Larry Sanders, Ann Duncan and Allyson Pollock

Around 200 people came to Oxford Town Hall on Tuesday to hear Prof. Alysson Pollock explain how the NHS has been dismantled and how to reinstate it. Listen to her talk.

She explained how over 20 years, under different governments, more and more of the NHS has been opened to private money, until the Health and Social Care Act 2012 removed the Government’s obligation to provide comprehensive free health care for all. The NHS is no longer providing a service, but an organisation commissioning contracts. The contractors can often pick and choose who they will treat.

These elections the Oxfordshire Green Party is running candidates in all of the Oxford wards, including the Summertown by-election, for a total of 25 candidates. The candidates, listed by the ward they are standing in, are:

Our homes and businesses are threatened or have been damaged from flooding and storms

How can we adapt to what is happening?

Oxfordshire Green party member Judy Chipchase, a former city council planner and a flood threatened resident; and David Thomas an experienced water engineer and Green Party candidate for Holywell Ward say:

We sympathise deeply with families and businesses having to cope with these prolonged floods, and recognise that climate change is only going to make matters worse in years to come. The fact is, however, the effectivenesss of the proposed £160 million Western Conveyance has not been proven. It’s just one of a range of options on the table. We don’t believe the Government has looked meaningfully at up-stream management, and feel that flood victims in Oxford have not been properly consulted or listened to. 

The Green Party proposes:

• Consultations to be held in flood risk areas for you—the public—to share your experiences with experts from government and other agencies, and discuss the range of flood prevention methods available to Oxford.

• To push for a comprehensive study in to the potential for holding back water in the Thames and its tributaries, and the effective management of the upstream catchment. This should involve tree and wetland planting, which will also absorb carbon which is giving rise to climate change. We also want to see communities down river kept safe as well.

• Communities most at risk, like South and West Oxford, should have street-by-street emergency response plans, building on the successes of initiatives such as the temporary bunds and new pumping techniques.

• It may be necessary to create new areas of flood plain and channels to let water through, especially at bottle necks like the Redbridge area in South Oxford and the Botley Road in West Oxford. This approach needs to be carefully researched in terms of its widest benefits in the long term.

We would like you to contact us with your recent flooding experiences. We need to work together to develop and economic and environmentally sustainable solution to flooding in Oxford.

Use the suggestion box below to tell us your stories of the Oxfordshire floods, post pictures, and let us know what you think you and we can do about it.

Oxford councils must consider setting up an energy co-operative to help cut energy bills. Southampton and Woking councils both have their own energy generation helping to reduce their energy bills. Both councils have plans to extend their schemes to cover more local housing.

The Oxfordshire Green Party welcomes this publication, the extensive work behind it and the opportunity given for us to make our views known on the future of the market.

We agree with the conclusions that indicate that the market has been very much neglected and are of the opinion that a future plan is very necessary. Moreover we find a great deal of the medium term plan acceptable but do raise a number of questions we think are important about the long term future strategy. We also suggest a number of quick wins to improve the market.

Labour councillors voted out a proposal calling for new council powers to end the council house sell off - the policy brought in by Thatcher that has lost councils huge numbers of council homes, which are much needed in our communities.

Oxfordshire Green Party have examined the latest outline application for redeveloping Westgate. Our views on the current application remain largely unchanged from the previous comments to the Westgate Alliance. We do not consider this a sustainable proposal, and its disadvantages outweigh by far its benefits. 

Oxford City Council Air Quality Action Plan 2013 Consultation

Although we are pleased there is an attempt at an Air Quality Management Plan, we consider that given EU safety limits, this plan is inadequate given the scale of the pollution problem. We also consider that the problems of increased traffic and increased carbon emissions are hardly dealt with at all in any manner that would deliver adequate and beneficial targets or reductions in traffic. As an Action plan it needs to spell out in detail all possible means for reducing pollution rapidly long before 2025.

Oxfordshire Green Party have been opposed to a major shopping development at the Westgate from the earliest proposals put forward. This land is public land, and was historically housing.  The basis for the decision to make this an area for commercial development rests on an idea that Oxford should be more regionally commercially competitive; but we believe that this is not the best use of this central, piece of precious public land.