Chamber of Commerce Awards - North East companies feature

Spent last night supporting various north east businesses at the awards ceremony at the National Maritime Museum hosted by Fiona Bruce. Really good turnout from the North East with several companies feratured including Kilfrost [nominated for Achievement in International Business - and based in Haltwhistle] and She's Gott It. Delighted for the winners of the Green award = JC Atkinsons - the Tyne and Wear company who produce 60,000 environmentally friendly coffins a year; described by the Judges as "having an environmental agenda as part of their DNA" they were clearly and rightly delighted to wi such a prestigious award.
Good suport for the Young Chamber which supports students who want to be the next "Apprentice" -which the NECC tell me are doing well in Sunderland.

Farmers beware - the wrong approach to climate change

Should we really be putting beef farmers out of business to save the planet? I am deliberately trying to make this blog non political but the Health Secretary Andy Burnham's plan to cut climate change by reducing the number of beef cattle bred for the table by a third is one of sheer lunacy.

While there are many sensible ways to go green, wiping out the livestock industry is not one of them. As well as being ruinous for farmers and the landscape, it would be utterly impractical. The number of livestock is dictated by the market for the meat. Arbitrarily cutting the domestic supply by a third will not make people greener – just angrier.
The telegraph has a good piece on this story: see
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/6655846/Incentivise-people-to-help-the-environment.html

The Iraq Inquiry

And so it begins...like a car crash that noone wants to look at, but all are irrresistably drawn to, we are all going to be transfixed by the unfolding disaster of the Iraq inquiry and its sad revelations. As a bookend to the decline of the New labour movement it will make a sorry tale. Expect the total decline of the reputation of Tony Blair, the slow rehabilitation of the likes of Andrew Gilligan and an increase in the opposition to the Afghan war. Nation Building will look a lot less attractive to the country by the spring.