designated as 'unrecoverable'. The Draft Waste Strategy concedes that incineration "will generate additional hazardous waste".

Quite why his party is called 'progressive' is odd. They have lent their support to a practice which will damage the environment and will precipitate a new crisis in public health. The victims will be among the poor and the young. In my understanding this is about as far from progress as you can get.

Capstick and Dix, slapstick tricks

The election season for the Harton ward has well and truly started now, with Councillor Jim Capstick in Friday 2nd February's Gazette pleading for independent candidates not to stand against the 'anti-Labour' candidates (read Progressives). He asserted that it's the "public wish" that anti-Labour voters are unified. I've got no particular beef against the Progressives and I think Coun Capstick is a worthy councillor, but I don't remember being asked about this anti-Labour unification. And isn't asking potential candidates not to stand for election in support of their principles just to allow the Progressives defeat Labour a wee bit cynical?

That's politics I suppose.

Labour's local publicity attack has also now got into gear, with former councillor Rob Dix's pamphlet hitting my mat today. The leaflet is a slick multi-colour glossy piece which spends plenty of space berating the Progressives for not communicating with local residents. He also manages some time for that old local election chestnut, the "strong voice".

The leaflet doesn't appear to be printed on recycled paper, which is further evidence that our borough's councillors still need to learn the meaning of 'sustainability'.

Under the witty title "Delivering for South Shields", postman Mr Dix allows the Labour council to claim credit for "The multistorey car park site will be demolished in February and should be completed in less than three months." Perhaps it was shortage of leaflet space that caused Mr Dix to fail to add how long said eyesore has been permitted to crumble?

In his leaflet, Mr Dix humbly informed us that at the last local elections "I came within 18 votes of regaining my Council seat" and also asked mischievously "when was the last time the Progressives...delivered an environmental improvement for your community?" I was somehow under the impression that this was a Labour dominated council, so surely the question should be pointed to his chums in the cabinet? No doubt the Progressives will respond to Rob Dix's claims.

With the likelihood that Progressive and Labour will be publicly pieing each other in the months to come, what have other prospective candidates got to lose by trying to slip through them with good old fashioned ideology and principles?

And, of course, a strong local voice.