Simon Jupp is MP for Exmouth and the surrounding area. His constituents have long complained that he failed to oppose the dumping of sewage in their rivers and on their beaches. But he’s not paying attention to their concerns – instead he’s moonlighting as a quiz compère in Seaton! Why? Simon thinks that he’ll lose if he stands in the new Exmouth seat in the general election, so he’s pitching for the new Honiton seat, of which Seaton is a part.
If Simon isn’t prepared to spend his time representing his constituents he should stop claiming his MP’s salary. And people in Seaton should take note – if Simon’s prepared to dump Exmouth because it’s no longer of use to him, he’ll do the same to Seaton if we give him the chance. Remember Hugo Swire? He used to be Seaton’s MP. Then they changed the boundaries and he did the dirty on Seaton’s hospital beds. Thank God we’ve got a decent, devoted MP, the Liberal Democrat Richard Foord, who’s standing for us again. Let’s send Simon back where he belongs
PS What’s the Gateway doing acting as a propaganda tool for failed Tory MPs?
The government is delaying putting into effect new environmental laws forcing developers to improve countryside and wildlife habitats, the BBC has learned.
The delay comes after weeks of political uncertainty on environmental policy, with the government looking to throw out “nutrient neutrality” pollution rules and to water down policy on achieving net zero.
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC), an industry body that promotes sustainable development, said any delayed implementation of BNG would “hurt green businesses and development”.
Richard Benwell, CEO of environmental coalition group Wildlife & Countryside Link, said net gain had “already been pared back to the bare minimum to offset the habitat harm caused by new development”.
He added that a delay “could strike at the foundations” of the scheme.
The Home Builders Federation said developers “have embraced the principle of biodiversity net gain” but that there were “significant gaps” in government guidance.
Neil Jefferson, the federation’s managing director, said that would “not only prohibit local authorities’ abilities to effectively manage this new requirement but inevitably lead to further delays in the planning process”.
“We need government to deliver on its requirements so that industry can provide these huge environmental benefits alongside desperately needed new homes,” he said.
Philip Box, UKGBC’s public affairs and policy advisor, added: “Businesses from across the industry and our membership have raised concerns regarding any potential delay.
“This would be exceptionally damaging for them in terms of projected work pipelines, investment, supply chains, and related job roles.”
As part of planning permission, under the new rules developers will have to agree to delivering a biodiversity gain, on or off site, set at a minimum of 10%.
Habitats and wildlife impacted by development would be given a biodiversity value using a government-developed metric ‘calculator’: from native hedgerows and hay meadows, which support dozens of species and merit a high unit value, down to less habitat-rich cropland, and derelict land, which would be awarded a low value.
Sue Young, head of land use planning for The Wildlife Trusts, said they had wanted any gain to be set at 20% and said any delay now would “cause uncertainty for developers and could affect the quality of schemes”.
“Attempts to delay or weaken rules for biodiversity net gain would deliver yet another hammer blow for nature from the current UK government,” she added.
Georgia Stokes, CEO at Somerset Wildlife Trust, added: “It feels unnecessary for there to be a delay and we’re quite shocked that that’s where we’ve ended up. We need the government to take action.”
Government ‘fully committed’
Meanwhile, the Local Government Association (LGA) has called on government to confirm what funding council planners will be given when BNG finally becomes law.
A survey earlier this month by the Royal Town Planning Institute found more than 60% of public sector planning departments were unable to confirm they would have the necessary resources and expertise in place to deliver the scheme.
Darren Rodwell, environment spokesperson for the LGA said: “Councils are concerned about the impact of further delays on their ability to effectively implement BNG.
“Councils urgently need confirmation of go-live dates, essential guidance and definitions and a clear timetable of funding in order to employ additional staff and invest in the expertise and capacity.”
A spokesman for the government said it had already committed more than £15m to help local councils prepare and recruit new specialists to deliver the scheme.
He added: “We are fully committed to biodiversity net gain which will have benefits for people and nature. We will set out more details on implementation timings shortly.”
Torquay trader Cllr Ras Virdee (Lib Dem, St Marychurch) told Torbay’s full council last week wasn’t surprised to read an article in a national newspaper about the state of trade in the centre of Torquay.
In the piece, one business owner described this summer as the worst in 14 years for business, with the town looking ‘deserted’. Another estimated that without support from the government at least a third of the remaining businesses would shut down in the next 12 months.
In a written question to the full council, Cllr Virdee asked: “In light of this, over six months ago, Torbay Council agreed in the 2023-24 budget for £100,000 to be allocated to introduce a new role within the council to act as a force for positive change in our town centres.
“Can you please explain why no appointment has been made?”
Cllr Chris Lewis (Con, Preston) recruitment had not yet begun as the new Conservative administration on the council took time to identify the specific challenges facing the town centres of Torquay, Paignton and Brixham.
“There is a commitment to ensure that this budget is used to support vibrant and sustainable town centres in Torbay,” he said.
“It’s not about recruitment. It’s about looking to see what the priorities are.
“We are not against having a town centre manager for the bay, but that has not been a priority for us in the midst of a lot of issues we have got in the town centres – anti-social behaviour and a lot of other things we are trying to clear up.
“But it is still on the list of things we have to do.
Most leaders have to wait until after they’ve died for the statues and monuments of them to go up. But all the Trowbridge town council leader, Stewart Palmen, needed to see his likeness in stone was a planning dispute.
An angry builder in the middle of a three-year spat with local authorities has erected a stone gargoyle-like carving of Palmen on a roof in Trowbridge.
