Has your dog been ill?

 When we talk about pesticides we tend to focus on the harm to flora and fauna (especially pollinators)  followed by the impact on human health.  But there’s another group that are impacted that we tend to forget: our dogs and cats. 

Just as our children are in contact with pesticides as they make contact with sprayed areas, so are our dogs and cats. Children playing on the ground can easily make contact with sprayed areas but our pets have no choice: by walking on the ground they are bound to make contact.  Symptoms of acute pesticide poisoning (single incident exposure) in cats and dogs can include vomiting, diarrhoea, drooling, irritation to the skin or eyes, chemical burns, breathing problems, lethargy, disorientation, seizures and even death. While instances of acute pet poisoning are sometimes studied and recorded, there is almost no research on the long-term, chronic effects on pets’ health of regular, ongoing direct exposure to pesticides that have been linked to diseases in humans such as cancer.

Spraying in our parks and green spaces is exactly where we walk our dogs. We recently heard a case where somebody had tied their dog to the railings around a play area, while they took their child inside where dogs aren’t allowed, then ran up a vet’s bill of over £1,000 when the dog fell ill.  The area along the railings had been sprayed.  There has even been a case of a dog dying after lying on a sprayed area and ingesting the poison through its skin.

Making the connection between pets falling ill and pesticide use is in its infancy. The Veterinary Poisons Information Service (VPIS) has recorded a 55% increase in pesticide related poisoning enquiries between 2019 and 2021, but this is only through voluntary contact with the VPIS, so the issue is likely to be much greater.

The lessons to be learnt from this are:        

• Keep your dog away from sprayed areas and especially don’t tie your dog up where it can make contact with a sprayed area.
• If your dog does fall ill with any of the symptoms above and you suspect poisoning visit the VPIS website to get advice.
• Be aware this can affect cats too and as we have no control of where they go outside we have no way of controlling pesticide exposure to cats.
• If you take your dog or cat to the vet and poisoning is suspected, please ask the vet to report it to the VPIS – we need more data.  Vet membership of the VPIS is only £8/month.
• Don’t spray your garden.
• If you get the opportunity to stop the council spraying on the areas outside where you live, please take it.
• If you take your dog across the fields try and avoid sprayed areas.  Farmers often spray round field edges and some crops are sprayed too if the crop has been specially developed to resist pesticide spraying.  Look for the tell-tale tractor wheelings through crops that indicate the passage of a spraying vehicle or brown grass round field edges.
• Be wary of footpaths through crops where the footpath has been cleared of the crop by spraying.
• Don’t let your dog drink from puddles and ponds near sprayed areas.
• If you see spraying taking place try and keep upwind of it and better still avoid the area altogether - for your health too!

Please join Leicester Friends of the Earth in pressing your council not to spray in public parks and green spaces.

Make them pay - a different way?

The “Make them pay” campaign focuses on taxing the super-rich.  Rather than focusing on taxing individuals wouldn’t it be better to tax the source of their wealth, in an ongoing fashion?

The super-rich are all owners of multi-national companies, companies that are able to move their profits to low tax countries claiming money owed for things like licencing.  This is just a way of moving money around to avoid tax.  There are two obvious consequences of this behaviour:    

1. The UK (and other governments) lose out on tax revenue. In the UK this is corporation tax, a 25% tax on company profits. 
2. Companies based purely in the UK that cannot move their profits abroad, so have to pay true corporation tax, cannot compete with multinationals so get squeezed out of business.  Nowhere is this more apparent than Amazon and the impact can be seen in most town shopping centres.

This table of Amazon corporation tax paid, extracted from Ethical Consumer, illustrates the extent of the problem.

So how should we go about changing things?

What we could do is work out tax due as follows:

UK Sales  x Global profit  =  profit from UK sales.
Global Sales

Then tax the profit from UK sales at 25%, with deductions for investment in UK infrastructure, e.g. start-up costs to mitigate against claims we are preventing investment.

Yes, there would be squeals of protest from the super-rich (mostly from the USA) and their tax consultants, but perhaps then we’d breathe some life into our high streets and get some pot holes repaired!  Also we might get some UK based competition going.

