The editor flew (yes, flew) to Australia, and nobody else was interested in learning the ropes.

Goodnight and good luck.

Manchester Airport is owned by the 10 local authorities of Greater Manchester. Manchester City Council owns 55%, with the other 9 councils owning 5% each.  While the airport’s ground operations are relatively “green”, the airport is refusing to take responsibility for any proportion of the emissions of the planes taking off, flying or landing, on the pretext that there is no internationally agreed way of sharing out these emissions between the origin and destination of a flight.  But this will change, and as majority owner of the Airport, Manchester City Council will have to take ownership of a proportion of the aviation emissions.  Including these extra emissions will make its ambitious carbon reductions targets set out in the Manchester Climate Change Action Plan impossible to achieve.
Any non-violent action that does not endanger lives which is taken to discourage the Airport’s owners from expanding the airport should be applauded and supported by any sane human being concerned for the fate of the planet.  We no longer sell slaves, or deny voting rights to women, and we are astounded that such practices were ever the norm.  We will look back at airport growth with the same incredulity.
Marc Hudson, editor of Manchester Climate Fortnightly 2008-2010.

[It is a matter of public record that I am flying to Australia to spend a year with my parents, and returning overland. Doubtless this will bring cries of 'hypocrisy' from those keen to change the subject from the City Council's responsibility,  but the activists on trial have said they still want me to provide a statement.]

And the editorial alongside this post, reprinted in the interests of, erm being a useful rhetorical stick for media campaigners to beat the now-under-new-management MEN with, is from 2006. “Going green must be our top priority.” Indeed

The Economy, Employment and Skills Oversight and Scrutiny Committee is made up of councillors from the governing Labour party and the Liberal Democrat opposition. It meets “twice within an eight week period to hold decision makers to account and to develop policy within its area of concern.  This area includes economic growth, strategic transport, employment, regeneration, tourism, the voluntary sector, City region, Core Cities, adult skills development (aged 16+) and worklessness.”

The very production of the report generated controversy. The editor of MCFly, invited to give evidence to the Committee, cited the work of Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre to the effect that a growth economy in the developed world would make achieving carbon emissions reductions that gave any reasonable prospect of avoiding a dangerously warmer world impossible. What was therefore needed, to achieve the sought-after ‘first mover’ advantage was work on the implications of a steady-state economy. After a question and answer session, Liberal Democrat councillor Vincent Chamberlain asked the chair of the committee if this work would be taken forward. Councillor Hugh Barrett was not in favour, stating that the work would be above the remit of the committee, and against the ‘jobs’ agenda. The Green City representative then offered to write a report, but stated it would not be available ‘in the next two weeks’ (Cllr Barrett made an aside to the effect that two years would be his preferred timeframe). The chair then asked for agreement, and as no-one demurred, a report will be produced.

MCFly will not be around to report on this, but Manchester Mule is picking up the threads, and will keep tabs on the progress and rigour of the report, and its further ramifications.

Meetings of the Economy, Employment and Skills committee are open to the public, and there is no need to book. Meetings take place in Castle Grayskull (also known as Manchester Town Hall)

Future meeting dates for this committee are as follows. 15 December, 12 January 2011 and 9 February 2011, 7 March 2011

re: behaviour of Cllr Mary Murphy (Hulme ward)

I am writing to you about the behaviour of one of the elected members of the Labour Party. As you will be aware, Mary Murphy circulated an article from “Manchester Climate Fortnightly” (MCFly) that she had altered in many important respects. The doctored article gave the false impression that MCFly endorsed/approved of the Labour Candidate in the Hulme bye-election. As an independent newsletter, MCFly has never formally endorsed any candidate for any election.

Full details of the events around this are to be found on the following web pages
MCFly lodges formal complaint about Councillor’s behaviour (Oct 12)
Doctored MCFly story sent to Hulme Residents during election campaign (Oct 12)
Labour Councillor gets away with it (Nov 12)
That Mary Murphy decision in full (Nov 12)

Although Councillor Murphy has since claimed it was a “spoof gone wrong”, at the time she sent it out to a Hulme Residents Online list, she did not make this clear – even after being challenged on the alterations. At no point since then – to my knowledge – has she made any effort to clarify that it was a spoof and to apologise publicly for her behaviour. She has displayed – at best – appallingly poor judgement.

I complained using official Council channels, and have been told that because she did not use her official council email, they are going to take no action.
I am writing to ask whether you are going to take any action at all on this matter. I am assuming this sort of behaviour on her part is not the sort of thing the Labour party endorses.

To take no action will be perceived by people watching this case – and there are some – as tacitly condoning what she has done.

At the minimum there should be an apology for the distortion, and a public censure of her.

Marc Hudson
editor Manchester Climate Fortnightly

cc.  Richard Leese (Leader of Manchester City Council), Cllr Nigel Murphy (Senior councillor in Hulme ward), Tony Lloyd, MP.

Download as a pdf, or read it below as a scribd document.

Marc Roberts‘ latest cartoon (vastly improved, as usual, from a mediocre script by me – see below).

