Leith MSP Malcolm Chisholm praises city coalition deal

Stewart Lochhead from Three Men In A Blog recently posted this audio interview with Leith MSP Malcolm Chisholm to Soundcloud. In the interview they discuss the new Labour/SNP coalition deal at the City Chambers.

Whilst the chairs are still being shuffled on the Royal Mile, it looks as though Leith councillors are set to take up some key roles in the new administration.

Leith Walk councillor Deidre Brock is lined up to become Deputy Provost, after serving as Convenor of Culture and Leisure in the previous administration. In the same ward Labour Councillor Angela Blacklock is set to become vice-convenor of the Regulatory Committee according to the Edinburgh Labour website, whilst her party colleague in the Leith Ward, Gordon Munro, is lined up for the vice-convernorship of the Economic Development Committee.  

You can read the Labour and SNP coalition agreement in full below: 

A New Contract With the Capital

Leithers will be interested to note that one of the more specific pledges in the document is a commitment to oppose commercial biomass plants. This will give some comfort to No Leith Biomass campaigners, who remain concerned that Forth Energy will return with a new proposal for another large biomass power plant on the docks. 

Labour and Greens gain in Leith Wards

The LibDems have lost both their seats in Leith, following a local election which saw them reduced from the largest group on the council to the smallest - with just three councillors city wide. None of the three remaining LibDems are in Leith or Leith Walk.  

The Leith Neighbourhood Partnership, which is comprised of both Leith and Leith Walk wards saw anti-cuts activist Nick Gardner get himself elected in Leith Walk Ward, whilst Chas Booth got elected for the Greens in Leith.

Both had been supporters of the Splashback campaign to re-open Leith Waterworld.   

The SNP had hoped to get two people elected in both Leith Walk and Leith Wards. In the event, only Deidre Brock was returned in Leith Walk, whilst, in one of the big surprises of the contest, the incumbent Rob Munn lost his seat in Leith Walk.

Instead, voters opted to give more of their votes to his younger party colleague, and Adam McVey.

This may have been because he was first on the ballot paper, because of the 'Leith Water World factor' or because of bad "voter management" by the SNP who were the only party confident enough to stand two candidates in the Leith Ward.  Most probably it was a combination of all of these things.

Either way, on learning of his election McVey said:

The worst kind of win for me personally. But I'll do my best to fill the enormous void left by 1 of our party's brightest stars @robm2

— Adam McVey (@adamrmcvey) May 4, 2012

Whilst he represented Leith Ward, Rob Munn clearly took his work seriously and was always very helpful in resolving local issues that Greener Leith raised. Indeed, re-elected Leith Walk Councillor Maggie Chapman was quick to post her thoughts on the result on Twitter as well: 

@robm2 Really sorry not to have you in Leith ward, Rob! We've lost a really good local cllr - I'll certainly miss you!

— Cllr Maggie Chapman (@MaggieEdinburgh) May 4, 2012

Rob Munn has let it be known that he's likely to disappear from public life for a bit - primarily on account of the fact that he needs to find a job.

So your new councillors are as follows:

Leith Walk

• Angela Blacklock - Labour 
• Deidre Brock - SNP
• Maggie Chapman - Green
• Nick Gardner - Labour

You can find detailed results on this page on the City of Edinburgh council website.

Leith 

• Chas Booth - Green
• Adam McVey - SNP
• Gordon Munro - Labour

You can find detailed results on this page on the City of Edinburgh council website.

 The Leith Neighbourhood Partnership system brings councillors from both Leith Walk Ward and Leith Ward together with other representatives to make some local decisions. There's a chance it will see a bit of a shake up under the new administration, but for the foreseable future it is likely to continue. 

Indeed, given that Labour and the Greens gave commitments to devolve power away from the city chamber we can expect, if anything, that the Neighbourhood Partnerships will be strengthed, not weakened over the course of this administration. 

The Leith Neighbourhood Partnership is regarded as one of the more successful ones in the city, and this in large part is due to the fact that no one  political party could dominate the discussions. The fact that the Leith Neighbourhood Partnership has gone from a four party body to a three party body may be concerning in this sense, but if you look at the balance of power - locals may take some comfort from the fact that no single party has a majority.

This means they'll still need to work together at a local level.

 

Leith Ward Hustings - Quiz your local candidates

On May the 3rd, we'll all be asked to go back to the polls to elect a new clutch of local councillors to represent Leith in the City of Edinburgh Council.

The voting system used to elect councillors to the City of Edinburgh Council is Single Transferable Vote.(STV)

There are three seats up for grabs in Leith Ward whilst the Leith Walk ward returns four councillors.

Leith Links Community Council are organising a hustings event for Leith Ward on the 29th March at 7pm in the Leith Kirkgate Community Centre.

