People's Republic of South Devon » Plymouth

Plymouth Councillor Chaz Singh – the face of Sikhs in Britain

PRSD — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:09:37 +0000

Chaz Singh – a Sikh in Britain in the book the Sikh's in Britain

Chaz Singh has a nice face – and that’s official! But don’t take our word for it, Chaz – Plymouth’s first Sikh councillor – is featured in the book The Sikhs in Britain, and it’s all down to his dashing good looks.

The picture of Chaz – which we reckon has reached iconic status – is by Peter McMullin, and here the pair of them talk about how the image came about.

The book The Sikhs in Britain is a lavishly illustrated portrayal of the social history of the Sikhs in Britain and their contribution to British society. Peter and Chaz were at a signing in Plymouth’s Waterstones.

This cracking short film has been produced by Bill Sheikh

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Plymouth MP Oliver Colvile isn’t the only Tory taking tobacco hospitality

PRSD — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:52:03 +0000

'The Government's tobacco plan warns of the dangers of tobacco industry attempts to influence health policy.'

It’s not only Plymouth MP Oliver Colvile who sucks down the fetid air of tobacco firm hospitality – another Tory MP has been under fire for accepting a tobacco firm’s ticket gift.

Lincoln MP Karl McCartney bagged more than £1,300 from Japan Tobacco International for tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show, thisislincolnshire.co.uk reported in January.

Turns out that Karl also tried to find out about how the public health charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) is funded. And he requested details about the number of people associated with ASH who have placements with the Department of Health and other areas of Government.

Meanwhile, Plymouth MP Olly C voted to lessen smoking restrictions.

Quoted on the thisislincolnshire site, Martin Dockrell, director of policy and research at Action on Smoking and Health, said: “The Prime Minister says corporate lobbying goes to the heart of why people are fed up with politics and he is right.

“The Government’s tobacco plan warns of the dangers of tobacco industry attempts to influence health policy.

“MPs don’t always know when they are being lobbied by the big tobacco companies because they often hide behind a smokescreen of lobby firms and front groups.”

In Plymouth a Cough Up Colvile campaign was started for the MP to donate the value of the hospitality he received to cancer charities.

(image: Some rights reserved by Fried Dough)

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Cricket-lover Colvile asks a question on non-EU benefit claimants in Plymouth

PRSD — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:33:36 +0000

Finger-on-the pulse Plymouth MP Oliver Colvile asks a question about already published figures

Spare a thought for Plymouth MP Oliver Colvile – he loves his cricket, and must be going through a dismal time what with the England team’s form against Pakistan. If they don’t improve will he be able to enjoy a freebie of attending a test (all at the expense of a tobacco company)? At least he’d be able to settle back and just talk business – that’s if he’s asked again.

The latest utterances of the cricket mad MP demonstrates even more thinking outside the box (a cricketing term). Who’d have thought that the Tory would ask ‘the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will estimate the number of registered benefit claimants from outside the EU, who originally came to the UK to work, study or visit, who are registered as living in Plymouth.’

Now there’s an MP with finger that’s a firmly on the pulse…

He was, of course, pointed in the direction of the recently published figures, which state: Non-UK nationals at NINo registration: DWP working age benefit claimants by world area in Plymouth unitary authority, February 2011: European Union, 250; Non-European Union, 410.

(image: Some rights reserved by Sam Hames)

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Dupre discusses Darwinism

PRSD — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:54:31 +0000

Charles Darwin: how our understanding of his Darwinism has changed will be discussed in Plymouth

Professor John Dupre, author and president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science, will be talking about Darwinism and how our understanding of it has changed over the last few decades.

He has written, among other books, Nature after the Genome, Value-Free Science: Ideal or Illusion, Darwin’s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today and Humans and Other Animals.

The event has been organised by the Plymouth Humanists and the format will be a presentation followed by discussion and a Q&A session.

The talk will take place at the Royal Plymouth Corinthian Yacht Club on Tuesday, January 24 between 7.15pm and 9pm. Cost: Voluntary donation.

(image: Some rights reserved by Paul8032)

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Train, planes and automobile – how to travel to Plymouth, Melbourne and Astana for Christmas

Claire McCarthy — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:00:05 +0000

Claire McCarthy spent much of her Christmas holiday ensuring her tray table was in the upright position

As I work in a private school, I am very fortunate to have a great deal of holiday. Summers are over two months long and there are all the other holidays throughout the year.

As we are a British school in Kazakhstan we observe not only the usual UK holidays of Christmas and New Year, but we also finish earlier in order to cover the Kazakh independence day on December 16 and return after the Russian Orthodox Christmas of January 7.

