Adrian Hollister's UK Blog

With a little bit more work we could extend this to the surrounding areas... check out the article though in the Newbury Today web site.

I can't help thinking - where is our local MP here? He's paid lip service by issuing a few press releases, but why hasn't he spoken to the Living Rainforest and told them how to go about getting funding? He has a big enough office and large enough staff can't they help here? Perhaps he is far too worried about his precious DESO (just about the only thing he has spoken on in Parliament)... so very disappointing.


Wonderful revolutionary project could fail at last hurdle.

Must the Low Carbon project return €1.2 million to Brussels?

Plans to construct Europe’s ‘greenest glasshouse’ at the Living Rainforest, an eco-centre which educates the young and older in Berkshire are on the verge of collapse. £950,000 will be claimed back by Brussels if the final funding is not secured urgently.

The Living Rainforest is a sustainability charity which welcomes and educates in the most experiential and exciting way children from schools all over the country. Visiting adults also enthuse about it.

LRF has raised over £1.8 million of EC funding to showcase what the low-carbon commercial glasshouse of the future could look like.

What is a low-carbon commercial glasshouse?
Instead of relying on greenhouse-gas-polluting fossil fuels for heat, the design uses the glasshouse itself to collect excess heat from the sun, and stores this energy underground for use in winter.

This revolutionary technology can be used to heat buildings and grow ‘protected crops’ like tomatoes and lettuce year-round in a climate-neutral way.

“This is a golden opportunity for the UK to play a leading role on low carbon technologies which stand to benefit both the planet and the UK Horticultural industry” says local MEP Caroline Lucas.
”It would be a tragedy to simply let this EU money slip through our hands after so much funding has already been secured – the project would in effect be killed.”

LRF sponsors have raised significant funding but the charity needs to raise a further €1 million (£830,000). The Government needs to support the final stages of the project however, despite warm words from Phil Woolas the junior minister at Defra, further financial commitment to the project remains out in the cold.

Karl Hansen, director at The Living Rainforest said
“Like many science centres, we support the work of the Government with very little funding from the public purse. We educate schoolchildren about the world’s threatened ecosystems, and about ways to reduce our ecological footprint at home and abroad. We do so without relying on government handouts.”

Many hundreds of school children of all ages visit the LRF weekly and experience the delights of blue morph butterflies, Geldi monkeys’ 40 different calls, the sculptural water dragon often to be seen perched up high over the pond, and countless beautiful animals and plants, in humid high temperatures which reflect the rainforest’s. Tour guides thread their way through the forest, enabling the children and teenagers to identify cocoa plants and think about the healthy properties of dark chocolate, to look out over the luxuriant banana plants and highest leaves. Young children talk excitedly and sadly of the death of Steve Coogan when they spot the piranhas, and love the fluttering blue morph giant butterflies and spying the poisonous bejeweled little frogs.

Hanson adds, “Major innovation projects like this cannot succeed without reasonable backing from Government and other sources.
The horticulture industry is keenly interested in the lessons to be learnt from the project. Ironically it is feeling the pinch of rising energy prices and is unable to fund this work”.

He continues “despite the obvious advantages and solid financial support from Brussels, the project is now at risk and so we need clear, realistic support from the Government to ensure that this wonderful demonstration project goes ahead”.

With very few weeks left to secure the support required, the Living Rainforest is faced with the alternative of returning €1,200,000 to Brussels. This lack of funding at the eleventh hour, of a project which leads the way forward seems genuinely to be madness.

What great weather we have been having, nice long warm and hot days and the occasional overnight shower. All the plants seem to have boomed in the past few weeks leaving fields filling with crops and some wonderful downland walks.

Discussing the situation in the middle east, Adrian Hollister comments: "It disgusts me that Americans not only back the Israel ethnic cleansing of other lands and the horrors that brings to families broken by mass deportation and disappearances; but that they are yet again planning to attack another 'oil' nation. Why do we in the UK let them get away with it?"

Barak Obama on You Tube

Hi all, just a reminder that there the next meeting is on the 10th of June in Newbury. All are welcome so please feel free to message me if you need an invite and the directions. Plan is to start at about 19:30 and finish as usual (when we finish!). Hope to see you all there.

The price of fuel is reflecting a resource that is dwindling and controlled by states that could be considered a threat to the US and US allies. So in some respects I can understand the recent protests by the Lorry Drivers about the cost of fuel, but perhaps not for the reasons that they are protesting. My concerns are not that their businesses are under threat (because actually if they thought about it there are other ways of working and other methods of transport available to them), but that UK lorry drivers are put at a disadvantage against the foreign competition because of our high cost of fuel.