The Tax Justice Network is campaigning along these lines but eight countries are blocking UN tax reform, and as you might have guessed, one of them is the UK. This article from the Tax Justice Network World losing half a trillion to tax abuse, largely due to 8 countries blocking UN tax reform, annual report finds - Tax Justice Network outlines the scale of the problem and this article states that eight out of the top ten tax havens are British Overseas Territories. 8 out of the 10 biggest tax havens are British territories.  Why?

In conclusion, rather than taxing the super-rich, let’s just level the playing field and create some fairer competition and press our government to get behind the UN tax reform initiative.

Conservative MP helping mining company to sue the Government

We were horrified to hear recently that the Cumbrian Mining Company is suing the British Government for not allowing their proposed coal mine to go ahead in west Cumbria, and that the lawyer representing the company is a Conservative MP! One of our members sent this letter to her own Conservative MP about it - you might like to use her wording to contact your own MP, particularly if they are Conservative.

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Dear [MP’s name]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9391205znwo

I am writing to let you know that the British Government is currently being sued by the Cumbrian Mining Company over the High Court and Coal Authority decision to decline its proposal to build a coal mine in west Cumbria. The Coal Authority found that its proposal was not financially viable and that substantial damage could be caused to land and property in the vicinity. It was also not the case that the coal potentially mined could be used domestically to help generate electricity in this country, as the High Court judgement established that the west Cumbrian coal has too high a sulphur content ever to be used domestically.  It was simply an unworkable proposal which was rightly refused by experts in the coal mining business, which the company should have taken away to have a rethink and come up with something more acceptable. 

Instead, they seem to have been encouraged to take the UK Government to court under the Investor-state-dispute settlement (ISDS) scheme also known as corporate courts for compensation.

This has been possible because their holding companies have been based in Singapore and there is a UK/Singapore treaty with an ISDS clause. 

https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/corporate-courts-2/ 

These disputes are not heard in any recognisable and accountable national or international courts but in rather secretive “pop-up” tribunals which have previously been used against countries in the Global South who have been trying to protect their land and communities against destructive mining and other extractive activities undertaken by multinational companies. Global Justice Now has been lobbying governments for many years about these arrangements which effectively are allowing industries which have no viable future in a climate change affected future economy to claim compensation for destructive activities.

In the light of this I was rather surprised to find out that it is the current Conservative MP for Torridge and Taverstock, Sir Geoffrey Cox, the former Attorney General, who is acting for the West Cumbrian Mining Company against the UK government. I find it difficult to understand why Sir Geoffrey is seeking to get compensation for a company proposal which was turned down by the High Court having heard all the evidence on both sides.  I would hope the plea is rejected but if upheld the government could be liable for fines running into thousands of pounds – money which 

would have to come out of our taxes and would not be available for NHS and other essential spending.

I gather Sir Geoffrey earns more than any other MP from outside earnimgs and would no doubt claim a significant proportion of any settlement for his own bank balance. I have always found it difficult to understand how MPs can do a proper full-time job for their constituents while working many hours outside Parliament and sometimes abroad. I suspect that once a date is fixed for this corporate court hearing, the Whips will get very few votes out of Sir Geoffrey until it is finished.  

I had always thought that the Conservative Party was rather in favour of patriotic activity which benefits the country and so I fail to understand why a British Conservative MP should find it necessary, other than for personal gain, to sue his own government for upholding a High Court judgement on behalf of a failed mining company which could not come up with a viable and financially acceptable proposal. Are there no rules against this sort of behaviour by MPs?

I would ask you to do two things.

Please write to Peter Kyle Secretary of State for Business and Trade and ask him to ensure that ISDS clauses are not included in future trade deals as they can be used without justification against the British Government for any action that a company considers is against its interests via unaccountable corporate courts. 

Then, please write to your fellow MP, Sir Geoffrey Cox and ask when the case against the UK Government is likely to take place and why he thinks the Cumbrian Mining Company deserves compensation for its failed application for a proposed mine whose coal could not be used in this country. 

Yours sincerely,

[Name and address]

Thank you to local organisations supporting good business!