Not wanting to break with tradition, and of course to see family and friends, I returned to Plymouth for the Yuletide celebrations. New Year, however, saw me visiting a country which had been on my list ever since I had completed, what I believed to be at the time, a spectacular primary school project!

I received an email at the start of last year from a fellow teacher friend cordially inviting me to her wedding in Ballarat, a gold mining town about an hour outside of Melbourne. As my finances were in place and as I had no particular plans for New Year’s Eve, I decided I would jump on a plane and join her for her special day, which was actually going to be on December 31.

Knowing I would be going back to the South West for Christmas, I then set about working out the quickest , cheapest and easiest route from Astana to Plymouth, from there to Melbourne and back to Astana. This was not particularly easy!

Due to the fact that Astana is a fairly new capital city, it has not yet become an international hub for air traffic. Choice of airline and destination are limited! I also considered different transport options but the fact Kazakhstan is landlocked ruled out a ship, the seven-day journey by train and two week by car or bus were also not options!

After much research it turned out the cheapest route was to fly through Vienna to London, train to Plymouth, car back to London, a return journey from London via Kuala Lumpa to Melbourne and to return to Astana via Frankfurt! (Of course Astana to London, London to Melbourne and Melbourne to Astana would have made more sense and would have meant I wouldn’t have had such a zig zag of a journey).

For someone who is scared of flying this was an odd decision! The epic journey, unfortunately, did not start well. The morning was cold-very cold -31°C with a light dusting of snow! As the departure time came and went, we became more and more anxious. Eventually the airline staff told us the reason. There was apparently not enough energy to heat the plane and they were waiting for energy to be delivered! This really made no sense and left us wondering what type of energy this was!

Fortunately the “energy” was found shortly afterwards and we were able to leave – even though the temperature inside of the plane was only 8° above zero!

The flight was dreadfully dull as I had the seat in front of the curtain to the business class and meant there was no entertainment! Though a quick peak through to the other side, showed me they were being subjected to Tom and Jerry playing on a loop so I didn’t feel too hard done by!

The flights from London to Melbourne return actually passed off without any particular incident – the usual screaming children and odd nose bleed.

I sat next to a friendly Cornish lady on the first 13-hour leg to Kuala Lumpa, who offered me Murray Mints and had actually caught the coach up the night before, which I was originally going to get on before my sister kindly offered to give me a lift!

All the travel was well worth it – my friend looked stunning, the weather was perfect and I managed to see quite a lot of Melbourne and the surrounding area. I even managed to grab lunch with a good friend from my days at Plymstock School, who had emigrated to Perth a few years before!

The final two flights of this ambitious journey were where it finally went wrong! The flight from the UK was delayed and although I rushed to catch the next flight, the plane was grounded while four drunken people were removed from what was a lunchtime flight!! However, arriving at midnight, exhausted from all the travel, my luck finally ran out and my bag did not appear!

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MEP Giles Chichester to meet Plymouth City Council leader

PRSD — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:00:00 +0000

Council offices in Plymouth: South West MEP Giles Chichester will visit Plymouth City Council leader Vivien Pengelly there

Giles Chichester, Conservative MEP for the South West and Gibraltar, is to meet with Councillor Vivien Pengelly, leader of Plymouth City Council, at the Council House in Plymouth on Friday, January 13.

The meeting has been arranged to brief the MEP on a range of projects and programmes including those in receipt of European funding that the city council has initiated to further economic development and growth.

MEP Chichester, who is Conservative Energy spokesman in the European Parliament, has a specific interest in the city’s policies and programmes to promote the use of alternative energy sources and, in particular Plymouth’s Energy from Waste project.

A briefing meeting has also been arranged for the MEP with Kevin Kelway, marketing executive for Outset Plymouth, in their offices in Milbay. This organisation, which also has centres in Torbay and Plymouth, provides free advice, training and assistance to those involved in start up business projects. Funding is provided by Plymouth City Council and The European Regional Development Fund.

(from a press release)

(image: This image was taken from the Geograph project collection. See this photograph’s page on the Geograph website for the photographer’s contact details. The copyright on this image is owned by Pete Chapman and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.)

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Plymouth Labour condemned racist report

PRSD — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:19:00 +0000

Big wheel in Plymouth

Plymouth Labour Group of Councillors has reacted angrily to suggestions in a report by the council’s deputy leader that “foreign” students are responsible for a rise in crime in the city centre.

Of course, the council has now rejected the proposals, and said they’ve been ‘taken out of context’.

But Cllr Tudor Evans said: “We are outraged, this is racism pure and simple. While the city centre company has accepted this should never have been submitted to council, the very fact that this strategy was endorsed at the highest level in the council, the Police and the City Centre Partnership raises serious doubts about the judgement of all involved.”

