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Review of UK housing and planning policies widely welcomed

Changes need to be made to housing and planning policies in the UK to ensure enough new homes are being built, according to a property market review. The Lyons Housing Review, commissioned by the Labour party, identifies the changes which need to be made to increase the number of new homes to 200,000 a year. It says there must be new powers for local communities to build homes in places people want to live, that councils must produce a home building plan and allocate sufficient land for development and first time buyers should get priority access to new homes. The review says local communities should have the power to build the homes in places people want to live. Councils will be able to designate ‘housing growth areas’ and will have powers to assemble land and give certainty that building will take place. They will also ensure on larger developments the planning gain that results will in part be used to invest in the schools, roads, green spaces and GP surgeries that make developments possible. It also says councils should be compelled to produce a home building plan and allocate sufficient land for development. Labour says if it wins the general election next year it will make it mandatory for local authorities to produce a local plan to meet the housing needs of the community. If they do not allocate sufficient land or present a plan, the planning inspectorate will have powers to step-in to ensure the housing need is not ignored. The third main recommendation is that first time buyers from an area should get priority access to new homes. Councils would be given the power to reserve a proportion of homes built in ‘housing growth areas’ for first time buyers from the area for a period of two months. In addition, local authorities will be able to restrict the sale of homes in these areas so they cannot be sold for buy to let or buy to leave empty properties. The changes identified have been widely welcomed. According to Susan Emmett, residential research director of Savills the recommendations should help boost housing numbers regardless of who is in government next year. ‘The report clearly recognises the need for a long term, more strategic approach to planning for homes, integrating housing with infrastructure and increasing the number of players operating in the market,’ she said. ‘While we expect that large house builders will continue to provide the bulk of new homes, Lyons’ recommendations for supporting smaller builders and helping Local Authorities to build more is crucial if we are to increase overall housing numbers,’ she explained. ‘We also welcome the report’s recognition that we need to be delivering homes across all tenures including homes for rent. We expect to see the number of people renting continue to grow and supporting institutional investors to build to rent is essential to provide the good quality homes needed,’ she added. The British… Continue reading

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EU Ministers Pave The Way For Historic CAP Reform Deal

26 June 2013 | By Alistair Driver REFORM of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that will enshrine the ‘concept’ of greening of direct payments is likely to be confirmed in Brussels later today. EU Ministers, under the chairmanship of the Irish presidency of the EU, signed off its position at a meeting in Luxembourg late into Tuesday night, following two days of exhaustive talks. The Irish Presidency will now take the revised CAP proposals to Brussels to be passed by the full European Parliament in a meeting later on Wednesday. A press briefing is scheduled for approximately 4pm when the parties leading the negotiation hope to announce the broad political deal. This would not be the end of, however, as the detailed legal text is unlikely to be completed until the autumn. In some of the key elements of the EU Ministers’ text: Flexibility has been granted for member states regions to green direct payments in a way that reflects national circumstances. Ecological Focus Areas under CAP greening will start at 5 per cent possibly rising to 7 per cent in 2017 . On top of 10 per cent compulsory modulation, Governments can now transfer up to 15 per cent of funds from their direct payment pots to their rural development budgets, without co-financing the transfer, as is the case now.There is also scope to move money the other way. More flexibility has been granted in the move towards area payments. Member states/regions must ensure all payments are within 60 per cent of the national/regional average by 2019. Member states will be able to allocate 8 and 13 per cent (more in some cases with Commission approval) of the direct payment budget on coupled subsidies. The sugar quota regime will go in 2017. The young farmers scheme taking up to 2 per cent of direct payments will be compulsory. The ‘active farmer’ definition will exclude certain land uses with a negative list. Commenting from Luxembourg in the early hours of Wednesday morning, Defra Secretary Owen said the UK broadly supported a mandate agreed by the 27 EU Ministers. He ‘warmly congratulated’ Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney for his work so far in brokering a deal. “Negotiations between 27 agriculture ministers, the EU commission and the European parliament were never going to be easy. We all have different ambitions for CAP reform and the Irish Presidency has had a really tough job trying to get a deal,” he said.   