Thursday 17 July 2008

John Mono ( Comments )

FROM CITY TO COUNTRY SIDE... Having been born and bred in the City I can only tell this one way. From a very early age I played on concrete, the view from my bedroom window was concrete, with the odd tree planted by thoughtful developers. I had never heard the sound of a cuckoo, the hoot of an owl, the only wild life I ever saw was in the local Birmingham Museum where you gazed at stuffed animals through glass with a button you could press to hear the sound they made before greed and development consigned them to a glass case.

Growing up I moved into the music industry, endless miles of tarmac, night after night, the surreal world of recording studio's, I was in fact leading an artificial life in numerous artificial Cities around the world. At the grand old age of 51 I finally broke out of the concrete prison and moved to Yapton.

The air is clear, there are endless cornfields, I actually heard my 1st cuckoo, this time I didn’t have to press a button to hear it, for it was flying free and alive, not some exhibit in a glass case. I recently walked along corn fields blowing in the breeze, I could not believe the sound of nature, for once in my life I feel I belong, each day I marvel at the sights and sounds I should have seen and heard as a child. Now, the Government want to destroy all this. Will the cuckoo I heard the other day end up silent? On show in a glass case in a Ford Eco Town Museum of past wildlife ?

I wont let this happen, I will fight, and I will shout with my big Black Country Mouth Until We Win ! You just can’t destroy beauty in favour of ugliness

Click for John's My Space site...

Wednesday 16 July 2008

In Britain, plan for carbon-neutral ‘ecotowns’ draws rural ire


You’re the prime minister of a small, rich nation with a growing population, pressing space constraints, a chronic housing shortage, and a perennial need to be green. What do you do? Gordon Brown thinks he has the answer. In one of his boldest policies since he assumed power last year, the British premier is planning to build a cluster of completely new ultramodern “ecotowns” on sites dotted around the English countryside.

Windmills and solar power, biomass heating facilities, car-free streets, and subterranean recycling chutes will result in net carbon dioxide emissions of zero or less.

But the innovative plan is pitting urbanites’ vision of green utopia against the ire of rural England, whose residents are loath to let their pristine environs be despoiled. Read more here...

Sunday 13 July 2008

So, just how green will the eco-towns be?

The plan to build 10 new eco-towns across the UK has been beset by fierce local opposition and concerns over the state of the housing market. But there has been little examination of the towns' green credentials. Robert Booth went to two of the proposed sites to discover how 'eco' they will be.

By the banks of the fast-flowing Arun, fields of corn ripen in the summer showers and peas soak up the late evening sun. It is a picture of productive plenty on the fertile farmlands of southern England.

But in less than two years all this could be torn up by fleets of diggers to create an eco-town - Gordon Brown's utopian, but increasingly fragile, vision for housing in the 21st century. Click here for more...

Four days after helping organise a protest march across the West Sussex countryside, Vicky Newman remains buoyed by the turnout against a planned eco-town near the historic town of Arundel.

About 2,000 people are estimated to have joined the march – organised by the Campaign Against Ford Eco-town (Cafe) – in early June. ‘We had people of all ages. It wasn’t just the blue rinse brigade,’ stresses Newman, the group’s vice chair. Click here for more...