Londoners could be missing out on vast amounts of solar energy as a result of the city’s low uptake of residential solar panels.  The capital has just experienced record breaking temperatures with long hours of sunshine providing perfect conditions for solar energy production.

Despite a population of over 8.6m, it is estimated that the capital produces less energy from domestic solar panels than any other region of the UK. According to the latest Government figures London has only 46,284kW of domestic solar power generating capacity, the lowest of any region in the country. By comparison the South West has enough residential solar panels to provide almost 310,000kW in capacity.

A report from the London Assembly Environment Committee last year found that the Mayor was failing to hit key targets for his domestic energy efficiency programme, in part as a result of the slow uptake of solar panel technology.

Earlier this year a Government survey found that 81% of people supported solar energy, making it the most popular form of energy production in the UK.

There is vast untapped potential for solar power production in the capital. Whilst we bask in the summer sunshine, London could be producing significant amounts of environmentally friendly energy.

The Mayor’s dismal efforts to increase renewable energy use have failed to deliver the goods. Across the rest of the country the appetite for domestic solar power is rocketing yet in London uptake is severely lagging behind. When Wales, with a population of just 3m, produces three times more energy than London from domestic solar panels, there’s clearly a problem.

The Mayor needs to do more to promote the opportunities and benefits of domestic solar power in the capital. If London were to really embrace solar panel technology as other regions have, the potential is as bright as the sun.

–       Domestic (non-commercial) solar power generating capacity installed between 2010 and April 2015 by Region in kW:

• South West                          309,027
• South East                           263,944
• East of England                   235,626
• East Midlands                      206,081
• Yorkshire                             193,870
• North West                           178,573
• West Midlands                     158,888
• Scotland                               139,001
• Wales                                   123,643
• North East                            88,980
• London                                 46,284

Source: Ofgem, Feed-in Tariff Installation Report 31 March 2015

 –       The London Assembly Environment Committee’s 2014 report on the Mayor’s failure to hit carbon reduction targets is available here.

 –       The April 2015 DECC Public attitudes survey showing 81% support for solar energy is available here.

Almost 9,500 Londoners die prematurely each year as a result of air pollution in the capital new figures from Kings College London have shown. The research demonstrates how bad air quality in London has become, the Mayor needs to finally get serious about tackling air pollution.

The Mayor needs to take tangible steps to improve London’s air quality including allowing London boroughs to opt into the new ultra-low emissions zone which will charge the worst polluting cars for entering central London from 2020.

This research demonstrates that air pollution is one of the most serious public health emergencies facing London. Despite almost 9,500 Londoners dying every year, the Mayor has dithered and delayed when it comes to tackling our toxic air.

It’s time for the Mayor to get serious about air quality, that means expanding the proposed ultra-low emissions zone and allowing London boroughs to opt in should theywish. It should be an indisputable right of residents in Westminster to breathe clean air, not an optional extra as the Mayor is currently treating it.

The research by King’s College London is available here.

In the term so far we have had a number of motion on the postal service in London

The closure of Post Offices particularly the Crown ones

and the reduction & poor performance of the Postal Service across London in response to the part-privatization allowing TNT into delivery competition.

Since the botched part-privatization of Royal Mail by Vince Cable we now have the full privatization of the Royal Mail by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne – something even Margaret Thatcher would not have considered as she famously said, she ” wasn’t prepared to have the Queen’s Head privatized “

With the competition being withdrawn by Whistl, this final privatization will give over a public monopoly to becoming a private monopoly after almost 500 years of public service to us and see the asset-stripping its large land-holdings of Royal Mail in Greater London. 

The full privatization of the Royal Mail will mean;

the loss of a public voice in Postal Services like no consultation on PO closures and a commercially driven Royal Mail looking to down-grade Universal Service Obligation (USO) which will even affect Central London post codes!

All this when the Royal Mail last year made an operating profit of £600m and paid out ten’s of millions in dividends each year. 

We have also have institutional investors rather ” friends in the City ” buying up shares in Royal Mail since Osborne announcement. 

Ironically this including the Norges Bank – state bank of Norway and its sovereign wealth fund of Norway investing in Royal Mail when the UK government is selling it off. 

We also have up to 10,000 people employed by the Royal Mail in London and this privatization doesn’t bode well for employment standards in the Postal industry particularly after what we saw with TNT/Whistl offered their workers when entering the delivery market. The stories of mail dumping by employees of Whistl on zero hour minimum wage contracts illustrates well the connection between quality of service and terms and condition of employment.