The sculpture of Palmen’s face, with his signature half-moon spectacles and the bushy beard he wore in his council photo, shows the council leader sticking out his tongue with a pointed expression in his stone eyes.
Photo Stewart Palmen
The sculpture, which is around a foot tall, sits perched on the corner of the building at the heart of the dispute, looking down a street in central Trowbridge, a parish with the population of just over 37,000.
Palmen suspected that the builder, 71-year-old Michael Thomas, had put up the sculpture “to wind me up”. “But I’m quite proud of it,” Palmen, 61, said. “I live just around the corner so I quite like it.”
The grotesque – a carving of monstrous features with no functional architectural purpose, as opposed to a gargoyle, which is a statue with a spout to convey water away from the sides of a building – went up about three weeks ago after nearly three years of dispute between Thomas and planning authorities.
Thomas had begun work in 2020 to convert the former one-storey pizza shop on Newtown into a three-storey building, telling neighbours that he was turning the shop into a multiple-bedroom house, Palmen said.
But Thomas had not applied for planning permission. Council enforcement asked him to stop work and apply for permission, but his application was rejected because of the size of the project and the fact that it was in a conservation area, Palmen said.
Thomas appealed against the decision but his appeal was rejected, and though he was ordered to return the building to its original state, he instead began work to convert it into two stories.
Thomas returns on 27 October to magistrates court, where he could face a heavy fine.
“He seems to have taken this all very personally and believes that I have set out to stop him from building his project and turned all the neighbours against him,” Palmen said.
Thomas, who could not be reached for comment, told the Wiltshire Times that the council doesn’t “follow the rules”. “They make them up as they go along,” he said. “If council officers are not following the rules, why should I?”
“I am going to carry on building against their order and allow them to take me to court,” Thomas said. “I am not afraid of going to jail, I have been jailed twice before and I’m told that these days they have toilets and televisions so I don’t think that it will be a hardship.”
Depending on what the enforcement team decides at his court date next month, the grotesque could stay up, should Thomas gain planning permission. If it does not, Palmen said he’d like to buy it off of Thomas. “It would be nice in the garden.” he said.
Proposed agricultural building. Land North West Of Scouse Lane Hawkchurch AxminsterRef. No: 23/1802/AGR | Validated: Thu 14 Sep 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision
Threatened by an electoral defeat, what’s a multi-millionaire Prime Minister to do?
Read the letter from Daren Jones, MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury below, spells it out! – Owl
For something that hardly affects anyone, and is in any case paid only after one passes away, inheritance tax appears to hold a strange fascination for the Conservative mind. It is as though there is something in the psyche that refuses to accept the maxim “You can’t take it with you.”
Scrapping inheritance tax is an old favourite, and is often floated when ministers are searching for an eye-catching initiative that could, they believe, help them to win a looming, somewhat difficult, general election. Sometimes, as now, it smacks of desperation.
Taxes on the estate of the deceased are certainly unpopular, if not macabre, and every so often the Tory spin machine will seek to capitalise on this resentment and put out the notion of abolishing the levy, or radically increasing the threshold at which it must be paid. This is indeed happening again now, as Rishi Sunak seeks to create more “dividing lines” between his government and the opposition.
The recent retreat on net zero is another textbook example of this strategy. There was no pressing need to smash the cross-party consensus on climate change; it was merely an attempt to confect a policy contrast for short-term electoral gain. Many more (almost arbitrary) populist policy proposals for the next Tory manifesto will be set out as campaigning gathers pace, and we have no doubt that migration, trans rights, and other “culture war” issues will be ruthlessly exploited. Whatever else, the British general election of 2024 promises to be an unusually dirty and bitter affair.
Perhaps because what used to be called death duties impinge on people’s lives only rarely – a fact that no one is complaining about – inheritance tax is widely misunderstood. Only 3.7 per cent of estates are affected, the equivalent of some 27,000 families in all. Where a couple is involved, the effect of a relatively high basic threshold (£375,000) combined with spousal exemptions means that they can pass on as much as £1m to their descendants entirely tax-free. That threshold should be viewed in the context of the value of the average UK home – £288,000.
There are also additional reliefs applicable to farms and businesses that are passed on; and increasingly, personal pension pots are being used as highly tax-efficient methods of avoiding taxes on bequests.
As ever, the rich can get richer by playing the system – and the super-rich, with access to lawyers and offshore trusts, can get away with paying zero tax. When an individual dies before the age of 75, funds remaining in their pension escape income tax entirely – there is income tax relief when the money is paid into the pension, and no income tax when it is taken out. Furthermore, any funds that remain in someone’s pension when they die (at any age) are not subject to inheritance tax.
In other words, a vast swathe of personal wealth is simply ignored by the state. The present set-up is extremely generous to the descendants of the already wealthy – a group concentrated in London and the South East who, unsurprisingly, tend themselves to be older “baby boomers” as well as Conservative voters.
Abolishing inheritance tax would deprive the Exchequer of some £6bn – one of the smaller tax takes, but a significant one. It seems an odd move when vital infrastructure schemes such as HS2 are being mutilated for a supposed lack of funds.
There’s little reason to think that getting rid of inheritance tax would raise the economic growth rate as effectively as capital investment. It would certainly create an even less equal society, adding in particular to disparities in housing. There is no case for raising the threshold. But some cuts in inheritance tax seem to be on the cards, as far as No 10 is concerned.
This is entirely consonant with the other story doing the rounds in the media, which is that the Conservatives will extend the “triple lock” on increases to the state pension. Once again, this is a measure that benefits the old at the expense of the young, and exacerbates the intergenerational divide that is scarring society.
