Climate Breakdown - Gathering pace as people sleep

It is now exactly two years since I wrote my last blog post entitled "Politics will not save us from abrupt climate change because we don't want to be saved", now viewed over 6,500 times and which was seen by some as a bit pessimistic.

So, two years on, how are events unfolding against the timelines I set out in that blog?

<<The three warmest years on record globally have been 2014, 2015 and 2016 (with 2017 set to join them).>>

The three warmest years are now 2015, 2016, and 2017. 2018 is in fourth position, while 2019 is expected to beat them all, in part due to a weak El Nino. However, CO2 levels continue to rise - the average level measured at Mauna Loa for October 2017 was 403.63 ppm. For October 2018 it was 406.00 ppm and last month 408.53. The current annual increase is around 2.5 ppm with no signs of even the rate of increase decreasing.

<<Within five to ten years I expect to see food prices rising well above inflation - perhaps by as much as 50% to 100% with some empty shelves appearing in supermarkets as specific crops are devastated>>

[This is the science bit] What drives the timelines I used regarding the impact of climate change on food production is crucially the state of the Arctic. The really significant event will be what's called a 'Blue Ocean Event' - where sea ice extent is below 1 million square kilometres at the annual minimum (in September each year). The 1 million figure is used as it represents largely open water, with residual ice remaining between islands and in fjords. The presence of sea ice keeps surface air and water temperature around or below zero Celsius. Without it, the water will warm up quickly, leading within a few years to an ice free ocean for much or all of the year.

Blue water absorbs much more solar radiation than white ice, and the next stage is for sea surface temperatures to gradually rise to several degrees above zero - about 30 degrees warmer than currently in the winter and several degrees above normal in summer.

Why is this important? Because it drives the jet stream, the fast flowing ribbon of air flowing at high altitude, normally at mid-latitudes. How the temperature differential affects the jet stream is explained in this video. This is crucial. It is also starting to happen on a startling scale. We are already seeing weak, wavy and stalling jet stream patterns even with most of the sea ice still present.

While sea ice extent is erratically trending down, the volume - i.e. the thickness of the ice - is steadily reducing. The problem is that measuring ice thickness is difficult and, even with the most advanced satellite technology, is far from totally accurate. However, the summer of 2019 has been characterised by more 'fluid' behaviour of the ice in the Central Arctic Basin, with more ice flowing towards the Atlantic side, indicating a thinner and more broken structure. The timing of a Blue Ocean Event is very uncertain, dependent on both the thickness of the ice overall and quite simply the weather experienced in any one summer, but it does look likely to occur by 2025.

The next crucial link is that between jet stream behaviour and crop production. A stalling jet stream gives rise to drought and floods, a weak and wavy jet allows 'heat domes' and 'beast from the east' type events, while allowing incursions of warm and moist air into the Arctic, exacerbating the situation [... end of the science bit].

The impact on food production so far has been through increasingly severe weather events over the last two years - most notable in the US mid-west, the main crop growing area of the United States, but also in Europe in 2018 and 2019 and even in the UK. In the southern hemisphere, Australia had its lowest wheat production in a decade, forcing it to move from being an exporter to an importer of wheat. However, we will probably not see an abrupt change to food production until after the expected Blue Ocean Event.

<<Wildfires are already becoming uncontrollable>>

Wildfires in Brazil have been in the news this year. But they've also been very bad in Siberia, Africa, Alaska, Australia, and as is becoming a worsening annual event, in California.

<<Hurricanes are becoming stronger and appearing in unusual places >>

Again we are seeing hurricanes forming further north and east in the Atlantic. Also similar storms are turning up in odd places in other parts of the world. As sea surface temperatures increase, these are reaching hurricane force and strengthening where in the past they may have dissipated.

<<Over the next decade, super hurricanes, flooding and drought will cause insurance companies to collapse.>>

In California this is already happening and where companies are surviving, they are either increasing premiums or cancelling policies completely.

On top of all this we have ocean acidification, the decimation of insects and vertebrates, deforestation and many other pressures on our fragile ecosystem.

