Guest blog by Danielle Pafford, Move Your Money UK
In May, in between the Diamond Jubilee, the Bank Holidays, and the wait for the weather to improve, thousands of shareholders are gathering for the Annual General Meetings of the big banks.
These AGMs are a great chance for us to get the word out: move your money, move it now, and bank on something better.
The AGM circus kicked off at Barclays, where Bob Diamond’s massive $17m pay package was voted through, despite huge public anger. And it’s not the only bank paying huge bonuses, regardless of failure or success. And it’s not the only bank that caused the financial crisis of 2008, for which we’re all paying. They’re all at it, and they won’t change. Continue reading →
The Scottish Government’s proposals for new rules of court on Protective Expense Orders published last month are as disappointing as they are late.
Codification of the rules of court on Protective Expense Orders (PEO) was recommended by Lord Gill’s review of the civil courts in 2009 as a necessary aspect of compliance with the UNECE Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. Continue reading →
Ever feel frustrated that your hard earned pennies are being pumped into coal-mining, cluster bombs or credit default swaps? Then March is the month to move it!
Beth Stratford preparing for the move to a better bank.
Today is the first day of Move Your Money Month, during which thousands of people will be moving their money out of the big banks like RBS, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and Santander and into mutually owned, community-focused or ethically minded banks. Continue reading →
By Ana Dragalina, Friends of the Earth Scotland volunteer.
Last Saturday we paid a visit to the people of Rosyth, Fife, and had a chat with them about one of Forth Energy’s proposed biomass powered plants which is planned to be built near the town’s port. Sheila Duffy, concerned resident of Rosyth and Friends of the Earth Scotland activist, invited us along to help her raise awareness.
Continue reading →
Did you know that across the UK as a whole, biomass accounts for a whopping 82.5% of renewable energy currently produced? At Friends of the Earth Scotland, we believe there is a space for small, community-owned biomass boilers making use of heat and using locally sourced wood.
But – take heed, readers, and take action: big biomass in Scotland a far cry from this romantic ideal. It is simply riding on the ‘clean and green’ image to try and attract heavy subsidies for renewable energy, which are currently up for review. Please get in touch with the Scottish Government soon to call for it to stop putting our money into this false solution.
Here are five myths about biomass that the Friends of the Earth Scotland team is working to dispell: Continue reading →
2011 wasn’t a great year for the environment or the climate, and, after this year, few of us will be in any doubt about what is meant by the term ‘extreme weather’. The year kicked off with Australian floods in January, followed by cyclones, landslides and earthquakes. No region seemed safe, but the US was hit particularly hard by flooding, wildfires and drought. The Guardian called 2011 “the year of too much or too little water”, and wrote: “It began with devastating floods in Australia which covered an area the size of France and Germany combined, and ended with tropical storm Washi killing nearly 1,000 people and making 300,000 homeless in the Philippines.” Continue reading →
If you read the EU commissioner for climate action Connie Hedegaard’s summary of the outcomes of the Durban climate summit, it sounds like the talks were a great success. Hedegaard is trying to enforce the story that the EU is leading on tackling global climate change. In fact, what Durban gave us was another ‘we agree to agree on a deal later’. The sad truth about the so-called roadmap agreed in Durban is that it fails spectacularly to take action against the climate crisis. Instead of leading on climate change action, the EU is part of a band of culprits comprising rich developed countries, who refuse to act. This band of brothers is the US, who never signed up to the Kyoto Protocol in the first place, Canada, who dropped out of Kyoto yesterday to continue their climate wrecking tarsands operations, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Russian and finally the EU. Together, these countries are responsible for 75% of all emissions historically, yet continue to avoid and dodge their responsibility to act. Continue reading →
Good news in a guest post from Kev Smith at Platform, a group we’ve been working with on our Clean Up RBS campaign.
News has reached us that RBS isn’t sponsoring the 2012 Climate Week, due to take place in March. RBS was a controversial sponsor of last year’s event, which many saw as an opportunity for the bank to gain some ill-deserved environmental credentials in the face of public criticism over its appalling record of fossil fuel finance. Continue reading →
This is a version of a talk given at the Scottish Parliament in November 2011.
The Hunterston case was brought by Marco McGinty, a bird-watcher from Largs who visits the site on an almost daily basis. With the support from a number of NGOs, including Friends of the Earth Scotland, the local community and a solicitor called Frances McCArtney, Marco lodged a judicial review in September 2009 against the Scottish Government over the inclusion of Hunterston in the second National Planning Framework.
Last month, Lord Brailsford ruled against Marco McGinty. The case raises serious questions, not just with the Hunterston application, but with Scotland’s planning and justice system more generally. Continue reading →