We also have the asset stripping of the remaining major sites in London like Nine Elms and Paddington. After the undersale of Rathbone Place and the fasico of Mount Pleasant this is very real. With Rathbone Place we had Portland Estates buying it for £120m only to have recently valued at £500m. With Mount Pleasant we only have 12 per cent affordable housing after Mayoral intervention over the heads of the local councils. 

These land asset should be used to deliver housing across all tenures in the capital and not have venture capital stripping such assets. 

So this motion calls on the Mayor, to defend London’s postal service and ensure the Royal Mail land assets are used to deliver housing in London across all tenure by arguing for the government to retain its 15 per cent stake in Royal Mail and committing to protecting the USO. All this by strengthen the position of Royal Mail in the Postal Services Act. 

Now we have had the report from Airport Commission recommending expansion of Heathrow Airport, it strikes me we have to wonder if it is really better for passengers not withstanding the obvious adverse impact on the quality of life for Londoners particularly near to the airport and in West London. 

The report has not only disregarded the possibility of a network of competing airports throughout London and the rest of the UK, its recommendation would effectively recreate a monopoly at Heathrow that will suck in long haul connections from the regions of the UK and drive up prices for passengers. 

Regular air travellers in London will be accustom to using a variety of airports in London & the South East including City, Luton, Gatwick, Stansted, determining by price and easy of getting to the airport where to take their journey from home or the office. Yet we will be forced to take all our long haul air journeys via Heathrow with this recommendation from Howard Davies with very clear implications to consumer welfare. We have this already with flights to the US where clearly Heathrow has a stranglehold and pound for pound these trips are a lot more expensive than similar length trips to Asian destinations to emerging economies where at least we have many more options.

We can see some of the benefits of competition between the different London airports with low-cost long haul a real option from Gatwick on the transatlantic flights offered by Norwegian Airways using new Dreamliner aircraft going to New York for as little as £179 while consistently achieving load factors in excess of 90 per cent In October, Norwegian, will introduce a daily connection from Gatwick to  New York (JFK). Will this progress if Heathrow is given a monopoly on long haul flights by Howard Davies?  I think not. 

The irony is that the Competition Commission ( now the Competition & Market Authority ) in 2011 broke up the monopoly that BAA had over airports in London and South-East when it owed all three major ones – Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted – where for years it had underdeveloped the two smaller airports. Now it appears Heathrow Holdings PLC have got their way completely with continued expansion of Heathrow without any responsibilities for the other two, after having to sell off the others. More so as it looks like becoming a private monopoly of long haul flights if Howard Davies recommendations are accepted by the government. 

The matter needs referring back to Competition & Market Authority, for the sake of the consumer and travelling public if nothing else.  

Anyone who has watched the recent Paddington Bear movie, particularly those who live or work locally to the area where the film is set, probably noticed that the shots of Paddington station appeared to look remarkably like Marylebone station.  Indeed, it was the frontage of Marylebone station with the name Paddington slapped on to it!! After all should Paddington Bear return to the station where he arrived for the first time in London, he would be very confused. 

Why was this done? I suspect it’s because the front of Paddington station looks so lousy that the film makers used the more attractive frontage of the station from Marylebone and simply changing its name.

I trust Network Rail has taken note of this, as it doesn’t reflect well on how it manages Paddington station.  Now that the film has made the station a global landmark to which many tourists will visit, we don’t want them to be disappointed.  It’s time the front of Paddington station was given a revamp by Network Rail, in keeping with how it looks in the movie.

I’ll be writing to Network Rail to make the point. 

While TfL are busy telling the world today about 24 hour service available on the tube from 12th of September, its lost sight of comments made by the Mayor at the last MQT that there won’t be a 24 hour service till it doesn’t disturb people in the middle of the night.

This was in response to myself bringing up the issue on behalf of long suffering residents in Clarence Gate Gardens Mansions off Baker Street from noise caused by the Jubilee line and disturbances near Gloucester Rd tube caused by the Piccadilly line as well.

It appears it’s the first time, the Mayor has heard of the problem though other AM’s did agree it was something which had been told to them particularly in Central London.

For the sake of the long suffering residents this needs to be sorted before the 24 hour service is fully operational on the 12th of September. Let us certainly hope so and its certainly something the Mayor is signed up too given his robust response to my question. I just hope TfL can actually deliver on it before then.

MCC members want as much legroom as in new Warner for other stands as well

At last year’s AGM, a Members’ Resolution seeking seat legroom of 900mm to be provided in the new Warner Stand was overwhelmingly passed, with over 70% of the nearly 3,000 Members who voted in favour.