Every week I see articles proclaiming that climate change is happening 'faster than expected'. If there's one thing I would change in the article I wrote two years ago, it would be my prediction that abrupt climate change will lead to the breakdown of society within 30 years. Now I would be inclined to say 20 years maximum. This is not linear, it's exponential. For example, if something doubles every year, it reaches a million in 20 years. Five years ago, BBC news reports included one or two climate related events each month. Now it's two or three a week. In five years' time it will be two or three new events a day with the heatwaves hotter, the hurricanes stronger, the floods more damaging and more widespread. When collapse happens, by definition it's fast and takes everyone by surprise.

The collapse of industrial society will bring its own specific problem - namely the removal of aerosol masking (the so-called 'global dimming effect'). This alone will increase global temperatures by several degrees. So we're damned with what we do and damned when we stop. But this must not be an excuse to continue what we are doing. Industrial society will soon collapse - no ifs, no buts - so the question is, do we manage it ourselves or let nature do it for us?

And I've not even mentioned the impact of a potentially huge methane blowout from under the rapidly melting Arctic permafrost ...

All of this leads to the conclusion that climate change is irreversible. But say it out loud and you're told that's 'giving up hope' and we can't do that or people will simply give up and not make any changes. In 1989, a full 30 years ago, the UN said that governments had a 10 year window to solve the climate crisis before it goes beyond human control. Since then we've seen numerous such warnings but still nothing has been done. So why keep trying with a failed method? To people who say we must not give up hope, I ask; "At what point would you openly agree that climate change is irreversible?". If they say "Never", then that is simply immoral (A doctor who refused to tell a patient their condition is terminal would be struck off for doing so) and one wonders if they may already have privately accepted it. On the other hand, if they admit they may one day reach that point, my response is that, having researched the science closely, I have already reached it and perhaps if they did the research I have, they too will accept the reality of the situation.

The reason we accept science is to use the information to decide best what to do in future. Only when we do that can we move on and start to prepare for what's coming our way. Hoping it won't be so bad, hoping we can fix the unfixable, only delays the point at which we start to make useful decisions. Accepting the inevitable isn't the same as giving up (someone given a terminal diagnosis doesn't just give up - after going through the five stages of grief as I have, they finally reach Acceptance and look for ways to prolong their life and make it more fulfilling). Acceptance allows us to focus on building resilience, slowing down the extinction process, and most importantly building the kind of communities that will help themselves and each other.

And we can do that by making drastic lifestyle changes to minimise the damage we are doing - no flying, removing vast numbers of cars from the roads, changing diets. Planting trees won't work, Green New Deals won't work, electric cars won't work. In short, Green capitalism simply replaces one set of problems with another, and simply feeds the consumerist habit with the belief things can just carry on as they are.

We also need to start growing food - everywhere - because that will be the new money. Community orchards, fruit and veg growing in all our public parks and spaces, allotments and back gardens, wherever space allows (think Leningrad during the siege). We need to plan for this now, building skills and infrastructure and a community spirit that will reap its own rewards.

Or we can just keep saying we've got ten years to fix the problem and wait for the next ten years to pass just like the last.

Politics will not save us from abrupt climate change because we don't want to be saved

Forty years ago I was studying for a Physics degree at Edinburgh University. I chose Edinburgh because it offered a course which included Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics, interests which have stayed with me since.

When I came across articles about the Greenhouse Effect, this intrigued me as a scientist, but also worried me as a human being, and although it was only a theory at the time, I felt the implications if true were so severe that at the very least, we should adopt the precautionary principle and take immediate action to prevent it.

It was this that led me to join the Ecology Party in 1979 and since then, politics for me has always been about climate change and the need to address it before it became unstoppable. In the seventies and eighties, the threat of an impending nuclear war was on everyone's minds, but here was another existential threat to humanity that although distant, required no less attention to defuse or at least to quantify.

Then it was a theory and if proven, we still had time to do something about it. Forty years on and the Greenhouse Effect is now known as Global Warming or Climate Change. The effects predicted are not only happening, but they are happening much faster than predicted and events over the last three years have led me to believe that this is not only irreversible, but we are now entering a period of what is known as 'abrupt climate change', which will lead to the breakdown of society within 30 years and near human extinction by the end of the century.