It is also consistent with the easing of our CO2 emissions targets, which will affect those growing up now rather than their parents and grandparents. “Culture war” issues and Euroscepticism are additional sharp dividing lines, as much between generations as between classes. In this context, it hardly seems surprising that Labour beat the Conservatives by 43 percentage points among 18- to 24-year-olds at the last election (or that Sir Keir Starmer seems quite keen on enfranchising 16- and 17-year-olds).
Mr Sunak seems to be following an undeclared “core vote” strategy, seeking to consolidate the Conservative baseline vote – say about 30 per cent of the electorate – with the hope that an improving economy next year will add a few more percentage points and deprive Labour of a majority.
That may be Mr Sunak’s best hope, realistically, but it also means that he isn’t even trying to reach out to the wider electorate – the young and hard-pressed families who expect to inherit little, if anything, from their elders. Talk of prioritising unfunded tax cuts for the rich, along with significant and indefinite guaranteed increases in the state pension, is also inconsistent with the government’s claim to be pursuing a strategy of fiscal responsibility.
Only a few days ago, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, declared that it would be “virtually impossible” to cut taxes before the election. The country may well wonder why it got rid of Liz Truss for her recklessness a year ago if Mr Sunak, once thought so responsible and fair-minded, is just going to recycle her policies. The prime minister should think again.
Prospective Tory candidate slams DCC record on highway maintenance – no it’s not ultra loyalist Simon Jupp (nor whatshisname for Exmouth and Exeter East)! – Owl
Devon County Council has been warned it is building up huge financial problems for the future by failing to maintain its road network. It’s been urged to make a special bid for Government funding to tackle its backlog of road repairs – or face ‘unmanageably high’ bills in a few years’ time.
Drivers have become highly critical of the poor state of the county’s network of 8,000 miles of road – the largest network in the country. Devon County Council does have the largest road network in England.
The council will invest £66 million in highways and bridge maintenance in 2023/24. But concerns have been raised over the fact some rural roads are ‘dangerous to drive’.
Prospective parliamentary candidate Ian Liddell-Grainger says special efforts must be made to implement a wide-ranging programme of improvements. Mr Liddell-Grainger, who intends to contest the new Tiverton and Minehead parliamentary constituency for the Conservatives, has slammed the Conservative run Devon County Council and said the longer the problem was neglected the more serious would be the eventual outcome.
“From the point of view of road safety alone the county council must start addressing this issue urgently because quite frankly many stretches of Devon’s roads are now dangerous to drive,” he said.
“Tourists arriving from other parts of the country must be horrified to find themselves negotiating fracturing surfaces and massive potholes and although local drivers are probably resigned to all that as a fact of life it doesn’t hide the fact that substandard road surfaces can frequently be a contributory cause of accidents.
“Doing nothing is not an acceptable option. Any road engineer will tell you that if road surfaces are allowed to deteriorate past a certain point they can no longer be patched or repaired, they have to be rebuilt, which is a hugely expensive operation.
“If Devon County Council allows that point to be reached it will clearly be left with unmanageably high bills which are bound to impact massively on what it has available to spend on other services.”
In response, a DCC spokesperson said: “Road maintenance investment is a national issue. The backlog of carriageway repairs in England and Wales has reached £14.02 billion, and in Devon it is over £200 million. The Government’s additional £9.4 million announced at the Spring Budget to help tackle this has been very welcome.
“But given that Devon has 8,000 miles of roads, the largest road network in England, with more than half of these categorised as Unclassified and having evolved over time in rural areas, this only partially addresses the sheer scale of the challenge. These challenges are further compounded by inflation, and more frequent severe weather events.
“Despite these pressures, our Highways and Traffic Management Service has continued to focus on reviewing and improving current working practices to increase efficiency and reduce disruption.
“This has been highlighted in benchmarking data from the National Highway and Transport Network (NHT) which shows us to be an efficient highways authority which strives to squeeze the maximum from our limited resources while also taking a national lead on carbon efficiency.
“We are investing £66 million in highways and bridge maintenance in 2023/24, this includes the additional £9.4 million from Government and a further £500,000 from our own efficiency savings.”
“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue,” Donald Trump
Donald Trump calls Rishi Sunak ‘smart’ for easing climate targets
LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s easing of green policies has won the backing of Donald Trump.
In a post on his Truth Social media account late Saturday, the former U.S. president congratulated Sunak for announcing last week that he is paring back his green pledges.
Sunak has confirmed a major roll-back of several key U.K. green policies, including easing the transition to electric vehicles and shifting a date for a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 until 2035. He also promised there would be more time to transition to heat pumps.
“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue,” Trump wrote.
Trump, who is leading the polls in the contest for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, said the U.S. “keeps rolling merrily along, spending Trillions of Dollars trying to do that which is not doable, while at the same time breathing in the filthy and totally untreated air floating over our once great Country from China, India, Russia, and Parts Unknown.”
Sunak argued last week that continuing with the current climate policies risked “losing the consent of the British people — and the resulting backlash will not just be against specific policies, but against the wider mission itself, meaning we might never achieve our goal.” But Sunak insists he is still committed to reaching net zero by 2050.
Trump added: “Congratulations to Prime Minister Sunak for recognizing this SCAM before it was too late!”
The Liberal Democrats have kicked off their annual conference with a call for people to vote tactically in the general election to remove Conservative MPs, until proportional representation makes this unnecessary.
Gathering in Bournemouth for their first autumn get-together since 2019, a conference rally heard video addresses from Carol Vorderman and Steve Coogan. Neither are party members but they said people should vote in a way to ensure Tory candidates lost.