As part of the Planet Over Profit campaign, we are collecting support from local organisations for a Business, Human Rights & Environment Act in an open letter to our local MPs. We are grateful to the first four organisations who have signed: 

• The Race Equality Centre
• Leicester & District Trades Union Council
• Green & Pleasant
• Climate Action Leicester and Leicestershire

If you own a business or are part of an organisation that might want to support this campaign, please get in touch with us: leicesterfoe@gmail.com 

-------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Shockat Adam, Liz Kendall and Shivani Raja,

We are writing to you as small business owners, trade unions and community groups in your constituencies of Leicester South, Leicester West and Leicester East. Together, we represent an important cross-section of the local community who wish to buy and supply ethical products and are concerned by the many harms caused by unregulated supply chains—from modern slavery and unfair working conditions, to deforestation and land grabs.

We are writing in support of a new Business, Human Rights & Environment Act, which would hold UK companies and the public sector legally responsible for preventing harm to people and planet in their supply chains, and contribute to a Just Transition to a greener and fairer economy. Such a law would also enable workers, local communities and Indigenous Peoples in the UK and around the world, who are harmed by UK companies or public sector supply chains, to seek justice in a UK court.

The demand for ethical and sustainable products and services in Leicester is now mainstream with many people turning away from companies complicit in environmental harm and human rights abuses. YouGov polling¹ shows that over 80% of UK adults want new UK laws requiring British companies to prevent human rights abuses and serious environmental damage in their operations and supply chains.

We urge you to add your name to the over 50 MP’s and Peers who have signed the Good Business Matters pledge² in support of this new law in parliament and engage with us and Friends of the Earth to ensure it is a fair and robust piece of legislation we can all be proud of. Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

1https://corporatejusticecoalition.org/news/press/press-release-four-in-five-uk-adults-support-new-laws-to-tackle-environmental-harm-and-human-rights-abuses-in-company-supply-chains/

2 https://www.goodbusinessmatters.org/

Make Them Pay march in London

Four members of Leicester Friends of the Earth joined people from Nottingham and Leicester on a coach to London for the Make Them Pay march. It was organised by an alliance representing millions of workers, citizens and communities across Britain. The movement has three key demands: 

1. Tax the super-rich 
2. Protect workers, not billionaires 
3. Make polluters pay 

More than 80 organisations are part of this alliance, ranging from Oxfam to the Fire Brigade Union, Patriotic Millionaires to Global Justice Now.  

Climate justice and economic justice go hand-in-hand. For too long, the richest people and most polluting corporations have profited while fuelling the climate crisis – and ordinary people are being left to pay the price as climate impacts become more and more evident in our daily lives.

There were some great speakers in the rally at the end of the march, including Asad Rehman, the new CEO of Friends of the Earth. He pointed out that behind every private jet is a crumbling hospital and behind every rich oil executive is a climate disaster in a country that hasn't benefited from cheap fossil fuels. The problems we are facing are not caused by immigration: that's just the lie they are using to distract us. The problems are caused by greed. The few are screwing over the many and we can't let this continue. It's time to remember who really deserves our anger. It's time to tax the rich. 

A Buzzing in the Park

The sun shone and the afternoon buzzed with the sound of bees…. wait a minute…that was the sound of human bees! Well humans dressed as bees!

It was Friends of the Earths annual summer picnic and get together to celebrate our year of work and what better way to celebrate than to celebrate the life of bees and how we need to protect them. So, we decided to have a picnic in Humberstone Park – dressing-up as bees was optional.

We have spent the last year working again on our pesticide project – trying to get Leicester City Council to stop spraying parks and green spaces with glyphosate.

The Global Glyphosate Study that concluded this year was a multi-national study on the effects of glyphosate and the results were even worse than feared: there is no safe level of exposure to glyphosate when it comes to human health, with the risk of multiple types of cancer and DNA damage.  Also, the GM crops that have been developed to resist glyphosate have also been shown to have an impact on human health.  Our latest approach is to highlight the impact on pet health while we wait for the public consultation on the renewing of the glyphosate licence in December 2026. 

