Weekend in Tenerife or future of the planet?

Forgive me if I don’t get too excited about the news that budget airline Jet2.com will soon be operating from East Midlands airport.

Of course the creation of 250 jobs is good for the region (assuming they go to people in the region and that the new staff don’t commute from elsewhere) but the arrival of yet another budget airline which will doubtless encourage  more people to fly further or more often (or both) is a disaster for our struggling environment. 

With flights to Tenerife for £60 and to Sharm El Sheikh for around £80, we could see the advent of stag and hen weekends moving from Europe to sunnier climes and I’m sure many people who have endured the summer in the UK this year (probably on the Nottingham Riviera) will be tempted to run for the sun if the price is right.

But  I couldn’t disagree more with Penny Coates, managing director at East Midlands Airport, when she says: “The news that Jet2.com will open a brand new operation from East Midlands Airport next year is extremely encouraging for the airport and the region as a whole”, and that the news is “a positive indicator for the future”.

Commercially, of course, she is right (and this is obviously all she’s paid to think about) but in terms of the extra CO2 these new flights will generate – joining the emissions from Ryanair, BMI Baby and Easy Jet who already fly from EMA – and the contribution these make to accelerating climate change, this development is not a positive indicator but a very negative one.

At some point, we have to bite the bullet and accept that short term economic gain that brings long term environmental damage in its wake is something the planet can no longer afford.

One Nottingham? The clue’s in the title

Browsing around other local blogs, I’ve just come across the news on Nottingham is Crap that One Nottingham Chief Executive, Andrew Balchin has resigned and is due to leave in October. The Evening Post reported this briefly in mid-August and quoted Mr Balchin as saying: “I have had a good four years in Nottingham and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Now is a good time to look elsewhere.”

However, Nottgirl at Nottingham is Crap suggests that the arrival of Jon Collins as Chair of One Nottingham is much more a factor in Mr Balchin stepping down than the attractions of a post with Wakefield District Council.

I know very little about One Nottingham. It has a pretty low public profile and Nottgirl describes it as: “…a Government quango that brings together all of the main organisations in the City of Nottingham. Its aim is to reduce the gap in services between the wealthier and more disadvantaged wards.”  Clearly a worthy aim and an important one.

But there seems to have been a subtle change in One Nottingham’s relationship with the City Council recently. When I last checked out the ON website (whilst Graham Allen was still Chair), it was an independent ‘.org.uk’. Now it appears to have become part of the City Council. Perhaps this is just an acknowledgement of what many local commentators see the situation to be; that the City Council has simply taken over One Nottingham in its own interests.

If that is the case, we can probably expect another classic Collins manoeuvre any day now. Force out the current Chief Executive (as he did at the City Council) and replace him with a person of your choosing who is more likely to toe the party line; ideally an old mate (just as he did at the City Council).

In these troubled times, when even more scrutiny of those in public life seems increasingly necessary, it would appear that Nottingham is going in the opposite direction, with the few real political power brokers in the city tightening their grip in an ever more insidious way.

This is unlikely to be good news for any of us.

That riviera touch…

Never let it be said that I can’t admit when I’m wrong (well, a bit wrong anyway).

Having slagged off the Nottingham Riviera (big pile of sand in the Market Square for those who don’t know it by it’s posh name), I dropped in again this evening after being attracted by some unusual music. I sat in a deckchair, drank an illegal coffee (purchased from Costa across the road rather than the official Riviera vendors and therefore not allowed) and just let the atmosphere wash over me. It probably helped that it was quite warm but, you know what..? I really enjoyed it.

I think the time of day was also a factor in my conversion (too early for there to be too many drunks) and the fact that it wasn’t over-run with people. I felt almost mellow as I watched the sun go down; the chairoplanes whizzing round above me amid the excited laughter of children and the fountains spurting playfully in the background.

Even the sight of the ‘Official Photographer’ (at least, that’s what it said on his shirt) and his mate scooping the day’s accumulated sand out of the sea (the murky paddling pool next to the beach) seemed somehow quaint tonight rather than tacky.

I must be going soft.

CPO PR from KO king

Now here’s a novel scheme, the details of which, though, seem to be hard to come by. I can find no reference to it on the Nottingham City Council website but the BBC reported tonight that our old friend Carl Froch (you remember him, I’m sure, from posts on this blog and others; he’s the Nottingham boxer being paid £1000 an hour for 32 hours promotional work for the City Council) is throwing his considerable weight behind a recruitment campaign for auxiliary Community Protection Officers.

Froch: Can we look forward to him pounding the city's streets as a CPO?

This is also reported in the Evening Post but the bit that is unclear to me is that, from the BBC report, these ‘auxiliary’ posts seem to be voluntary ones (a bit like Special Constables) set up to support the full-time CPO’s employed by the City Council, yet this doesn’t seem to be being made very explicit.

If they are unpaid posts (or even if they aren’t, actually), the sight of the very highly paid Mr Froch, once again imploring Nottingham’s citizens to do their bit for the community will surely make many city residents want to spit…

… but not on the pavement; the CPO’s can fine you for that.

Smoking stats to smile about

It has just been announced that more than 5,000 people in Nottinghamshire have set a date to quit smoking within three months – a 40% increase on the same period last year.

Of the 5,000 people setting quitting dates in the county between January and March, 1,000 live in the city of Nottingham and 4,000 outside.

This is good news for them and for all of those like me who hate the habit and who derive great pleasure from seeing these anti-social weed burners huddled together in the rain outside pubs getting their nicotine fix.

But I bet poor old John Player is turning in his grave.