The Lib Dems have benefited significantly from traditional Labour voters and even disenchanted Conservatives switching their support to overturn big Tory majorities in a string of recent byelections.
Coogan, the actor and comedian, told the rally that while he normally voted Labour, he would switch to the Lib Dems in the marginal Lewes constituency where he lives to try to oust the incumbent Tory, health minister Maria Caulfield.
“I’m not a member of the Lib Dems, and despite the beard and the fleece I generally vote Labour,” Coogan’s video said. “But where I live in Lewes, the candidate best placed to kick the Tories out is the Lib Dem candidate, so I vote for them.”
He backed proportional voting rather than the current method of first past the post, which Coogan called “an electoral system that robs millions of people of their vote”.
Vorderman, the former Countdown co-presenter, already works with a tactical voting website called Stop the Tories.
She told the rally: “We desperately need to end a system where only marginal seats matter, end a system which delivers parliaments that fail to accurately reflect votes cast and end a system where only the winner’s votes count.
“It doesn’t deliver parliaments that properly reflect the will of the nation. It has to change. But how do we get there? Well, in my opinion, the first step is tactical voting.”
The introduction of proportional representation (PR) is a longstanding Lib Dem aim, and one the party is closely associated with. It hopes to use the conference – following three years in which it was scuppered first by Covid and then the Queen’s funeral – to set out more policies before an election very likely next year.
One policy formally adopted on Saturday commits to a doubling of statutory shared parental pay from just over £172 a week to £350, and increasing the amount of time it can be claimed from 37 weeks to 46 weeks.
However, as well as the videos about PR, the conference-opening rally included other trusted Lib Dem favourites, such as criticism of the government’s record on sewage discharged into rivers and the sea.
In another crowd-pleaser, Davey posed with one of the party’s ubiquitous election props – a giant clock with the slogan “Time’s up for Rishi Sunak”, used after the local elections in May.
After nearly 40 years of Thatcherite deregulation and privatisation, the buses in Manchester are back under public control. On Sunday, 50 Bee Network electric buses will take their first journey across Bolton, Wigan and parts of Salford and Bury, with the full rollout across Greater Manchester scheduled to be complete by January 2025.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, should be proud. He faced down his critics, and stood firm against the immense pressure of the private bus operators who challenged his decision but failed to overturn it in the courts. The role of local campaigners Better Buses for Greater Manchester in this result must also be recognised; they clearly made the case for why public control would improve services and put pressure on Burnham to go through with his campaign promise. Thanks to them, the chaos of bus deregulation in the city will finally come to an end.
Greater Manchester was the home of the first ever horse-drawn “omnibus” service. Set up by a tollkeeper in 1824, the service ferried passengers to and from Pendleton and Manchester. The city has seen public ownership and control before. From 1930, there was a patchwork of services across the city, with every council owning a different coloured bus fleet. In 1969 these were streamlined, with the creation of a new transport authority, Selnec, which covered the whole of Greater Manchester with its trademark orange buses.
Then along came Margaret Thatcher. Her 1985 Transport Act led to a mass sale of council-owned bus companies and the start of a free-for-all in how services ran in the city. The quality of vehicles dramatically declined. In the “bus wars” that followed, private companies fought for custom, even racing each other down the street to pick up passengers. One observer described it as “gangster warfare”. Most travellers unsurprisingly simply got the first bus that came along, rather than picking and choosing their favourite bus company, which left competition authorities scratching their heads.
As companies consolidated, Manchester’s privatised buses developed a terrible reputation for being expensive, unreliable and slow. The theory was that deregulation would lead to “new and better services”, but the opposite had happened. Buses became more expensive and more unreliable. Since privatisation, bus fares in the UK as a whole have nearly doubled in real terms since 1987, while 3,000 bus routes were cut in the decade to 2019.
We are all propping up the private operators in this broken system. Public money makes up 40% of bus company revenue, but the public has no control over fares, nor the vast majority of routes and timetables. And 10% of that public money is paid as dividends to bus company shareholders, instead of being reinvested in better services.
The contrast between the capital and the rest of the country is stark. While journeys in London, where bus services are regulated by Transport for London, doubled over the two decades before the pandemic, bus trips outside London halved. The UK lags behind other countries on productivity, and terrible urban transport in major cities outside London is a significant factor.
None of this is inevitable.The public want a better bus system, with one study showing that 57% of motorists would use their car less if bus fares were lower and services more reliable. Other countries show it is possible. Local public transport is 88% publicly owned in Germany, and in Switzerland, every village gets an hourly service thanks to proper funding, public ownership and planning.
And now Manchester is also showing the way. Using new powers from the Bus Services Act 2017, Burnham has introduced London-style regulation with private bus companies now bidding for contracts in a planned network.
Ultimately, we need full public ownership, but public control is still a gamechanger. It means Transport for Greater Manchester has the power to properly plan its Bee Network, with affordable area-wide fares, simple ticketing and a coordinated timetable.
It means that it will be able to redirect surplus profit from busy routes to subsidise less busy but essential buses. Overall cost savings due to lower profit margins can be used to expand the network, or provide better evening and weekend services. Public transport will be cheaper, more frequent, reliable and easy to understand.
A 2021 report on buses by a former UN special rapporteur on human rights found that the UK had “provided a masterclass in how not to run an essential public service”. But the tide is now turning. Thanks to Burnham and the campaigners who made the case, Greater Manchester could provide a blueprint for turning around our broken bus system.