The family friendly picnic was well supported. Families brought food to share, children and adults dressed in bee costumes and made paper flowers to take home with them. We also had a huge Rainforest picture for people to colour in to think about the current national campaign, “Planet over Profit”, where we are asking the government to bring in a law to make companies avoid harm to people and planet in their supply chains.

It was a lovely day – a celebration of everyone’s hard work, then everyone can have a well-earned rest ready for the next round of work persuading Leicester City Council to stop spraying the same as Lewes, Cowes, Trafford, Cambridge and many others and keep its environmental status as an environmental city that cares about nature and wants to help save our pollinators.

Time to listen Leicester City Council?

Planet Over Profit campaign stalls

Over the summer, we are getting involved in the big national campaign, Planet Over Profit. This is calling for a new law that would hold companies accountable for harm caused by their supply chains. From the food on our plates to the clothes we wear, global supply chains controlled by corporations are often plagued with harmful environmental impacts and human rights abuses. These can include land grabbing from local communities and Indigenous peoples, when forests are cleared for palm oil plantations or soy crops, for use in processed foods and animal feed. And forced labour and poor working conditions are rife in garment factories churning out fast fashion. Companies should be responsible for ensuring that their profits don’t come at the expense of people and planet. But existing laws aren’t holding them to account. Read more about the campaign and the need for a new law here. 

We are collecting public support in Leicester. We had two stalls at the Green Film Festival at the Phoenix last month and we spent this morning in Knighton Park, talking to passersby. We are asking people to sign a postcard to their MP supporting this new law. People can also colour in their postcard, or we have some that are already coloured in by children who have been helping us! We are also colouring in a large banner, which we will take with us when we go to visit Leicester's MPs in the autumn. Our next stall will be before the Bee Picnic in Humberstone Park on 30th August. If you can't come to a stall to sign a postcard, you can still show your support for this campaign by signing our local online petition. 

As well as collecting support from individuals, we are also collecting letters of support for a new law from local businesses and organisations. If you own a business or are part of an organisation that might want to support this campaign, please get in touch with us: leicesterfoe@gmail.com 

Book Review - The Lie of the Land by Guy Shrubsole

The author begins by explaining that, for centuries, we have been sold the myth that owning land makes people good stewards of it. This idea was used to justify the enclosure of common land and the eviction of the people who lived and worked there in the past and it is still dragged out to justify restricting access to the countryside today. We are told that people who do not own the land will treat it badly. However, ownership gives people the legal right to destroy their property and large landowners have taken full advantage of that to inflict enormous damage on our landscapes. As Guy Shrubsole says, ‘the greatest threat to the countryside comes from within it’. Reading the first couple of chapters, I realised that I had subconsciously absorbed this ‘lie of the land’ myself, but the rest of the book will leave no-one in any doubt that there is something profoundly wrong with the way land ownership works in this country.

The following chapters provide a series of examples of how large landowners, (often the aristocracy, but also the newly rich, investors and institutions), are abusing the land they own. Vast tracts of our upland moors are managed as grouse shooting estates. Their deep peat soils are the UK’s single most important carbon sink. However, when managed for grouse, the land is drained and the vegetation is burned to promote the fresh growth of heather, favoured food of the grouse. This devastates the botanical diversity and turns a carbon sink into a carbon source, as the peat dries out and releases long-trapped carbon as it decomposes. The damaged peat is no longer able to absorb the winter rains as effectively, causing flooding in the valleys below. To add insult to injury, the gamekeepers on these large estates systematically kill predators of the grouse, including protected birds of prey. They are very rarely prosecuted. Grouse moors are a sick landscape, all so that the very rich can shoot birds for ‘sport’.

The fenlands of East Anglia used to be common lands, ‘a vast wet wilderness’ where people had an abundant source of food (fish) and a unique lifestyle. However, marshy land is difficult to own and produces little profit that can be counted in pounds and pence, so from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, a handful of investors bought the fens and drained them, destroying an ecosystem and a way of life. This area of Britain now produces most of our vegetables, but the drying peat is sinking and blowing away and we desperately need to stop the soil degrading further.

