Forum Topic

You need to travel to the places not on the tourist trail to see what life is like and how things are done and have been done in some cases for thousands of years.There are things that pollute and destroy on a massive scale, much if which need not and much of which is not because of the industrial world but age old means of survival but for a growing population. Slash and burn is on a biblical scale in many places and has to be seen to be believed.Lithium mining and extraction though is rocketing for Electric vehicles and has far more serious consequences than fossil fuel detritus. Whole lakes in china are now so toxic that just putting a hand into it can make you sick.And yet the stampede to go electric ignores this.And then put into context what nature can do. Sometimes in a matter of hours, not years or decades.Fact is developed areas of this planet are increasingly over populated. Does that ever really get discussed?  Not properly.But the developed world has been steadily reducing pollution, over use of unreplenishable materials for most of our lifetimes and this is increasing even with overpopulation.Even though we have Covid, people live much longer and healthier than at any time in history. The biggest jump is in the last 70 years.There have been all sorts of climatic changes all over this planet in it's entire existence.  We are a tiny part of that existence. We also become more and more responsible but have to remain pragmatic. The excesses and greed have been the causes of catastrophes and some is part of the learning curve. We have probable reached the peak of that and the impetus has changed, no doubt these will continue but well get less and less.Nature though, might have other ideas.There have been long periods in these islands, of hot dry conditions, long wet conditions and cooler conditions, flooding and freezing, all post ice age and within the lifetimes of our oldest vegetation - trees.  The climate shifts all the time. It's just that it has not done it much over the modern age of communications and industry.It's how we have hills, mountains and lowlands, peat bogs and marshes, sand mud and gravel, erosion, Ox bow lakes and almost everything we stand on.It also gives us the means to heat, eat and create. And expand on natures shortcomings. It's why we have medicine, and economies.Doing a bit helps, and in reality we do.  We don't need fines and blockades and dividing community districts up and authorities screwing us for money under a banner of climate emergency.it's all part of our latest trend toy, Social media and communications which are abused to the point of manipulating and panicking the masses. Muddying the waters purveyed by salaried experts who have very little credibility apart for an eye for fiscal and career opportunity

Raymond Havelock ● 1805d

It’s worse than that.Most papers, particularly local ones which typically used to report on council goings on, simply reprint whatever press release arrives in their inbox. Usually there’s no effort made to get into a story. ‘Balance’, they claim, comes from printing a tweet from someone who disagrees with something, though even that’s not always done.Ealing Council is ripe for investigation and has been for years. Cosying up to property developers and the resultant surge in unwanted and unaffordable tower blocks of flats, all going through on the nod. The recent approval of the massive Bollo Lane project happened despite one committee member admitting he didn’t know the area. He voted for it anyway.A council leader who still ‘needs’ a housing association property for his family despite the people he ‘needed’ it for having long since died. No wonder there’s still a housing crisis.Inadequate due diligence when coming up with policies. The town hall being a case in point. Unable to get round the fact that it doesn’t own parts of the building it wants to hand over to a hotel developer the council has racked up £2million of costs trying to make it happen.Consultation is a con. Decisions are made before the public is even told about them, with consultation just a sham. The LTNs show this, with 75 percent of residents wanting rid of them, yet we are told they are ‘here to stay’.You could also blame the apathy of residents who either don’t care or don’t bother to find out the truth, relying instead on the version of events peddled in Around Ealing (taxpayer funded to the tune of £100,000 a year).We have a local election next year. I wonder how many half truths and outright lies emanate from Perceval House between now and then.

Simon Hayes ● 1811d