With further campaigns being organised in cities and regions across England to take buses back under public control, and with Wales already planning to regulate its entire bus network, the reversal of Thatcherite deregulation and privatisation is in motion.
Cat Hobbs is the founder of We Own It, an organisation that campaigns for public ownership of public services
The East Devon parish of West Hill is looking to ‘breakaway’ and stand on its own two feet. At present, a joint Neighbourhood Plan exists which covers both the town of Ottery St Mary and the village of West Hill.
But an application has been made to create a new neighbourhood area for the parish area of West Hill only. If approved, it would remove the village from the current joint neighbourhood area.
Documents with the application which has been made to East Devon District Council say that it has been agreed between the two councils that each parish has its own needs and priorities, but that there are areas of mutual interest where it would be advantageous to have some joint working and discussion, e.g. a potential green wedge between Ottery & West Hill.
A statement says: “A joint Ottery St Mary + West Hill Neighbourhood Plan is currently in place. But West Hill Parish Council considers it appropriate to designate a neighbourhood area, focussed on the West Hill Parish Boundary, for the following reasons.
“As it is now over four years since the NP was made, it is timely to consider a review, which can also be in conformity with the emerging Local Plan 2020-2040. A review of the Neighbourhood Plan by West Hill Parish Council has shown that the interests and priorities of the two councils (Ottery St Mary and West Hill) have diverged.
“There are some policies in the NP which are working well and others which could be strengthened and made more specific for West Hill, and some new policies are needed. For these reasons, West Hill Parish Council’s decision is that they wish to re-define the Neighbourhood Plan Area and work on a separate Neighbourhood Plan for West Hill.
“As established during the process of creating the new parish of West Hill, the two settlements have separate and distinct identities and demographics. The priorities for a revised NP are different for the two settlements. It is agreed between the two councils that there will be joint discussions over matters of mutual interest, e.g. the green wedge, and that there may be a need for mirror policies in the two new NPs.
“The proposal to proceed with an NP review was discussed with residents during the consultation event for the Local Plan Review organised by WHPC. Residents were supportive of the proposal to proceed with a separate new NP for West Hill.”
West Hill Parish Council has applied for the whole of the parish to be designated as a new Neighbourhood Area. East Devon District Council is now consulting on this proposal. The closing date for comments is 9am Monday 30th October 2023.
West Hill is currently included in the Ottery St Mary and West Hill joint Neighbourhood Area, which is covered by the ‘made’ Ottery St Mary and West Hill Neighbourhood Plan. If the application is approved, a new Neighbourhood Area would be designated to cover West Hill parish, and the existing Neighbourhood Area would be amended to remove West Hill parish from it. This amended Neighbourhood Area would cover the parished area of Ottery St Mary only. The existing joint Neighbourhood Plan will remain in force across both areas until such time as it is replaced in either or each parish by a new Neighbourhood Plan.
Research by pollsters Survation found support for climate action particularly high in Tory-held constituencies in the southeast of England, where the Tories are facing a series of challenges by the Lib Dems and Labour.
The Tories are predicted to hold just 29 out of 52 seats in the southeast, according to analysis of over 20,000 voters by the firm.
It comes as Mr Sunak jettisoned a long list of net zero pledges, including delaying a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars until 2035, and introducing diluted targets for the phasing out of gas boilers.
He was also widely mocked for axing policies that did not exist – such as theoretical new taxes on meat or “compulsory” car sharing – topics which are often fodder for online disinformation.
In a blow for Mr Sunak, Survation found that the most marginal constituencies in Tory heartland seats overwhelmingly support almost all specific climate policies polled.
In addition, almost three in four of these constituents (72 per cent) said those policies would influence how they voted.
Georgia Whitaker, a climate campaigner at Greenpeace, which commissioned the polling, said: “Voters in the most hotly contested seats are saying that climate change matters to them, and they want bold policies to tackle it.
“But in a desperate attempt to play politics with the climate, Sunak risks haemorrhaging his party’s support in Tory strongholds and key marginals.
“This endless flip-flopping on such vital issues will not only leave people with higher bills and a damaged economy, but it could badly backfire against Sunak’s party at the next election unless the government changes tack.”
Some 85 per cent of voters in the blue wall want the government to provide more financial support to insulate homes, while almost four in five (73 per cent) want more government funding for heat pumps.
And 88 per cent want to see more investment in renewable power, while 79 per cent want rail travel subsidised to ensure it is always cheaper than driving.
Greenpeace has launched a campaign to encourage people to become “climate voters” at the next general election, expected next year.
They want voters to choose candidates who are committed to reducing the UK’s emissions in line with scientific advice and improving nature.
Activists said they were aiming to recruit at least 1 million climate voters and would be knocking on doors across the country but especially in marginal and blue wall areas.
The campaign has received support from high-profile celebrities including Stephen Fry, Olivia Colman, Mel B, Will Poulter and Joe Lycett, who have also put their signature to an open letter alongside 100,000 other people demanding politicians take stronger action on climate.
Actor Peter Capaldi, who is also backing the campaign, said: “It can feel overwhelming when you look at all the crises we are facing, like the cost of living, extreme weather, and pollution choking our rivers and seas.
“But none of this is inevitable and, although we’re clearly already suffering the effects of extreme weather, there’s still time to change direction.
“I stand with people all over the country who are demanding climate action for our NHS, our economy and our planet. A safer, healthier future for all is within our grasp if politicians can be bold and brave enough to deliver it.
“It’s up to us to demand that our political leaders listen, and deliver on what the country and our children deserve.”