To understand how this will happen so quickly, we need to appreciate that climate change is not linear. We are on an exponential curve. The three warmest years on record globally have been 2014, 2015 and 2016 (with 2017 set to join them).  Floods, droughts, wildfires and storms are this year setting records and records are not only being broken, but they are starting to be broken by some margin. We're on an curve where not only will events happen more often and be more severe, but the rate at which they increase will itself be increasing. That's what exponential means.

We also need to appreciate some of the deficiencies in climate modelling. Specifically, climate scientists (in common with nearly all scientists) are experts in their own fields only. Looking at a specific aspect of science in isolation is fine if nothing else is changing, but if everything else is changing, you need to take that into account if you're predicting what will happen in the future.

There are around 70 feedback effects now kicking in, and few if any models are taking these into account. For example, scientists studying the Arctic sea ice may take into account higher sea surface temperatures, but not the incursion of water vapour (a greenhouse gas) into the Arctic resulting from a distorted jet stream, or the impact of soot on ice albedo from increased wildfires thousands of miles away.

A recent example is the speed with which this year's Atlantic hurricanes strengthened from tropical storms to Category 5 hurricanes due to higher sea surface temperatures. This surprised meteorologists as the computer models were only forecasting Cat 2 or 3 at most. Only now are they recognising that the models are underestimating the effect of warmer sea surfaces and the additional energy and water vapour they provide.

As Peter Wadhams writes in his recent book 'A farewell to ice', to reverse the effects of man made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would demand a switch in global focus on the scale of the post war Marshall plan. We would need not only to stop producing CO2 but also turn over many of our factories to producing carbon capture and storage machines, and we would need to start right now. The cost to the world economies would be huge, possibly running to over $100 Trillion.

If, and it's still an if, we are capable of reversing the trajectory we're on, there are no signs of a willingness to do so - neither from politicians nor people in general. CO2 takes over a decade to become fully effective as a greenhouse gas, and lingers in the atmosphere for decades. Methane (CH4) is 130 times as effective as a greenhouse gas in the first 3 years after release and due largely to melting permafrost is starting to rise rapidly in global concentration (another feedback).

So what are we actually doing about it? 'Emissions' as measured by countries themselves levelled out over the past three years - but are now rising once again. Leaving aside allegations that the figures have been doctored anyway, the extra CO2 from increasing wildfires is not included (as an example, the CO2 from those in British Columbia, just one Canadian province, this year equated to the annual emissions from 40 million cars on the road). The litmus test is the actual measure of CO2 in the atmosphere - now reaching a peak of around 410 ppm and rising at a record annual rate of around 2.5 ppm per year.

In 1989, the UN issued a warning that we had only ten years to address global warming before irreversible tipping points start kicking in. That was 30 years ago. Similar warnings have appeared since, none of them heeded. Instead of issuing warnings, more and more scientists are now coming round to the view that it really is too late. What I have witnessed over the last three years has led me to believe the same. We really are too late and are now entering the sixth mass extinction.

Too many articles on climate change contain the phrase "By 2100..." or "By the end of the century...". That really is too far away for most people to treat as urgent. While it's difficult to make predictions, it should be made clear that the catastrophic impacts of climate change will affect us well before then.

Within five to ten years I expect to see food prices rising well above inflation - perhaps by as much as 50% to 100% with some empty shelves appearing in supermarkets as specific crops are devastated (we already had a 'taste' of this earlier this year with courgettes and lettuce crops hit by unusual weather in Spain; world wine production is now at a 50 year low due to extreme weather events).

Wildfires are already becoming uncontrollable. Portugal has seen six times its average this year. There have been fires in Greenland and in Australia during its winter, not to mention the devastation in California, Canada and Siberia. Hurricanes are becoming stronger and appearing in unusual places (Ophelia was the strongest on record in the east Atlantic and Greece is currently being hit by what is called a 'Medicane'). Sea surface temperatures need to be over 28.5 C for a hurricane to strengthen. The Mediterranean off Italy's coast reached 30 degrees this year. With the right conditions, it would only take one stray east Atlantic hurricane to head into the Med to cause widespread devastation. I can easily see this happening within ten years. Elsewhere we will see hurricanes and typhoons strong enough to flatten cities within the next decade.

