The WREN Blog
On Wednesday 6th November, just in time for remembrance, the Wadebridge War Memorial in Coronation Park was re-lit.
The memorial stands above the town, up a narrow Cornish lane and well past the houses, and the wind was blowing more than somewhat. As I arrived an official-looking gent in a smart overcoat and a name badge was setting out plastic chairs. “Are these for VIPs or can anyone sit here?” I asked. “They’re for anyone who needs them, who can’t stand,” he said. The wind blew over half a dozen chairs. “I’ll sit on this one till someone needs it, to stop it blowing away,” I said.
PIMBY? PIMBY? Don’t you mean NIMBY? What’s a PIMBY?
“Please in my back yard” is what it means. People who want to see wind farms and solar panel arrays built because of the impact that fossil fuels have had, are having and will have upon the global ecosystem – you know, that thing we rely on to grow food, replenish oxygen, maintain temperatures and just generally stay alive...
12 people. Just 12. That was the number The One Show on BBC last evening (16th Oct) quoted as taking up the ‘Green Deal’ through to completion. The government's programme to encourage energy efficiency measures and provide loan finance to pay for them was, it implied, a failure. Then today (17th Oct) official statistics up to the end of September were released by DECC.
You’d expect an “Energy Shop” located on a main shopping street to be in the business of selling energy, but you’d be wrong. It’s WREN’s public face in Wadebridge, the place to go for advice and help on renewables and energy efficiency, staffed by volunteers. But what actually happens inside? I went to see.