Website officer.

Candidate for Manor Castle 2012

I am married with 3 grown up children and have lived in the area since 1979. I work at Sheffield City College where I am Curriculum Leader for Skills for Life. I have stood in every local election since 1994. I have also been a General Election candidate.

I am standing in this election because we urgently need to change our City Council. The public sector cuts , supported by both the Lib Dems and Labour, are unnecessary. Like many other local people, my job is threatened by these cuts. The Green Party have consistently opposed the cuts and have shown how they are not necessary.

Climate change is already happening, yet Lib Dem and Labour councillors are doing very little about it. The floods we experienced in2007 should mean we start to change the polices in the town hall.

Graham Wroe.

In our ward we need to improve the housing stock so that our homes stay warm and dry without wasting fuel and creating more climate changing gases. Lots of us live in early 1900′s terraced housing which is not very energy efficient. The Green Party has persuaded the Council to fund South Yorkshire Energy Centre, where you can find out how you can reduce your energy bills. I have worked hard to improve my inner city house. It is now well insulated and has solar thermal and pv panels, so we make our own hot water and some of our electricity.

Park Hill is being redeveloped, but I am concerned that so few of the flats will be available for social housing, and little effort seems to have been made to make the redesign eco-friendly. Where are the wind turbines and solar panels that could so easily grace such a building?

As press officer for RASC  I have been campaigning against  plans to block the pedestrian bridge across the station with barriers for 4 years. The latest development is a Government offer to fund £3m towards a new bridge, which will either replace the old goods bridge (which will have to be demolished to make way for electrification) or be to the north of the current bridge with an exit near the pub. There are still problems with this offer. Firstly will £3 million be enough for a new bridge? Rail experts tell me it wont be, and the Council certainly don’t have spare funds to add to it. More importantly do we really need a new bridge? Why spend £3m of public money when we have a perfectly good bridge already?

We need to regulatee the bus service so that we can rely on good quality public transport. We need good local shops and services, so that we don’t need to travel so much. We need schools that are public services, not trusts that have their own agenda, be it religious or corporate. This ward is now in the crazy position that all three of its local secondary schools are controlled by christian organisations.

Personally my work at City College means that I can walk to work, but sometimes I am forced to take the car to travel to other centres around the city and be in time for my next lesson. I am  proud that the college has completed its “green” rebuild which incorporates solar panels, wind turbines and a green roof, but very disappointed that the cuts have meant the closure of many of our community education centres. I have not flown since I returned from teaching in Uganda in 1990 and usually holiday in this country. I experienced the effects of climate change at first hand in Uganda and have been campaigning on it ever since.

In the past Graham campaigned strongly against Bernard Road incinerator as chair of Residents against Bernard Road Incinerator (RABID) and appeared on television during the Greenpeace “Toxic Crime” occupation. He has an election blog at http://manorcastlegreens.sheffieldgreenparty.org.uk/

Sheffield council and budget cuts

While Labour and the Lib Dems on Sheffield Council fight each other over small differences our city suffers. Green Councillors have offered real alternatives for residents eg :

• Opposition to the Highways PFI on the grounds of it’s huge, rising cost.
• Help for local people most affected by the proposed change to fortnightly bin collections.

Green councillors fought to stop the cuts from government unfairly affecting the most vulnerable. Our council budget for 2012/13 tried to cut backroom functions and the wages of top executives.

We wanted to :

• support frontline services like Citizen’s Advice and the Youth Service
• support children, elderly and disabled people
• raise standards in private-rented housing
• stop cuts to teams fighting anti-social behaviour

but we were voted down by Labour and the Lib Dems.