Hustings events give local residents a chance to put their questions directly to local candidates and compare how they would deal with local issues.

In an STV vote, where it isn't just your top priority that can make a difference to who ends up in the city chambers speaking on your behalf - your second, third and fourth choices can also affect who is elected - we think these meetings are particularly important.

Leith Hustings Poster

Please print out this poster if you can and stick in your local shop window or community centre.Failing that - please share this post far and wide on social media if you can.

In the Leith Ward we know the following people (in alphabetical order) have been confirmed as candidates:

Chas Booth - Green Party

Adam McVey - SNP

Rob Munn - SNP

Gordon Munro - Labour

Nicola Ross - Conservative

Marjorie Thomas - Liberal Democrat

Will the SNP get two candidates elected from Leith? And if they do, who will get squeezed out? The election speculation has already started. Here's what Edinburgh blogger, 'Liberal Sell Out' who is of unknown political persuasion, had to say about the upcoming battle for Leith ward:

"Leith (2007 result: 1 SNP, 1 Labour, 1 Lib Dem)

The SNP comfortably elected Rob Munn in the first round last time and on the back of support swelling in the Holyrood elections are now standing two candidates. Labour on the other hand are rowing back, standing just the sitting councillor Gordon Munro having opted for two in 07. This is wise of Labour with Munro only being elected in the seventh round previously and with all that Lib Dem support up in the air standing two would risk losing both.

But the reason this is interesting is Leith will be a barometer for how teflon-like the local SNP are. Heavily implicated in the trams debacle, and the continuing furore over Leith Water World the transfers from Munn may not be as perfect as they’d like. The Lib Dems haemorrhaged their vote in the not perfect comparison of Holyrood so the third seat could see the Greens gain should they trump the rump of Lib Dems that continue to place a ’1′ by their badge."

And for Greener Leith readers who don't live in the Leith Ward, and are wondering if you're going to get a similar chance to quiz the council hopefuls for Leith Walk Ward - we understand The Spurtle are in the process of organising a hustings event for that ward.

Date, time and venue for that hustings event still to be confirmed at the time we wrote this.

Leith Waterworld campaigners release film calling on locals to play politics

Leith Waterworld may have closed but the local campaign group has not given up. Hundreds of people have already viewed this video clip which was made by local resident Jon Pullman.

The man with the big brown hat in the video clip is Nick Gardner who is standing as a Labour candidate at the next election in the Leith Walk ward.

Readers of this blog will be interested to know that neither of his party colleagues who represent the area on the council, Angela Blacklock and Gordon Munro, have backed the Leith Waterworld campaign. Indeed, they actively voted against moves by another party at the last full council meeting that would have kept the pool open. 

Meanwhile, campaigners have lodged a formal complaint against two more local councillors, Lib Dem Councillor Marjorie Thomas who represents the Leith Ward and SNP councillor Deidre Brock who represents the Leith Walk ward.

Splashback campaigners alledge that the two councillors have a conflict of interest as they moved a motion at the same council meeting supporting the closure of Leith Waterworld, even though they both also sit on the board of Edinburgh Leisure. 

You can read more about the campaigners complaint on their blog. 

Meanwhile Waterworld campaigners have been perplexed to find that their Twitter account has been suspended. They still  have a Facebook page, on which they posted the following statement: 

"Innocent technical glitch or sinister attack on freedom of speech? The Splashback twitter account was suspended yesterday, shortly after mentioning a large supermarket chain and having the temerity to ask a question about the impact a large store may have on a local economy, in this case in Galashiels...We are appealing this, but in the meantime please keep in touch here on FB, or via the blog."

Tories team up with trots to trounce libdem tram plan

In the latest twist to the ongoing Edinburgh tram saga, the Conservative group at the council have teamed up with Labour to back their proposal to build the tram line no further than Haymarket. So now, despite Green support for the Liberal Democrat position which would have seen officers instructed to continue with a line to St Andrews Square, it looks less and less likely that a tram line will ever run down Leith Walk at all.

In the final vote, the SNP group abstained.

Alan Rudland, chair of the Leith Business Association was among those in the public gallery who tweeted live from the meeting. We've put together a slide show of some tweets from local councillors and others to give you a sense of the strength of feeling the debate has produced. It would seem most Leithers simply want to get Leith Walk repaired as quickly as possible.

Leith biomass update: Easter greenwash special.

You could be forgiven for thinking that, with the main period of public consultation over, the objections in (even if you still can't actually read them all on the Scottish Government website) and the Holyrood elections underway that the Leith biomass controversy would die down a bit.

But no, Forth Energy is still splashing the greenwash around, even though they need to play an international media game now that US environmental NGO's have stepped into oppose the plans.

To recap, Forth Energy have been assuring people for some time that they wouldn't be burning biomass from unsustainable sources, like tropical rainforests, or plantations grown on land that was once tropical rainforest, because they were confident they could source all the fuel they need from North America and Europe.

