Rob Edwards

Police slip-up on Trump protest

from Sunday Herald, 30 October 2011

Police strategy at the Aberdeenshire golf resort being build by US property tycoon, Donald Trump, was targeted against protestors – but that was a mistake, according to an internal police report obtained by the Sunday Herald.

Grampian Police confessed to an “admin error” in recording that its aim was to “deter, detect, detain and report those responsible for unlawful protest” against the controversial development. It should have said “unlawful behaviour”.

A hand-written note in a senior police management file released under freedom of information legislation warned that this could lead to accusations that the police were biased in favour of Trump.

"Emphasis on ‘protest’ could be seen as an imbalance in terms of neutrality,” it said. “‘Behaviour’ is more appropriate and was original strategy.”

The revelation has resurrected claims that Grampian Police have acted as Trump’s private security force in protecting the billionaire’s £750 million golf course and hotel complex on the Menie Estate. Last year, two documentary filmmakers were arrested and imprisoned after interviewing a member of Trump’s staff on the estate, but then had charges dropped.

Prizes for polluting fish farm under fire

from Sunday Herald, 30 October 2011

A Highland salmon farm that was granted £630,000 of taxpayers’ money, given an environmental prize and labelled as a “freedom food” producer has been accused of lice infestation and pollution in breach of official guidelines.

Wester Ross Fisheries near Ullapool is under investigation by government and voluntary agencies following complaints from a local landowner, Jenny Scobie of the Rhidorroch Estate. She says that sea lice from caged salmon are contaminating wild fish and damaging angling on the River Ullapool, which flows through her land.

Reports from government inspectors released under freedom of information legislation show that concentrations of sea lice at three of the company’s sites on Loch Broom and Little Loch Broom have exceeded levels recommended in the industry’s good practice code six times this year.

Evidence released by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) also shows that pollution of the seabed underneath the three sites – Corry, Ardmair and Ardessie – has been rated as “unsatisfactory” 20 times over the last ten years, and “borderline” eight times. The weight of caged fish licenced under environmental rules was also breached five times at Ardessie in 2006 and 2007.

Wester Ross Fisheries is a small locally owned business, producing 1,500 tonnes of salmon a year. It was given a grant of £631,720 by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) in March 2011 to help it expand.

Plan for massive new coal plant ‘riddled with errors’

from Sunday Herald, 23 October 2011

A planning application for a new £3 billion coal-fired power station at Hunterston in North Ayrshire is “riddled with errors” about pollution, carbon capture and wildlife, according to environmental groups.

The application - submitted by Ayrshire Power, a company formed by Clydeport’s owners, the Peel Group - makes a series of mistakes that undermine its credibility, they say. It manages to mix up the majestic white-tailed sea eagle, which has a wingspan of 2.5 metres, with the humble wheatear, whose wings stretch less than a third of a metre.

Dr Richard Dixon, the director of WWF Scotland, described the application as the worst he had seen during his 18 years working in the environmental movement. “It has contradictory figures, sloppy mistakes and uncertainty about the most basic parameters of the plant,” he told the Sunday Herald.

“Ayrshire Power can’t tell the difference between the UK’s largest eagle and a small moorland bird, they don’t know what our climate targets are, they can’t divide one number by another and they get their scientific units wrong by a factor of thousand. I wouldn’t buy a used car off them, let alone let them build a power station.”

The application for a plant to generate enough electricity for up to three million homes by burning coal and other fuels is due to be considered at a hearing convened by North Ayrshire Council tomorrow. The council will meet on 9 November to decide whether or not to back the plant, which will then have to be considered by Scottish ministers.

Has the population bomb been defused?

from Sunday Herald, 23 October 2011

It’s going to happen, the United Nations says, at the end of this month. Somewhere in the world on the 31 October, a baby will be born that for the first time in history will bring the planet’s population to seven billion.

The precise day, of course, is little more than an educated guess. But the undeniable prospect of the world reaching seven billion will generate a whole new flurry of international arguments about whether we can feed and house so many people without destroying the planet.

The UN will this week be releasing a new report on the state of the world’s population, starting a countdown to the 31 October. There will be those who say that that the “population bomb” will explode and engulf us all; and there will be those who argue that it has been defused and we should all be OK.

Whatever view you take, there is no doubt that an expanding population creates challenges. The world first reached one billion people in 1804, and it took 123 years to get to two billion in 1927.

But then the growth accelerated, with six billion being reached in 1998 (see table below) and seven billion just 13 years later. In May the UN predicted a global population on 9.3 billion by 2050 and more than ten billion by the end of the century.

Freedom of information appeals: the requester’s perspective

a talk at the Centre for Freedom of Information, University of Dundee, 19 October 2011

Hello. I'm glad to be here. It's daunting to give my views rather than report other people’s.

First an illustrative little story. In 2005 under what was then the new freedom of information (FoI) legislation I asked the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in London about a list of potential nuclear waste dumps which the government waste agency, Nirex, had given them. This was a Defra official’s baffling response:

What I am saying is that we don't have the list. I wouldn't want and couldn't be definitive about whether we had never had it. All I am saying is that if we did once have it, there's no record or memory of that being the case.

