Ed Vaizey

MP for Wantage and Didcot

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Archive for December, 2007

I should be so lucky…

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

Dear Kylie

I understand from an article in my local paper that you are looking for a home near Didcot.  I cannot say I am surprised, as you have always been a lady of impeccable judgement.

You may remember that Didcot was named as Britain’s twentieth crappest town in a book called Crap Towns a few years ago.  It was subsequently dropped from the second edition, and last Friday the author came to pay penitence for his unjustified slur on the town.  He saw, as no doubt you have as well, the renaissance of the town.  We have a new town centre, with leading national chains, a new five-screen cinema, and next year we will have an arts centre as well.

I know culture means a great deal to you.  I just missed you at the opening of your exhibition a few months ago at the V&A.  There is plenty of culture for you here.  Didcot has a wonderful street fair every year.  In nearby Wallingford we have the wonderful Corn Exchange, as well as the highly successful Blues & Beers festival and the Bunkfest.  I have just opened Wantage’s brilliant annual Dickensian evening, and Wantage too has a wonderful summer arts festival.  All the arts groups in Wantage have banded together to try and save the music rooms at the recently closed St Mary’s school, and we have wonderful brass bands in Wantage and Cholsey, just south of Wallingford.  Faringdon is really the heart of the live music scene in the area, and it too has a highly successful annual arts festival.  We also have the annual truck festival in Steventon, which was rained off this year but still came back with a vengeance.  The show must go on.  With all this going on, it is no wonder that Didcot produced a finalist for Any Dream Will Do, Andy Hansen.

No wonder so many of your fellow celebs set up home here.  Whether it is Rory Bremner near Faringdon, John Lloyd of Qi fame between Wantage and Didcot, Sandie Shaw, Brian Eno, the bloke from the Old Grey Whistle Test, Helena Bonham Carter in Suton Courtenay, and numerous other writers such as Candida Lycett-Green and Mary Louden, not to mention the Henmans, you will find many like-minded individuals nearby.  Oh, I almost forgot - your old co-star Jason Donovan lives here as well.

If all this culture is not enough, you may like to invest some of your hard-earned cash here.  We have a reputation for scientific excellence, and as a result many established and up and coming scientific companies are based here, such as RM and Oxford Instruments.  We also take the environment seriously, with the well-regarded Northmoor Trust leading the way.

I know that you have dined here as well, supposedly at the Sweet Olive in the Astons.  You might like to check out Splitz in Didcot (an ex-Manoir chef) or The Boars Head in Ardington, or The Eyston Arms in East Hendred.

Really there is so much to see and do here, I imagine all that is holding you back is finding the right place.  Let me know when you ahve, and I’ll pop round with a bowl of sugar.

Ed 

 

 

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Another Own Goal by an Environmental lobbying Group

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
On Friday I met with Regenatec, the renewable energy company based on Milton Park, Didcot, about whom I have blogged before.  They were visited this year by Tony Blair, and have just won a prestigious innovation award.  They have developed an innovative technology to convert diesel engines to run on pure plant oils as well still being able to operate on diesel.   This is a great way of lowering the carbon footprint of a vehicle, and lots of buses, coaches and rubbish trucks are now using it. 

Recently there has been a bit of a biofuel backlash.  Environmentalists argue that biocrops replace food crops, and that rainforests are being cleared to make way for fuel crops.  There is a point to the backlash - not all biofuels are the same, and there is a difference between non-sustainable and sustainable biofuel (just as there is, say, between non-fairtrade and fairtrade chocloate). 

However, Regenatec bend over backwards to use sustainable biofuel.  For example, CleanStar Energy, an Indian company that has partnered with Regenatec, is growing biofuels sustainably and ethically.  I was shown video footage of Cleanstar’s R&D site in the Maharashtra district in India.  The world bank had spent millions in this area trying to grow food crops and has given up due to sporadic rainfall and poor soil.  The only things that grow naturally here are oil trees called Jatropha and Pongamia.  So Cleanstar have planted around 100,000 tress on the landscape amongst the natural vegetation.  Water comes from captured monsoon rain.  The fact that these trees produce non-edible oils and are grown on wastelands blasts the food vs. fuel and cutting down the rainforests issue. And on top of that, growing biofuel trees generates significant jobs in rural parts of Africa and India.

It’s a real pity that on the day I visited Regenatec and met with CleanStar, the Friends of the Earth had made headline news in a local Bracknell paper condemning the local bus company operating on Regenatec’s technology.  It was clear that no one had taken the time to actually find out the facts as Regenatec had just won a major national design award from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers for their technology AND sustainability! 
We really need to take a balanced view on biofuels.  Just like any industry, things can be done in a good or bad way, sustainably or unsustainably.  Regenatec & CleanStar have nailed their colours to the mast by intending to become the world’s first ‘fairtrade fuel’ company.  Simply condemning without offering a viable, pragmatic alternative does no one any favours.  We should be supporting innovative UK technology like Regenatec’s to ensure we get viable & sustainable replacements in place before mineral oil really starts to become expensive as it eventually - and inevitably - becomes more scarce.   The alternative to not using sustainable biofuels is to run our buses and trucks on fossil fuels and to wait for hydrogen (still predominantly produce by burning fossil fuel to get the required electricity!)

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