He said the UK had got its way in some areas, for example ‘blocking a host of regressive proposals that would have meant a very bad deal for British farmers and taxpayers’ but not others. “We want to get the best possible reform for our farmers, taxpayers and consumers whilst delivering a better outcome for the environment,” he said. He said the UK, backed by Germany, ‘resisted every step of the way’ planned market organisation reforms driven by French MEP Michel Dantin that would have taken the CAP ‘back to the dark days of butter mountains and wine lakes, with costly interventions in the market’. “All along I have rejected moves that would increase costs for hard pressed consumers. British shoppers should not have to pay twice for the CAP – once through their taxes and again at the supermarket tills,” he said. He said pressure from the UK led to ‘significant progress’ to improve measures for the UK sugar industry, bringing the end of quotas back to 2017 rather 2020, as some MEPs were advocating. While this will be welcomed by UK sugar producers Mr Paterson said it was still ‘not enough’. Sugar beet quotas are bad for business and bad for consumers, driving up the wholesale price of sugar by 35 per cent and adding 1 per cent on our food bills. The case for better access to cane sugar is still being negotiated thanks to our efforts,” he said. He said there is now ‘absolute clarity from the Commission that each of the four parts of the UK  can implement CAP as they see fit’, he added. “Farmers in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales can be reassured that their governments have the complete freedom to deliver a CAP tailored to their needs and circumstances. This successful outcome is a result of working as a united force with all Devolved Administrations and respecting regional farming priorities. I am pleased we have been able to agree changes needed for all four countries,” he said. He welcomed the ‘further gains’ to secure flexibility on greening measures to benefit the environment and UK farming but expressed anger that UK efforts to block ‘coupled payments at a high level’ had failed. He said coupled subsidies, which Scotland and possibly Wales are likely to utilise under the reformed policy ‘create market distortions, are a poor use of tax payers’ money and discourage trading in a competitive open market’. He concluded: “I hope the negotiations will be completed today in Brussels, providing much needed certainty and clarity for farmers.” EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos said Tuesday’s Agriculture Council gave a negotiating mandate to the Irish Presidency: “Negotiations on CAP reform have made good progress in the past few days, which makes me confident of our capacity to reach a political agreement. We have made important steps forward on each of the four regulations of the legislative package,” he said. “However, there are still open issues on which the European Parliament, the Irish Presidency and the European Commission need to find the right balance. “Trilogues will restart in Brussels tomorrow with the view to finding a political agreement on the CAP reform.” Continue reading

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Climate Change: Russia Is Steamed About U.N.’s Kyoto Carbon Credit COP-Out

Representatives of Russia and other Eastern bloc countries at the recent climate talks in Bonn made it clear that they aren’t one bit happy about efforts within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Conference of Parties (COP) to cap their free Soviet-era  carbon credit trading green stamps previously gifted to them under the Kyoto Protocol. The original deal was that signatory nations that reduced carbon emissions by targeted amounts under their 1990 levels would be able to sell credits based upon tonnage improvements to countries that produced more than their allocations, thereby meeting quotas. In other words, a market was created to sell lots of hot air…something that the U.N. excels at. The idea, at least as presented by the FCCC, was to save our planet from dreaded CO 2 -induced global warming. Incidentally, we  might have credited that plan  for great success were it not for the fact that while global temperatures have been flat now for about 17 years, those atmospheric CO 2 levels have continued to rise. Yeah, But Russia Expected That All Along Originally, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on December 2, 2003, that his country would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol because the rationale supporting it was “scientifically flawed”. He argued that even one hundred percent compliance with the agreement wouldn’t reverse climate change. The Russian Academy of Sciences presented scientific arguments against signing in a statement issued on July 1, 2005, noting that the world’s temperatures do not follow CO 2 levels. Instead, they observed a much closer correlation between world temperatures and solar activity. The Academy also determined that sea levels were not rising faster with warming; rather, they had been increasing steadily about 6 inches per century