Another ‘sport’ introduced by the Victorians, driven pheasant shooting, is distorting lowland ecosystems. On estates across the country, 50 million pheasants are released for shoots every year. At the end of each summer, pheasants constitute a greater biomass than all our wild birds. 13 million are shot in the autumn. The rest provide an easy source of prey, which ensures the survival of larger numbers of generalist predators, to the detriment of more fragile bird and mammal populations. Pheasants eat caterpillars and beetles, many species of which are at risk of disappearing forever. They also prey on young adders, which are now on the brink of extinction. One group of trespassers found a pit of dead pheasants on an estate, behind the ‘Keep Out’ signs; after the ‘sport’ had finished, they weren’t even being eaten.

Guy Shrubsole shares various ideas about how things could be different. In Scotland, the right for communities to buy land, with a legal pathway that makes it possible, (albeit not easy), has led to a growing number of inspiring projects. Langholm Moor was managed for grouse shooting for decades but, since it was bought by the local community, it is now managed as a nature reserve and the wildlife is starting to recover. Unfortunately, we still don’t have the same rights for communities to buy land in England.

The author proposes returning to the vision of the government’s Nature Conservancy of 1949, which recognised the importance of state ownership and had the power to compulsorily purchase land and restore it for nature. Perhaps this right would be of most use in our national parks, which are not ‘national’ in any true sense at the moment. The vast majority of the land within them is privately owned, much of it by the aristocracy, and nature is declining more rapidly within the UK’s national parks than in the wider countryside.

Finally, the author proposes a national land use framework. This was first attempted in the 1930s but those who own the land have consistently resisted all efforts to temper their control over it. It needs to cover land to be reserved for nature, as well as agriculture, and require large landowners to report on their management for carbon and nature. This would restore some semblance of democracy to the management our land and perhaps promote true stewardship.

As with Guy Shrubsole’s previous book, our Green Book Group was impressed by the enormous amount of research that must have gone into writing this thorough and fascinating book. It was published just after the Labour government came into power and expresses optimism throughout at the changes they could make. We were left wondering how he feels now, after a year of Labour’s dithering and inaction on nature…

Mass Climate Lobby

Two intrepid travellers cycled off to Leicester Station on Wednesday 9th July to catch the train to London for the Mass Climate Lobby….

We had a meeting booked for 1.15pm in Westminster to meet Shockat Adam the Independent MP for Leicester South. Our train (we had allowed extra time) broke down on the way which reminded us of one of the topics for our discussion – public transport. 

Getting through security in Westminster is a challenge in itself and then having all of our information to give to Shockat taken off us – as no paperwork is allowed, in case we throw it around apparently – was a bit of a shame but we finally managed to keep our appointment and were joined by another campaigner from Leicester South.

Shockat was very friendly and listened well – we had spoken to him before about the Big Climate Plan that we are asking for it to hit our UK climate targets and improve people’s quality of life. We told him that our communities deserve warmer homes, cheaper energy, cleaner air and better public transport and well-paid green jobs. We explained that millions of people in the UK are already suffering the impacts of extreme weather, sky high energy bills and rising inequality so the new Climate Plan which is being re-written at the moment and will be published in October needs to be bolder and fairer. We reminded him about the points we would like him to raise when handing in our petition which we had previously given to him.  Shockat said he would try to do this before Parliament closed for the summer recess as time is getting short.

Shockat then treated us to a guided tour of some of the rooms at Westminster and led us onto a veranda overlooking the Thames for a photo opportunity before thanking us for coming and giving him (albeit verbal only) the information about the Climate Lobby asks.

We then made our way to the National Friends of the Earth meeting rooms for the day and a well-earned cup of tea.

As the day was heating up it was then time for weary travellers to make their way to St Pancras and begin the very hot return journey.

A very productive day though – thank-you to Shockat Adam for meeting us and making us welcome.

Melanie Wakley

Earthmover award for our pesticides campaign

At the recent regional gathering, we were delighted to receive an Earthmovers award from national Friends of the Earth for our pesticides campaign! They remarked that it was awarded for, "A determined, inspiring, long-term pesticides campaign - innovative, fun and engaging tactics, rigorous research and policy background and persistent ongoing political lobbying". We were very grateful for the recognition!

Alison gave a short presentation about our campaign and received the certificate from Richard Dyer, our regional campaigner.