Rob Edwards

Exposed: the "evil scheming" of a property developer

from Sunday Herald 29 August 2010

A leading Scottish property developer employed “evil scheming” to gain access to historic land to build a lucrative private housing estate, according to documents seen by the Sunday Herald.

The Lomond Group secretly planned to bounce Fife Council into ordering the demolition of a 300-year-old wall in the conservation village of Falkland, so farmland behind it could be opened up for a development likely to reap a multi-million pound profit.

The company’s behaviour has been condemned as “bullying” and “despicable” by residents, who described the destruction of the wall as “an act of vandalism”. Lomond said the wall had to come down because it was unsafe.

A 20-metre stretch of sandstone wall was knocked down by a Lomond mechanical digger on April 7.

Residents have argued the company manipulated the council to try and further its development plans. Their suspicions have now been reinforced by two company documents.

Learning to love wasps

from Sunday Herald, 29 August 2010

We all know the scene.

You’re just sitting down to relax in your garden on a warm, sunny day, maybe with a chilled glass of wine and a newspaper ... and then they attack.

Buzzing at your head in a yellow and black blur, dive-bombing your ears in a desperate hunt for a sugar fix. Whatever you do, they just won’t go away – and nor does the threat of a painful sting.

Wasps are probably the nation’s most hated insect, provoking widespread fear and loathing, and death by rolled up newspaper. But campaigners are about to try and change all that. They want us to learn to love the wasp.

The insect conservation group, Buglife, will tomorrow launch a major campaign to rebrand wasps as “wonderful”. You shouldn’t kill them, the group says, you should try and be nice to them.

Buglife will be appealing to members of the public not to swat wasps. Instead, the group suggests, people should “calmly waft” or give a “little puff” to shoo them away.

“I love wasps. They are some of the most fascinating creatures on the planet,” said the TV presenter and naturalist, Steve Backshall, who is backing Buglife’s campaign.

Revealed: the £13 billion that RBS puts into polluting industries

from Sunday Herald, 22 August 2010

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has provided nearly £13 billion worth of funding to the world’s dirty oil and gas industries since it was bailed out by the taxpayer two years ago.

The figures, being revealed today by the Sunday Herald, are the first authoritative and detailed account of the bank’s controversial financing of the companies blamed for causing global warming.

Among the 66 companies backed by RBS are well-known names like BP, Shell, ConocoPhilips, Tullow Oil, Trafigura and Cairn Energy. The bank has helped them raise many hundreds of millions of pounds to finance oil exploration, extraction and development around the world.

To environmental groups and the hundreds of climate protestors currently camped on RBS’s lawn near Edinburgh, the revelations prove that the bank is guilty of an unforgivable crime against the planet.

But to the bank, which does not dispute the figures, they just show that someone has to raise the money to extract the fuels on which we all depend before we can work out how to phase them out.

The singer who wants to save Greenland from oil

for Sunday Herald, 22 August 2010

Simon Lynge is watching his country melt. Every time he goes home to Greenland on the edge of the Arctic, something has gone.

When he was last there in June, the snow had disappeared from the hill, and there were no icebergs in the water. It was 28 degrees centigrade, the hottest he has ever known.

Previously, the drinking water that used to supply Alluitsoq, the small village where he was brought up, ran out. The mountain lakes from which it flowed had evaporated in the heat.

His country is changing so fast that he fears for its future, and he has no doubts what is to blame. “We’re spewing too much carbon dioxide into the air and drilling for more oil makes it worse,” he says.

“To paraphrase an old native American saying: only when the last tree has died, the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught, will we realise that we cannot eat money.”

The protestors dancing around RBS

from Sunday Herald, 22 August 2010

It’s been a strange few days for staff at the imposing headquarters of the Royal Bank for Scotland (RBS) at Gogarburn, just outside Edinburgh. Late on Wednesday evening, a group of green protestors “swooped” into their grounds and set up this year’s climate camp.

Since then tents, teepees, brightly coloured toilets, a field kitchen and a wind turbine have been set up, and there’s been talk of a permaculture garden. The police have arrived, while the campers have formed affinity groups, run workshops, and planted banners.

On Friday, more than 100 activists penetrated the security cordon that had been thrown around the bank’s HQ. One woman “disguised as a banker” gained entry to the building and superglued her hands to the front desk.

Bank workers were invited to lunch at the climate camp, to learn about what the protestors were doing and why. Some demonstrators entered the HQ’s revolving doors and held what they called a “dance party”, before listening to speeches about RBS’s alleged evils.

Scottish Natural Heritage to shed 150 jobs

from Sunday Herald, 22 August 2010

The Scottish government’s wildlife agency is facing the loss of 150 jobs because of spending cutbacks caused by the financial crisis, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

Scottish Natural Heritage is preparing to cut its staff by a fifth in order weather drastic reductions in its budget expected next year. It is also considering slashing grants to voluntary groups, selling property and cutting schemes to help farmers by managing geese.

The revelation has provoked concern from some environmentalists, but barely-disguised pleasure from others critical of SNH’s failings. It comes from a report (152Kb pdf) of a closed meeting of SNH’s board released under freedom of information law.

“Beyond 2010 the public sector financial outlook was bleak,” recorded the minute of the meeting in Edinburgh on 23 February this year. The agency’s grant of £66.86 million for 2010-11 is expected to be significantly reduced next year.