since the Little Ice Age ended in about 1850. In addition, the Academy discounted one of the most significant danger claims about global warming – that tropical diseases would spread – noting that malaria is a disease that is encouraged by sunlit pools of water where mosquitoes can breed, not by climate warmth. They also pointed out the lack of correlation between global warming and extreme weather, which a British government scientific delegation had admitted it could find no evidence to support. What ultimately caused Putin and the Russian duma to change their position and ratify the Protocol? It is widely speculated that Europeans were instrumental in getting Russia admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and thus categorized it as a developing country rather than a developed one in applying the Protocol regulations. This meant that Russia received an opportunity to sell to European countries billions of dollars’ worth of Soviet-era emission credits associated with former dirty industries that had been casualties of economic melt-down. This would also help Europe meet Kyoto’s first-phase requirements without actually cutting emissions or energy use. Europe’s 1990 CO 2 emissions of 4,245 million tons fell to 4,123 tons in 2002 due to reductions in burning coal in both Britain and East Germany. Yet Kyoto Protocol requirements stipulated further European Union cutbacks to 3,906 million before 2012. A December 2003 U.N. report predicted that the E.U. would miss that reduction target by even more than that amount, namely, by dropping an additional 311 million tons. Since Russia’s 1990 emissions were 2,405 million tons, and had fallen by 2001 to 1,614 million tons, they could sell up to 800 million tons of credits to the Europeans at an “auction” price. This would be cheaper for Europe than shutting down fossil-fired power plants or removing trucks from its vital transportation infrastructure by means of escalating already high diesel fuel taxes. But Not Such a Great Deal for the U.S. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t in the cards for the U.N. to offer the U.S. any breaks comparable to those accorded to the Europeans and Russians . First, unlike Europe and former Soviet countries that were treated as separate emission-credit-trading entities, the U.S. was treated as a single nation (allowing no credit exchanging between states to meet quotas). Second, the U.S. emissions in 1990 were not inflated to high target allowance levels as was the case in Germany, Britain, and Russia, making compliance much more difficult to achieve. In response to these inequities and other issues, our Senate passed (95-0) a rare unanimous bipartisan Byrd-Hagel U.S. Senate Resolution (S Res 98) that made it clear that the United States would not be signatory to any agreement that “would result in serious harm to the economy of the  United States”. Then-President Clinton, no stranger to political pragmatism, got the message and never submitted a necessary U.S. Kyoto Protocol approval request for congressional ratification. Heated Climate Negotiations Put On Ice Reuters reported on June 6 that U.N. talks aimed at progress towards a new 2015 climate pact agreement have now been stalled by objections from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine regarding procedural violations purposefully intended to eliminate their free carbon food stamp lunch. The UNFCCC now wants to renege on a deal they made with Russia to get them into Kyoto in the first place. Now that European carbon markets have recently collapsed with the price of carbon (hot air) hitting record lows, they are concerned that allowing Russia, Ukraine, Poland and other former Soviet bloc nations to retain the huge stockpile of carbon credits they picked up under Kyoto would further flood and depress the market. Ironically, those credits were originally granted as a reward to former Eastern bloc nations for the Communism which depressed their economic development prior to 1990, essentially compensating them for the economic destruction wreaked by their own Communist regimes. Poland, which will host COP 19 in November, has approximately 500 metric tons of carbon credits it plans to continue to sell to other nations including Japan, Ireland and Spain to offset its emissions from heavy coal use. Russia has since announced that it will not be part of a second Kyoto commitment period under these conditions, saying that they are committed to keep the credits and sell them to other countries regardless of a claimed COP “consensus” that would terminate them. They are still smarting over a snub during two-week-long U.N. Climate talks in Doha, Qatari last year when, during the final minutes, Vice Prime Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiya ended the eighteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-18) before their delegation which wished to be recognized could speak. While Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief, claimed that a consensus had been reached, Oleg Shamanov, the chief negotiator for Russia’s delegation called that an “absolutely obvious violation of this procedure.” Shamanov added, “This is a systemic issue. Unless we put our house back in order, we may not be able to guarantee that in 2015 we end up with something productive.” Capitalizing on Wealth Transfer