Mark Brown

A few days back Tim Montgomerie (Opinion Editor and a columnist for The Times Newspaper) hit back at claims that recent extreme UK flooding meant we should act on climate change. He called such calls “alarmist” and assured his readership that we should keep listening to the likes of “Rational Optimists” Matt Ridley, Lord Lawson and Bjorn Lomborg. Their advice? Do nothing because Climate Change won’t be a big deal, it won’t damage us anytime soon and besides, we will be so much richer in the future that we will be able to afford this luxury then.

“We’re going all out for shale gas” announced our Prime Minister. Rousing cheers all round. Well maybe in the only other two countries in Europe to embrace this fossil fuel: Poland and, err, Lithuania. But what the heck, it will create jobs we were told. Well yes, spending money doing almost anything creates jobs but that is NOT what this is all about is it? If creating jobs was our objective then we would spend the money on mass transit and home insulation. But we don’t.. well, putting HS2 to one side for a moment. In fact, as the infographic I am publishing with this blog clearly shows, doing almost anything else other than fracking would create more jobs.

In 2012 I delivered a public presentation called “The History of High Wycombe 2000 to 2100″ in the High Wycombe Guildhall. It was based upon the World Economic Forum’s 2011 assessment of Global Risks. These assess what our world leaders expect the challenges will be, how much each could cost and how likely they are to happen. You can download these terribly dull documents from www.weforum.org but I did it for you so you don’t have to. So what’s the big deal?

This week we entered the surreal world of Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass in the great British energy debate. BIG headlines have been made by Political leaders with their eyes firmly on the next election. As most of us suspect; a large part of this posturing is all hot air. Indeed it doesn’t even make a lot of sense. If a Poll by the Mail on Sunday is to be believed 75% of us DON’T believe the Big 6 energy company excuses for price hikes, ie, most of us don’t believe it has anything to do with ‘green taxes’. Of course, most of us are perfectly right. It makes you wonder how Politicians think they will win votes this way? The electorate aren’t stupid but politicians want to make this the voter’s agenda. It is all so much grandstanding and is getting us nowhere.

A couple of weeks back we posted a birthday video on YouTube - 5 years has passed since August 2008 when Transition Town High Wycombe formed. It was time for reflection. A lady I spoke to at Wycombe Harvest told me that she had lived in High Wycombe 30 years but had never heard of Transition Town High Wycombe. I shrugged. Such was our failure to break out into the broad-lit uplands of the public consciousness.

“Wycombe in the running to be named ‘Britain’s Crappest Town’” went the headline. Well that’s a red flag to a bull isn’t it? To make it worse the local media implored the local population to “stand-up” to defend the town or say why it is crap. There is nothing we like more in High Wycombe than a good scrap. The irony here is that the list of top 100 crap towns is nominated by the general public & the guy who nominated High Wycombe actually blamed the town’s culture of Saturday Night violence. Should we play up to this stereotype or can we do better?

How do we communicate concern for the “environment” if we cannot even share a definition of what it is? We think we all know yet this is demonstrably untrue.This communication problem is perfectly illustrated by little blue men. The Smurfs appeared over fifty years ago with a language that used the word “Smurf” as verb & noun. This is described on Wikipedia thus: “A characteristic of the Smurf language is the frequent use of the undefinable word “smurf” and its derivatives in a variety of meanings. The Smurfs frequently replace both nouns and verbs in everyday speech with the word “smurf”" Thus it is that the “environment” is an undefinable word – every argument you have ever heard about the environment flows from this central problem. Definition.

Get ready… Can you hear it coming? By the end of October the wheelie bins of High Wycombe will no longer be collected every week. It moves to fortnightly. It is no secret and every household should have received a notification pack in the post. Woe betide anyone who simply throws it in the bin. And what I can hear coming are the howls of complaint. It starts as a low whistle – like a distant express train, but I am sure it will grow to a deafening crescendo in the coming months. Welcome to the revolution. This revolution doesn’t require the erection of barricades, but it will come with lots of little boxes.

I first met our current Mayor (the Mayor of High Wycombe Trevor Snaith – Mayor 2013 – 2014) in 2008 when he gifted Transition Town High Wycombe a small discretionary grant. Since that time we have enjoyed a chat - now and again. We were delighted when it was announced he would be our new Mayor and enjoyed his weighing-in ceremony.

There really is money to be made out of what we throw away. Although the old days of the rag’n'bone man are behind us we have modern equivalents; a few weeks ago an old van drove pulled into our cul de sac. It drove up and down. Then exited without stopping. It was one of those clothes-for-charity collection vans. For one second I felt a pang of guilt. Maybe I shouldn’t.