However, US environmental groups wrote this, very critical, open letter to the company, explaining why their claims didn't stack up. Well, now Forth Energy have responded, with this letter.

We thought we should look at some of the things that Forth Energy claim in their new letter. You can find more detail, and references in our formal objection to the plant that you can find here.

1. Forth Energy say: "We are wholly committed to the procurement of fuel that has been produced sustainably."

As ever, the company claims to be committed to sustainability, but will not commit to any binding standards other than those they set for themselves. This renders their fuel sustainability claims meaningless.

Forth Energy continually claim that the fuel will be certified by a third party as sustainable, but as the US NGO's, and countless other critics, point out, if these third party schemes are not specified then the claims are baseless.There are many, many timber certification schemes in the world. From a sustainability perspective, very few are worth the paper they are written on.

The FSC certification scheme is widely regarded as the most robust, and although even this scheme has its critics, and does not guarantee that forests will be managed as long term carbon sinks, Forth Energy do not even commit to using fuel certified in this way.

2. Forth Energy say: "Your letter is based on the misaprehension that we have already identified the locations from which we will source our fuel. This is not the case. What we have done is undertake a sample carbon footprint assessment, for comparative purposes."

In this new letter Forth Energy admit that they haven't decided where they will source their fuel. In fact, they could source their fuel from anywhere in the world. Critics have long been pointing out the contradicitions in their application between the fuel types they name and the claimed fuel sources. For example, very little Eucalyptus grows in Norway as far as we are aware. If they're going to be burning Eucalyptus, it isn't going to be from Scandinanvia, or the UK.

On the other hand, there are examples of biomass power companies in the UK, when they get permission to build, actually sourcing their cheap, fast growing, Eucalyptus fuel from plantations in South America, in flat contradiction to what they said during the planning process.

It's interesting to note that no carbon foorprint assessment of using fuel from South America, or Indonesia was undertaken as part of the application. Not even for comparative purposes. Funny that.

3. Forth Energy say: "Comparing carbon savings from our proposals with a range of electricity generatation alternatives illustrates a saving of 73-91% on a lifecycle assessment basis."

This claim is so disingenious it's difficult to believe that Forth Energy have the Chutzpah to keep making it. We take it to pieces in our objection to the power plant, which you can find here. To summarise just some of the main flaws in this claim:

• It is based on historical, rather than future projections of the carbon intensity of the grid.
• It is based on extremely optimisitic assumptions over heat use,, and thus the efficiency from the plant.
• It is based on a mysterious assumption that all the carbon emitted by the plant is immediately reabsorbed somewhere by other plant life (whereas carbon emitted by coal plants is not!)
• No comparison is made with genuinely low carbon energy technologies like wind or hydro. There's little point in comparing the power produced by the plant to coal as no-one is likely to get permission to build any new coal plants, and the ones that do exist are getting converted to lower carbon generating technologies.

In an indication that Forth Energy have at least been forced to reconsider their giant Leith power plant plans it emerged last week that they've requested a six month extension to 'enable more consideration of the points raised,' during the public consultation process.

Whilst the proposal has by no means been abandoned, it does at least mean that the arguments that Greener Leith, alongside all the other people and organisations that have been critical of the Leith plans have had some impact.

Both the SNP and Green Holyrood manifestos contain explicit commitments to oppose large inefficient biomass plants, whilst all the other parties local candidates have also voiced opposition to the Leith power plant. Politicians of all persuations say that the Biomass plant is the big local issue they're hearing on the doorstep and we note that SNP candidate Marco Biagi, recently described the Leith Biomass plan thus:

"It is an inefficient and unenvironmental proposal. It will burn unsustainable fuels and has no plan for use of the heat. The SNP supports small-scale biomass when it meets standards of environmental efficiency. This plan is the worst example of greenwash I've ever seen in Scotland."

Given the most recent Holyrood polls, which seem to indicate that a combined SNP and Green block at Holyrood could  command a majority in the next holyrood parliament, have Forth Energy decided to think again?

Whilst Forth Energy are back looking at their drawing board, they may wish to have a re-read of this post:

• How Forth Energy Could Win Friends and Influence Leithers.
  

When we have more information on the real reasons behind this latest delay, we'll let you know. But as it could involve 'statutory' consultees, many of whom are government agencies, it will be unlikely that more information will be forthcoming until after the election.

Last day for Leith Power Plant objections.

Find more photos like this on The Greener Leith Social

Today is the last day for members of the public to object to the Forth Energy Leith Biomass plant. If you've not objected yet you can do it online, really easily on the Friends of the Earth Website by clicking here.

The campaign has generated a resounding no from Leithers, and civic society. Lothians SNP MSP, Shirely-Anne Somerville asked the Scottish Government how many objections they'd received this week. The answer?

