Dear National Grid,

I find your so called consultation a sham because it simply has not provided enough information on other options than Mega Pylons sited on a number of routes for the transmission of electricity from the proposed new Nuclear Power station Hinkley Point C. It has been a request for residents to chose between two least favoured options, as one person at one of the many public protest meetings described it as "a choice put to a vegitarian over whether to have chicken or beef".

Quite simply this is not a consultation but a sham and the process should be started again with all options including under ground or undersea, with or without use of super conducting cables fully costed and presented. The long term amenity costs to the general public living in the area should also be included, including the loss of value to house prices, the estimated losses to income generation from tourism in the area, the cost in terms of human health and reduced life expectancy, and the cost of having to look at theses unsightly pylons for the next 80 years.

Another issue that has not been taken into account by your consultation is the likely need for further additions to the grid in future years when a probable tidal barrage system is built. I believe that a buried super conducting powergrid cable would have the capacity to carry continual increases in current without the need for further lines to be buried. There would thus seem to be the need for a fully thought out strategic review of the UK national grid for the 21stC and beyond, I venture to suggest that if super conducting cables are to be a part of this, then the time to start this switchover is fast approaching, and where better to start than on the Hinkley Point C project?

Regards
Dr. Brian Mathew
Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for North Somerset

With Yatton Against Pylons

With Save Our Valley in Nailsea

We are holding a vigil to stop climate change. This is part of a string of events happening across the UK and the World headed off by the WAVE demonstration which is being held in London on Saturday the 5th of December to encourage our leaders to take the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change seriously.

The National Grid's "Consultation" over the pylon issue for North Somerset,
is like some ghastly timeshare sales pitch. "Please tell us which option you
prefer and why?"  Our dilemma: Corridor '1' (wrong location, ill-considered,
not value for money) or Corridor '2' (wrong location, ill-considered, not
value for money)? In the National Grid's exercise in sham democracy, there
isn't a 'none of the above' option and we need one.

This whole exercise is designed to split our community right down the
middle, setting one side against another.  The time has come to stand
together as one.

Using 1950's technology for a 21st Century project is unacceptable.  There
are other very real alternatives for example:

1) Using cables to go under the Severn

2) Putting the lines underground as they do with gas;

3) If super conducting cables were used, as they are now being in the USA
and parts of Europe, a three foot wide trench could be dug along the side of
the M5, and there would be energy savings to boot!

National Grid cite the costs of alternatives as being between 12 and 17
times more expensive. Other evidence from the USA would suggest the real
cost would be somewhere between 5 and 10 times more, and with new technology
options becoming cheaper every day, who is to say what the difference will
be in five to ten years time, when the new power line will actually be
needed (remember they have not started work on the new nuclear power
stations yet and the actual installation of the transmission line would take
less than 18 months).

But this issue is not just about short term money considerations, the
proposed powerlines are so high (46.5 metres) that they will need lights
running down the side to prevent aircraft from Bristol Airport flying into
them, and they will be up for so long (80 years life expectancy), that they
will blight the view both by day and night for generations to come.

The beauty of an underground superconductor cable system would be that it
would not only remain hidden, but the transmission of power from future
expansion of energy in the South West (from renewable resources such as the
Severn and new as yet to be built wind farms and tidal stream generators)
could with ease be accommodated in a super conducting cable. Super
conducting cables are also massively more efficient something that is of
great importance when we think of global warming and the need to conserve
and use energy wisely.

The proposed 1950's mega pylons will by comparison 'heat the air' and will
be suited to the needs of the expanded EDF nuclear power station at Hinkley
Point and nothing else.

There are also health concerns, the power carried by the proposed pylons
leaps from 132,000 volts carried in existing lines in the area to 400,000
volts.  Worries over health are swept away as a statistical blip - earnest
reassurance is given by the National Grid  'electricity pylons won't cause
any harm to nearby residents or children in adjacent schoolrooms', and those
professional critics who report a higher incidence of cancer and leukaemia
near pylons are dismissed as unreliable nutters.

Infrastructure projects, if they are large enough to be taken out of the
local planning process, are certainly large enough to deserve serious
consideration of how best to minimize the damage to the local environment
and serious investment in solutions which are acceptable to local people.

National Grid's consultation should be a consultation.  It should give us
all the information we need to make an informed decision.  We need to be
able to choose:  to know how long the routes are, and what the real costs
are if National Grid put the power lines underwater in the Bristol Channel,
on land alongside the M5 corridor, underground along National Grid's
favoured routes, or overland on those routes as they currently propose.  We
all need to consider the options, but we're denied that chance.  Ultimately,
we are going to pay for this; so will our children, and their children's
children.

This is not a consultation.  It's an imposition.  Think again, National Grid
and come back to us with some real alternatives.

Brian Mathew

Last week I was invited to two climate change events, one entitled 'Operation Noah' at Southwark Cathedral with Rowen Williams the Arch Bishop of Canterbury and one in Bristol with OXFAM, Stop the Climate Chaos Coalition and Climate 350.org. The later a campaign to get CO2 down to 350 parts per million in the atmosphere, Currently we are just below 400ppm and rising fast (up from around 280 ppm in 1800)

The implications of Climate change are potentially terrifying if we don't get on and do something soon to reduce our own and global levels of CO2 production. While I was in Zimbabwe I took with me James Lovelock's latest and, by his own admission probably his last book, 'The vanishing face of Gaia, A Final Warning'. In this book Lovelock castigates the IPCC for basing its findings on concensus rather than science. With the scope of opinion ranging from climate change deniers on one side to James Lovelock on the other and the IPPC somewhere in the middle, it is deeply worrying to find the Met Office's own latest predictions are closer to Lovelock's than even the IPCC's.

At the Bristol event, I met Elvis Sukali one of OXFAM's team in Malawi who said “Climate change is having a huge effect on Malawi. Malawians rely on rain to grow food for the family and to earn money to pay for vital goods such as medicines and the foodstuffs they cannot grow. The rain is now so unpredictable that people’s livelihoods and lives are at risk.”

So the next question is what to do about it? There is a lot we can all do at home straight away by switching off lights when we don't need them on, keeping the heat down and generally conserving energy. But there is even more our Government could be doing and that's why OXFAM and the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition is organising a big rally called "The Wave" in London on the 5th of December. So come on and join the demo and make your voice heared loud and clear! I'll see you there...

See the flyer below:

The campaign to save one of the few open air Lido pools in the Country at Portishead has been won! The result means that the Portishead Pool Community Trust have 12 months to make the pool work, with a 40 year lease promised by North Somerset Council if it can be shown to be managed successfully. Congratualtions should go out to Portishead Pool Community Trust as well as all the people who have turned out to protect the pool. Now we must all turn out again to use it as soon as it opens at the end of May.

HOLA or 'Hands off Long Ashton' and DRAG or 'Dundry Residents Action Group' along with 100 environment activists and residents, campaigned at a demonstration in Bristol on Saturday the 7th of March. The prospect of 9000 new houses being built on the green belt is worrying, and its certainly not free, fair or green. "On thing is for certain when the green belt is gone it is gone, the Lib Dems Million Door survey of towns and villages is in North Somerset revealing how much town dwellers and villagers alike value their green spaces. New building needs to be kept to brown field sites" says Brian Mathew, North Somerset's next MP.