Keep it Green and Pleasant here

Lockdown reminded me the 'basics' are the most important part of life - Food, shelter, and family.

Cornwall is a wonderful place to live with friendly people and amazing countryside.

Stop building new homes on green fields. An area of countryside and green space almost the size of Cornwall has been lost to development over 25 years - Source: UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology 09/07/20 Its just got to stop!

Charge Council tax and business rates for Second home owners.

Set limits on second home ownership in each area.

Provide more buses in Cornwall so that we can use our cars less. Especially buses to and from town primary schools and out to the villages.

Support farmers to produce food to feed us.

Provide better doorstep recycling, and a free composter for each home. I would recycle more if I could.

Stop the water companies dumping raw sewage into our seas every time it rains. Its appalling that in this most 'advanced' of nations, we cannot look after our own waste water and our oceans.

All new builds should be of a good environmental standard and be able to last the test of time. They should all have eco-build qualities as standard such as triple glazing, ground source heating, electric car chargers, underground parking (to keep the gardens above as green spaces), and insulation as good as the Scandinavian countries. Why not?

Support farmers to keep farming. Without farms there would be hardly any green spaces left. Look at the latest housing developments - see any green fields there? No. Its all concrete and housing. With hardly even any gardens.

Look at the latest developments in and around Newquay. Many have concreted over all the green space they had! Where will that water drain to when it rains? The overloaded drain system? Where is the green grass and plants in gardens and village green areas that soak up the carbon?

Support farmers to farm our land. Farmers are caring for these fields every day. Green fields are homes and food for farm animals, and for us. All the hedgerows and green spaces in between are wildlife havens. Farmers do not concrete over their green spaces, or use up every available inch for profit as developers do. In each farm there are acres in between the fields left for nature.

We must ensure farmers can continue to farm. That means operate like any other business in the UK, and make a profit, so that they can continue to keep the country green. Once a farm has gone, its gone. Lets keep them here.

We are lucky to live in a country where we have some of the highest environmental standards and highest animal welfare standards in the world. We must cherish that and support it. Think about other countries in the third world where we import our food from. What do you think the standards are like? Do you think they have or uphold them? The safest place to get our food from is right here in the UK. And local being the best. So lets let it grow and thrive so we can buy our food locally from where we live.

The current crisis has shown us that farmers aren't the bad guys ruining nature that the media like to portray, they actually support and cultivate nature to provide food for all. Farmers continued to work throughout the crisis of lockdown, and yet emissions dropped dramatically and the birds were heard once more. So finally we admit they are not to blame. We are. With our plane rides, our endless need for more consumables, our long 'unnecessary' car journeys, our imported food, and increasing energy use with more and more tech. The list goes on.

So lets turn it around. Lets do what we can to make the earth we live on and the people we meet more happy.

Cornwall and its people are lovely, lets keep it that way.