Zac Goldsmith urges students to lobby their MPs to support green waste initiatives




Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park, has urged students to write to their MPs to express their concern about the amount of waste produced by households and businesses across the UK.

He said that the issue of waste and recycling was a low priority for most MPs because their constituents do not lobby them enough about it.

The Conservative MP made the comments after a screening of Trashed – a film about the global waste problem starring Jeremy Irons – at King’s College School in Wimbledon.

He said: “This should be a top priority in Parliament but it isn’t. It is so far down the agenda that if we were to have a debate on this issue you would probably only have six or seven MPs turn up.

“I think it is partly the consequence of you, collectively, not lobbying your MPs to take this issue on board. There is not nearly enough energy being directed to MPs about these issues.”

Mr Goldsmith, who is an active campaigner on green causes, said that the damage to the natural environment caused by waste is the biggest crisis faced by humanity. 

He used the example of the campaign against the disposal of dead or dying fish by trawlers to meet EU quotas – a practise that is now largely banned – to argue for more action. 

“No one really cares about fish, yet nearly a million people wrote to their MPs and said we want you to do something about the fact that half of the fish caught in our oceans are thrown back into the water dead or dying. 

“If you can mobilise a million people to care about cod and haddock and things like that, then I think you can mobilise people to care about the global waste problem.”



I talk to the Orange Order about their attempt to save the Union



The Orange Order, Britain's most high profile Protestant fraternity, is rarely far from controversy. Its parades through the cities of Northern Ireland - which feature marching bands and banners celebrating Ulster Protestant culture - frequently spark sectarian unrest.

Despite its association with sectarian unrest in Northern Ireland, the fraternity remains determined in its attempts to save the union. To help persuade Scotland to vote 'no' to independence, the Scottish branch of the fervently pro-unionist organisation, the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland, is planning a pro-union march through Edinburgh on 13 September. Some 10,000 Orangemen, many from Northern Ireland, will take part in the organisation's largest gathering of the year. But Better Together, wary that the Orange Order's involvement could alienate catholic voters, has said that the Order will “never” be part of its own campaign to save the Union.

Ian Wilson, past leader of the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland and the coordinator of its referendum campaign, is unrepentant and remains adamant that the organisation can help serve the pro-unionist efforts. “It is not the first time we’ve held marches,” he says. “We’ve had them all over the place - in Edinburgh back in 2007 we had a huge march to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the union. So, the Order’s unionist credentials are pretty well-known.”


Local councillors have raised concerns that the potent mix of politics and religion at the parade, just days before the referendum, could result in violence. An Orange parade in Glasgow in July coincided with 18 arrests for disorder offences and one girl was struck in the face by a bottle. Mr Wilson argues that these incidents were not associated with the marchers and that similar violence in Edinburgh is unlikely.
“Dare I say it, that is a very Glasgow thing,” he says of the trouble at the previous parade. “The Order has annual marches in the summer - typically Battle of the Boyne celebrations - and there is almost never a situation in Glasgow when there are no arrests. We have marched in Edinburgh many times in the past and there has never been the slightest problem.”

Despite his fraternity’s staunch Protestant identity, Mr Wilson stresses that the sole aim of the parade is the defence of the Union. He describes unionism as a “broad church”, mentioning the example of one Labour MP who has embarked on a speaking tour around Scotland. “I’m very well aware that Jim Murphy – who is certainly not of my persuasion (he is a season ticket holder at Celtic Park and comes from the Irish Catholic tradition) – is still a very staunch unionist.”

With a recent YouGov poll in the Sunday Times showing a 51-49 percent lead for the nationalists, independence looks a distinct possibility. An article in The Scotsman claimed that senior figures in the Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland discussed the idea of forming a political party to represent the group’s 50,000 members in the event of independence. I asked Mr Wilson if there is any truth to these rumours? “No… there is absolutely no intention whatsoever for the Order to get involved in politics,” he says. “At the end of the day, we are thoroughgoing democrats so whatever the outcome we will accept the will of the Scottish people.”

In the event of independence, Mr Wilson says that the Order would “adapt”, but campaign to persuade the SNP to honour its promise to keep Scotland under the crown. A more chilling course of action was raised by Jack Ramsay, a former general secretary of the Orange Lodge of Scotland. In an interview with the Sunday Herald he said that independence could cause the Lodge, in extreme circumstances, to “recourse to arms.” He was sacked for his comments which Mr Wilson says are “hard to explain.”