At the last AGM our new Guildford and Waverley Green Party banner was revealed. A massive THANK YOU to Trish Johnston who spent many days and hours making it. Trish came along to our Green Quiz last February and was keen to contribute to our local party. She moved from the Isle of Wight where she had previously made their banner. We are so grateful and will now be able to proudly display it at all the events we attend.

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Sam has been a member of the Green Party since 2010. He says, “My first ever vote, as a student, was for the Lib Dems – shortly before they abandoned their election pledges and propped up a Conservative government, which has since led to 14 years of total disaster for the country. I joined the Greens immediately after.

“I’m often told I must have particular opinions or beliefs because I’m a Green. It’s completely the reverse – I’m a Green because of my opinions and beliefs. On everything from climate to equality, public services to peace, democracy to tax, I find the Greens are the only party committed to genuine change, while the others increasingly follow the ruinous Conservative lead”.

Aware of the enormous damage successive Conservative governments had done to the country, and the impacts of our undemocratic voting system, the Green Party did not stand in Guildford in 2019. This was to avoid further splitting the vote of the majority of local residents who did not want a Conservative MP. Unfortunately, less than 45% of the vote was enough to hand them the seat.

Sam believes now is the perfect time to stand again for Guildford. Not only will the Conservatives lose this election heavily as things stand, but also both Labour and Liberal Democrats have never been so far from the bold, transformative policies the Green Party offers.

He continues, “No other party will end sewage dumping and rank corruption by renationalising water; cut bills and end fuel poverty by properly insulating all homes; provide jobs and real energy security with clean, cheap renewables; ensure those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share to support a decent and healthy society for all; reverse hundreds of disastrous new fossil fuel licences; run public services for the public good, rather than private profit; and so on. Merely tinkering around the edges of a failed system is simply not good enough.

“I will champion these values and policies in this general election campaign – the first in decades where voters can feel free to vote for the policies they want, rather than just against the worst option. These policies will set the standard for all candidates, and I’m thrilled to see the support we’ve had so far from people across the constituency from all walks of life”.

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Greens had been calling for an inquiry alongside our WBC coalition partners since the early days of the most recent Thames Water failure. Surrey County Council repeatedly refused to declare a Critical Incident, significantly delaying the response from Thames that – when it came – was confused, uncommunicative, and wholly inadequate.

Cllr Clare Weightman, Deputy Leader of Godalming Town Council, spoke for many local residents with a passionate and highly critical look not just at the latest failures, but also the culture of failure that privatisation and cuts to regulators has caused over the past 30 years.

Residents present agreed with Cllr Steve Williams, who said “an excellent meeting on the water outage this evening organised by Waverley Borough Council – but shameful that Thames Water refused to attend”. One Conservative councillor tried to claim WBC had made the meeting ‘political’ by not holding it at a time when Thames could attend – but as was noted at the meeting, there was plenty of notice given. Could not one of the 7000+ employees make a weekday at 7pm?

As mentioned by another speaker shortly after, another meeting next week in Guildford – which Thames Water and the area’s MPs have said they will attend – is being held on a weekday at 5.15pm, and will only hear a pre-selected set of questions and comments. That conveniently means anybody who works a standard day will be unable to attend, let alone have their voice heard…

Greens in Guildford and Waverley will continue to push for a full investigation into exactly what went wrong in November, why it happened, and why the response was so poor. We continue to hear more stories from residents who were abandoned without water even on the Priority Register – leaving elderly and disabled residents reliant on town councillors, who drove round the borough long past midnight throughout the outages dropping water which should have been organised by Thames.

Of course, the ultimate cause of these failures – and countless others, from rampant sewage dumping to asset stripping to shareholder siphoning off billions of pounds while infrastructure crumbles – is privatisation, backed up by a government determined to cut regulations and hamstring regulators to ensure private profits.

Yet it is still ONLY the Green Party who is committed to renationalising our water, to run this vital public service for the public good rather than private profit. Tinkering around the edges is simply not good enough – if water is in private pockets, the priority will always be to increase profits for shareholders, whether that’s through dumping sewage, cutting jobs, failing to maintain infrastructure, or piling up dangerous levels of debt.

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Idling – which is leaving a vehicle engine running unnecessarily while stationary – generates around 150 balloons of exhaust fumes a minute, or more for larger vehicles like SUVs. These gases are of course bad for climate change – but can be devastating for human health, and particularly those of children, babies and people with existing respiratory problems.