Councillor Chaz Singh, whose Drake ward covers the city’s university and language schools said: “I am shocked and upset by this report. The Labour Group are calling for a full investigation of this matter. We want to know who agreed the action plan and authorised its publication. We must have assurances that these racist policies will not be put into practice. We believe that a public apology should be issued immediately.”

The relevant paragraphs in the report were hastily withdrawn from a meeting following press interest in the suggestion that “foreign” students should be forced to carry ID cards at all times in Plymouth. The report also suggested that the number of “foreign” students be limited in shops across the city centre.

The Conservative-controlled council published the report as part of its response to the Mary Portas report about how to encourage a flourishing city centre.

Labour Councillors were prevented from challenging these racist comments when the report was presented to the Growth and Prosperity Overview and Scrutiny Panel.

Here’s what the Guardian said about the report.

(from a press release)

(image: Some rights reserved by didbygraham_

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Final public consultation for proposed energy from waste facility at Devonport Dockyard

PRSD — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:30:51 +0000

Protests at the Devonport incinerator

The Environment Agency are giving people the opportunity to make final comments on the draft permit and decision document for the incinerator with energy recovery proposed for Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth.

In December 2011, the Agency completed its technical determination of MVV Environment Devonport Ltd’s application for an incinerator at North Yard and concluded it was minded to issue a permit to the operator MVV Environment Devonport Ltd.

This meant the Agency is satisfied, based on the information provided, that the proposed facility will be constructed and operated in a way that will not harm human health or significantly pollute the environment.

A draft permit and draft decision documenthave now been published, and these show theconditionsand how the Agency reached its decision.

The two draftdocuments are published before the Agency makes its final decision to allow any new information to be considered or any factual errors to be corrected.

The Environment Agency is also running a public consultation surgery so people can see and discuss the draft permit and draft decision document. This will be held between 1.30pm and 6.30pm on Monday, January 16 at Tamar View Community Centre, Miers Close, St Budeaux, Plymouth, PL5 1DJ.

“The aim of this surgery is to give people in the area the opportunity to speak to our officers about the draft permit and draft decision document and find out how we reached the decision and how they can now respond,” said Chris James for the Environment Agency.

“We will be running a question and answer sessions about the draft permit on the hour at 2pm, 3pm, 4pm and 5pm. There will also be officers available to answer questions throughout the session on other subjects such as regulation, environmental impact, biodiversity and health.”

The Environment Agency has received many responses from members of the public and other organisations during the public consultation and technical determination period and these have been taken into account during the decision making process.

People do not have to attend the public surgery in order to respond to the consultation, which closes on Friday, February 3.

MVV needs planning permission from Plymouth City Council (PCC) and an environmental permit from the Environment Agency to operate the facility.

The draft permit and draft decision document can be viewed on the Environment Agency website. People can comment by writing to: Permitting Support Centre, Quadrant 2, 99 Parkway Avenue, Sheffield, S9 4WF and quoting the reference number EPR/WP3833FT on all submissions.

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What about a People’s Question Time on the Hoe?

Stuart Bonar — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:54:38 +0000

Belvedere, Plymouth Hoe: an ideal location for a People's Question Time in Plymouth

As a candidate in the 2010 General Election one thing I really enjoyed was the hustings, what Americans would call ‘the stump’. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s the age-old tradition of candidates standing for election appearing on a panel and answering questions from their would-be constituents.

I was a candidate in Plymouth Moor View, and I generally found them to be good-natured, with the candidates giving positive answers about what they would hope to do, rather than too much knocking of opponents. It strikes me, however, that we should have more of this – politicians answering directly to their electorates – not just at election time, but all year round.

When I was up on the Hoe back in September to watch the America’s Cup it struck me that a perfect location for this would be the Belvedere, or what my father – a former city police officer – told me he knew as ‘the wedding cake’. In fact, back in the 19th century, the Belvedere was used for just that purpose, according to a local website dedicated to local history. Why not bring it back into use for that purpose?

Why not have the Leader of the council as well as the city’s three MPs (including South West Devon, as it covers Plympton and Plymstock) appear there two or three times a year and have an audience of people standing all around asking them questions?

It could be televised (at least by local news and on the new channel the city is set to receive) and streamed on the internet, with audience members encouraged to tweet as well. The audience could be randomly chosen from local Council Tax payers or be specially selected to cover a cross-section of the population (you’d need some selection to avoid it being taken over by unrepresentative political extremists). It could become a democratic tradition that the city becomes known for.

