Rob Edwards

The Scottish Greens: a disappointment, but not a disaster

from Sunday Herald, 8 May 2011

As the sun went down on Friday, the newly re-elected Green MSP, Patrick Harvie, sat sharp-suited and sleepless on a concrete bench outside the Scottish Parliament and tried to come to terms with the last 36 hours.

After years of election planning, weeks of ceaseless campaigning and a dizzying blur of media appearances, the Scottish Greens had ended up exactly where they began: with just two MSPs, Harvie himself in Glasgow and Alison Johnstone in Lothian in place of Robin Harper.

As many as six other colleagues from around the rest of Scotland never made it, despite winning an overall total of 87,060 votes – 4.4% of the regional list vote. The hope, born of opinion polls, that they might beat the Liberal Democrats into fourth place after the SNP, Labour and the Conservatives was dashed.

“It’s a disappointment, but not a disaster,” said Harvie. “We weren’t wiped out. We hung on by our fingernails.”

The Greens were the only party, as well as the SNP, to increase their share of the vote. But the increase was tiny, just 0.3 of a percentage point, and not enough to send any additional Greens to Holyrood.

Trump opponent suffered racist abuse

from Sunday Herald, 17 April 2011

Martin Ford, the Aberdeenshire councillor pilloried by the local media for rejecting the controversial £750 million plan for a luxury golf and hotel resort by the US property tycoon, Donald Trump, suffered racist abuse because he is English.

After he was labelled as a “traitor”, a “misfit” and a “buffoon in a woolly jumper” by the Aberdeen Evening Express, Ford has revealed that he received “threatening and racist” emails referring to the fact that he was born and brought up in England.

He was also contacted by the local police and warned to stay in his house with his wife and lock the doors. He was the victim of “the behaviour of a mob”, he said.

Ford, who is now standing to be a Green MSP in the north east, has written his first detailed account of the weeks he was caught in the midst of a media maelstrom at the end of 2007. As chairman of Aberdeenshire council’s infrastructure services committee, he had used his casting vote to turn down Trump’s plan.

The Soviet environmental disasters that could come to haunt us

from Sunday Herald, 26 December 2010

There’s an atomic lake, a disappearing sea, a top secret biological weapons dump and hundreds of millions of tonnes of radioactive waste. Food is contaminated, babies are deformed and illness is widespread.

Welcome to central Asia, home to some of the world’s worst environmental disasters. But they are disasters that could come to haunt us all, according to an alarming new prediction from a veteran Scottish politician appointed as an international ambassador for the area.

Poisonous radioactive pollution could leak into rivers and end up contaminating the Arctic and other oceans, warned Struan Stevenson, the Conservative Euro-MP for Scotland. “The Soviet nuclear legacy may yet become a world catastrophe,” he said.

“It would be a grave error to think that this problem is in a far away country about which we know little and therefore can have no impact on us in the West. This is a man-made environmental problem of global significance.”

Stevenson has launched a campaign to bring the plight of central Asia to the attention of the Scottish public. This month he began a series of lectures at universities across Scotland on what he calls “Stalin’s legacy”.

Trump victim to appeal to human rights court

from Sunday Herald, 12 December 2010

Molly Forbes, the 86-year-old Aberdeenshire widow being threatened with eviction and a legal bill of up to £50,000 by the US billionaire, Donald Trump, is to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

She is applying for a ruling from the court in Strasbourg that she has been denied access to justice because she was refused legal aid in Scotland. Deprived of financial help, she was forced to drop a court challenge to Trump, who is now pursuing her for legal costs.

“I haven’t got the money to pay costs so he’ll just have to take a penny a week,” Mrs Forbes told the Sunday Herald. “I think he’ll have to wait until after I’m dead until he gets it all. He’ll never get it all. 

She pointed out that the chalet where she lives on the coast at Menie is worth considerably less than £50,000. “But I don’t want to sell it, I want to live in it,” she said. “It’s my pride and joy. It’s my paradise.”

Mrs Forbes, along with her son Michael, who lives next door, and a handful of other local residents, have been threatened with eviction to make way for the New York tycoon’s controversial £750 million golf and hotel resort.

