Lancaster & District Green Party

The Green Party held Lancaster Central and gained Lancaster East in the Elections for Lancashire County Council on June 4th - congratulations to Chris Coates and Sam Riches and their teams! There was also a Lancaster City Council by-election in our strongest Green ward (Castle) as Catriona Stamp stepped down after a 6 year stint on the Council - Melanie Forrest won it by a long way and joins the 11 other Greens on the City Council for the next 2 years - congratulations Melanie, and thanks to Catriona for all her work over the last few years.

Unfortunately we missed out on other hoped-for wins in Lancaster South East and Skerton – but Jane Fletcher and Ian Chamberlain both came within 300 votes of winning.

The Conservatives now have a big majority on the County Council (51 out of 84 seats), with Labour on 16, Lib Dems on 10, Independents 3, Greens 2, Idle Toad 1, BNP 1 (in Padiham & Burnley West). Overall turnout was 38%.
Results for Lancashire County elections can be viewed at http://www.lancashire.gov.uk

In the name of transparency and accountability, County Councillor Chris Coates has published the amount of money that he has received from the County Council. Cllr Coates received £8,040.18 last year, compared to the average claim of £14,582.07 for County Councillors.

He explained, “I get the basic allowance which each County Councillor receives. This is essentially a part-time wage to cover the time I spend at meetings and on sorting out problems for local residents, which takes up about three days each week. The only expenses I claim are the occasional train fare for meetings not held at County Hall; these amount to only £44.13 in total over four years.” Read the rest of this entry »

Green County Councillor Chris Coates has called for ‘Green Jobs’ to be a priority for Lancashire. The call came as Lancaster Green Party launched a report on what a Green New Deal for the County could look like.

The report includes suggestions for a County wide Green Skills Network, help to improve energy efficiency in the areas housing stock and help for those in fuel poverty as well as measures to support local business.

The local report is based on the national document published last year by the New Economic Foundation.

A crowd of over 100 local residents and school children from Dallas Road & Loyne schools saw the Mayor of Lancaster, Cllr Keith Budden, open the new flood defences on St Georges Quay. Green County Cllr Chris Coates, who was part of the team that organised the celebrations, said “We thought it was so obvious to mark the Quay being open on St George’s Day with a bit of a mini festival that hopefully got a few more folk down to this wonderful part of the City.”

Following a few words from the Mayor the crowds followed St George and his Dragon in a short procession along the Quayside pathway along to Lancaster Maritime Museum where the Mayor gave a toast to England and St George with a cup of English tea. In the evening on April 23rd 20 people heard a talk in the Maritime museum by Dr Sam Riches entitled “An English Saint for English People? – The reinvention of St George.”

At the weekend there were further activities all along the Quay with Morris dancers, a brass band, family craft workshops at the Museum and folk music in the Three Mariners and Wagon and Horses pubs.

Green County & City councillor Chris Coates has been selected as the prospective Green parliamentary candidate for the Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency at the next general election. Cllr Coates said after the result of the ballot of local members was announced at a recent Green Party monthly meeting, “The time has come for us to look beyond the bits of the area where we are strong and take a Green message out across the whole District. I look forward to the challenge of campaigning in Morecambe and the Lune Valley.” Read the rest of this entry »

Four residents of Lancaster charged with Aggravated Trespass after they entered Centros’ London offices and refused to leave were last week found Not Guilty. After a two day trial,  the District Judge said she was satisfied that the protesters actions were peaceful and lawful.

Aurora Trujillo, one of the protestors, said “We’ve been acquitted, but we’ve still got the real battle ahead, to stop Centros turning Lancaster into one more Clone Town.”

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At the Green Party conference in Blackpool today, top North West candidate Peter Cranie urged the Green Party to redouble its efforts to push the far-right BNP out of this June’s Euro-election race.

Liverpool-based Peter Cranie is the candidate set to thwart the electoral dream of BNP leader Nick Griffin. In regional list elections, the big three parties usually take most of the seats, and the highest-polling candidate from a smaller party the last seat. In the North West - where the far right seeks to build on the fears and insecurities of the recession - the race for the last seat will almost certainly be between the Greens and the BNP.
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British Energy – under their new French owners EDF – held a PR exercise on Tues 10th March at the Platform in Morecambe. A mix of pro and anti-nuclear members of the small audience asked questions of a panel of ‘nuclear experts’ following a presentation of the proposals for a third reactor to be built at Heysham.

British Energy/EDF intend to put forward Heysham to the government as a possible site for a new reactor by the end of March. If you wish to comment on the proposal you can do this via: www.nuclearpowersiting.decc.gov.uk

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Green Councillors have sent in their submissions to the Public Inquiry into the Centros development. Cllr Chris Coates said ” With shops closing in the City almost every week it is even more important that this massive shopping development is defeated.”

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Following a seven hour budget meeting, that saw amendments from all party’s, Lancaster City Council finally set a budget for the next year. Speaking afterwards Green Group leader Cllr Chris Coates said “The budget that we started with at the beginning of the meeting was bad enough, what we have ended up with is a real dogs-dinner -  where ever you live in the District you will be affected one way or another by the cuts in this budget.” Read the rest of this entry »