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Wednesday 21 December 2011

The Queen's Hydro Scheme Moves Ahead

We've been closely following a few schemes and the Archimedes turbines at Windsor is one of those.

The Daily Mail has an article you might find of interest (Poor pun warning)

We've covered this topic a bit over on the main North Mill website and on the blog here- there are facets to the Queen's project which the Daily Mail doesn't cover - like the fact that British banks (including state owned ones!) wouldn't provide finance for a British company to actually build the turbines.

Saturday 17 December 2011

Well, we have had a good experience with the EA for a change. Their last review of Freedom of Information has been very competently handled and has finally ... about 18 months late, delivered a lot of what we asked about at the end of last week - quite a wait.

The EA's prior obstructive handling of our FoI requests is the subject of a complaint and an investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office - we mustn't pre-judge the ICO's findings :-)

It's all extremely interesting -  and there are some real revelations. We will be contacting the EA next week to discuss the way forward.

Saturday 19 November 2011

Things are moving along, met with Duncan Hames MP again this evening. He's trying - but when levels of EA intransigence and obstructiveness reach a certain level - our MP is essentially powerless and the EA have pretty much given him the finger - so much for accountability. It would seem that the shredders have been fired up at EA offices.

Thought we'd spruce the blog up a little - the old layout was just dashed off to give us a space to vent a bit and elicit some input from people interested in what's going on and get a dialogue going.

Interestingly, the blog has attracted some attention from unexpected places (Always thought Twitter was pointless - no longer!) and as a result - we have come into the possession of some very interesting (unshredded)  information which is not to put too finer point on it - quite explosive.

We would really like to just dump it in the public domain, but we must be very careful not to prejudice court matters.

Yes, a bit coy - but there is a lot at stake here.

The unexpurgated tale will be here eventually.

Monday 14 November 2011

Peter Juerges


We found this on Flikr - eye candy indeed.

Anyway, an update - we have received more FoI documents (last week) which really make the Environment Agency look very bad indeed. It seems that they were being duplicitous and have started to try and hang the wrongdoing they've indulged in on a junior official - we know different.

The Environment Agency have been criticised over their behaviour by the Information Commissioner. We are still waiting for specific documents from almost two years ago. They told us last week that some documents (from their main archive!) have been ahem...  "misplaced" and apparently some emails have been "accidentally" deleted! 

If The Environment Agency have something unpleasant to hide about the way senior managers have handled the water licenses at Avoncliff - they're doing a a bang up job of convincing us that we must continue digging....

Sunday 18 September 2011

They Wouldn't Finance Elizabeth II's Hydro Scheme

We discovered the other day that banks had refused to finance a British equipment manufacturer to build the turbines on the hydro scheme being used to partly power Windsor Castle.

And the government is supposed to be promoting hydro power and associated industry?

Considering that the government (we?) actually own several of the largest banks in the country their refusal to finance a green technology project for The Queen of all people beggars belief! (Well, she might be able to fund it personally, but it was a fabrication company that was refused finance apparently)

In The Wiltshire Times

First off -  thank you to everybody who's commented and the several thousand non commenting visitors. Scrolling down the comments has become a chore - so please use the comment facility on this post.

The Avoncliff hydro power water licence dispute finally gets into print - albeit a few centimetres of quite weirdly stilted and rather jumbled sense on an inside page and without a photograph. It's not easy to square three weeks of questions and what must be some considerable effort on the reporter's part with such a short and not really very informative piece - considering what they managed to print about us before - without actually asking us any questions.

Obviously - we're biased - but given the dispute's national profile (Questions in the House of Commons by Duncan Hames MP about Avoncliff and a suggestion for a formal debate on the EA's activities in hydro power licence administration from Deputy Leader of The House and Frome & Somerton  MP David Heath) we think that the Wiltshire Times have pulled their editorial punch on this matter for some reason.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

New Web Site!

We have started on the task of constructing a permanent web site for the property. This will contain elements of the original content from the test site and new material which was held off -line while we were tinkering with the content / look and feel of the site.

This will progress over the next few weeks with a target of having substantial content in place and working by the end of August 2011.

The dispute with the Environment Agency over their handling of water licences at Avoncliff is ongoing.

Wednesday 2 March 2011

Sunday 27 February 2011

With Some Trepidation - we go public

The business of the hydropower licence has descended from bizarre farce into a rather serious affair. We would like to hear from folk whose hydro power applications have been messed up by the water licensing people at the Environment Agency.

The web site is partly up - still not walking yet....

Don't rush please, form an orderly queue in the comments :-)