Tuesday 1st April 2008

Oxfordshire County Council Conservatives

Bottling it up

Conservative councillors today complained at the amount of CO2 emissions being generated by the number of bandwagons onto which Liberal-Democrat councillors were jumping.  The latest was a ban on bottled water which Liberal-Democrats tried to impose on the County Council during its full council meeting on 1 April.

To calls of hypocrisy, Liberal-Democrat councillors were observed drinking the sparkling mineral water offered at council meetings even whilst the motion was being moved.

Cllr David Wilmshurst (Thame and Chinnor) said:

“The people of Oxfordshire must wonder what we are about when we waste time on such a trivial issue. This was a typical Liberal-Democrat motion – bad science, uncosted, and, irrelevant.  What we should have been concentrating on were the major inequalities faced by the people of Oxfordshire.  We, after all, are paying £7.10 for our prescriptions while the residents of shire counties in Scotland are paying nothing.”  

Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Advisor to the government, has warned that singling out luxury items in this way trivialises climate change and is counter-productive. He also points out how the calculation of food miles has been reduced to inaccurate and simplistic calculations.