The number of people in hospital has gone up. Google searches have doubled in a month and booster vaccines have been brought forward because of a new variant. It might all feel a bit 2021. But – these days – how much do we really need to worry about Covid?
Marjorie from Pembrokeshire had gone through the whole pandemic without catching the virus – until this month.
“I thought I had natural immunity,” she says.
“But I caught it from my granddaughter who had the same symptoms as mine.”
In her case, that meant a headache, muscle pain and a loss of smell and taste.
“I just didn’t realise I would feel so weak and lethargic,” she adds.
How many people – like Marjorie – are catching Covid this autumn is impossible to know for sure.
All those drive-in testing sites are long closed and those free boxes of lateral flow tests probably dried up months ago.
The Office for National Statistics infection survey, which used to test a random sample of the population, was scrapped back in March.
But we do still record the number of people who test positive in hospital across the whole UK, and that figure has been creeping up since the summer.
“What does it tell me about the virus? It tells me it’s spreading and it tells me it still has the ability to make people very unwell,” says Stuart McDonald, an actuary at the consultants LCP, who has studied the data closely since the start of the pandemic.
On 17 September, 3,019 hospital beds in England were taken up by someone with Covid. That number has tripled since July, but dipped last week, and is just a fraction of the 33,000 seen at the peak of the second wave in 2021.
About a third of those patients were being treated mainly for the disease, with most testing positive after they were admitted for another reason.
Why do some people get infected?
Hospital trends give us a very rough idea of how much virus is around and whether infection levels are rising or falling.
How likely we are to catch it, and how sick we get, then depends on a mix of complex factors – from genetics and age, to lifestyle and the environment in which we live.
Research published in the journal Nature this year suggests about 10% of the population carry a gene which allows them to identify and eliminate the virus before they even start to develop tell-tale symptoms like a cough, sore throat or fever.
Covid immunity in the UK
93%aged 12+ have received at least one vaccine
82%infected at least once by Nov 2022
Source: NHS Digital, ONS
We have all built up different levels of immunity over the last four years depending on our vaccine record and contact with the disease.
“There’s probably no two people in the country whose history of vaccinations and Covid exposure are alike,” says Mr McDonald.
“So I think it’s more difficult to predict what will come next than it has been at any previous point.”
That immunity starts to fall soon after an infection or a vaccine. This is where the virus differs from measles or polio, for example, where jabs in childhood can protect you for life.
Protection against catching Covid is likely to last just a few months – at best – although data shows protection against severe disease is more long-lasting.
In part that is because the virus itself is constantly changing.
Previous waves have been driven by different forms – or variants – which have undergone multiple genetic changes.
Those mutations can alter the virus’s behaviour – making it spread faster, for example.
But crucially they might also make it harder for our immune systems, which have been primed to respond to those older versions, to recognise and fight off.
In late 2021, the Omicron variant did just that and infected millions, although that wave did not lead to a huge spike in hospitalisations and deaths.
“Being exposed to the virus, either through vaccination, infection or a combination of both, is undoubtedly reducing the severity of disease when we get it,” says Alex Richter, a professor of clinical immunology at the University of Birmingham.
More recently we have seen a series of smaller waves driven by close relatives – or subvariants – of Omicron.
BA.2.86 Covid variant
18countries with confirmed cases
54cases detected in the UK
28infections at Norfolk case home
0residents needed hospital treatment for Covid
Source: GISAID, UKHSA, PHS
In August 2023, scientists around the world started tracking the spread of yet another version with a large number of mutations.
But the new jabs are only available to people over 65 years old – it was the over-50s last year – and those with certain health conditions. That is a tactical decision, says Dr Adam Finn, professor of paediatrics at the University of Bristol.
He explained: “When younger people who’ve already had infections and vaccines get Covid [again], they get a cold and a cough and might be off work for a few days.
“There’s no real value in investing a lot of time and effort immunising them again when there are so many other things for the health service to be doing.”
The reality is then that most under-65s will now end up boosting their immunity not through vaccination, but through catching Covid many times.
How worried should we be?
Prof Richter says it is now time to start thinking of Covid more like flu, where new forms of the disease, some worse than others, appear every year and new vaccines are rolled out for the latest winter strain.
Covid will still be a problem for the most vulnerable, she adds, and hospitals, which will still need to deal with new infection waves.
“We have bad flu years and good flu years,” she says.
“There’s a good chance that once every four or five years, we’re going to have a bad dose [of Covid] and we are going to need to go to bed for a few days, otherwise most of the time, for most of us, I think it will be OK.”
Every dose of the virus is not completely without danger, even for the healthy, with some research suggesting an increased risk of long-Covid symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breathe and brain fog.
But – in general – Prof Finn says each new infection should feel milder with the length of time you are sick reduced.
“Each time you catch it, your immunity gets stronger and broader,” he adds.
Sam, an IT worker from north London, managed to pick up infection number three on a trip to Turkey with her family this month.
“The first time was really horrible, the second time it felt like flu, but by the third time I didn’t really think about it,” she says.
“I just had a stinker of a cold and was all bunged up.”
This is maybe what scientists meant when, at the very start of the pandemic, we were told that, one day, we would have to learn to live with Covid.
The virus is not going away.
But perhaps it is starting to become part of the background to our everyday lives.
It comes after Rishi Sunak scrapped energy efficiency regulations for landlords in an overhaul of green policies.
The taskforce was set up in March to speed up home insulation and boiler upgrades.
Improving energy efficiency is seen as a key way to get household bills down and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
The UK is often described as having some of the oldest and least energy efficient housing in Europe.
In 2020, BBC research found 12 million UK homes were rated D or below on their Energy Performance Certificates, which means they do not meet long-term energy efficiency targets.
