Green Councillor Kevin Pressland is a passionate campaigner for nature and the natural environment. His understanding of the threats faced by the natural world is based on expertise gained from a 40-year career in horticulture, garden design and sustainable land management:
Labour’s Growth Plans appear to be written without a dwindling Planet in mind
This has been shown in Thanet by the decision to allow a building development on one of the last remaining woody areas in Broadstairs at Lindenthorpe Road. So much for nature recovery. Sadly, some Labour and Conservatives voted this development through.
In a broader context, the ‘World Economic Summit’ is taking place in Davos, Switzerland, and Labour is cushioning up to corporate interest. Rachel Reeves is convincing funders like Black Rock and Saudi wealth funds that we are open for business and she will likely push for aviation expansion. Another nail in the coffin for the current dwindling diverse planet and future generations.
Why are Labour unwilling to define growth in a more holistic context rather than a ‘Business as Usual Approach’ based around big infrastructure projects and short termism?
Imagine Solar/Air Source Heat Pumps on all new builds, domestic or commercial properties, with the reduction in bills for households and businesses this could achieve (funded from oil and gas tax receipts or additional taxes on them).
Imagine rainwater catchment systems on all new builds producing up to 50% of a business or household’s average volume water requirement whilst helping to reduce volume water runoff from the land (funded from water company tax receipts or additional taxes on them), helping to safeguard rivers, sea etc.
These approaches would create 1000s of jobs throughout the UK, including Thanet. Is that not a positive growth for a positive future? Is it not best to create jobs where people can feel they are making a genuine difference and be proud of that work, whilst having the diminishing diverse planet in mind?
It will produce more revenue for the government’s treasury too and reduce people’s energy and water bills on those new properties, whilst appreciating the need to retrofit older properties. Why will Labour not do this? This is positive growth, creating jobs with purpose.
Imagine more vibrant living, rural areas where government mechanisms could encourage young people that working on the land – be it in agriculture/forestry and ideally a combination of the two in the form of agroforestry and wider regenerative agriculture approaches – are wonderful rewarding careers. Will Labour support young people into careers that will really matter and be rewarding? Not everybody wants to be stuck behind a computer.
Agroforestry (silvoarable/silvopasture/temperate syntropic systems etc) and other forms of regenerative farming/horticulture lead to safeguarding soils, help water absorb into the land reducing rainwater run-off and therefore reducing contaminants into rivers like artificial fertilisers and pesticides etc. They increase connectivity of biodiverse habitats, increase home grown timber long term, increase a balance between predator and pest, reducing pesticide use, increasing the availability of more nutrient dense food and equalling a healthier populace.
Encouragingly, Labour is beginning to allow DEFRA and Natural England to create the mechanisms/funding for Agroforestry under ELMS (environment land management scheme) and SFI’s (sustainable farm incentive scheme) which has recently been published. This enables more flexibility in approach as each farm is different, although farmers need other support in transitioning to agroforestry and other combined regenerative systems.
Thank you, Labour, for this. I hope these approaches are supported even more.
We need initiatives like creating smaller farms, market gardens around towns and cities, enabling more local production for local consumption. These initiatives, including added value products produced on the farm or nearby, can revitalise rural communities and create jobs and increase growth but in a positive way.
This would create rewarding jobs for people and economic returns with multiple values in mind throughout the UK including Thanet.
We need politicians to enshrine ‘Systems Thinking’ and in a truly holistic way, so we begin to work with nature rather than against it, learning from how nature functions, understanding nature’s biological methods that can enable us to achieve so much more, but in a positive way. This approach can knock on the head the economics that pervades at the moment which is largely destructive and short termism. Why won’t Labour do this?
It’s great to see Thanet District Council unanimously agreed to send a letter in support of the Local Government Authority and a letter to Government urging that the Incineration Tax due to be applied in 2028 be changed instead to a tax on all fossil fuel-based packaging (plastic).