Maybe they could have just said: “Sorry, we lost it.” Six months later, after a lot of backstage political manoeuvring and several U-turns – all of which I know about because of a later FoI request – the list of possible nuclear waste dumps was released. Two months after that I heard back from the UK Information Commissioner, to whom I had appeal earlier when it looked like the list might not be released, saying he was ready to begin his investigation. I had to point out that if he had read the newspapers, he would know that the information had all been released so the investigation was redundant. As you’ll see from what I’m going to say, I’m not sure that the UK Information Commissioner’s attitude has improved much since.

Leaked memo: UK nuclear watchdog confident of safety hours after Fukushima

Exclusive, 18 October 2011

The government’s nuclear safety watchdog assured ministers on the day of the Fukushima nuclear accident that Britain’s nuclear plants would resist earthquakes and floods, according to a leaked Whitehall briefing.

In a memo to the employment minister, Chris Grayling, on 11 March 2011, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said it was “confident” that British reactors and the companies that operate them had “appropriate levels of protection for seismic events”.

It recommended a series of reassuring “lines to take” with the media about the “robust” safety systems that were in place to prevent nuclear disasters. In a covering note, an HSE official said it looked as if the accident in Japan was “now under control”. 

The Fukushima accident, triggered by a large earthquake and tsunami on 11 March, forced 80,000 people from their homes and spread radioactivity around the world. Reactors suffered three explosions, three meltdowns and a series of fires, and the accident was eventually classified as level seven on the international scale, meaning it was a “major accident” like Chernobyl in 1986.

Radioactive pollution will harm us but not children on the beach, says MoD

from Sunday Herald, 16 October 2011

Ministry of Defence (MoD) scientists have refused to analyse radioactive contamination from Dalgety Bay in Fife because of the risk it could give them cancer, official minutes of a meeting have revealed.

The MoD has been resisting demands to pay for a clean up of the pollution from old military planes for the last 20 years. It has persistently played down the possible health effects for members of the public.

The revelation that its own scientists are “not particularly keen” to come into contact with the contamination to protect their health will increase the pressure on UK ministers to act. The MoD’s position was condemned last night as “contradictory”, “unacceptable”, and “scandalous”.

The Scottish environment secretary, Richard Lochhead, described the disclosure as “disturbing” and promised he would contact the new defence secretary, Philip Hammond, about it. “Foot dragging by MoD officials must not continue to delay a final clean up,” he told the Sunday Herald.

“Public safety is the number one priority, and the MoD must be completely open and transparent. We absolutely must get to the root cause of this repeated contamination of Dalgety Bay.”

The MoD must now clean up its mess

comment from Sunday Herald, 16 October 2011

The sins of our past will always come back to haunt us. That is true not just for the former defence minister, Liam Fox, but for the sprawling, inefficient and sometimes disastrous ministry that he used to run.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has an unenviable record on safety, whether on nuclear submarines, on the battlefield in Afghanistan or flying RAF Nimrods. Sometimes of course it may not be entirely to blame, but sometimes it is.

It was old military planes that caused the radioactive pollution at Dalgety Bay in Fife. The thoughtless dumping of the burnt residues of radioactive dials more than sixty years ago has this weekend come back to haunt us with a vengeance.

Revealed: BP’s repeated safety failures in the North Sea

from Sunday Herald, 16 October 2011

The British oil giant, BP, has repeatedly breached legal safety rules on all its rigs in the North Sea over the last year, according to the government watchdog, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

The multinational company has kept failing to comply with the HSE’s statutory instructions to improve risk assessments after a series of alarming near-misses on several oil platforms, including Clair and Schiehallion west of Shetland and a network of nine fields in the Central North Sea.

The revelation comes after BP and its partner oil companies last week announced a massive £10 billion investment in exploiting new oil and gas reserves around the UK, triggering warm congratulations from the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond.

The investment is centred around opening up the more dangerous waters west of Shetland, and promises to reverse the decline in UK oil production, if only for a few years. It is forecast to create 3,000 jobs in the oil and gas supply chain, sustain the Sullom Voe terminal in Shetland for decades and bring in billions of pounds of tax revenues.

At a time of economic recession, this has been greeted as good news by many. And it was heralded by BP on Thursday as proof that the 40-year-old story of the North Sea oil industry was far from over, with drilling now projected to continue to 2050.

Public barred from beach by radiation fears

13 October 2011

People have been barred from an area of foreshore at Dalgety Bay in Fife after dangerous levels of radioactive pollution were found there.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency discovered a highly radioactive lump of metal near a public footpath at the weekend, and yesterday Fife Council cordoned off the area and erected warning signs.

This is the first time such drastic action has been taken to protect the public from radioactive contamination at Dalgety Bay. The pollution comes from the radium on old military aircraft dials that were burnt and dumped as landfill.

Radioactive particles are being washed ashore at the rate of about a hundred a year, Sepa says. In a recent health assessment, the government agency warned that children who ingest them could suffer a significant risk of cancer in later life.

Floods or earthquakes could cause radiation leak, says bomb factory

from The Guardian, 11 October 2011

Floods or earthquakes could cause radioactivity to leak into the environment from Britain’s nuclear bomb factories, the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) has admitted.