I would like to see a level playing field for all lorry drivers in the UK. Perhaps a system where the fuel duty is change to a road toll fee would be more appropriate. The road toll fee would be added to the price of fuel in the UK and all non-UK resident drivers would also be required to pay this fee no matter where they filled up. Non UK drivers would have to declare entry to the UK and exit from the UK mileage and charged an appropriate level. Personally I would also like to see all inbound lorries weighed and visually inspected to ensure they meet the UK road limitations and requirements.

Perhaps then importers may consider using more rail freight, sea freight and reuse the canal networks?

I've had my company car (a Toyota Prius) for four years now and it's going back soon. The car has been utterly reliable - it's never broken. The fuel economy is good, the noise it produces is very good, and it fits Adrian Hollister + family & dog with no problems. The down side is that it's quite expensive for a company car. To help me decide I've test driven a couple of other cars - the BMW 320d, an X type Jag, and one of the new Ford Focus slightly more efficient 1.6D cars.

The beemer was just boring. Boring boring boring. No sat nav, no... well anything. It felt like the seats were optional, the noise was terrible - tractors down my road are much quieter, and the fuel economy worse than the Prius (with the same driving style and roads). The Jag just felt cramped and the family decided against it. The Focus seems smaller than the Prius and again it came with no basic's (my personal opinion is that sat nav and bluetooth integration are mandatory and actually very cheap for the manufacturers to provide). Fuel economy was great, so overall it's OK but nothing stunning.

Disheartened by the marketing hype on the BMW and the massive cost of the add-on's for both the BMW 320d and the Ford Focus I gave up for a bit. We had a quick look at a C30, but it's too small and CO2 output is very high; the same seems to apply to most of the other cars we looked at that would fit our family.

So what was the decision in the end? Well we are getting another Prius. The reasons in order of preference: Sat Nav, Bluetooth built-in, not waking up the family driving away in the morning (cos it's so darn quiet), watching the tyre fitters trying to work out how to drive the car on to the ramp (seriously - this is a hoot), low CO2, utterly reliable and good fuel economy.

I wonder when or if Reading Council are going to realise that building more roads only facilitates a growth in traffic? There latest barmy plans are to increase the size and throughput of Junction 11 on the M4. Of course what will happen (as has happened everywhere else they have done this) is all about people... people don't drive there because it's busy - we use other routes and other methods of transport. That's a good thing - the less convenient cars are, the less likely we are to use them 'because we can'*.

So, if the bottleneck goes away, people will start to choose to drive there again - because they can, it's easy right? So in a few years time we are right back to where we started... a very busy junction and a reason for Reading to go back to the drawing board and add more and more roads.

Iterestingly the BBC have an article on just this subject. You can find it here.

and you can also find some information on the Reading Council web site here.

*So why is Adrian Hollister so much against the use of cars? Well I'm not. But we do have a problem. Culturally we seem to think that they can be used for any and every trip - we have no environmental conscience about their use.. car's pollute - they produce noise, they produce heat, they produce toxic gases, they take up our space and are often made the center of our lives and social status by marketing people. A car is just a car people - it's just a method of transport - forget the marketing people they are conning you. OK rant over!

'Five Million People Around the Water Cooler' by Adrian Hollister and Dan Bailey is one of my new papers, it discusses how the UK public sector could benefit from social networking and bottom up knowledge management. You can read it here.

"Social networking has the potential to be the most important emerging enabler of government over the next five years."

"The potential of social networking for the public sector transformation agenda is exciting. The effective delivery of any major transformation relies on the strength of communication throughout that organisation. With the right attention to data security, government could harness this new technology to break down communication barriers between departments and locations."

Swan Bridge (A338 in Great Shefford) is likely to remain closed until mid May 2008. It's been a little difficult for residents to get good information from West Berks Council about it, but it now appears that erosion has undermined the bridges foundations. The bridge is roughly half way through the idyllic West Berks village of Great Shefford shutting the road but not the foot bridge. There are long road detours in place for cars.

The whole area has been subject to significant flooding over the years and maintenance of local streams and water ways has always been very poor. The area is famed to outsiders for the constant flooding on the A338 through the whole village. For locals though the A338 is famed for fast drivers, big lorries and near misses.

This village suffers from the incompetence and bickering of the various Tory and Lib Dem councils running West Berkshire. Neither have actually invested in environmental and social issues, they just do as little as possible all of the time and Great Shefford has taken seen it's fair share of this. The bridge is just an indication of this - if the water management had been sorted out years ago we would not be in the position today.