This year a similar Resolution for the new Tavern & Allen Stand has been tabled. Since the Club will be seeking planning permission for the stand later in the summer, this is the last time that Members have an opportunity to confirm that they wish to have 900mm as standard legroom in the new stand.

To give you an idea what 900mm means, this is the legroom that is currently provided in the Warner Stand, and in the upper levels of the Tavern & Allen stands. To us it is unconscionable that, in this day and age, the Committee should be seeking to reduce Members’ comfort. But it does appear that, as with the Warner last year, they would prefer to have 850mm in order to fit in 330 more seats for members. 

Lord’s is special, as we all know. Most who enjoy sitting in the Warner, Tavern and Allen stands in recent years have enjoyed that little bit of extra legroom (50mm or two inches) so that one can more easily move in and out of our seats during a long day’s play, or store our picnics beneath our seats. We want to keep it that way.

So let’s hope you have not forgotten to post your vote if you are not turning up to the AGM on the today. Otherwise you will have vote with your feet by attending today’s AGM. 

As the Supreme Court judgement unanimously orders the government to submit new air quality plans to the European Commission no later than 31st of December in response to the case taken against DEFRA by ClientEarth, lets not forget what the Mayor’s role in all of this as well.

For years Boris Johnson has shied away from tackling this silent killer. Today’s judgement should finally spark meaningful action to clamp down on the dangerous pollutants being pumped into the air.

In paragraph 30 of the judgement it states that despite promising to make London one of the world’s greenest cities, under Boris Johnson London’s air quality has got worse not better and thus early compliance has been made worse. It’s time to change direction and get a grip on the capital’s air pollution crisis.

As a start we need to see an ambitious and detailed plan to get the capital’s air quality under control. That means expanding the Mayor’s proposed Ultra-Low Emission Zone in London and using is as a basis for similar schemes in other areas of the country as Labour has proposed.

The Rana plaza victims’ orphaned children staged symbolic sit-in demonstration in Dhaka on the second anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy.

They pleaded there should be “No more orphans among garment workers’ children like us from the negligence of factory owners, buyers, government and Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers & Exporters Association (BGMEA)”

Orphan children, who had lost either both or one of the their parents, in Rana Plaza building collapse and leaders of the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) today pleaded to all concerned that the Rana Plaza disaster be made the last accident in the RMG sector in Bangladesh. And that should not be any more orphans amongst garment workers’ children in the future down to the negligence of buyers, factory owners, government and BGMEA.

The appeal was made from a “sit-in” demonstration staged in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka City commemorating the second anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, organised by the NGWF and their President Amirul Haque Amin.

The eight-storey Rana Plaza building which housed 5 garment factories collapsed on the 24th of April 2013 killing 1,138 workers, mostly women, and injured over 2,500. This is the worst industrial of the 21st century in the world. Hundreds of children lost both or either of their parents in the tragedy and languish now in poverty and uncertainty as they have not yet received any compensation.

Newly published Government figures show a 37% increase in the number of people sleeping rough in London last Autumn. The statistics from the Department for Communities and Local Government found that between the 1^st September and 30^th November, 742 Londoners were estimated to have been sleeping rough, up 37% from 543 between the same dates in 2013. The increase means that London’s rough sleepers accounted for 27% of the total figure for England last Autumn.

The figures are further proof that the Mayor of London needs to do more to help people who are forced to sleep rough. The Mayor had previously pledged to end rough sleeping by 2012 but since then, according to research funded by the GLA, the number of people sleeping rough in London has risen every single year with 6,508 people estimated to be sleeping rough in 2013/14. This means that 3,036 more people slept rough in London last year than in the year Boris was elected Mayor.

Rough sleeping in Westminster has also risen significantly during Boris Johnson’s time as Mayor.  In 2008/09 1612 of people were sleeping rough in Westminster. By 2013/14, this number had risen to 2197; with an additional 585 people on Westminster’s streets.

In 2009 Boris Johnson made a promise that he would end rough sleeping in the capital by the Olympics. Yet since he made that pledge the number of people having to sleep rough has tragically gone up each and every year. It is both tragic and shocking that there are now 585 more people sleeping on Westminster’s streets.

Every person living on our streets represents both a personal tragedy and a failure of the system which is meant to protect them. Delivering on his pledge to tackle rough sleeping could have been a crowning achievement for the Mayor; instead it is a chronic failure on his part.

There is no doubt that the Government’s deep cuts to Council budgets have made things harder for people sleeping rough with support services facing significant cutbacks. But with the number of people sleeping rough on our streets increasing, Boris should be doing more to meet his promises to them.