Your say / Politics
‘Bristol Airport is far more complicated than a soundbite’
Blinkered, oppositional and – as ever – out of touch with reality, the Green Party are now trying to blame Bristol’s elected mayor for a planning decision in the rural county of North Somerset which has yet to be taken in Weston-super-Mare.
The Green Party’s councillors – posh people from the city centre who don’t need to balance work with commitments in City Hall – sadly seem intent on impoverishing south Bristol. This side of the city is one which they’ve likely only been through, rather than to. They don’t understand how left behind we feel.
Context is key. Bristol Airport is a major employer south of the river. Its expansion plans would bring £3bn of economic benefit. At a time when the Government’s handling of Brexit is making our economy uncertain, this would be a much-needed boost.
is needed now More than ever
And, from a practical and environmental perspective, it’s obvious that people should fly straight in and out of Bristol rather than – as so many as doing at the moment – Heathrow or Gatwick, with a drive hundreds of miles to and from the West Country in a bus or car.
The carbon reduction of stopping people driving an extra 100 miles or more is something that the Green Party choose to ignore when having this debate. The innovations of airlines like EasyJet, through more environmentally-friendly planes and fuels, as well as Bristol Airport’s own carbon neutrality target, should be driven forward, not dismissed.
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Child poverty is on the rise, thanks to the austerity of the Lib Dems and Tories. For wards like Hengrove & Whitchurch Park, where I am proud to call home and even prouder to represent, this is not just statistics but a day-to-day reality for tens of thousands: choosing between heating and eating, struggling to make ends meet, kids going to school hungry.
In my ward and others near the airport, deprivation is not only among the highest in the city but the worst in the country.
For us, the reality of 10,000 new jobs at the airport, the reality of a regular payslip for families in wards like my own, is far more important than simple slogans.
Bristol is seeing a reduction in manual and traditional jobs while the high-tech sector grows and if we do not take steps to diversify our economy, we will sit on an unemployment time-bomb.
Then again, I might be wasting my time explaining what life is really like for so many in Bristol to a party which tried to delete all mention of the word ‘poverty’ from a recent Labour council motion which was all about tackling inequality!
These same Green Party councillors, like the Tories, also voted against funding Labour’s £40m council tax reduction scheme, which helps Bristol’s poorest 25,000 households – including 900 families in my ward and almost 8,000 others across south Bristol – and against funding the council becoming a Living Wage employer.
This makes councillor Stephen Clarke’s speculation about pay and conditions for jobs which don’t exist yet, difficult to swallow.
It is anticipated that passenger numbers at Bristol Airport will increase from eight million a year, to as much as 20 million by the mid-2040s
Marvin Rees has delivered a Living Wage for the council, and is pushing for Bristol to be a Living Wage City. He is writing to major employers to offer to work with them and the Living Wage Foundation to make this so, and it’s a safe bet that the airport-based employers are on his list.
All of this is not to say that our environment isn’t important. It is, and the future of our planet is at risk because of global warming. That makes strategy, not slogans – considered public policy, not cheap political points – so important.
That’s why Labour made a firm commitment to carbon neutrality in our 2016 local election manifesto, which I was proud to stand on. The Green Party chose not to.
That’s why Labour prints our leaflets on 100 per cent recycled paper, while the Green Party refuses to.
That’s why our Labour administration voted to invest tens of millions of pounds in renewable energy to tackle climate change, heat networks to reduce fuel poverty, and secured the UK’s biggest bio-gas bus order as well as buying clean vehicles for the council and waste company to improve our air quality.
Unfortunately, the Green Party voted against all of this – preferring yet again to vote with the Tories and against Labour’s environmentalism. It’s votes, not rhetoric, that matter.
You might expect me to say this as a south Bristol Labour councillor. It’s clear that the reds are far ahead of the blues and greens on all these issues, just like City compared to the Gas or Forest Green.
Barry Clark is the Labour councillor for Hengrove & Whitchurch Park ward. He currently sits on the Bristol Airport Consultative Committee for Bristol City Council.
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