It is estimated that air pollution causes up to 60,000 premature deaths in the UK every year, with the effects of exhaust fumes damage every cell in the body. Idling is in fact already against the law – but most councils still don’t enforce this. Surrey County Council had consistently refused to take action on idling, telling Sam it was ‘a matter for local councils’ despite it being SCC that has authority over transport and parking.

Other councils have massively cut air pollution, especially around schools and densely populated areas, by enabling parking officers to ask idling drivers to switch off engines. They’d be able to give a £20 on-the-spot fine (but only for repeated refusals to switch off, after explaining why switching off benefits both the driver and everyone around them).

Sam has calculated that idling generates thousands of tonnes of exhaust fumes across Surrey per year – so even tackling a small fraction of them would be hugely beneficial to our air quality, as well as saving drivers money and cutting Surrey’s transport emissions, which account for over 40% of its total emissions.

We have six months to reach 10,000 signatures for SCC to consider it – so please do sign and share with friends and family in Surrey who’d like to breathe cleaner air! The link is https://mycouncil.surreycc.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?Id=543.

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A Library of Things acts like a normal library, but instead of borrowing books you borrow items you’d use every so often but that it makes no sense for you to buy – for example, a hedge-trimmer, carpet cleaner or gazebo. Instead of each of us buying our own – and wasting money, space, resources and energy – you can instead borrow one for free as and when you need it!

This fantastic project is the result of collaboration between What Next? Climate hub, Godalming Town Council and Godalming Library. Former Green mayor Shirley Faraday and former Green candidate David Faraday in particular have dedicated huge amounts of time to getting the Library established over the past year.

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However, Richardson made several claims during the episode which, while unfortunately not scrutinised by the presenter, we felt needed some clarification. Members have sent the below questions to her office, and will update with answers if we ever receive one!

• You claimed that the economy has grown by 60% since 2010. This will not only be news to the thousands of local people still suffering through an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, but also to the Office for National Statistics. ONS figures show an average growth since 2010 of just 1.6% per year – a long way off the purported ‘60% growth since 2010’ claim. Could you please lay out what figures this claim is based on, and what assumptions have been made that result in a percentage so different from those given by official statistics?

• Secondly, you claim that “we have cut emissions in this country since 2010 by 40%”. Could you please again clarify what data this claim are based on, and what assumptions have been made, given that reports from the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero suggest that in fact, territorial emissions have dropped by less than 30% excluding aviation, shipping and externalised emissions in for example imported products. As recommended by the government’s own Committee on Climate Change, when we include aviation, shipping and consumption-based emissions – which appear to have increased since 2010 – the UK’s real emissions cuts are a fraction of the headline figure, mainly due to the ongoing switch from expensive fossil fuels to cheap renewables which has largely been hampered, rather than supported, by successive Conservative governments.

• Thirdly, you claim that ‘most emissions come out of people’s homes and buildings that aren’t insulated correctly’. Government figures show the ENTIRE built environment sector – including construction, materials production, land change, transport infrastructure, and heating – account for up to 40% of the UK’s total emissions. Heating is a significant by no means the largest portion of even this 40% figure, and therefore certainly does not generate ‘most emissions’. Could you also comment on the fact that since David Cameron’s government famously ‘cut the green crap’, insulation installations have plummeted by 96% in the UK, with significantly more loft, cavity wall and solid wall insulation measures installed in 2012 alone than in all subsequent years combined? The current Great British Insulation Scheme would take over 300 years to insulate all UK homes to meet your government’s own targets on fuel poverty, even if it is not cut in the recent trashing of our net zero commitments – costing households hundreds or potentially thousands of pounds per year in higher energy bills and leaving thousands of Guildford residents in cold, damp homes, choosing between heating or eating with some suffering unnecessary ill health and even early death as a result.

Beside these three clarifications, it is unclear how your position in government and support for Rishi Sunak’s announcement remains tenable and consistent with your membership of the Conservative Environment Network, which has opposed Rishi Sunak’s plans and pointed out that many of the u-turns Sunak has made, such as delaying the transition to electric cars or allowing landlords to continue failing to insulate homes, will actually cost the public billions of pounds more. Will you be resigning your government role or your membership of the CEN in light of this contradiction? And if not, what does your membership of the CEN mean to your decision-making in parliament, given that analysis of your voting record by They Work For You shows you ‘generally vote against measures to prevent climate change’?

We hope to bring you an answer soon. It is a shame that a BBC presenter would let such claims go without even a mention, let alone a challenge to determine where these figures have come from and how they have been generated, when even a cursory look suggests they may not fully reflect an accurate picture of the economy or this government’s record on climate.

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