News
24th January 2021 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
It was great to hear that cyclists and walkers will benefit from Community Infrastructure Levy funding after the council agreed to spend more than £350,000 on creating or upgrading cycle paths in the district. May I suggest that some of the money is spent on improving and making safer the cycle route from Stroud to […]
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21st December 2020 / 20th March 2021 by Dagan Smith
The government has thrown out Stroud District Council’s request to allow it to operate a fairer voting system during next year’s local elections. At November’s full council meeting, councillors approved a motion calling for an end to the First Past the Post system, for councillors to be allowed to job share and for 16-year-olds to […]
Stroud District could be the location of a “groundbreaking” trial of Universal Basic Income (UBI) after the District Council approved the idea of running a pilot scheme. District Councillors Catherine Braun (Green, Wotton-under-Edge, North Nibley and Stinchcombe) and Trevor Hall (Labour, Dursley) proposed and seconded a cross-party motion to trial UBI – a non-means-tested sum paid […]
Stroud District Council’s Strategy and Resources Committee has unanimously approved the council’s Carbon Neutral 2030 plan, which is due to be considered at full council in February. The cross-party support for the plan, which is out for public consultation until December 16, was welcomed by environment committee chair Cllr Simon Pickering (Green Party), who said: […]
10th November 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
Stroud Green Party coordinators, councillors and members were among more than 200 local residents who put their names to the following letter written by the Stroud Coronavirus Community Response team. The letter asked people not to attend the anti-lockdown rally that took place in Stratford Park at the weekend, and urged the organisers to withdraw […]
17th July 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
Transparency campaigners were today vindicated when the high court ruled Gloucestershire County Council had deliberately hidden information about the huge rise in the cost of the incinerator contract. Rachel Smith, Green County Councillor for Minchinhampton Division, said: “While it’s disappointing that Community R4C were not granted standing to challenge the procurement process on a technicality, […]
14th July 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
The Stroud District Green Party is recruiting an Elections Coordinator Stroud District Green Party (SDGP) is recruiting an Election Coordinator to work as a self-employed contractor until end May 2021. The Elections Coordinator will lead the delivery of the approved Stroud District local election strategy and budget. This will involve motivating and supporting a team […]
30th June 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
Dear Sir/Madam Last week I raised the issue of the need for better information on the spread of the coronavirus with Gloucestershire County Council. Without such information we cannot exercise common sense about where we go and who we see while keeping our community safe. I am pleased to say that Mark Hawthorne, leader of […]
26th June 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
In response to the findings of the investigation into the complaints by Stroud District Council’s Monitoring Officer regarding social media tweets by Cllr Debbie Young, Labour, Green and Liberal Democrat Alliance leaders wish to put on record our disappointment that explanations for the judgement shows very limited understanding of the lived experience of direct and […]
25th June 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
The below letter was sent to Siobhan Baillie and Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown by our Coordinators Lynn Haanen and Cllr Martin Whiteside. Dear Siobhan, We are writing to express our acute concern about the government’s stubborn refusal to request an extension to the transition period to allow enough time for a successful trade negotiation with the […]
22nd June 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
Green councillor to put motion to Gloucestershire County Council calling for a local contact tracing. As more evidence emerges daily of the failure of the government test-and-track system, Greens are calling for Gloucestershire to establish its own contact-tracing system. Cllr Rachel Smith, who will be putting the motion to Council, said: “It’s clear the government’s […]
9th June 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
Black Lives matter Supporting the Black Lives Matter movement is nothing more than words unless we address the systemic racism that affects people of colour, including in the context of Covid-19. The recent government-commissioned Public Health England (PHE) investigation found that people of Bangladeshi background in England are twice as likely as white Britons to […]
26th May 2020 / 20th March 2021 by Dagan Smith
Dear Sir/Madam New research has shown that the Covid-19 hotspot in Gloucestershire was probably related to the decision to go ahead with the Cheltenham Festival. Prof Spector from King’s College London told the BBC that “people will have probably died prematurely” as a result of that decision. The lesson from this episode is highly relevant […]
19th May 2020 / 19th May 2020 by Dagan Smith
The Green Group of Stroud District Council voted against a change of constitution but were outnumbered. The change means the quorum for remote Council meetings has dropped from 50% to 25%. This means out of the 51 councillors, only 7 would be considered a majority and can thus make a decision on behalf of the […]
11th May 2020 / 11th May 2020 by Dagan Smith
Stroud District Green Party has called for workplaces to have a certified and published plan for Covid-safety to be in place before employees are required to return to work. Following the Prime Minister’s call for a return to work, Greens are clear that the return should not resemble the piecemeal and haphazard procedure for locking […]
11th May 2020 / 22nd June 2020 by Dagan Smith
As we are now beginning to imagine life after lockdown, what are we imagining? While we have all been in the same storm, we have been in different boats – with some families facing much greater difficulties than others (think single parent in a flat with kids or a care-worker with inadequate PPE). Some families, […]
6th May 2020 / 19th March 2024 by Dagan Smith
The Stroud District Green Party has called for the removal of a false and misleading sign from the window of a shop called the Beacon in central Stroud which claims that Covid-19 is not a virus and can be cured by ingesting chloroquine and zinc. This level of disinformation is dangerous for all residents of […]
Stroud District Green Councillors call to save lives in the future by creating new local public health workforce to track and trace future corona outbreaks. Gloucestershire County Councillor, Rachel Smith (Green Minchinhampton), has welcomed the Government’s announcement to move quickly towards establishing a network of contact tracers for identifying all people with the Corona virus […]
28th April 2020 / 6th May 2020 by Dagan Smith
Local Green District and County Councillors join over 100 MPs and Peers across seven parties for the introduction of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in response to COVID-19. The letter to Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer was published in the Financial Times on April 22, 2020. The joint statement calls for a recovery UBI […]
