No to cuts, yes to green investment and jobs, says Winchester Green Party
Winchester Green Party joined the Unison demonstration against HCC job cuts on 24th February, to demand green jobs in Hampshire.
1200 jobs, or 8 per cent of the HCC workforce, is to be cut under the latest Council budget plans. Alison Craig of Winchester Green Party says ‘Nothing but steady deterioration, high unemployment and lost opportunities can be expected from public sector job cuts.’
She went on, ‘Neither the Council nor the Coalition Government has a coherent vision for healthy economic development to give people jobs in the future. The Council’s newly launched service to business (www.investinhampshire.co.uk) beggars belief. In one breath the Council acknowledges the need to reduce climate change emissions, and in the next it does everything it can to promote high-carbon-emission aviation companies such as BAE Systems and the Farnborough Aerospace Consortium (FAC).
‘There must be a consistent strategy that will work’, she says. ‘The Green Party is calling for a clear focus on green, low-carbon jobs, for example in green engineering, renewable energy and public transport. These technologies and industries equip us for a future in which oil availability is diminished, and carbon-emission reduction has become even more imperative.’
NOTES TO EDITORS:
- The new business website recently launched by HCC – www.investinhampshire.co.uk – promotes aviation and defence on one page (industries which increase carbon emissions), and environmental technologies on another page (activities which reduce carbon emissions.)
- HCC is simultaneously planning an ambitious Hampshire-wide programme of public sector climate change emission reductions through: large scale solar photo voltaic (PV) deployment; energy efficiency in public sector buildings; and domestic retrofit and micro-generation throughout the public sector estate, see http://www3.hants.gov.uk/9_dec_outcomes_reportc.pdf
Reductions achieved by this programme would be cancelled out by high-carbon economic development including airport expansion, as also promoted by HCC.
No to Cuts
The cuts to higher education, training, council staff have been brought about because in England we have had to bail out 4 banks, Northern Rock, Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Bradford and Bingley.
For a future program
1 There should be a march to London demanding that banks should pay into a fund to relieve the taxpayer of the burden.
2 Furthermore that there should be a regulator who will have complete power to investigate all the "trades" that bank undertake and to look into any aspect of their business to see if what they are doing has a useful purpose. In rather the same way that Health and Safety Inspectors can investigate a factory.
3 All those bankers who have received "bonuses" in the last 20 years in any bank, should provide evidence of the work they have undertaken and that should be examined to determine it's usefulness and whether it helped to contribute to the world banking crisis. ie was it a bad loan.
4 We must reduce our dependence on "financial services" considering the misery they have caused.
5. We should invest in green technologies so that those items which use a lot of raw materials ie cars, buildings, are built in such a way that they do not use precious raw materials. That is the way forward, not relying on people moving money from A to B and picking something up as it passes.
Rupert Pitt