The cost of plastic packaging needs to be far above the cost of truly compostable packaging, this will then drive change in consumer habitat and give the public genuine ability to help drive that change. If implemented this will mean economics as if the planet matters.
The used compostable packaging material can then be broken down in a biodigester, creating energy and compost for the soils in Thanet and elsewhere in England/UK. A truly circular approach, no waste, as nature intended.
As Thanet residents may be aware, we too have a biomass facility on our doorstep that is burning trees and tree prunings. In a wider context in England, Drax which is the UK’s single largest carbon emitter and the world’s biggest tree burner, is receiving around £1.5 million per day in renewable subsidies paid from our energy bills, whilst making record profits.
Much of the wood that Drax and Lynemouth burn comes from the logging of biodiverse forests in the Southern USA, Canada, Estonia and Latvia, with devastating impacts on forests, wildlife, communities and the climate.
In a past audit the biomass facility at Discovery Park, just over the border of Thanet, was found to be burning wood from old growth forests in Estonia too.
In 2023 alone, Drax emitted over 11 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere from burning trees, and hundreds of scientists have warned that using such woody bioenergy will increase global warming for decades to centuries.
Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband are now considering using our energy bills to extend these subsidies for tree-burning power stations like Drax and Lynemouth etc beyond 2027 when the current subsidies are due to end.
If granted, these new subsidies would do nothing to lower our energy bills and would allow biomass power stations to keep burning trees at ours, other creatures and the environment’s expense for many years to come, at an estimated cost of up to £2.5 billion a year. Please Labour, do the right thing and withdraw these subsidies.
I hope the government will be far more holistic in its future vision for the UK and the current diminishing diverse planet and future generations. The decision to effectively block the Climate and Nature Bill appears to say otherwise.
I voted Labour under the extremely naive illusion that they’d improve public transport, as well create more safe cycle paths and clear the huge back-log of blocked footpaths.
Still, as the late great Chuck Berry said, “Don’t let the same dog bite you twice”. Thanks Chuck, I won’t!
None of the dogs wanting to run the cpuntry can do so under the expectations everyone has, we’ve gone full net zero and now have some of the worlds highest energy costs, so businesses contract, move overseas and no foreign investor is going to do so here without huge subsidies if their business is energy hungry. We have a population that is quite happy to not work, so we ship in huge numbers of relatively low paid low skilled workers, who in turn need subsidising as the jobs they fill don’t pay enough to cover living costs.
Mr Presslands dreams seem to revolve around subsidy based on taxing other areas of the economy, good luck with that.
But we’ll carry on ignoring the patently obvious and keep painting the nation into a corner, might as well start wondering what a few years of seriously declining living standards are going to be like as its well on the way to being baked in, we can’t keep borrowing to fund the lifestyles the nation appears to want without working for it.
i think many people are now realising they have made a grave mistake voting for what they thought were better times to come , and the changes we were hoping for , no one except the people in power at the moment , knew that we were about to be crushed underfoot by this evil regime
Im fed up with all this greenie hypocrisy that all and sundry pontificate about.
The A299 in Thanet has become a fly tip with litter all in the bush verges.Its been like it for over a year now.All theA299 layby litter bins are overspilling with litter flying all over the countryside.Half the drains are silted up through lack of TDC road sweeping.Bins all around the coastline are overflowing and spilling into the sea, even though there
are very few tourists at present.Sothern Water are polluting our rivers.Nothing gets sorted no matter how much you complain.TDC,KCC and Polly Billington you are all hopeless.
Look on the bright side, David- it’s January! If you don’t like seeing litter on the A299, don’t drive there! If you don’t like seeing bins on the coast overflowing, don’t go to the seaside! There are buses and trains and taxis! There are lots of inland places with no bins at all! Explore!
