I’m Barry Cash and I’m standing as a Liberal Democrat candidate in Bishopston and Ashley Down

Published and promoted by L. Barry on behalf of B. Cash (Liberal Democrats) at 26 Chantry Road, Bristol BS8 2QD

Why?

Well at 73 and standing as a Libdem I’m not hoping to become Prime Minister!

There are three policies that I want to promote as Councillor

Emergency Housing Plan

We need an Emergency Housing Plan for Bristol. I’m appalled that we have 21,000 families on the Council Housing list with no realistic chance of a home. How can we not have a safety net for families that suffer misfortune?”

A key problem is how to pay for it. The Department for levelling up, Housing and Communities has returned £1.9 bn because it can’t find housing projects to spend it on. I have written to Michael Gove asking how Bristol can apply for funding from this money. Read my letter and his reply here.

After the Great Fire of London in 1666 there were 100,000 homeless. By 1672 all of them had new homes. If they could do, it why can’t we?

I watched Cathy come Home in 1966. The TV drama shocked the nation when it showed how easily a young family could spiral into homelessness, through no fault of their own. In all these years nothing has changed. Politicians promise to build thousands of houses but never deliver.

My plan calls for prefabricated homes to be erected temporarily on any unoccupied land in Bristol. I’m not planning Council homes or luxury. Just basic accommodation so people have a base to sort out their lives while they wait for all the affordable homes to be built.

A kit for a three bedroom house costs a few thousand pounds from China. Obviously there will be costs involved in assembling them etc. When the affordable homes are built the temporary ones can be removed.

If 30,000 people in Bristol were made homeless in massive fire, it would be a national emergency. We need to treat homelessness as the emergency it is. We need to respond as Winston Churchill would with “Action this day!” Read more about how I would solve the housing crisis here.

Stopping the Climate Catastrophe

I want to leave a safe world for our children and Grandchildren. We have the technology. What we need is ACTION! For over a hundred years people have talked of harnessing the huge power of the tide in the Severn Estuary. The last proposal was rejected because it would destroy the mud flats that the birds feed on.

However, a Professor of Engineering, Rod Rainey, has designed a system to generate electricity from the Severn that will keep the mud flats, so the birds still get their lunch! It also doesn’t use turbines and therefore won’t chop up any fish that go through it. It’s cheaper to build than an equivalent amount of gas-fired generation.

It ticks all the right boxes. However, my maths isn’t good enough to check a Professor of Engineering’s work. What we need is a feasibility study. I’ve been trying for over five years to get local politicians interested, without success. Dan Norris, the West of England Combined Authority Mayor, could order a study. Instead, he’s setting up a committee, to consider creating a commission, to investigate if we should generate power from the Severn.

We don’t need another talking shop. What we need is ACTION!

You can read about the Professor’s system here.

P.S. Tidal Lagoons – Forget them. They are twenty-two and a half times as expensive to build as the Rainey system.

Reducing my emissions

My house was built in 1926 with solid walls and no insulation. Consequently heating my home is probably my largest contribution of greenhouse gases. I have put in loft insulation but it’s only four inches of fibreglass. (Scam Alert I get phone calls telling me that the British lung foundation has declared that fibreglass is an irritant and needs to be replaced. It doesn’t. They have never made such a statement and they aren’t even called the British Lung Foundation any more.)

I’m planning to double the depth of my loft insulation. I’m going to lay more joists across the existing ones and put insulation between them. Then replace the boards and junk in the loft. The beauty of this is that there are plenty of offcuts of insulation board in builders skips around Bishopston. They are usually quite happy for you have it because they have to pay for the skips to be emptied.

I shall make a video of how I do it so other do-it-yourself homeowners can copy me. There are an enormous number of houses in the UK that need insulating and it’s expensive to have it done professionally. Doing it ourselves could make a big difference.

The big challenge is how to insulate my solid walls. I had a quote a few years ago of £15,000. Wow! If I can find a way to do that myself it could make a real different. I can’t imagine the nation will ever have the manpower or money to retrofit all the old homes in the country. But lots of homeowners doing it themselves could.

Any ideals?

Where’s our money?

I want a transparency office at Bristol City Council. Somewhere for us to see the books and check where our money has gone.
Bristol Energy was a good ideal, but it didn’t make a profit. Well some you win, some you don’t. But how did it lose £43,800,000? The only accounts I can see are online at Companies House. All that I can find out from them is that the highest paid director was paid £1,088,844 with £57,662 pension contributions over 6 years. Sounds a lot for running a company that never made a profit.

The estimate for refurbishing the Bristol Beacon/Colston Hall was £48 m. It actually cost £132 m. I’ve been trying to find out where all that money went. No one will tell me. But I’ll keep asking. Your support will help.