More Good News For Belsize

My colleague Arthur has been working with local residents to bring more food stalls to the Swiss Cottage Market outside Hampstead Theatre. This Sunday, from 10am till 2pm, the Essex Farmers Market Group will be open for business. Please come and see what they have to offer and support our local market.

Arthur has also persuaded the National Grid, who have been digging up Belsize Village for weeks, to pay for Xmas Lights in the Village.

Meanwhile I had a meeting recently with regional managers from Tesco and they have agreed to look at stopping deliveries to their England’s Lane store between 08:00 and 09:30 when the road is often completely snarled up, reducing the frequency of deliveries and reducing the size of trucks. In addition they have agreed to work with me as Camden Eco Champion on ways to make their Camden stores more environmentally friendly.

Finally, good news for any of you that have, like me, tried to swim in Swiss Cottage Leisure Centre pool on a Saturday or Sunday lunchtime and found it closed for half an hour while staff remove the lane markers. This crazy practice should end in January.

An apology

For anyone who is a regular reader of this blog (my mum and the Labour front bench), you will have noticed that sometimes I sail somewhat close to the wind. I do not set out to deliberately malign anyone in a malicious manner but I can appreciate that it may sometimes seem thus.

In my most recent but one blog posting, I came close to slandering a fellow councillor. I would like to take the opportunity to apologies fully for this. It was inexcusable and something I shall have to bear in mind to a far greater degree when posting future offerings.

My position as Chair of the Audit Committee, and panel member of various other committee's bestows upon me a degree of responsibility that may make any off hand comments I make here, reflect badly upon the work of the council and the efforts of my fellow councillors. I would like to take the opportunity to say sorry if I have crossed the line recently.

Arthur

Climate March

Lib Dems on the recent Climate March in London: Ten Things You Can Do To Green Your World:

1) Try to buy local, seasonal, organic fresh food whenever you can. If you use a supermarket, don’t buy fresh food that has been flown in from overseas because carbon emissions from aeroplanes are a big problem. Best of all, sign up for an organic box distribution scheme like Abel & Cole (http://www.abel-cole.co.uk/) or Riverford Farm (www.riverford.co.uk).
2) Try to refuse plastic bags and surplus packaging in shops. Keep your spare plastic bags by the front door and take some with you when you go shopping.
3) Switch to a renewable energy provider like Good Energy (http://www.good-energy.co.uk/) or Ecotricity (www.ecotricity.co.uk)
4) Buy a subsidised compost bin from Camden Council (call 0845 130 6090) and compost your garden and kitchen waste. If you don’t have a garden, buy a wormery to transform your kitchen waste into compost (www.greengardener.co.uk/worms.htm)
5) Pay an environmental charity like Climate Care (http://www.climatecare.org/) to offset the carbon for any flights you take. They will invest in environmentally friendly projects around the world. Of course, taking fewer flights would help even more.
6) Buy a £30 grey water diverter to water your garden during a drought (www.green-shopping.co.uk/reviews/reviews49.html).
7) Stop buying milk in tetrapacks (which can't be recycled) and plastic bottles (which are expensive to recycle) and sign up with your local milkman who can deliver organic milk in a glass bottle. (Terry the milkman delivers to Belsize and surrounding areas: 07960 856181)
8) Change the light bulbs in your house to energy-saving light bulbs and always switch off electrical appliances rather than leave them in standby mode eg televisions, mobile phone chargers, computers etc.
9) Try to carry a travel mug or a plastic water bottle with you so that you don’t need to use disposable coffee cups or buy additional bottles of water.
10) Take your friends to see Al Gore’s film on Climate Change “An Inconvenient Truth”.