Rob Edwards

RBS chairman to meet protesters

from Caledonian Mercury, 27 April 2010

The chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Sir Philip Hampton, is to meet with environment and human rights campaigners this week in an attempt to defuse escalating protests about the bank’s “dirty” investments.

The bank’s annual general meeting (AGM) in Edinburgh on Wednesday has become the target for a wide range of protest groups. They accuse RBS of putting up to £10 billion of public money into fossil fuel and mining projects in Canada, India and elsewhere which wreck the environment and violate human rights.

RBS was bailed out for £45.5 billion by the UK government during the banking crisis and is now 84% owned by British taxpayers. It has argued in the past that it cannot be held responsible for all the actions of the companies in which it invests.

But by agreeing to meet with campaign groups in Edinburgh after the AGM, Hampton may be signalling a new approach. “We are keen to listen to their perspective,” said an RBS spokeswoman.

“We recognise that a broad range of stakeholders have a very legitimate interest in the way that we conduct our business. Although we will not always agree with the many different opinions expressed, we welcome feedback and constructive engagement.”

Ministers face court action over Aberdeen bypass

from Sunday Herald, 25 April 2010

Plans for one of Scotland’s major new road developments will be thrown into doubt this week as campaigners announce they are taking the Scottish government to court.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that a decision by ministers to give the go-ahead to the £400 million Aberdeen bypass is to be challenged in the Court of Session by the local campaign group, Road Sense.

Legal opinions commissioned by the group make them “quietly confident” that they will be able to trip up ministers for failing to ensure that the road and its damaging impacts were given proper and lawful consideration.

They say that a public inquiry was unfairly restricted and its findings of fact were inadequate. They also allege that the road has violated the rights of those facing eviction along its route, and could breach European law by damaging colonies of bats.

“We have been forced into taking this action after years of being sidelined, stonewalled, ignored and misinformed,” said William Walton, the chair of Road Sense. The group has been opposing the bypass, known as the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route (AWPR), for more than four years.

RBS under fire for more ‘dirty’ investments

from Sunday Herald, 25 April 2010

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is facing a welter of fresh allegations about its multi-million pound investments in dirty and dangerous industries as campaigners prepare to protest at its annual general meeting in Edinburgh this week.

The bank, which is 84% owned by British taxpayers, has now been accused of backing a highly controversial mining operation in India. It is also said to have invested in companies which make cluster bombs, which are to be banned worldwide because of their “horrific” impacts.

Campaigners are demanding that RBS totally rethinks its investments to respect human rights and the environment. The bank, however, believes it is being unfairly targeted, and is becoming privately frustrated at the attention it is receiving.

The human rights group, Amnesty International, says that RBS or its subsidiaries have provided financial support worth £163 million to Vedanta Resources, a British-owned mining company, since 2004-05. The company runs a large aluminium refinery in Orissa, an impoverished region in central India.

An investigation by Amnesty found that the refinery had flouted the law and undermined the rights of local communities in the Niyamgiri Hills. Vedanta was accused of displacing landless workers without compensation, and polluting water used by people for drinking and bathing.

The monsters that used to roam Scotland

briefing from Sunday Herald, 25 April 2010

Last week there was news that the footprint of a giant scorpion had been found in Fife. But this is only one of a myriad of strange and extraordinary monsters that used to roam the land and seas millions of years ago.

Experts say there were huge centipedes in Arran, dinosaurs in Skye, flying sharks in Bearsden, weird reptiles in Elgin and woolly mammoths in Kilmarnock. There were probably other bizarre creatures for which evidence is still to be uncovered.

In those days, of course, Scotland was very different. The country started off around 500 million years ago as part of a huge continent called Laurentia in the southern hemisphere of the globe. Over millions of years the land gravitated north, crossed the equator and ended up where it is today. 

During the course of this “continental drift” driven by the movement of the earth’s tectonic plates, Scotland was rammed together with England. Then, some 60 million years ago, Britain broke off from north America and, along with the rest of Europe, moved slowly across the Atlantic.

Evidence of monster scorpions discovered in Fife

from Caledonian Mercury, 20 April 2010

Gigantic scorpions used to roam Fife, according to a unique fossil find by scientists. Footprints preserved in a rock show that huge six-legged, sharp-tailed monsters lumbered across the swamps of the kingdom some 330 million years ago.

The creatures, which predated dinosaurs by millions of years, were about two metres long and one metre wide. That’s about the size of a large dining room table - and somewhat more threatening.

The discovery of the distinctive trail of one of the beasts in a slab of sandstone in north east Fife has thrilled geologists. They say it is the largest known track of any invertebrate animal, and is hence globally significant.

