Dark skies…

The Government has enjoyed ten weeks free of Parliamentary interference. It was not quite the media break it had hoped for, given the very public rows and splits in the Labour Party as it seeks to salvage something from the wreckage of the Blair years – and tries to decide whether or not the bitter cup of what’s left of the inheritance will pass to Gordon Brown – or not.

Will Parliament rise to the challenge of representing your frustration, now that No.10 has lost the plot? Or can the executive continue to rely on its massed ranks of fretful backbenchers, ever more fearful of losing their seats?

Who governs Britain?

Parliament needs to reassert its authority in the face of an arrogant government that on several occasions during the summer has been faithfully reported by the BBC as having decided to change the law in important areas of public life – such as John Reid’s decision to send people to prison even if the legal process was flawed. If MPs and our judges let them get away with abuses like that it will be the beginning of the end of the rule of law.

Governments don’t change the law. Parliament does. The collective of left-wing editors that controls BBC news output should not have allowed itself to report such abuses so uncritically. But then, the BBC was also up to its old tricks of reporting bad news in the Middle East as actions by ‘British Forces’ as if independent journalism required them to take the ‘British’ out of BBC. Not that the BBC like to report the good news of the successes of HM Forces.

Pax Britannia

The tragic adventures in the Lebanon during August have blown dark clouds over British Foreign Policy and Defence Policy. As David Cameron and William Hague have so clearly explained (and as I have on my website) Britain cannot stumble on with global security and economic attitudes and aspirations conceived in post-cold war Europe.

I believe the USA, too, is ready for a radical reassessment of the path the western world needs to take. I hope that our two nations will tread that road together – but we may need to go on ahead, with a British Government firmly committed to putting British interests first.

But who will lead our Government? Will the whole house of cards collapse and a General Election deliver new hope? Don’t hold your breath! Another dark cloud ahead is the brooding, dour presence of Gordon Brown, sulking in the wings with supplies of hair shirts, fire and brimstone. It is going to be a long, hard winter of discontent again.

Star of wonder, star of light

Dark skies can mean something completely different! I’m all in favour of them if it means waking up to the fact that we are losing the battle against light pollution and our children are losing an important part of their inheritance. What can they make of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar saying, “But I am constant as the northern star, of whose fixed and resting quality their is no fellow in the firmament…” if they cannot identify the northern star and have never seen the firmament?

The Milky Way is now only visible from 30% of the UK on a good night. We have no operational world-class optical telescopes any more and our astronomers rely on using instruments in Australia, La Palma, Hawaii and Chile. Partly to blame - you’ve guessed it – are vapour trails from the massive number of new jet passenger aircraft.

Unnecessary lighting is a gross waste of energy and a contributor to carbon release and climate change. The link between bright lighting and road safety and crime is viewed with increasing scepticism. Light trespass from industrial and retail premises, football grounds and sports facilities as well as from over-lit rural roundabouts is a growing problem. The most common complaint is about automatic domestic security lights, usually triggered by the neighbour’s cat, that are thoughtlessly installed to spill unwanted and excessive light into other people’s property.

In the last Parliament I worked on the Science and Technology Select Committee and we recommended, amongst other things, that light pollution should be legally defined as a statutory nuisance, along with noise and smell. For once the Government listened – and a statutory nuisance it now is, enforced by local planning authorities. So, well done Salisbury District Council for designating two planning officers with responsibility for this menace. I am assured that planning applications are now routinely scrutinised and thoughtless light polluters may expect a polite call rather than a summons.

Have your say

More good news is public consultation on the recent publication of the Porton Down Masterplan, devised by the Health Protection Agency, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratories and PBTC Ltd ( Porton Bioscience and Technology Centre, the company set up to encourage private industrial spin-off and civilian applications of taxpayer-funded science research at the Porton Down establishments).

Like Topsy, Porton Down just growed. Now that we are (fortunately) looking forward to a secure and expanding workforce and increased economic activity (with some 3000 jobs, rivalling Salisbury District Hospital as a major employment focus in our community) the time has come to think strategically about major infrastructure provision in travel and transport, water, energy and waste.

The very special ecology and biodiversity of Porton Down are part of the Masterplan – along with trees, hedgerows, archaeology and the landscape. That’s more like it!

Robert Key MP
October 2006