Axe falls on Scottish government’s green advisor

25 November 2010

Scottish ministers have come under fierce fire for scrapping their green advisers, the Sustainable Development Commission.

The environment minister, Richard Lochhead, announced late this afternoon that funding for the commission will cease from next March, silencing one of the government’s most effective and radical critics.

This follows an earlier decision by the UK government to withdraw financial backing from the commission. There had been hopes that it would be saved in Scotland, but it is now doomed to extinction.

The decision was attacked as “deeply regrettable” by the head of the commission in Scotland, Jan Bebbington, a professor at the University of St Andrews. “There is no way to disguise the fact that the withdrawal of Scottish government financial support significantly weakens the government’s ability to progress sustainable development,” she said.

She pointed out that the Welsh Assembly had created a new critical and independent advisory group in place of the commission. “The same leadership has not been shown in Scotland,” she complained.

Trump demands tens of thousands of pounds from pensioner

from Sunday Herald, 24 October 2010

The US billionaire, Donald Trump, is demanding tens of thousands of pounds in legal costs from an 86-year-old Aberdeenshire pensioner who has been trying to protect her home from his luxury golf development.

Molly Forbes, who is worried about paying her next electricity bill, is being pursued in court this week by the New York property tycoon in an effort to recover his legal bills.

“It’s very unfair,” she told the Sunday Herald. “If he’s a billionaire, what’s he need money for from little people like me? He’s unbelievable."

Forbes, a widow, is one of several local residents who have been resisting eviction to make way for Trump’s controversial £750 million resort at Menie on the Aberdeenshire coast. She has been threatened with compulsory purchase of her home.

Last year she made headlines by launching a legal challenge against Trump and Aberdeenshire Council, asking for a judicial review of the decision to give the development the go-ahead. But she has had to drop the action because she was refused legal aid.

Fake grass could cause lead poisoning, say US scientists

from Sunday Herald, 17 October 2010

Ageing artificial grass can become contaminated with enough lead after a few years to poison children, according to a new study by US scientists.

The study has raised fears for the health of millions of children worldwide who use synthetic lawns for sports or play, and has prompted calls for “urgent checks” in the UK.

There are thousands of football, hockey and tennis playing surfaces made from synthetic turf across the UK. According to Sport Scotland, there are 232 full-size synthetic playing pitches in Scotland.

US health researchers have discovered that after 2-4 years or more of wear and tear, some artificial grass can become contaminated with lead dust. This has led to playing fields in the US being closed down because they were regarded as hazardous.

Lead, a heavy metal, has long been recognised as a potential danger to public health, and was eliminated from petrol and paint 20 years ago. If it gets into the body, it can cause brain damage, as well as heart disease and cancer.

Falling behind on saving the world: how we’ve failed the poor

from Sunday Herald, 19 September, 2010

“I’m extremely pessimistic about the future,” says Labo Bermo, a yellow scarf wrapped around his head. “There have been no rains. The animals are dying every day. Everyone is hungry.”

Bermo, a farmer from Niger, is a victim of the world’s latest food crisis, along with 10 million other west Africans. “At this rate, I don’t think even one of my cows will be able to survive,” he worries.

His story is not new, nor is it surprising. But this weekend, it has a special resonance, as world leaders prepare to meet and assess how they have responded to one of humanity’s greatest challenges: ending hunger, poverty disease and deprivation.

Not very well, is the answer. A decade after 189 countries agreed the historic “Millennium Development Goals” to bring comfort and justice to the world’s poor by 2015, most of them are on track to fail.

More than a billion people - a sixth of the world’s population and most of them in Africa - still go to sleep hungry every night. Every day 960 women die in pregnancy or childbirth because they lack basic health care.

At the same time, under pressure from the economic recession, rich countries are breaking the promises they made to help poor countries. Last year, half of the developed nations cut their foreign aid budgets.

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.

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.

Exposed: a series of safety lapses in silicon glen

from Sunday Herald, 04 July 2010

A series of worrying safety lapses in the high-tech microelectronics industry have been exposed in a new report from the government’s watchdog, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Companies using highly toxic chemicals to etch silicon chips for computers are under fire for failing to protect the health of their workers. HSE inspectors uncovered “weaknesses”, “misunderstandings” and poor practices in vital safety procedures.