In a submission to the Fukushima safety review led by the government’s chief nuclear inspector, Dr Mike Weightman, published today, AWE said that some of the sensitive operations carried out at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire were “vulnerable” to flooding or seismic damage.

Burghfield was badly flooded after heavy rain on 20 July 2007, which an internal AWE report said caused severe disruption and “extensive damage” to an explosives area. But the report stressed that there was no “threat to the nuclear safety of either the AWE sites, the public or the environment.”

Now, however, in a 40-page submission to the Weightman review by the Office for Nuclear Regulation, AWE accepts that radioactivity could escape. “Some containment may be vulnerable to flooding in which case some limited spread of radiological contamination could occur,” it said.

This would be “a minor consequence event”, AWE added. “Some containment (process and structures) may be vulnerable to damage from a seismic event. There could be particulate release as a result of loss of containment or fire.”

Child cancer risk from radioactive pollution at Dalgety Bay

from Sunday Herald, 09 October 2011

Young children contaminated by radioactive pollution from old military planes at a popular Scottish coastal resort face a “significant” risk of getting cancer later in life, according to a new health study by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa).

Babies or toddlers who accidentally swallow one of the tiny “hot particles” that keep polluting the foreshore near a yacht club at Dalgety Bay in Fife could get radiation doses hundreds of times higher than the maximum permitted from nuclear reactors.

Earlier studies have underestimated health hazards from the pollution, Sepa warned. New tests have shown that more of the radioactive particles are likely to dissolve and stay inside the body than previously thought.

Sepa is upping its pressure on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to take responsibility for the pollution. That means finding out exactly where the particles are coming from, and paying for them to be cleaned up.

And this weekend Sepa has been backed by a former senior MoD safety official, who accused the MoD of “prevarication”. Fred Dawson, who worked for the MoD for 31 years before he retired as head of the radiation protection policy team in 2009, said public agencies had been playing a game of “pass the parcel” with the Dalgety Bay pollution.

Inquiry call over quarry firm’s conflict of interest

from Sunday Herald, 09 October 2011

Environmentalists have demanded an inquiry into a conflict of interest that they say has compromised a bitterly disputed plan for a massive new quarry on the banks of the Clyde in South Lanarkshire.

Patersons, the company behind an application for a three-million-tonne sand and gravel quarry near Biggar, helps run an environmental consultancy which has given a green light to the plan.

Two of Patersons’ directors, William Paterson and James Richardson, are also listed as directors of Envirocentre, a Glasgow-based firm that provided an “independent check” on the safe management of flood risks from the quarry.

The Clyde River Action Group (CRAG), which is campaigning against the quarry, has questioned the impartiality of the consultant’s advice. “This report is meant to be independent by law, yet it's about as independent as Palestine,” said CRAG spokesman, Arthur Bell.

“If an audit were to be carried out on a company by auditors who included the company's own directors, without any declaration of conflict of interest, then Companies House would prosecute.”

Inside story: Trump’s “difficult” relationship with Grampian police

from Sunday Herald, 02 October 2011

The US property tycoon, Donald Trump, has come under attack from Grampian Police for repeatedly demanding tougher security at his controversial golf resort being built at the Menie estate in Aberdeenshire, according to internal police reports seen by the Sunday Herald.

The billionaire has piled pressure on the police to increase protection of the estate by making more patrols and responding more rapidly when called. Over the last two years Trump and his aides have held numerous meetings and discussions with senior police officers, urging them to do more.

A series of memos marked “restricted” show that the police have struggled to resist this pressure, and have become worried that their impartiality would be damaged. Trump had “unrealistic expectations” that Grampian police would behave like the New York Police Department (NYPD), police officers said.

The revelations come against a background of growing disillusionment about the police’s relationship with the Trump Organisation. Two documentary filmmakers were arrested and imprisoned after interviewing one of Trump’s staff, but then had charges dropped.

And local residents opposed to the Trump development say they no longer bother calling the police if there’s an incident because of “the perception that they are working as a private security force for Trump.”

Doubts over promises to Trump on wind farms

from Sunday Herald, 02 October 2011

The Scottish Government and Aberdeenshire Council have denied that they made any promises about wind farms to the US property tycoon, Donald Trump, casting doubt on his claims.

Trump is vigorously opposing plans for an 11-turbine wind farm in the sea off Aberdeen Bay, a mile from the golf resort he is building on the coast near Balmedie. He has written twice in the last month to the First Minister, Alex Salmond, complaining that the wind farm would look “ugly” and be “environmentally irresponsible”.

The wind farm, proposed by a consortium including the Swedish energy company, Vattenfall, would deter visitors and damage his development, Trump argued. He would not have gone ahead if he hadn’t been “repeatedly promised, as an incentive for us to proceed with my project, that wind turbines would not be destroying and distorting Aberdeen’s magnificent coastline,” he told Salmond.

But both the Scottish Government and Aberdeenshire Council insisted that they had no record of making any such promises. The Sunday Herald asked them under freedom of information legislation to provide details of any statements made to Trump on wind farms.