The economic implications will be immense. The impact of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in the US is expected to be around $400 Billion this year, not counting the wildfires in California and drought in Montana. Over the next decade, super hurricanes, flooding and drought will cause insurance companies to collapse. Banks will follow and pension funds will start to come under pressure. With food prices increasing way ahead of wages, disposable incomes will be hit hard, leading to worldwide economic depression.

And that's not taking into account the hundreds of millions of climate refugees (already begun in the Caribbean). With the jet stream already getting seriously messed up, or if the Hadley cells become severely disrupted, it's not out of the question that the Indian monsoon could fail permanently and within a year we have a billion people starving.

There's a saying that if something is unsustainable it will not be sustained. Obvious, perhaps, but we have been living well beyond the sustainability of the planet for decades and continue to believe that somehow we can do so increasingly and indefinitely. That will not be sustained.

So for forty years I tried to warn people. Now I tell them it's too late and we're f***ed, they say I'm being too negative need to give people a positive message. OK then, will "We're positively f***ed" do?, because when we could save ourselves nobody listened, and even now when they think we still can, there is absolutely no will to do so.

For a long time, we have needed to change our lifestyles and that, for most people, is a red line area. There are no quick fixes. We cannot continue with mass air transport - the only non polluting alternative to fossil fuels requires huge areas of land to be removed from food production, which is already coming under pressure due to climate change and increasing population. We need to stop owning cars (not just leaving them in the driveways) - the resource requirements and human rights implications of even switching to electric cars present largely insurmountable problems. And even if these problems can be fixed, the solution needs to come first, rather than assuming as always that the next generation will somehow pick up the bill and sort out the mess we are creating by our profligate lifestyles.

And so we continue to build more runways and roads, drill for more oil, burn more forests for palm oil plantations and clear the rainforests for agriculture and logging, despite the fact that these massive environmental problems are no longer a theory but are staring us in the face. But we keep on driving and keep on flying and keep on buying things we don't need from halfway across the globe without the slightest thought that all this will kill our children.

I was perhaps naive to believe that politics would solve the problem. If the bottom line is that people will not change their lifestyles, then they will not vote for politicians who say we need to. So politicians will not tell people the truth and tell them instead that we can get by with replacing petrol cars with electric ones by some decade well in the future and convince people we're all 'doing our bit' for the planet by planting a few wind turbines. They talk vaguely about carbon capture and how air transport is important for economic growth and without that we cannot tackle climate change. As a councillor I was the only one even vaguely interested in the council's climate change plan (including both councillors and officers).

And people believe them because they want to. I've long maintained that people get the politicians they deserve (good and bad) and they certainly don't want politicians to tell them they can't have their cheap holidays in Spain. I joined the Ecology Party (which became the Green Party) because it was, and still is, the only party to come anywhere close to telling people the truth on climate change. That people are generally not in the least interested in the environment that keeps them alive is borne out by the derisory vote Greens get - around 2% support except where they campaign strongly on non-environmental issues.

And Green Party activists have also realised this. So they focus on being more user friendly and campaigning on issues that 'matter to people' like independence or austerity, rather than lose votes by telling people it's about time they faced the harsh truth.

I've been accused of being too Utopian, that before we address climate change we need an independent Scotland, or a Socialist Republic, or something else. And those arguments were rational thirty years ago - after all, it's the free market Capitalist system that brought us to this position. However, thirty years ago is not now - when your house is on fire, you don't try and get ownership of the keys, you reach for the hose. When I attend a climate rally and see it attracts less than a tenth of the numbers at a Scottish independence rally, it brings home how insane our politics has become. What planet do these people expect an independent Scotland to exist on? Venus by the look of it.

So we might be f***ed, but should we give up? No, I don't think so. We may not be able to stop the process, but we can slow it down and offer the next generation at least some kind of palliative care. I have not flown or owned a car for around 20 years and will continue that way. Because very soon my children's generation will become angry with mine, and will ask why, in the face of so many warnings from scientists for decades, we did nothing about it.

It will be little consolation, but at least I will be able to say I tried.