898 objections logged against the proposal, with approximately 400 still to be recorded. Only 2 representations have been received that are in favour of the plant.

In addition we know of at least 5 community councils that have objected to the plan. Numerous local residents groups, and politicians of many persuations. More objections have been published online this week, and as we still cannot depend on the Scottish Government to publish all objections in a transparent way, we link to as many of them as we can find here:

• Mark Lazarowicz MP (Labour)
• Sheila Gilmore MP (Labour)
• Malcolm Chisholm MSP (Labour)
• Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP (SNP)
• Leith SNP 
• Cllr Maggie Chapman (Green)
• Port of Leith Housing Association
• Greener Leith
• The Cockburn Association
• Friends of the Water of Leith Basin
• Leith Links Residents Association
• Leith Links Community Council

With the period of public consultation drawing to a close, attention will now focus on the City of Edinburgh Council response. Although it is the Scottish Governent who will utlimately decide on whether the plant will get consent, if the council objects, they will force the application to go to a public enquiry.

So far we know the SNP group on the council is against it. We know that the Green group is against it. And we know that Labour are likely against it. There are 58 city councillors, and the SNP, Labour and Greens together make 30 councillors, so if a vote were to go to party political lines we could, in theory see the proposals rejected.

Among the LibDems only Cllr Louise Lang, and Cllr Marjorie Thomas  have made public statements of opposition to the plant. A number of other LibDems have also expressed reservations but not outright opposition. We have heard no Conservative councillors express an opinion on the matter.

Should you wish to continue to support the campaign we recommend that you consider writing or emailing Liberal Democrat or Conservative councillors in key positions. You may also want to write to councillors on the Planning Committee.

The Guardian Edinburgh website has also been publishing some passionate objections to the plant from local residents:

• Tim Threllfall
• Ewan McIntosh

If you would like us to link to, or publish your objection, please do get in touch.

This weeks Leith biomass roundup

Half way through the window for public consultation on the Forth Energy biomass plant, there are so many things to report that this post has become a bit of a round-up.

As we posted previously, one Edinburgh resident who opposes the plant put together a Google Earth mock-up of the plant, based on the dimensions, and the graphics provided by Forth Energy in their planning application. The idea being that anyone with access to the program could see how the plant would look from anywhere - even space. A few locals then used this to come up with their own user generated images.

This week, the Google Earth file has been used in a new way. A supporter of the No Leith Biomass campaign has produced this 'fly-through' using Google Earth, and added some captions to provide people with more information on the plant. You can view it below:

Proposed Biomass Power Station Leith, Edinburgh February 2011 from EM 9o7 on Vimeo.

Meanwhile, I followed up one of the points made by at last weeks Leith Biomass public meeting, over how the plant would be connected to the grid - and the possible travel disruption this could cause. You can read the response from local business groups and Forth Energy on the North Edinburgh STV website.

A day later, a three person team of senior staff from Forth Energy were said to be sent home 'with their tails between their legs' from a meeting at the Mal Maison hotel after strong criticism from members of the Friends of the Water of Leith Basin group.

The No Leith Biomass campaign, who say that 'hundreds' of objections have already been sent to the Scottish Government, has also produced a campaign Twibbon. Meanwhile more and more people continue to use the #leithbiomass hashtag on Twitter to share campaign updates and information and nearly 800 people have signed the online petition.

In the last couple of weeks, the political mood has continued to shift against the proposals too. The Edinburgh Green Party has voted to oppose the plant, The Leith branch of the SNP has voted to oppose the plant and Shiela Gilmore MP had this to say on her blog, after joining her Labour colleague Malcolm Chisholm MSP at the No Leith Biomass demonstration last week: 

‘The plans just don’t add up; at a meeting last week, residents were shushed when organisers tried to claim the greater efficiencies would come thanks to the municipal heating system. This municipal heating system is at present an idea that will only be developed when consent is granted, so, efficiency of this green ‘renewable’ plant will be around 30-40%, similar to existing electricity plants.

‘Further still, in 40 years time, when Forth Ports have finished regenerating the area, the plant area will be again be redeveloped, without a plant to supply a municipal heating system!'

‘We need to reduce carbon emissions and use the resources that we have in Scotland. Sourcing the wood chippings from around the world is not green, nor is ferrying waste and ash through the already clogged roads in Edinburgh East.'

‘I’m with the campaigners on this one; the plant is too big, in the wrong place, and it is not green.’

The No Leith Biomass group plan to take the campaign to Holyrood next. There will be a demonstration on Thursday the 24th of February. If you want to go, meet at 12 as the demo is planned to run for an hour 12.30 - 1.30pm.

You can find out more about the No Leith Biomass campaign at www.noleithbiomass.org.uk