Personally, I’d like to see the work of the council and local representatives opened right up. The system is too closed, with anyone other than the Conservatives and Labour shut out. Councillors and people attending council meetings should be free to tweet. People should be free to film council meetings, and there should be an official streaming of meetings too. Many other councils do this, and Plymouth should do the same. In fact it should go further; the Belvedere idea should be part of a whole raft of steps taken to open up politics locally and make politicians more accountable for what they do and say. Politicians should answer to the people not just at election time, but all year round.

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Environment Agency minded to issue environmental permit for Plymouth incinerator

PRSD — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:46:32 +0000

Protestors campaigning against the Devonport incinerator in February 2011

The Environment Agency is minded to issue an environmental permit to MVV Environment Devonport Ltd’s application for an incinerator at North Yard, Devonport in Plymouth.

The agency is satisfied that the proposed facility will be constructed and operated in a way that will not significantly pollute the environment or harm human health.

Several responses from the public and other organisations have been received during the public consultation and technical determination period and this feedback has been taken into consideration during the draft decision-making process and these are also reflected in the draft decision document.

The Environment Agency will now publish a draft decision document and draft permit.

“The draft documents show what conditions we have included within our draft decision and how we made our draft decision,” said Chris James for the Environment Agency.

The draft permit and decision document will be available for formal public scrutiny and comment before the Agency makes its final decision. This will run until Friday, February 3 2012. The consultation has been extended beyond the normal four-week period to take account of the Christmas and New Year holidays.

“If we receive any relevant new information during this period we may alter the conditions of the permit. If the information we receive is substantial it could cause us to review our decision to issue a permit and we will be holding a public drop-in after Christmas to allow people to view the documents and ask us questions regarding the draft permit,” added Chris.

MVV Environment Devonport Ltd. submitted its planning application to Plymouth City Council during May 2011. It is the responsibility of the council to decide whether to grant planning permission. The planning committee are due to hear the application at their meeting on December 22, 2011.

The plant can only be built and operated once the operator has secured both an environmental permit and planning permission.

• The documents will be available to view on the agency website at bit.ly/t6qeav and on the public register at: Environment Agency, Exminster House, Miller Way, Exeter, Devon EX6 8AS Tel: 01392 316026 and at Plymouth City Council, Civic Centre, Armada Way, Plymouth, Devon PL1 9ST

People can comment on the draft permit and draft decision document and should do so in writing to: PSC, Quadrant 2, 99 Parkway Avenue, Sheffield, S9 4WF or by email to p...@environment-agency.gov.uk

People should quote the reference number EPR/WP3833FT on all submissions.

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Plymouth University students help create the university’s first allotment

PRSD — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:23:55 +0000

Plymouth Univeristy staff and students create an allotment for the university

Plymouth University staff and students who volunteer via the Students’ Union have swapped pens for pitch forks to create its first allotment plot.

It’s part of the institution’s commitment to the Plymouth Food Charter, which aims to educate people about the food they eat and where it comes from.

Jenny Bushrod said: “By supporting local growers and producers, we can create a more sustainable city, bringing fresh food to the table. It is also a good way to encourage better eating habits when you look at the statistics of around a fifth of adults in the UK being classed as obese and that number continuing to rise.”

Food charters have been set up in cities around the world and Plymouth’s arm has been supported by various organisations in the city including the NHS, the city council, the National Trust and the university.

This latest initiative is aimed at encouraging students and staff to come together to grow their own vegetables, promoting a better awareness of healthy eating and a healthy lifestyle.

Organiser of the allotment project and head of Sport and Recreation, Lesley Coulton, said: “Those taking part will not only reap the benefits in supporting the Food Charter, they will also be able to feel the difference of working outside in the fresh air, injecting a fun approach to exercise.”

Plymouth has over 30 hectares of allotment land across the city divided into just under 500 full-sized plots, and around 800 half-plots. The council has cleared an area in the Central Park allotments for the university, offering its support to the initiative, as well as a range of similar community projects.

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Highways Agency has no objections to contentious Devonport incinerator

PRSD — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:50:57 +0000

The Highways Agency's concerns over the Devonport incinerator have been allayed

The Highways Agency has no objections to the to the proposed Energy from Waste plant at Devonport.

The agency asked for further information about the impact of the proposal on the A38 from the applicant MVV Umvelt.

In a letter to the planning authority the agency said: “We are content that the applicant has addressed our concerns.

“Given the improvement scheme falls largely on Plymouth City Council’s road network, we are happy to direct relevant planning conditions preventing commencement of the development until the implementation of this scheme, on the understanding that the council are satisfied with all the elements of the scheme…”

While the Highways Agency is statisfied, there are some who don’t feel the health implications of the incinerator have been fully explored.

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