Seven legal enforcement notices have been served on four companies in the past few months for breaching health and safety rules. One Scottish company, Intense Photonics, was rapped three times for failing to control hazards at its former plant in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, including risks from arsenic dust.

HSE inspectors last year visited 17 companies in the UK involved in making semiconductors for the computer industry. Five were in Scotland’s ‘silicon glen’: National Semiconductor in Greenock, Semefab and Raytheon Systems in Glenrothes, Shin-Etsu Handotai in Livingston and Intense Photonics.

The HSE was checking to see what had changed since it last had a serious look at the microelectronics industry in 2002. Although it found some improvements, a string of remaining safety shortfalls are highlighted in its report, released online last week.

Monitoring to ensure compliance with safety rules in high hazard situations “was weak at several sites”, the report said. “Often, there was no consideration of risks to others arising from maintenance and cleaning, for example from spread of contamination.”

Revealed: Scotland’s farm subsidy millionaires

from Sunday Herald, 09 May 2010

Four farmers in Scotland were given record handouts of more than £1 million each by taxpayers last year, according to new figures released by the Scottish government.

They join the elite club of Europe’s agricultural ‘subsidy millionaires’ who take the most from the public purse to help run their huge farming businesses. Large landowners and aristocrats across Scotland were also given hundreds of thousands of pound each under the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy.

The massive subsidies to rich farmers have infuriated public spending, environmental and anti-poverty campaigners, who say that poor farmers at home and abroad suffer as a result. But they have been defended by landowning and farming groups as necessary to keep down the cost of food.

Figures for the subsidies given in 2009 have been posted online by the Scottish government, in line with freedom of information legislation. In the last two weeks, most other European countries have also released a huge amount of information about agricultural subsidies.

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.

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.”

British government under fire for US use of Diego Garcia

from Sunday Herald, 28 March 2010

The unfettered use of the British island of Diego Garcia by the American military is “disturbing” and ministers should be “less deferential” towards the US, says a cross- party group of MPs.

In a report published today, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee criticises the British government for ceding control of the island in the Indian Ocean to the US, and demands a comprehensive review of the  arrangement.

The report comes as the US is planning to make another major military deployment at Diego Garcia. This summer, the USS Emory S. Land, which left a base in Italy in 2007 under a cloud, will arrive the island to start servicing the US submarine fleet.

Two weeks ago, the Sunday Herald revealed that 387 bunker buster bombs were being shipped to Diego Garcia by the US. Experts suggested that this might be in preparation for a strike against Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities.

Although the island is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.

The Large Hadron Collider: another big turn on

briefing for Sunday Herald, 28 March 2010

On Tuesday, some will warn you, the world is at risk of being swallowed up by a black hole.  Not metaphorically, but literally, as one of the legendary matter-gobbling vortexes is created when the Large Hadron Collider is turned on.

CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, has announced that  the huge circular particle accelerator in Geneva is to be fully powered up on 30 March. It has been mostly out of commission since a helium leak caused by an overheating electrical connection forced it to close after just nine days of operation in September 2008.

But on Tuesday physicists are hoping to do what they’ve been wanting to do for decades: engineer a head-on collision between two tiny particles travelling at ludicrously high speeds. The process, though, is a bit hit and miss.

“Just lining the beams up is a challenge in itself,” said CERN’s director, Steve Myers. “It’s a bit like firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way.”

Demands for honesty over US use of Diego Garcia

from Sunday Herald, 14 February 2010

The Foreign Office is coming under mounting pressure to tell the truth about how the British island of Diego Garcia is used by the US to launch attacks on countries in the Middle East. 

Leading opposition politicians are demanding answers from UK ministers on the role played by the Indian Ocean atoll in previous attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, and in any future strikes against Iran.

Last week, the Sunday Herald revealed that 387 bunker buster bombs were being shipped to Diego Garcia by the US. Some experts suggested that the move could be in preparation for a possible strike against Iran’s controversial nuclear facilities.

Although the island is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is used by the US as a military base under an agreement made in 1971. The agreement led to 2,000 native islanders being forcibly evicted to the Seychelles and Mauritius.