The Knowle West Food Festival, well covered in the local media, did great job of promoting healthier and more environmentally friendly attitudes to food. A great example of the sort of community-based event we need more of.
I think the City Council should appoint a Local Food Officer to help to make these community-based events happen more often, in more parts of Bristol - and on a bigger scale and with more, related, follow-up developments too. There are few ways to become greener better than changing attitudes towards food, so much of our footprint is food-related - grow your own, cook your own, go local, go fresh and unprocessed, go organic, go high fruit and veg!!
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Well done to the Knowle West Food Festival!!
Labels:
Bristol City Council,
community,
ecological footprint,
environment,
food,
health,
Knowle,
Knowle West
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Why do liberals think all you need to do to solve a problem is create a job that has the problem in the job title?
ReplyDeleteHave equalities workers made us more equal? Have Sustainable City Workers made the city more sustainable?
Nothing demonstrates the poverty of progressive politics better than this obsession with creating more government jobs rather than proposing real solutions.
If you ask people what they want from the council they'll say (something along the lines of) a small, lean, efficient, service focussed organisation please.
Very few will ask request a sprawling and expanding mess of pseudo occupations and departments aimed at manipulating people's behaviour.
As the council hasn't got money to spend on these workers anyway (without charging me more), improving their food purchasing and procurement might prove a better, more efficient, leaner and service-focussed way to go.
Using your science focussed approach, can you provide us with empirical evidence (not hearsay) on the effectiveness of these Food Officers?
It all sounds a bit like (green) jobs for the boys to me (at my expense of course).
I prefer to tag myself a green than accept having someone else, who as far as I know doesn't know me personally, tag me as a liberal.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't want to be without officers for equalities and sustainability myself. I think they do far too much valuable work and we'd be in a worse situation without them. I might want to use some of them differently though. There are jobs within the council that I'd prefer not to fund, like some of the marketing and PR ones (I'm sure if I did a review I'd find others, including some very highly paid ones). I'm opposed to the council paying consultants left right and centre too.
I think you are going over the top with your comments about creating lots of government jobs, in relation to my proposal at least (I'm only suggesting one job is created!). Sounds like exaggeration to make a point to me. Some council officers are needed, though I guess we'd all have our preferences about what sort we'd have!!
Personally I think a Local Food Officer post could be created by switching funds less usefully employed in the council, just one being the production of many tens of thousands of glossy leaflets and brochures, most of which are not read (there must be better and greener ways to keep people well informed). Large amounts are also paid out to consultants.
Employing a Local Food Officer in the way I want would not cost you more in council tax.
I'm basing my opinion on the potential value of such an officer on the huge growth in interest in local, fresh food and on the scale and nature of a wide range of food-related issues. I think there is more than enough justification there.