As a start West Berkshire council need to step up to the mark and:

1. enforce speed limits and give the residence the option to introduce a 20 mph zone through the bulk of their community, especially near the school, shop and community halls.

2. drainage ways and water ways must be maintained to capture run off water and where possible to allow water to collect and soak away.

3. passage through the village on the main road must be with full respect to the residence of the village. People, bicycles and buses should have priority over cars.

4. localisation of power distribution using West Berks abundant wind power and our hydroelectric potential

5. promote our local businesses and farms. We are used to buying produce from Devon, why not promote the best of West Berks produce, products and services?

Staggering this county - West Berks Council continue to amaze me. I've worked hard here to get my main waste bin into a position of being about half full weekly with the rest doing to recycle or compost. My two small baskets for tins and bottles overflow. I have a nice can and tin crusher that puts everything to a much smaller size but with cat food, dog food, human food the odd drinks can and a few glass bottles I can easily exceed two of these small bins. West Berks won't take anything that's not in the bins, so the options are clear: compact it more or get more bins. Simple?

a. Compact the waste. Packing the bins tightly seems to push the weight too high and they don't collect them - really they just leave them at the side of the road! So this is not actually an option as it makes the problem worse.

b. Get more bins. West Berks told me that they were not going to let people have more than two bins for recycling. I was told to keep it for next week's collection or take it to my local recycling facility (which is not local it's 30 mins drive away!). The lady on the phone from West Berks Council was clearly unimpressed that my main household waste had gone down and my recycling had gone up. Clearly I don't quite fit the West Berks Council's stereotype of an average citizen.

So are they suggesting I stockpile recycling until it's viable to fill a car to the brim to take it to the recycling center or are they suggesting that I just put recyclable materials in my general purpose bin and let it head to landfill?

Clearly here West Berkshire Council are just green washing... i.e. they are doing as little as they can get away with whilst still appearing to have a green tinge.

Woke up to quite a bit of snow today up here in the downloads of West Berkshire. It's a bit odd to see so much snow so late in the year but all the kids around here are making the most of it.

It's been a while now since I've been running on waste veggie oil, virgin veggie oil and diesel in my Landy. The 300TDI engine is just so basic it seems to lap it up without any concerns, but about 10K miles on here is my summary to date:

My random notes:

a. I replaced my heater plugs as the starting was a nightmare - whilst doing this I discovered that none of the heater plugs were actually glowing or getting warm! and by the look of some of them, they hadn't been for some time (well before the veggie conversion I'm guessing). New plugs are in and everything starts first time - even on pure veggie oil at 3-8 degrees outside temp.

b. IMHO technically Waste Veggie Oil is much much much better. It seems to burn cleanly, give good performance and leave little smoke. Normal virgin veggie oil is ok and seems to give a performance akin to Diesel but I've only gone through a small amount of the stuff. Of course the best way to use veggie oil has to be by using local waste veggie oil - so I'm not sure if I'm evaluating my estimate of performance of the waste oil on my moral interest in localisation. Either way it does seem to be the best.

c. The glow plug part of the veggie oil conversion seems to provide the best boost in starting and early running performance. The hot water side helps later (but almost by then the engine is already warm and handles it much better anyway).

d. Best ratio of veggie oil to diesel so far: Warmer temps (+10 degrees C) 100% veggie oil no problems. Cooler (0-10 degrees C) 60% Diesel 40% Veggie Oil. Cold (-8 - 0 degrees C) 98% Diesel 2% Veggie Oil. There is nothing scientific about this - this is just what I've experienced. With my heater plugs changed it may well allow me to run higher mixes.

e. Be pragmatic - use an injector cleaner regularly, don't expect miracles, and don't expect to make all your money back in one or two tanks - it's about the environmental savings as well you know.

f. Last thing... getting hold of waste veggie oil is getting very difficult!

I would strongly encourage all to attend the Aldermaston 2008 Protest 12 noon Easter Monday 24th March at Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston. You can find more details in the link below.

CND Aldermaston Protest 2008

I've been interested in the question of street and shop lighting for some time and I've never quite got to grips with why people and businesses seem compelled to leave the lights on all night.

I'm in the lucky position of being north of Newbury in an area of outstanding natural beauty. Our village and the surrounding villages have no street lights. Everyone who is going to be out at night carries a torch, even visitors learn quickly that a torch helps them back to their car. We look up and see a blackish sky, but we can easily see the yellow glow of Newbury, Reading etc.