Shining a light on political distortion

An online petition is currently doing the rounds in Midlothian. It states "Midlothian's SNP and Green Councillors have voted to withdraw funding for the erection, dismantling, insurance and maintenance of Christmas lights across our communities", with the emotive strapline "Make the most of your lights ... they'll be your last".

To give some background, a budget was agreed last week between myself and the SNP on which not only were both parties comfortable, given the severe financial constraints, but which also contained significant overlap with Labour's proposals.

However, one line in a long list of officials' proposals which Labour wanted removed was  entitled 'Review Christmas light funding'. Note the word 'Review'. During the budget debate, this item was not raised as a priority by Labour, so its importance to them now would appear to be more by virtue of its being an emotive issue at this time of year than anything else.

However, that did not stop the Bonnyrigg Events Committee from setting up and wildly promoting a petition to 'name and shame' councillors who heartlessly voted to get rid of our lights.

That the Bonnyrigg Events Committee is run by two people who will be the Labour candidates in May should be lost on no-one, and the straying into what may be seen as party political activity by a community group is, well, unusual.

The actual budget proposal "seeks to review all funding for the provision, erection and dismantling of Christmas lights, trees, etc. This will require a specific focus on promoting greater community involvement for the erection, maintenance and dismantling of the lights, etc. The alternative is where the local community provide funding to allow this to continue to be carried out by the service".

My own view is that the review should focus on other forms of external funding - sponsorship or advertising, perhaps by companies which specialise in this kind of thing, for whom the costs would be substantially less than those incurred by the council, and would benefit from the publicity.

Because those costs are now significant - £60,000 a year, or the equivalent of about 3 learning assistants in our schools, and growing as more lights are purchased by community groups. Buying the lights is the easy part, but who pays to then check them, put them up and then take them down every year? Bonnyrigg alone costs around £20,000 a year.

As it's a review, there will be no decision to stop erecting or dismantling them until the review is complete. We do, however, have a responsibility to council taxpayers to review this escalating cost and reduce it if at all possible. If a petition is to be launched, surely the time to do that is after the review is completed and a final decision about to be taken. And yes, if there is strong feeling amongst the population that they agree with the Labour Party that this is one of the highest priorities council taxpayers hold, then the funding will be no doubt be kept.

But let me ask this of those signing the petition. Do you have any idea about the financial problems our council faces? Where do you think the £60,000 should come from? Social care? Education? Children's services? Closing libraries? Road maintenance? 

If you really are getting so animated about a £60,000 cut to a non essential service, how will you feel when the full £40,000,000 of cuts start to hit over the next five years? Yes, you read that right, £40 million.

The Labour budget proposals offered no solution. Although they, rightly in my opinion, called for a more thorough analysis of staffing costs across the council, their savings proposals were vague, involving the bringing forward of staff cuts which are far from even being identified, and assume cutting more back room staff will have no impact on front line services. I'm sorry, but all the low hanging fruit has been plucked and further cuts will hurt, no matter where they are taken from.

That's why my own budget proposals sought to bring in more income, rather than spending less, with a major investment in council owned renewable energy. And I believe we need to start looking for other income streams too.

I'm disappointed that Labour has yet again taken a confrontational position, especially when there was significant agreement across all parties during the budget debate. By working with other parties as I did, they would undoubtedly have achieved some of their aims - probably including this one if it really such a high priority for them. But this is an election year and it seems that some things will never change.

Council Budget decision and how nothing changes in Midlothian

With the ink not even dry on yesterday's council budget decision, I have already been publicly accused by one Labour councillor of "political point scoring". So here's my take on the proceedings.

Council was presented with the officers' proposals which we were asked to consider and approve. The SNP proposed a couple of amendments - to remove the proposed 15p rise in school meal charges and to delete the removal of the capital element of councillors' environmental allowances (£10k per councillor per annum - although the impact on the Revenue account is minimal). This has the effect of increasing slightly the amount required to be transferred from Reserves from the £2.6 million proposed.

Taking any funds from Reserves to balance the books is something to be avoided - as it simply puts the problem off to next year. However, as Labour points out, Reserves are currently quite healthy by historical standards and due to John Swinney's very late decision to cut 3.5% from grants to councils, in this instance I believe it is justified.

