Sam Riches and Patrick Harvie

County Cllr Sam Riches travelled to Aberdeen for the Scottish Green Party’s annual conference on 29-30 October. She was one of two official delegates from the Green Party of England and Wales to the conference of our sister party in Scotland, and is seen here with Patrick Harvie MSP – who is the male co-convenor of the Scottish Greens as well as one of two Green members of the Scottish Parliament.

Sam said, ‘I was delighted to represent the English and Welsh Greens at this conference, and I was able to get really involved. I was invited to chair one session – a speech by Glasgow City Councillor Martha Wardrop – and I was also asked to contribute to a debate on the hot topic of fracking – the controversial technique of extracting natural gas from shale beds. This is already taking place on an experimental basis in Lancashire, near Blackpool, and there is a threat of fracking being tried in Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. I’m delighted to say that the conference overwhelmingly voted to adopt a new, and strikingly simple, policy for the Scottish Greens: “We oppose hydraulic fracturing (fracking) methods of extracting oil and gas from conventional and unconventional wells.”‘

For more information on fracking visit Frack Off or Ribble Estuary Against Fracking

Lancaster Green Party are seeking to unify Lancaster & Morecambe by appealing to the Boundary Commission to alter their proposals that would see Lancaster residents voting for the same MP as those in Ribchester & Goosnargh.

Our proposals see Lancaster, Morecambe, Heysham, Bare, Overton vote for one MP to speak with one voice for the region.

Rick Seymour, North Lancashire Green Party Exec member :-

Our driving priniciple for this work is to bring together the communities of Lancaster & Morecambe. Having the people of Lancaster vote for the same MP as those in Pressall, Ribchester and Goosnargh does not meet our ideals of community. We want to unify, not divide, and have one voice for this district. Our proposals cover the whole of Lancashire and Cumbria and would benefit each diverse community and are neutral to all political groups. These proposals will be presented to the Boundary Commission on the 24th October in Preston.

Other Proposals

• Barrow in Furness Constituency
• Carlisle Constituency
• Cumbria North Constituency
• Westmorland Constituency
• Whitehaven & Workington Constituency
• Lancaster & Morecambe Constituency
• Lancashire North Constituency
• Preston Constituency

These proposals were drawn up by Rick Seymour and approved at the October group meeting

Green councillors have condemned Lancashire County Council’s decision to switch off bus information displays at Lancaster bus station from 1st December 2011.

Commenting on the news, County Cllr Sam Riches said:

“This is a dreadful decision. We need to be encouraging people to use public transport and these displays are very important for making this easy and convenient for people. Surely, providing easy-to-read information about when your next bus is leaving and from which bay is a basic requirement of a decent system.”
“At a time when many people are struggling to make ends meet it is not reasonable to assume that all bus users will have the money to invest in this kind of personal technology.”
“Considering that Lancashire County Council is happy to pick up a £30 million bill for its contribution to the northern bypass it is not surprising that it is thrashing around to cut genuinely useful and worthwhile projects like real-time information displays. This cut is the first of many that are needed to help fund the tarmacking of the countryside around Lancaster.”

Green councillors have reacted with dismay at a Council report that could overturn a decision to preserve the set of eight trees in Market Square. The new report recommends removing two of the trees as part of implementation of the new ‘square routes’ improvements to the square. This is despite the explicit decision made in December 2009 that all eight trees should be kept as part of the new plans. Cllr Chris Coates said:

“It seems that Council officers didn’t like the original decision and have decided to keep coming back to cabinet until they get a decision that they do like. I am delighted that the square is being improved – however, it is relatively easy to do this whilst still retaining the trees. These trees have been there for 30 years and to remove two of them now would be extremely short-sighted.”

“One of the reasons that the trees were retained originally was because of the overwhelming support for urban trees in the original public consultation. It seems that this consultation is now being conveniently forgotten. The Council has just spent money on a new programme to keep these and other city centre trees properly pruned – yet a few months later they are proposing to cut two of them down.”