The find is “unique and internationally important”, says the government’s conservation agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH). It is unveiling the discovery to the media today, though keeping its exact location secret to prevent it from being damaged by casual visitors.

Eyjafjallajökull: the little flick of ash that stopped us flying

from Sunday Herald 18 April 2010

Volcanoes can change history. About 74,000 years ago, Mount Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra exploded with a violence unlike any other, releasing enough pulverised molten rock to make two Everests.

The huge dust clouds that surrounded the globe blocked out the sun and caused a prolonged “volcanic winter”, scientists say. This made life very tough for humankind’s Neanderthal ancestors, reducing them to no more than a few thousand breeding pairs and for ever altering their evolution.

Compared to this, last week’s eruption in Iceland was nothing. It was not a nuclear-scale explosion, more a light flick of ash from a cigarette. Yet such is the vulnerability of 21st century international air transport that its consequences have been startling, far reaching and hugely damaging - and they could get worse.

Air travel has ground to a halt for at least three days, with mass disruption now expected to continue into next week. Apart from a handful of flights on the west coast, the UK has been in total lock-down, stranding hundreds of thousands of passengers, dislocating businesses, and wrecking countless weddings, funerals, holidays, conferences and sporting fixtures.

Flights from America into Europe have dropped by two-thirds, and up to 17,000 flights a day have been cancelled within Europe. The airlines are losing at least £130 million a day, according to the International Air Transport Association, with companies like British Airways and Lufthansa facing losses of maybe £10 million a day.

Protest against RBS investment in ‘bloody oil’

from Sunday Herald, 18 April 2010

George Poitras has come a long way to make his point. From his traditional Mikisew Cree homelands on the shores of Lake Athabasca in northern Alberta, he has journeyed to Murray Place in the centre of Stirling, to confront the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS)

“My people are dying,” he said, “and anyone involved in the tar sands industry must take responsibility for that, including those that help fund it like RBS.”

RBS, which is now 84% owned by taxpayers, stands accused of supplying loans worth nearly £5 billion over the last three years to companies involved in extracting oil from underground tar sands in northern Canada.

The industry is not just dirty oil, it is “bloody oil”, insisted Mr Poitras (46), the former chief of the Mikisew Cree First Nation. He blamed the high rates of cancer amongst his people on toxic pollutants from massive mining operations 240 kilometres upstream. 

Over a hundred people in the small lakeside village of Fort Chipewyan have died from cancer, out of a First Nation population of about 1,200. Studies have suggested that the cancer rate is 43% higher than normal, and some of the cancers are rare varieties linked to contaminants.

Air travel halted by volcanic ash from Iceland

from Caledonian Mercury 15 April 2010

Hundreds of thousands of travellers across Scotland, the UK and northern Europe face mass disruption today as virtually all planes are grounded to protect them from a cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland.

All Scotland’s airports are currently closed, and all other UK airports including Heathrow shut down at noon. “The cloud of volcanic ash is now spread across the UK and continuing to travel south," said NATS, the agency which controls UK flights, this afternoon.

"In line with international civil aviation policy, no flights other than agreed emergencies are currently permitted in UK controlled airspace. Following a review of the latest Met Office information, NATS advises that these restrictions will remain in place in UK controlled airspace until 0700 (UK time) tomorrow, Friday 16 April, at the earliest.”

Flights in the north of Sweden and Finland have been cancelled, Norway’s biggest airport in Oslo is closed and Denmark is planning to close its airspace this afternoon. It is unclear how long the disruption will last, though some experts say it may take days for the ash to clear.

“We continue to monitor the situation with the Met Office and work closely with airline customers and adjoining countries,” said NATS. “We will review the situation later today to understand what further action will be required.”

Radical recommendations to cut waste ‘sidelined’

from Caledonian Mercury, 13 April 2010

A series of radical recommendations aimed at eliminating Scotland’s waste, including ‘pay as you throw’ schemes, landfill bans and a network of biomass plants, are being sidelined by the Scottish government, insiders say.

Five authoritative reports by the Zero Waste Think Tank, a group of experts set up to advise ministers, are being virtually ignored in drawing up the nation’s waste plans. Critics fear that ministers may be losing the political will for tough action on waste.

The reports, which were meant to inform waste policy, were quietly posted on the government’s website last month at the same time as other announcements about recycling. No reference was made to their publication.

The Zero Waste Think Tank, involving 15 waste specialists from public agencies, voluntary organisations and businesses, started work in March 2008. It ended by producing the five reports, covering delivery, regulation, business and climate pollution.

The reports’ recommendations included the adoption of controversial “pay as you throw” schemes designed to encourage consumers to minimise their rubbish. They also suggested that the dumping of certain wastes on landfill sites should be banned.