I travel by bus, and still see litter on the A299…
Bats and newts beware, it’s the year of the snake and Starmer is coming to get you
So the solution to funding all the busted, and creaking public services is……growth! Apparently the proposed extra runway at Heathrow airport won’t be up and running for ten years according to Reeves, and that goes for just about everything else the Lab/Con government has promised, by which time many of us pensioners will be dead. So how did Labour achieved a massive majority at the General Election? Because the Conservatives stayed at home that’s how! Labour only received 34.1% of the vote, so its back to normal, with more people voting against a government than for it, Duuurh! We have an elected dictatorship, and my guess is the Lab/Con’s won’t be re-elected next time!
Wake up Pollyanna.I drove to Cornwall through Surrey,Hampshire,Wilts,Somerset,Devon into Cornwall.289 miles and there is more litter on the 2 miles of Thanet than the rest of my journey.
Yes I would love to travel ling distances on trains but £70 return to London and your not even gaurenteed a smooth journey.I have sat in London waiting for 2 hours before SE trains could get a driver.My daughter stranded at Canterbury at midnight because the bus service was cancelled. Thanet Council are usrless and have no concern gor green issues or nature welfare.Easily the dirtiest place I have ever lived.People like you are the problem.
Oh, thank you so much David! Your last sentence cheers me up no end, as it assures me that I am not the only person who looks on the bright side here in Thanet!
I will believe a lot of things, but Checksfield saying he voted Labour is not one of them!
Litter: It comes from somewhere.If it is on the verges of the A299, it probably came from cars and trucks at a wild guess. I know this is a pop at Thanetians, but fly-tipping car, van, and truck drivers are everywhere.These patriots like nothing better than to despoil their country by chucking out wrappings from sweets and fast food.
I assume the complaint is why has not TDC sent a squad down to pick up this rubbish, well maybe because maintaining the A299 is either down to Highways England or KCC, I am not sure which.
Never mind,in a couple of years you can moan at the new East Kent Unitary council or the shire Mayor.
Buses, Labour have given out £23.5m to KCC to improve bus services this year, so ask KCC what they are doing?
Greenies, as you call them: well I can see his point, and maybe a properly run scheme to insulate homes,install PV cells and heat pumps may well generate jobs and growth, but the trouble is there are so many cowboys out there ruining peoples houses that I hesitate to urge greater efforts in that quarter. One problem this country has, is that are too many flaky individuals, who grasp for money without carrying out the work they are paid for.Too many individuals have water company business models.
I do understand his reticence over Heathrow and Gatwick, but alas too many of us insist in flying as often as we can. I remain to be convinced that these airport expansions will be completed within 10 years and will be on budget, but maybe I don’t have enough faith.
What I do know however, is that the lower Thames crossing won’t solve the congestion problem and that they will be a ballyhoo, when motorists find they will be paying double what they do today to cross the Thames.
One thing is certain is that whatever scintilla of hope there was of Manston rising from the dead, is destroyed, as what shipper is going to use Manston when Heathrow and Gatwick are better options?
I don’t believe you’re George Nokes from Thanet. You’re certainly not on the electoral register.
As for Heathrow expansion, that is estimated to take 25 years. How long would Manston take to prepare if the will and money was there?
I don’t believe that you know what you are talking about.Oh dearie dearie me! Have you really taken the trouble to track down your nemesis.I don’t know whether to be flattered or concerned for your mental wellbeing.
Even in unproductive Britain they won’t take 25 years to build a new runway,so where did you get that idea from?
At least you admit that a bigger Heathrow will torpedo Manston for good, but seeing that Manston has laid dormant for 13 years, what hope is there that they could get anything up and running and trading successfully by the time that Heathrow 3 is complete,is vanishingly small.
And then of course there is Gatwick, so checkmate PC.
Look Riveroak or what ever the syndicate is called has a perfect excuse to cash in and sell it for housing,and my guess is that is what will happen.
Of course you and the geriatric mafia that have supported this lunacy all these years will have egg on your silly faces, but Riveroak will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Of far more concern to me are the lack of local buses and through-trains (even the much heralded Thanet Parkway requires two trains to/from Margate), the blocked and overgrown public footpaths, the lack of proper cycle routes (and not those ludicrous shared paths), the lack of toilet facilities in winter and the non-policing of our town centres.