Driving around the towns you see offices, shops and even houses leaving on lights when they are not in. It would be very interesting to see if one of the smaller towns such as Newbury could enforce or persuade local businesses to turn the lights off at night. Perhaps an incentive around the business rates would interest them? It would also be very interesting to see if people who are used to street lights could survive again with few or no street lights on a night. Is safety really the concern or just fear of the dark?

My heart goes out to the business directly around the new site of the Cinema. The roads are closed with signs deterring people and cars. The businesses in these areas seem empty - certainly compared to usual. I was in the Empire Cafe the other day - perhaps one of the best examples of how a business can work in a sustainable way with the local community. They bake bread using locally produced flour and have that traditional happy-to-see-you face on when you walk through the door (they are in Cheap Street in Newbury if you've ever in the area - well worth a visit).

Anyway, the Empire Cafe like many of the other businesses in the area are suffering from the lack of thought and indecision by West Berks Council who just seem paralysed by the bickering between the Tories and Lib Dems. The constructor must be laughing at this paralysis as they have managed to wriggle out of anything that would help these businesses to keep going during the construction phase.

I'm amazed by the way that West Berks Council seems to treat people and businesses as things to be managed. Have they forgotten that they are there to support our people, our businesses and our society? In my humble opinion, they are there to make our lives, our life and our society better; they are there to promote growth and sustainability; and they are there to go out of their way to help and support us. Perhaps one day the Green Party will take over this council and things can change for the better.

In the mean time, I would recommend visiting Empire Cafe in Newbury and while you are there look at the other fine shops, barbers, estate agents in the area.

The recent gossip around the security status of RAF Welford (see the various Newbury Weekly News stories as they have been following it) has only re-enforced my views that these American bases must be moved out of the UK. Our American occupation only seems to increase the threat to our country and force us to spend more time, money and resources on the military, intelligence and police forces - something that has turned us into one of the most monitored, censored, and controlled societies in the world. Don't get me wrong here, I don't doubt that we need all three, but all seem to be bloated by the American problem extending well past our original and realistic need, and well beyond the actual needs of our society.

"The Environment Agency has called for more information to be made available on the health and environmental risks posed by low-energy light bulbs."

BBC News reports on the mercury in Low Energy light bulbs.

Environment Agency Web Site

Is this really a concern though? I just wonder how many nasty chemicals go into the production of standard light bulbs as well.

The Newbury Green Party held a stall at the Green Fair in Oxford today. It was great fun and especially good to meet so many like minded people. The place was packed and an example of what we should be doing in Newbury and Hungerford.

Of special note to me was the 20 is plenty campaign (called 'Life Begins at 20') being run in Oxfordshire. I would be very keen to see the residential streets being returned to the residents by allowing voting to introduce lower speed limits in their area. You can find out more about their scheme here.

"'No platform' is not an attack on free speech. Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party (BNP) and David Irving - jailed for denying the Holocaust - have been invited by the Oxford union debating society to speak at a free speech event on Monday night. Dr. Derek Wall has condemned the invite. Derek said: "Every time a fascist is given an audience, hate crimes against ethnic minorities and the LGBT community rise. "While free speech is important, it does not mean that the Union has a right to give space to far right speakers. No platform is not an attack on free speech, it is saying that institutions don't have to give space to people with abhorrent views."

The LGBT group within the Green Party have also commented on this issue, please see: www.lgbtgreens.org.uk "

I agree, this is a step too far by the Oxford Union.

Surprise surprise, the Tories and Lib Dems voted with their parties and in objection to one another for yet another issue. This time they are turning down a wind turbine in the downlands area near Membury. The area is famed for it's thick motorway fog, service station and huge telecommunication tower but actually the area has stunning outstanding natural beauty. The tories voted to turn down permission for it to be built, partly as they were worried that are rare Red Kite's may fly into the turbine. Of course they are much more likely to be fried on the telecomms tower or mown down by the American helicopters flying into RAF Welford at what seems like 10 feet above the trees and as close to the occupied natives as possible.

How can anybody think that the Tories are in any way green? they are far too busy bickering with the lib dems to worry about our society, our environment and our future; and our good ole Tory MP Richard Benyon is just far too worried about the Defence Export Services Organisation (it's just about the only thing is speaks and campaigns upon).

Madness. I would like to see a quick and non-political planning process for alternative energies and sustainable developments in our region.

"Lammas Low Impact Initiatives Ltd have applied for planning permission to build an eco-village in Pembrokeshire. Now the group are appealing for financial backers to get involved by buying shares in the company. Lammas say 'for the first time ever a planning policy exists to allow people to build low impact houses in the countryside and live off the land in a sustainable way, but so far the policy only exists in Pembrokeshire'.", Green Building Press.

See the full article here.