Businesses set for ‘disastrous’ boom in pollution and profits

from Sunday Herald, 11 April 2010

Big businesses are in for a pollution and profit bonanza because of loopholes in the European scheme to limit climate emissions opened up by the economic recession.

New figures reveal that companies will now be able either to boost their climate pollution - or to sell unused pollution permits for millions of pounds, enabling others to increase their emissions.

The climate-wrecking boon for businesses has arisen because the recession has caused emissions across Europe to fall below the caps imposed by the European Commission for the first time.

Companies in Scotland that stand to gain include INEOS, the English petrochemical company which runs three polluting plants at Grangemouth, and Lafarge, the French-owned company that operates a cement works near Dunbar in East Lothian.

The prospects were “potentially disastrous”, according to Dr Richard Dixon, director of the environment group, WWF Scotland. “As it stands businesses across Europe will be able to make more profit by exploiting this loophole to carry on polluting pretty much as usual,” he told the Sunday Herald.

Crackdown on mass dumping of toxic tyres

from Sunday Herald, 11 April 2010

There’s millions of them, and they can be noxious, polluting and a haven for rats. But they have been dumped all over Scotland by waste cowboys.

The illegal fly-tipping of old vehicle tyres is one of the nation’s biggest waste problems. But it is now facing a crackdown by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), which is determined to catch “dumb dumpers”.

As many as a million tyres a year have been dumped on waste ground in the central belt since 2004. More than five thousand incidents have been reported, many in the west of Scotland.

As well as being a blight on the landscape, dumped tyres are dangerous. They encourage insect and rodent infestations, and are a major fire risk.

PIles of tyres are often set alight and have to be put out by the fire services, sometimes with great difficulty. And when they burn, tyres produce a toxic cocktail of pollutants that can contaminate water, land and air. 

If the polluted air is inhaled, it can cause major public health problems for nearby communities. The pollutants are particularly harmful for those with breathing difficulties.

Government under fire for U-turn on nuclear dumps

from Sunday Herald, 11 April 2010

An attempt by the Scottish government to quietly abandon its opposition to dumping nuclear waste underground has come under fierce attack from local authorities, environmental groups and experts.

They say that radioactive waste disposed of down holes in the ground could leak into the groundwater and soil and contaminate future generations. The waste remains dangerous for thousands of years.

Ministers are being urged to revert to their original plan to put the waste in stores above the ground where it can be managed, monitored and kept safe.

The Scottish National Party was elected in 2007 on a promise to “say no to new nuclear power stations or dumps”. The environment minister, Richard Lochhead, condemned burying nuclear waste underground as an “out of sight, out of mind policy” that should not extend to Scotland.

Is Scotland safe from nuclear submarine crashes in the Clyde?

from Sunday Herald, 04 April 2010

The Royal Navy has failed to minimise the risk of nuclear submarines colliding with oil tankers or cruise ships in the Firth of Clyde, according to a report by the Ministry of Defence’s internal safety watchdog.

The Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator (DNSR) says that naval plans meant to protect Scotland from submarine accidents in the Clyde and on the north west coast are riddled with flaws. 

There are “difficulties” with commercial shipping in the Clyde, it reveals. At some submarine berths, weather information is outdated, maps are inadequate and there haven’t been any emergency exercises for years.

The DNSR report, secret until it was released under freedom of information law, has prompted calls for a ban on the use of submarine berths. It has also heightened fears of radioactive leaks from submarine reactors.

There are designated berths for the UK’s Trident and other nuclear-powered submarines at the Faslane naval base on Gareloch and at the Coulport nuclear weapons depot on Loch Long. There is another berth in Loch Goil, off Loch Long.

There is also an official berth, known only as B4, in the middle of the Firth of Clyde off Gourock. According to shipping charts, it is close to the junction of three busy shipping lanes through the firth.

Revealed: drastic cutbacks in pollution inspections

from Sunday Herald, 4 April 2010

Scotland’s environmental watchdog is planning to slash inspections at thousands of factories, waste plants and small businesses, prompting fears that pollution will go undetected and unpunished.

Information leaked to the Sunday Herald reveals that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is making major cutbacks in checks for pollution problems at industrial facilities across the country in order to save money.

The revelation has alarmed green groups, who allege that polluters will be allowed to get away with toxic leaks and environmental contamination. But this is strongly denied by Sepa, which insists that the changes will lead to better regulation.

Inspectors from Sepa currently visit over 1,900 of Scotland’s smaller industrial enterprises twice a year. The plan is to reduce this to once every three years for the large proportion deemed to be “compliant very low risk”.

Similarly, inspections of many of the 1,300 sites licensed for waste management will be cut by a third, a half or more, depending on how risky they are judged to be. Visits to over a hundred local authority sites could drop from up to 12 a year to just one.