/* */

Archive for August 2nd, 2008

Do we need the Severn Barrage?

Saturday, August 02nd, 2008 | Author: News Team

Land & People reported earlier this year that a search for new homes for more than 65,000 birds has begun as part of a study into building a Severn barrage. A Government spokesman has now announced a feasibility study into the barrage to establish whether the benefits would outweigh the costs. It is claimed that a tidal barrage across the Severn Estuary would have the “breathtaking” potential to provide almost 5% of Britain’s electricity and reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly. In operation the proposed barrage would operate like a hydroelectric dam to generate electricity, with the water being pushed in by the tide. The Barrage proposed would stretch 10 miles from Lavernock Point west of Cardiff to near Brean Down in Somerset, impounding an area of 185 square miles.

The downside is that the barrage, which is estimated to cost £15 billion, would destroy large stretches of mud-flats, saltmarshes and other habitats vital to wetland birds that spend the winter in Britain. Presently the estuary is home to some of the most valuable bird habitats in Europe “ attracting species such as Bewick’s swan, pintail duck, shelduck, dunlin, redshank and, at risk of extinction in Britain, the curlew.

The estuary is also an important environment for fish such as lampreys, salmon, sea trout and eels. Any barrage could potentially block their migratory routes along the Severn. The study, which will take some two years to complete, will assess the cost of providing alternative areas of wetlands and the chances of finding suitable land.

It is claimed that more than 65,000 wetland birds are attracted each winter to sites that would be affected and they would need to be found alternative areas. To make matters worse saltmarshes, like those in the Severn estuary, are among the rarest types of habitat to be found in the British Isles. Similar work has taken place in parts of Essex, also as previously reported on by Land & People, but there remain doubts about how easy it would be for important fish species to transfer to restored areas.

Understandably ornithologists have considerable reservations about the Severn barrage proposal and a spokesman for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, recently said that the Government needed “to think long and hard” before committing itself. He said: “Supporting this scheme to the tune of £15 billion would not leave much spare change for alternative projects should it fail to deliver, so the Government has to be sure it is the right place to risk so much taxpayers’ money.”

The attraction of the Severn estuary, in terms of energy generation, is because it has the second-largest tidal range in the world “ the difference between the highest and lowest tides is up to 42ft (14m).

It is further stated that the feasibility study would be followed by public consultations if it were felt that the project should go ahead “ a questionable eventuality considering recent legislative proposals to ignore such consultation where the “national interest” is said to be in question!

In addition the feasibly study will look at several options, including the biggest proposal - for a barrage between Cardiff and Weston-super-Mare and will consider tidal lagoons.

According to the politicians and their friends in the energy and construction industries, the barrage is needed to meet the growing energy requirements of the nation. Surely, we suggest, a far cheaper and less environmentally destructive solution would be to curtail energy demand growth by simply halting immigration into our overpopulated land? And could not significant savings be made in existing energy demand through deporting the one million or so, illegal consumers currently squatting in our country “ people having neither moral nor legal right to be here in the first place?

Category: Birds, Energy, Renewables | Leave a Comment

No room for political correctness in environmentalism.

Saturday, August 02nd, 2008 | Author: News Team

Imagine, if you will, the casualty department of a city centre hospital. Also imagine a badly fitted paving slab located immediately outside its entrance. Now visualize a steady stream of injured pedestrians, nursing bruised knees and gashed elbows, seeking treatment within - having failed to successfully negotiate the offending item of “road-ware”. Finally, try to get your mind around this - the manager of said casualty department, fed up with the situation, puts pen to paper, to write to his local Health Authority in despair. Bizarrely he ignores the paving slab and, instead, implores them to build him a new and larger casualty department - so that he may be better equipped to cope with the increased workload arising from a never-ending stream of injured pedestrians!

Sounds crazy doesn’t it? But unfortunately this analogy is not that wide of the mark! Let’s explain:

A couple of years ago it was reported in the Guardian newspaper that a well known environmentalist organisation, whom we’ll not mention to save them embarrassment, had written to the then prime minister, Tony Blair. The letter urged Blair to make dramatic changes to the Government’s house building plans, so as to avoid urban sprawl in Britain’s countryside. In addition the organisation concerned was also reported as requesting that the Government increase its stated target for development, on brownfield land, from 60% to 75%”.

To elaborate further, this leading environmentalist organisation wanted the Labour Government to increase building densities in London and the South East to at least 80 homes per hectare, from the present 30 to 50 “ in order to “protect our countryside from the effects of urban sprawl”

We repeat “ “to protect our countryside from the effects of urban sprawl!”

Here we have, in real life, the equivalent of the manager of our fictitious casualty department! No mention of the cause of the problem “ you will note - just a request for more building to cope with the symptoms of the problem.

One would have imagined that a serious organisation claiming environmentalist credentials would be campaigning against the cause of the problem “ not pussyfooting around tinkering with its effects.

One would also have imagined that a serious organisation claiming environmentalist credentials would be asking why the population of London and the South East region is rising so quickly?

As it is ludicrous to suggest that the organisation concerned is unaware that immigration is the prime cause of the overpopulation that’s wrecking the South East of England - in particular “ then we must ask why it is that they are determined not to recognise the obvious link between immigration and overpopulation?

Can it really be that these so-called “mainstream” environmentalists are prepared to sacrifice our precious and irreplaceable environment on the altar of political correctness in furtherance of the worship of a false god, the idol known as multiculturalism?

Land & People says its time this idol was cast down, that the disciples of multiculturalism were exorcised from the environmentalist congregation, and that we campaigned for the protection of rural England from the ravages of immigration fuelled overpopulation. Amen to that.

Category: Environment, Overpopulation | Leave a Comment

Resistance for environmental salvation

Saturday, August 02nd, 2008 | Author: News Team

Our very existence, as a free people within an independent sovereign nation, is under dire threat “ as is our environment “ a treasure house of precious fauna and flora.

For the first time in our history we face grave danger emanating from both within and without this realm. In Britain today there is only one organisation resisting the menace of the EU Fourth Reich at our front and the growing Fifth Column at our back.

On the Home Front we are faced by a tidal wave of fresh immigration “ another six million migrants over the next twenty years the demographics experts tell us! Stating the obvious “ Britain is one of the most overcrowded countries on the planet. Yet despite the ruinous effects upon society, community and the environment arising directly out of immigration fuelled overpopulation the Government, the Establishment parties and the so-called “Greens” are determined that we should have even more!

Immigration fuelled overpopulation is the greatest controllable threat to our environment today. Yet “plastic environmentalists” “ such as the Greens “ refuse to acknowledge the link between immigration, overpopulation and environmental destruction.

Such people are, in effect, collaborating with the EU puppet regime in Westminster and working against the very cause they claim to champion. To stand back, to look the other way, to ignore what is staring us in the face - is an act as breathtakingly stupid as it is cowardly. Commonsense demands that environmentalists should campaign against immigration “ not as an act of “racism” - but as a necessity to protect what remains of our environmental heritage.

Immigration = overpopulation = environmental ruin “ it really is as simple as that!

The time for sitting on the fence and grumbling about the state of our nation is over - it’s an indulgence we can no longer afford if we are to survive! We owe it to our forebears - men and women who gave their all in the defence of our island home - as well as to the generations of brethren English, Scots, Welsh and Irish yet to come.

It’s time to stand up and be counted and what other possible way than by joining the BNP - the British Resistance here .

Category: General Issues, Resistance | Leave a Comment