New evidence that pesticide could be killing bees

from Sunday Herald, 08 August 2010

The UK government is under mounting pressure to ban a toxic pesticide after new evidence suggested it could be to blame for the catastrophic collapse of bee populations.

A Dutch scientific study says that bees could be poisoned by long term exposure to small concentrations of nicotine-based insecticides known as neonicotinoids. They are widely used by British farmers to kill insects that damage crops.

Because of concerns that they may be wiping out bees, their use has been banned or restricted in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia. So far, however, the British government has resisted calls for a ban.

According to beekeepers, honeybee populations in the UK crashed by nearly a third in 2008. The implications are alarming, as bees contribute £200 million a year to the UK economy and pollinate one in every three mouthfuls of food that we eat.

The crash has sometimes been labeled “colony collapse disorder”, and its causes are disputed. But some scientists argue that neonicotinoids, which paralyse insects by attacking the nervous system, are implicated.

The new study is by Dr Henk Tennekes, a consultant toxicologist from Zutphen in the Netherlands. Published in the latest edition of the journal, Toxicology (subscription required), it says that very small quantities of toxins can be hazardous in the long run.

Westminster accused over quango massacre

from Sunday Herald, 08 August 2010 

The Scottish finance secretary, John Swinney, has accused the UK government of breaching its high-profile promise to “respect” Scotland by failing to consult over the axing of public bodies.

In an attempt to cut the budget deficit, London ministers have scrapped or cut back more than 80 environmental, health and cultural quangos. But for some of those that cover Scotland, Scottish ministers were given little or no warning of their imminent demise.

This has left Scotland with a series of tricky problems to solve in determining the fate of several crucial agencies like the Sustainable Development Commission, the Food Standards Agency and the Health Protection Agency. Moves are now underway to see if some of the vital functions performed by these bodies can be saved.

The difficulties are particularly acute with the Sustainable Development Commission, which has given expert advice to ministers in Scotland and the rest of the UK on how to make policies more environmentally friendly and save money. Its funding from next April has been withdrawn by the UK environment secretary, Caroline Spelman.

But insiders say this was done without realising that the commission was also funded by the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – and without conferring with ministers in those countries.

Council accused of breaking the law on contamination

from Sunday Herald, 08 August 2010

A major Scottish local authority has been accused of breaking the law by failing to clean up dangerous contamination and putting the health of hundreds of people at risk.

North Lanarkshire Council has been threatened with legal action by solicitors representing residents from an estate in Motherwell who believe that toxic waste left by a old wartime factory is making them sick.

The council has acted “negligently” and its remediation strategy was “severely flawed and badly implemented”, allege the lawyers. Its repeated insistence that there was nothing to worry about was “simply misleading”, they say.

But the council has hit back, accusing the lawyers of touting for business by inflaming the fears of local people. In the last few days investigators commissioned by the council have begun a 16-week programme of test-drilling in the area to check for contamination.

The Sunday Herald revealed in March that residents near Watling Street in north Motherwell were worried about pollution from a huge military plant in the area that used to handle toxic metals, hazardous chemicals and radioactive materials in the 1940s.

Widespread opposition to new coal plant

from Sunday Herald, 01 August 2010

Government-backed plans for a huge new coal plant are running into a rising tide of opposition from a powerful range of groups worried about pollution, wildlife and tourism.

The £3 billion scheme by Clydeport’s owners, Peel Holdings, to build Scotland’s first new fossil fuel power station for decades at Hunterston in North Ayrshire is facing thousands of objections from faith groups, international aid charities, wildlife agencies, environmentalists and businesses.

Amongst those who have now come out against the scheme are Christian Aid, Oxfam, the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Largs Yacht Haven and the Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park Authority. A new coal station would harm people in developing countries, they say, as well as threatening otters, birds and businesses locally.

The breadth of opposition to the Hunterston plant creates problems for the Scottish government, which has already endorsed it as part of Scotland’s National Planning Framework. The plant has also been rejected by a majority of the Scottish Parliament, and it is the subject of a court challenge from objectors.

A public consultation by Scottish ministers is to due to close on 20 August. But the Sunday Herald understands that well over 5,000 representations have already been received, the vast majority of which are objections.

Scottish beach fails sewage safety limits

from Sunday Herald, 01 August 2010

Popular beaches across Scotland are again being polluted with sewage this summer, putting the health of bathers, paddlers and surfers at risk.

The Sunday Herald can reveal that one beach at the Heads of Ayr has already breached the sewage safety limit for the year, making it the first to fail so far this season.

Another seven bathing waters around the coast have also suffered serious sewage pollution. They include four more in the south west: Saltcoats in North Ayrshire; Girvan in South Ayrshire and Carrick and Rockcliffe, both in Dumfries and Galloway.

Other dirty beaches are Earlsferry in Fife and Milsey Bay in North Berwick. In the last two months, they have recorded one sample in breach of the limit for faecal coliforms.

The pollution comes from leaking sewers, or from animal faeces washed off the land by rain. It can cause stomach, skin or ear infections and in extreme cases can be lethal.

If a bathing water registers two failed samples, it is deemed to have failed for the season, which extends to mid-September. This is what has already happened at Heads of Ayr, a beach to the south west of Ayr heavily used by visitors from nearby holiday parks.