Tag Archives: austerity

Council, Derby Climate Coalition Archive, News

Closure of Council’s Climate Change and Energy Management Unit

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It was saddening to see the closure of Derby City Council’s Climate Change Unit on the first of April.

In 2006 the Derby Campaign against Climate Change raised climate change  with Derby City Council, which prompted the then leader, Chris Williamson, to lead the development of  a cross-party climate change strategy. This resulted in the adoption of the agreement to cut the Council’s own greenhouse gas emissions by 25% over five years and to address the issue across our city. All this was  backed up by the setting up of the Council’s  Climate Change and Energy Management Unit (CCEMU).

Continue reading Closure of Council’s Climate Change and Energy Management Unit →

climate, Derby Climate Coalition Archive, weather

Waking the giant!

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waking the giantHow can climate change affect the Earth?

Last Saturday I heard Bill Mcguire, Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, talk about how a changing climate can trigger earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes. Ironically he was speaking at Cromford Mill in Derbyshire, which contributed, as much as anywhere else, to the start of the Industrial Revolution . It was here that Richard Arkwright proudly opened the world’s first factory nearly 250 years ago. Continue reading Waking the giant! →

Derby Climate Coalition Archive, Uncategorized

Proposals to cut staffing on Railways will affect all of us!

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Over the next six years train operating companies are embarking upon a new programme of cost-cutting (refer to the McNulty report http://www.networkrail.co.uk/aspx/12658.aspx) that could see:

  • over 20,000 railway jobs put at risk,
  • the closure of 675 ticket offices and
  • a 50 per cent increase in the number of unstaffed stations.

Train companies are driving through the cuts in an attempt to find £3.5bn in efficiency savings by 2019, as requested by the government.

If the cuts go ahead one in ten staff currently working on the railways – including train guards, maintenance workers, and ticket office staff – could lose their jobs and around three-quarters of all the UK’s railway stations could become unstaffed.

This is not a case of creating a million climate jobs but of saving 20,000 Climate Jobs. The better and more attractive the railway service, the easier it will be to get people off the roads and to stop catching planes to places within the UK like Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Therefore Derby climate Coalition supports the TUC led  Action for Rail campaign. 

 

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