This year a BBC investigation found six out of 10 recently inspected UK rental homes failed to meet a proposed new standard for energy efficiency.
The prime minister has now pledged to scrap policies that would force landlords to upgrade energy efficiency in their homes, after pressure from landlords about the costs of doing so, but said the government would “encourage” households to carry out the work.
‘Accelerating insulation’
The old policy was that from 2025, new tenancies would only be possible on properties with an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of C or higher – from 2028, this would apply to existing tenancies as well. Both have been scrapped.
The government’s energy efficiency taskforce was first announced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt at his last Autumn statement.
It was asked by ministers to come up with a plan to reduce energy demand by 15% from 2021 levels by 2030 across domestic and commercial buildings.
When it was announced, the government said this would cut bills and help push down inflation and would include “accelerating household insulation and boiler upgrades.”
It was chaired by Alison Rose, who was chief executive of Nat West bank at the time (she was forced out of the bank in July after a row over Nigel Farage’s bank account).
‘Another U-turn’
The taskforce’s membership included: the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission Sir John Armitt; head of leading housebuilder Barratt Developments, David Thomas; and leading experts from the University of Salford, the UK Green Building Council and National Energy Action.
Energy efficiency minister Lord Callanan wrote to members of the group on Friday saying co-chair Dame Alison Rose would not be replaced and the group would be dissolved.
In the letter, seen by the BBC, Lord Callanan says the group’s work would be “streamlined” into ongoing government activity.
The minister writes that the ideas and discussions that had come from the group had been “hugely valuable in supporting the ambition to reduce total UK energy demand by 15% from 2021 levels by 2030.”
He adds that the work to date had not been “wasted” and that “draft recommendations will be instrumental in driving forward this important agenda.”
In response, energy analyst Jess Ralston at the non-profit organisation, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, told the BBC: “This appears to be yet another U-turn that could lead to higher bills, just like the prime minister’s decision last week to roll back landlord insulation standards that could leave renters paying an additional £8bn on energy bills.
“The gas boiler and petrol car phase-out weren’t set to have any impact on cost of living for struggling families for more than a decade, but insulation programmes could have a more immediate impact, yet the prime minister ditched that policy last week and now the government seems to be turning its back on experts and ideas that could help boost energy efficiency.”
She added: “Is government giving up on energy efficiency and those living in leaky homes unable to make the improvements that would keep them warmer?
“Experts like Citizen’s Advice are clear if you want to bring down bills you do energy efficiency, you help people to stop wasting heat through rooves, windows and walls.”
The group also said the government “could have easily replaced Alison Rose, there are lots of business people who feel they have a stake in how homes can be improved.”
Scientists have written to Rishi Sunak asking him to stop “politicising” and attacking the Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent body that exists to advise the government on five-year “carbon budgets” necessary to meet its 2050 target.
This week Sunak spoke about his plans to weaken his government’s environmental policies. When asked about comments from Chris Stark, the chief executive of the CCC, saying that the government would not hit the carbon budget with its current plans, Sunak replied: “I am very happy to get opinions and advice from everybody, and everyone’s entitled to their view.”
He added: “For those who disagree with me … the question’s for them – they should explain to the country why they think it’s right that ordinary families up and down the country should fork out five, 10, £15,000? … I don’t think they need to, and if someone disagrees then they should explain why.”
Subsequently Conservative headquarters wrote to journalists outlining measures from the CCC and asking them to demand that the Labour party reveal whether it would adopt them in government.
Bob Ward, the director of communications at the Grantham Institute for Climate at Imperial College, said in a letter to Sunak, seen by the Guardian: “My primary concern is a document that was circulated to journalists by Conservative campaign headquarters after your speech, which attempted to politicise the advice of the Climate Change Committee.
“Although this document was described as ‘Questions to Labour on Net Zero’, it included a section on ‘New measures which the CCC has said would need to be introduced …’ It cited issues described as ‘road taxes’, ‘flight taxes’ and ‘diet change’.”
Ward continued in his letter: “While your government is perfectly entitled not to accept advice from the committee, it is extremely unhelpful to politicise its role and its advice in this way. I hope that you will find an opportunity to acknowledge this mistake and to reaffirm the importance of the committee offering robust and rigorous independent advice on compliance with the Climate Change Act.”
Prof Martin Siegert, a co-director of the Grantham Institute, said this was a “cynical move” to openly add criticism to the body that offered independent advice, adding: “I have listened with concern in recent days. The PM’s focus, and those of cabinet and other ministers and members of government, on claiming the CCC is recommending policies that are unaffordable to the general public. They are clearly not government policy, and can only become policy under this government. When asked where these ideas came from, the response has been that the CCC recommended them.”
The government is in charge of appointing the new chair of the committee, and there are fears among the scientific community that Sunak will choose someone who allows him to weaken the next carbon budgets, or that the prime minister will stoke public distaste for the committee in order to change the carbon budgets in parliament.
A spokesperson from No 10 responded by sending comments Sunak made to broadcasters earlier in the week in which he said: “Lots of people will have lots of different views on this. We’ve been through the numbers. we’re confident that we are on track to deliver all our targets. And I would point out people have predicted we would miss our carbon budgets in the past, but we’ve actually met every single one of them.”
Alastair Campbell took to Budleigh Salterton waters anyway
Former New Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who’s a marathon runner and cold water swimmer, was warned off taking to the sea off Budleigh Salterton when he appeared at the town’s literary festival this week.
