'Bowes Labour' comments, on Enfield Conservatives' comments, on ...., on ...., about Pinkham Way

Councillor Alan Sitkin comments:

Link to 'Bowes Labour' web site

"As a 54-year-old, who never even thought of standing for any office before my children left home, I am anything but a 'career politician', and I am therefore unaccustomed to the 'lack of truthfulness' that seems a constant for certain party politicians. 

Indeed, it is very disheartening for any civic-minded person who has dared to put their head above the parapet, to have to spend time rebutting – how can I say this politely? – outright fabrications, instead of being allowed to work on the problems that afflict us all. 

Yet I have been put in this unfortunate position, due to the sheer volume of nonsense that Enfield Conservatives has been publishing recently. This refers to my attitude towards the Pinkham Way saga, even as (or maybe because) they gloss over their own responsibility for this sad affair. What I propose is to use the kind offices of the 'Pinkham Way Incinerator' web site [what, us?] to state a few straightforward truths, once and for all, before ending with a simple suggestion for positive action.

1. Enfield's Tories wrote, in a previous posting, that:

   "At Enfield's annual council meeting in May 2010, Alan Sitkin voted to remove Michael Lavender and Ertan Hurer, ... because they were causing too much trouble for the other Labour-controlled authorities on the NLWA ."

   This makes a mockery of your readers [both of them?] by peddling 'falsifications'. Messers Lavender and Hurer were not even candidates to represent Enfield at the NLWA, given that their party had just been turfed out at the election. Thus, I never had a chance to 'vote to remove them', much less for the reasons invented above. Do Tories disdain your readers, to the extent that they make up porkies, as they go along?
   
   
2. In a letter to the local paper, Cllr Daniel Pierce invents another huge whopper, about me previously supporting the Pinkham Way project. It is true that I have repeatedly discussed means to mitigate environmental damage, in case it is too late to stop this bad proposal. This, unfortunately, remains a distinct possibility, given the extent that the project advanced under Enfield’s Tories, before Labour came to power in May 2010 - but that is very different from 'supporting' it.
   
   Cllr Pierce's conflation of these stances signals either totally dishonesty, or, an inability to distinguish between wishing for a bad thing, and being responsible enough to make plans to limit the damage, when it cannot be stopped. I dare say that the same conflation drives the Tories’ so-called 'questions' to us, at Enfield’s upcoming Council meeting. When, oh when, can we expect these politicians to tell the truth, much less engage in mature and constructive thinking?

Let’s make this simple, once and for all. [Here we go. It's another list.]

1. To avoid stooping to the same shameful levels as the Tories demonstrate above, I’ll accept their claim: They now join Labour, in opposing a new waste plant at Pinkham Way.
   
   I even accept one of the points they make, that they were not the only North London administration, that failed to prevent Tory Barnet from having a laugh in 2009, at everyone else’s expense, when this solution was first stitched up (when Staples Corner was taken off the table).
    
2. The question then becomes: "What alternative do we seek at this late stage?" (It is 'late', because the NLWA is under pressure to develop new solutions by 2014, since – rightfully – it needs to stop sending London’s waste to other communities, including through landfill).
   
   Here there is a clear distinction between the two Enfield parties. The Tories want to throw more waste at East Enfield. Indeed, a leading representative of the Bowes Green Party has also gone on record to advocate this brutal, cold-hearted solution. This is an amazingly primitive outlook, where ecology and social justice are pitted against each other, instead of being addressed simultaneously.
   
   Labour rejects the total immorality of forcing even more waste on Edmonton – which has suffered the martyrdom of proximity to an incinerator, on behalf of all of us, for decades now. Thirty-four years after earning my first degree in Environmental Studies, I’ve had time to figure out how to reconcile ecological and social considerations. It really isn’t too difficult, and shame on those who forget that the poor of this world actually suffer more from environmental degradation than anyone else.
    
3. The simple solution is to get the affluent to stop fobbing their nuisances on to the deprived – in this case, to get Barnet to host the waste plant! One of the Enfield Tories’ few sensible comments was where they agreed that I had a 'legitimate gripe' about Barnet’s 'free-riding'.
   
   Since we concur on this, the solution is obvious: We must use all available political resources, to force Barnet to keep its lorries at Mill Hill, and erect the MBT plant at Staples Corner. I don’t know why anyone made the mistake in a previous comment that I want to see an incinerator there, because I don’t. But this solution is the ethical and practical one. The question is how to achieve it.

I ask all readers of this web site to write to the leaders of the Enfield Conservative Party, to convince them that it is in all of our interests, for them to add to the pressure on their fellow party members in Barnet. Enough of these manufactured, anti-Labour smokescreens! The real target is Brian Coleman, et al.

Party lines should matter less to career politicians, than principles of ecological justice. Otherwise, how can they sleep at night?"