from Capitalism Carbon credit cap-and-trade marketing is but one U.N. climate alarm-based profiteering scheme aimed at global wealth redistribution. Another important agenda item for the UNFCCC’s  2015 Paris treaty to address is a planned “loss and damage” mechanism to seek compensation from “Tier 1” developed nations by a lawyered-up group of small island governments, the  Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS),  premised upon global warming hazards caused by industrialization. AOSIS leaders, including Tuvalu, Kirabati, St. Lucia, and the Maldives, claim that man-made global warming is causing super-hurricanes and rising sea levels. And who is most to blame? Coincidentally, of course, those legions of lawyers have identified culprits with the deepest pockets…the U.S., Western Europe and Japan. Although China is now the world’s largest CO 2 emitter, they got a pass. Still to be determined, is the problem of how such penalties should be assessed. For example, if a Category 4 hurricane hits an island, how can anyone know which portion of that hurricane was caused by each nation?  Also, how much of it was caused by those coal plants and SUVs, versus at Mother Nature’s sole discretion? The idea of penalizing the West for trumped-up past and future climate crimes is certainly not new. Prior to COP-15 (2009-Copenhagen), several Latin American nations, the Philippines and the African Union claimed that Western countries owed developing countries trillions of dollars. U.S. and European delegation representatives attending the Copenhagen Climate Conference initially agreed to provide their “fair share”, pledging $10 billion in compensation per year from 2010 to 2012, The offer was rejected as an insult, discussions were temporarily interrupted as representatives of several undeveloped countries walked out of the meetings, and angry riots broke out in the streets over the injustice of such paltry penance. Then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told the audience where to lay the blame for the world’s social, economic and climate problems: “If the climate was a bank, [the West] would already have saved it”. “The destructive model of capitalism is eradicating life”. “Our revolution seeks to help all people…Socialism, is the other ghost that is   probably    wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet; capitalism is the road to hell…Let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us”. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton then came to the rescue, offering to up the ante with a $100 billion annual contribution from the United States and our more prosperous friends to the “poorest and most vulnerable [nations] among us” by 2020. She said that the money would come from “a variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance”. Where it would actually come from no one knew, including Hillary and her boss. (Any guesses?) Time to End the Climate of Insanity It’s way past time to recognize that UNFCCC’s cap-and-trade, loss and damage compensation and other global wealth redistribution agendas have little or nothing to do with actually preventing a climate crisis, much less offering any benefits. Despite rising atmospheric CO 2 levels, global temperatures have not only been flat for going on two decades, but are predicted by leading scientists to cool over many future years or decades to come. Russia entered into the Kyoto Protocol realizing prior to that time that there was no convincing scientific climate-related basis for doing so.  More recent determinations by researchers at their prestigious Pulkovo Observatory in St. Petersburg project that the global average yearly temperature will soon begin to decline into a very cold and protracted climate phase. Pulkovo  Observatory head Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, one of the world’s leading solar scientists, member of the Russian Academy of Science, and director of the Russian segment of the International Space Station, believes that the deep freeze will last until the end of this century. He predicts that: “after the maximum of solar Cycle-24, from approximately 2014, we can expect the start of the next bicentennial cycle of deep cooling with a Little Ice Age in 2055 plus or minus 11 years” (the 19th to occur in the past 7,500 years). Dr. Abdussamatov points out that over the last 1,000 years deep cold periods have occurred five times. Each is correlated with declines in solar irradiance much like we are experiencing now with no human influence. “A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse gas emissions. The common view of Man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect.” Russian scientists Vladimir Bashkin and Raulf Galiullin from the Institute of Fundamental Problems of Biology of the Russian Academy of Science agree that climatic changes are characterized by natural cycles which have nothing to do with activities of man. As Bashkin observes: “A global warming that so many are talking about is not so much a scientific problem, rather it is much more a marketing trick…We do not have global warming ahead of us.  Rather, we have global cooling.” Yes, and that marketing trick is one that the UNFCCC, including the Russian’s, has learned to play very well. Continue reading

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