Mr Campbell, who was in Budleigh to promote his latest book, But What Can I Do? ignored the words of foreboding, to take a dip nonetheless.
Speaking to the festival media sponsor Radio Exe, Mr Campbell lamented the state of much of the country’s infrastructure, which he claims began under former prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne’s ‘austerity’ programme.
He said it was so remarkable that the two trains he took to reach Devon were on time, he sent a message home to tell his family he “didn’t quite believe it…it’s a bit of a shock” and suggesting that’s indicative of the low standards many people now expect.
He continued: “Even going down to swim in the sea today, people were going ‘ooh, you’ve got to watch out for the sewage.’ And I’m thinking, ‘You come to a beautiful place by the seaside and you’ve really got to worry about whether there’s brown stuff floating alongside you as you swim. And they [the Tories] have allowed this to happen.”
Go to www.radioexe.co.uk to listen to Alastair Campbell’s full interview with Radio Exe (approx 6 mins)
The real story behind PM’s claim that he has scrapped a government diktat to sort your rubbish into seven different bins is revealed.
An EDDC source looks for the origins of the “seven bin” myth.
After deconstructing the semantic difference between “Consistency in Collections” and “Simpler Recycling”, and pouring over statements from DEFRA clarifying Rishi’s speech, it seems to come from no less an authority than the Daily Mail.
Every local authority has been awaiting 3 years now for a ministerial decision on how to go forward with critical key aspects of the Environment Act 2021 on recycling.
Maybe they will have to wait even longer to find out whether Rishi wants to sift through the rubbish and find more “diktats” to scrap. Some of them carry cost implications! – Owl
What’s the real story of the Prime Minister’s 7 Bins?
There is a lot of publicity regarding a change in Government Policy on Recycling and Waste.
Present policy and clarification after PM’s speech
The present policy that local authorities such our own East Devon District Council (EDDC) need to comply with is.
Officers and Councillors have gone through the follow up statements from DEFRA after Wednesdays 20.09.2023 speech by the PM but cannot find any changes or clarifications.
The only difference that was spotted is that “Consistency in Collections” now becomes ‘Simpler Recycling’. (Just a change in title but unfortunately no details on what it means.)
There are some assurances that there will be no top-down dictated requirements and that Local Authorities will continue to have local decision making on recycling systems as long as they collect the “mandatory materials” which EDDC do. (So basically, it seems there isn’t any change)
What is the origin of the reference to seven bins?
But the question remains where this mythical “seven bins” come from? The only reference seems to have come from a recent ridiculous Daily Mail story, but a spokesman for East Devon District Council says that in numerous meetings in the last 3 years the idea of 7 bins was never an agenda item with DEFRA. If it had, the spokesperson for the Authority said they would have obviously strongly objected to this unworkable and totally impractical change in householder and operational practices!
Do we have clarity on helping reduce household waste?
So where are we with Government changes to the Recycling and Waste Policies? Are we any clearer on the direction of travel that this Government wants us to travel down, to help reduce household waste? We were told that the Prime Minister was going to make an “enormous announcement on Climate Change” and a substantial part of improving carbon emissions is how we deal with our waste.
Unfortunately, the only information provided was that we will not all be forced to have 7 bins!! Which wasn’t a consideration anyway!!
Every local authority has been awaiting 3 years now for a ministerial decision on how we go forward with critical key aspects of the Environment Act 2021. Only this Tuesday (the day before the PMs announcement) it was reported that the Environment Secretary will release more information ‘soon’ on the key changes required within the Environment Act 2021, including:
Extended Producer Responsibility (Waste packaging producers paying for collections.)
This massive shift in government thinking will change the way Recycling and Waste will be financed. Rather than the funding from Council Tax and Government subsidy the funding will partly come from the packaging companies.
The theory is the makers of the packaging will pay a fee to a new (yet to be set up) Authority to administer the payments to be paid to each Council to cover some of the cost of collecting and processing.
Deposit Return Scheme (on bottles and cans) The latest news on this will be only on plastic drink bottles over 49mm to 3Lte and drink cans which will have a deposit amount of probably 20p. Glass bottles will now not be included. To claim your deposit back you will be required to return it to your retail outlet who will refund it over the counter or a return vending machine. This in theory will remove the majority of plastic and cans from curb-side collections, and the retail companies will be required to handle the returned bottles and cans and send them for processing for recycling.
Consistency in Collections (now called “Simpler Recycling”) In East Devon we are processing all the materials required by the act, but it is expected that light plastic rapping will be included later. The only outstanding issue that early discussions included was a free Garden Waste bin for every household. At present East Devon provide the service at £50 per year for a 2 weekly collection that makes a small provide which goes towards funding the general recycling costs for the district.
These new initiatives are still in development by DEFRA with implementation originally planned for next year, but now moved to Oct 2025 (but this is now looking very unlikely!!)
It had been expected that the Prime Minister would have provided clarity on these vitally important changes, but no! the only news was we will not be required to have 7 bins!!
East Devon’s Recycling and Waste operations are considered one of the best in the country, but the unending uncertainty is making it very difficult to forward plan the strategy and council finances. An extension to the current business partnership with Suez is now being finalised, but a new contract must be agreed and actioned by the summer of 2026 (less than 3 years away!) In that time the changes that the Government require needs to be embedded and in operation to provide an understanding of the physical and monetary changes, plus the added budgetary plans to decarbonise the 60 vehicles with the probable electrification of the whole fleet.
18 Sandoe Way Exeter Devon EX1 3WJRef. No: 23/1970/FUL | Validated: Thu 14 Sep 2023 | Status: Awaiting decision
East Devon Watch 