Farmers could be allowed to kill badgers from 2011 - News - The Ecologist

Farmers could be allowed to kill badgers from 2011 - News - The Ecologist

It strikes me that this Government is doing well in continuing the trend of successive Governments in not following the best available scientific advice and taking action of the type, scale and speed that the evidence suggests. Just off the top of my head in addition to the badger culling issue there is also: drugs and their classification; climate change; over-fishing...The grasp of science, scientific issues and their interrelationship with socio-economic and environmental factors in Parliament, in political circles generally and in the media is, with few exceptions, pretty poor.

More here, with useful links to some of the scientific debate on badger culling
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11303939

Green tips on the theme of clothes

Copy of a short article to be published in the local newsletter/magazine
'Knowledge', part of the regular 'Green Scene' series I write. This one's on the theme of clothes - topical give my recent blog entry on rising food and clothes prices the other day.

Money-saving, no cost or low cost ideas for being green:

*buy second-hand and where affordable buy clothes made from natural and ecological or recycled materials

*put old clothes to new uses and turn into draft excluders, cleaning rags, a patchwork quilt/blanket, furniture stuffing...

*take old clothes to charity shops and good quality recycling schemes like Oxfam, Scope

*think through what you are buying: Do you really need it? Will the item last well?

*don’t wash clothes at 50 degrees, cut the temperature down to 40 or 30 degrees – some detergents are designed to clean well at even 15 degrees

*think about whether what you are buying has been made by oppressed, abused, extreme low paid, slave and/or child labour – ask shops questions and if they don’t satisfy you then buy elsewhere

Cut Trident, dont replace, save £97 billion

From Greenpeace UK: Right now the government is discussing exactly what to cut from national budgets. Over the next few weeks final decisions will be made - in the firing line are schools, hospitals, housing and disability benefits and essential support for renewable energy.

At the same time they seem determined to green light spending £97bn on a new generation of nuclear weapons. Spending which is due to start at the end of this year.

How can it be that spending on building weapons of mass destruction is protected while investment in the 20 year Schools for the Future programme is scrapped?

And how can they justify giving the nuclear weapons factory at Aldermaston an extra £1billion funding every year to build new nuclear warheads - while scientific research funding is cut?

Again and again polls show that the public don't want new nuclear weapons. Weapons that the international community is working to eliminate.

Meantime senior military figures are warning against spending billions on Cold War weapons that are irrelevant to our military needs, while troop numbers face sharp cuts.

Please make your voice heard. Write to Chancellor George Osborne today. Let him know that you want to protect essential public services and cut Trident.

Louise Edge
Greenpeace Peace campaign

Please pass this message on.

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