Brent Friends of the Earth: What Not to Do

I guess one of the biggest disappointments I had last year was the failure of Brent Friends of the Earth to support any of the new Labour administration's (quite bold) environmental policies.  This is a great pity as it would be very useful to have an effective environmentalist lobby pushing the Council to do sensible things.  Brent FoE don't do this, partly because they pursue off the wall objectives and partly because they use the wrong tactics.

Our key policy is obviously the changes to the household waste management, where we plan the most radical restructuring the Council has ever had.  I am certain that our plans are the way of the future not just in Brent, but also across London.  The new way of doing things will allow people to recycle a greater range of materials (e.g. tetrapaks and mixed plastics), and consequently lead to a vastly greater weight of waste being recycled.  Brent FoE, bizarrely for a supposed environmentalist group, oppose this.  They argue that the quality of the recyclate will be lower, which is true, but ignore the vastly greater quantities that w2ill be produced.

If that were the only green policy they oppose, I could dismiss it as an aberration, but in fact they have either attacked us or remained indifferent to every initiative.  The emissions based parking permits, just coming to the end of its statutory consultation, is another example.  Here they don't quite have the courage to oppose it outright, but the tone of their response was so negative that they effectively do.

Again, they have shown no real interest in the passing of the Local Development Framework Core Strategy (a key part of improving conservation standards in the Borough), or the Brent "going green" project, or our objective to cut the Council's carbon emissions (still under development).

One early intervention they did make, in a rather odd way, was over the cutting of a post in the Environment unit.  This post was frozen under the previous administration and then abolished under ours.  Brent FoE stayed silent when the Liberal Democrats made the initial decision and only protested once Labour won power, which may give a clue to their real motivation. 

This is turning into rather a long post so I will split it into two.  Tomorrow, I will talk a bit more about Brent FoE's misguided tactics.