Frank is looking out the window of his house, yelling “Hurry up Zorro, that wave is coming right at us – we’ll all drown.”
Zorro says “We’ve already used up all the soil from the permaculture allotment for sandbags. Now what?”
Frank says “Well, what about all those inch-thick reports about mitigation and adaptation that I was collecting for a few years. They can at least be useful for keeping my house dry.
Zorro is holding a report and bullshit is flooding out of it.  “I think I’ve found the source of the flooding, Frank.”

The majority of the Standards (Assessment) Sub-Committee reached this conclusion on the grounds that:

1. the e-mail that forms the subject of this complaint appears to have been sent by the Member from her personal hotmail account, rather than from the Member’s Council e-mail address, and
2. the e-mail that forms the subject of this complaint does not appear to have been signed by the Member as coming from “Councillor Mary Murphy”, and does not make any reference to the fact that the author of the e-mail is a member of the Council

So, let’s be clear here. There is a process that members of the public are supposed to go through if they feel Councillors have behaved badly. MCFly found out that Mary Murphy had clumsily and semi-literately altered a MCFly story so to imply that MCFly endorsed the Labour candidate in a by-election. She circulated this to voters during the by-election from an email account with her name, that she has used for some time and everyone on the list knows is her. MCFly complained to the relevant authorities with supporting evidence.  And because she didn’t use her official account, and ‘sign’ it, she can…  do what she likes.

And this is how the Council regulates itself.

And they wonder why people regard local politicians with contempt and disdain.

Mary Murphy’s ‘defence’ is that she thought the alterations would appear in a different colour. When challenged on the alterations immediately after posting them to the Online Discussion group she did not say “oops, have the alterations not come through? It’s a spoof gone wrong.” Nor at any point since has she made any public retraction. She never used the other resources available to her (Hulme Labour website for example) to publicly retract her actions or apologise for them. The standards sub-committee has not, it seems, bothered to consider this omission on the part of the Right Honorable Member.

The decision by the Standards Sub-Committee (which MCFly had to chase the relevant authorities to get, by the way – we’d probably still be waiting if we hadn’t asked), also contains the gem that “even if they thought that conduct complained of might have been carried out by the Member in her official capacity, if there were to be a local investigation of the complaint and the Member were to be found to have breached the Code of Conduct, the most likely sanction resulting from a local investigation would be a requirement for the Member to make an apology to the Complainant. Since the Member has already apologised to the Complainant, the Standards (Assessment) Sub-Committee did not consider that, even if the conduct complained of had been carried out by the Member in her official capacity, it would be appropriate to refer the matter for local investigation.”

This covering email states that decision text “for your own personal use. The “information in the decision notice should be treated as confidential for the purposes of any further proceedings and should not be disclosed, it also contains personal information regarding third parties and again this information should not be disclosed.”

Well, a) you never said when I started this process – if you’d said that I wasn’t going to be able to circulate it, I’d have never bothered to start proceedings. You can’t retroactively impose a gagging order, it doesn’t work like that
b) I ain’t gonna bother to appeal – why waste more time?
c) There is nothing third-party in here at all, other than the name of the Chair of the Sub-committee. I’ll cheerfully xxxx that out and post the whole decision here.
d) I also sent you an example of Mary Murphy falsely accusing MCFly of sending abusive emails to Nigel Murphy in the run up to the May Local Elections. You’ve ignored that.

A few questions then…

For the clowns who came to this decision

• What would it take for you to consider actions to be in your remit? Councillor Murphy was writing from an email account she uses all the time to a residents group where a bye-election was being held, issuing distorted information about local media support for Labour. What more do you want? How does this fall outside the “Members should not place themselves in situations where their honesty and integrity may be questioned, should not behave improperly and should on all occasions avoid the appearance of such behaviour” rule? Eh? It’s there in Section A of the Code of Conduct for Members. Would you like me to send you a copy, since two of you had patently not got yours to hand when you made this ‘decision’?
• Do you understand why local politicians are regarded with such contempt and disdain? Do you understand that actions like yours add to the picture of group of self-serving and mutually-protecting unaccountable sleazoids?
• Do you care?
• More concretely, (and we will be submitting this as a Freedom of Information Act request) in the last five calendar years, how many complaints have been made, how many have been rejected as not within the remit of your little fig-leaf panel, and how many have been upheld?

For Mary Murphy

• If it were, as you claim, a spoof gone wrong, how come you didn’t say that when you were challenged online?
• If it were, as you claim, a spoof, why did you sign it off with “don’t all shoot the messenger”?
• Why have you not posted anything on the Hulme Residents Online Group saying it was a spoof?
  Why have you not publicly apologised for creating (whether accidentally or on purpose) such a misleading impression?
• Do you accept that your accusation, made at the Town Hall during the May Local Elections count, that MCFly had sent abusive emails to Nigel Murphy was wrong? Do you (publicly) apologise for that accusation?

For Nigel Murphy and Amina Lone (Labour councillors in Hulme)

• How can you condone your fellow councillor’s actions?
• Does not your silence imply support for her?
• What action will you take?

For the Labour Party leadership

• Will you publicly apologise for the actions of one of your elected members?
• Will you publicly censure her for her actions?

MCFly is not holding its breath for any answers at all…

If your organisation could make a positive contribution at this year’s conference and you’ve not yet had an invite, then please email to register for a place.  The email address in question is green.city@manchester.gov.uk

Have fun.