Let's be clear. It would be in Labour's interest to put off the biggest cuts to next year - to be announced as we head into a local election campaign, and that, I'm sure, was at the forefront of their minds as they argued that cuts right now are 'unnecessary'.

As I've pointed out repeatedly, the Labour Group on Midlothian Council does not speak to me. It lives in a world where it thinks it's one by-election from taking back power, where the national opinion polls don't apply and one day very soon, their boat will come in. Indeed, I am convinced it much prefers to lose every vote in the chamber than seek out my support and at least have a chance of winning one or two.

However, I do keep trying to open a dialogue. In previous years, there has been significant overlap between Labour's and my budget proposals. So I suggested to the Labour Group Leader, Cllr Derek Milligan, that perhaps we should set up a meeting and explore the options. Yet again, no-one came back to me, and depressingly, Labour played out its time-honoured charade of tabling its amendments by handing round a sheet of paper in the middle of the council meeting.

I described this at yesterday's meeting as 'neither professional nor adult' as a way to proceed. By contrast, when I last produced a formal budget proposal, I emailed it to all councillors 48 hours before the meeting. So why do Labour continue to behave like this?

I listened to Labour's proposals and agreed with them that the cut to community policing is a step too far. I expressed disappointment that they did not see fit to discuss their other proposals with me (it would have been in confidence) in advance, but I was not prepared to react to a gun placed against my head at the council meeting. Cllr Milligan's response was that they had only received information from officials at short notice so didn't have time. Which is pretty weak, considering I had been sitting in my office the previous day and Derek has my mobile number. What important information they had received on the afternoon before the meeting to prevent this they didn't say.

So in the light of the information presented, I proposed a removal of the cut to Community Policing, funded from Reserves (in addition to the SNP amendments), to allow a year to examine the alternatives. I may have supported more of Labour's proposals had they bothered to speak to me in advance, but I wasn't going to be intimidated into doing so. I asked for a seconder to my proposal, which (as expected) was not forthcoming, and then abstained on the full motion.

The critical point for me was that Labour highlighted the Community Policing cut as their overriding concern, with an impassioned speech on how bad it will be. I offered them a clear opportunity to get my backing on that, which they rejected in favour of their usual entrenched isolationist position.

So while I agree there is political point scoring, it's pretty clear to me who is doing it.

Bizarre planning decisions and who benefits

Hot on the heels of my last post, on a hotel application approved in the Pentlands Regional Park, comes another bizarre and worrying decision by Midlothian councillors.

A site referred as to the the 'Former Arniston Gas Works' sounds like it's an old industrial site which would benefit from being cleaned up and turned over to something prettier and more useful like housing, but a site visit reveals something very different.

Viewed here on Google Maps (it's just to the left of the A7, adjacent to the track and Borders Rail line), it's clearly only about 20% brownfield, comprising some hard standing, holding a few skips and containers. The rest is woodland and open ground with shrubs and bushes. It's also very much in what would be called a rural location.

The proposal for ten luxury houses (full details here - Item 7a) was rejected by planning officials as it contravened the current and proposed Local Plans and was inadequately served by public transport.

When an application determined by officers under delegated powers, as with this one, is refused, the developer has a right to appeal. The appeal is heard by the Local Review Body which comprises ten of Midlothian's 18 councillors. Also, only those members of LRB who attend a site visit prior to determination are allowed to vote on the appeal.

In this instance the following councillors were eligible to vote - Cllrs Baxter, Bennett, Bryant (chair), Constable, de Vink, Imrie, Milligan and Montgomery.

As far as I recall, only two arguments were presented in favour of upholding the appeal - that this is a Brownfield site and that it is adjacent to the area known as Redheughs, designated for some 700 houses in the proposed Local Development Plan.

The first, as I've said, is simply not true - and was backed by the Forestry Commission, which has stated that if planning permission were to be refused, it wanted to return the whole site to natural woodland. The Forestry Commission had also complained that illegal tree felling had already taken place at the site.

The second is, well utterly bizarre - we have a local plan process to designate areas for housing and boundaries are boundaries. That process involved wide consultation with the public, community councils and others. It decided the boundary for housing, but councillors in this case and without good reason overruled it.

I proposed that we support our planning officials and reject the application. All other councillors present (except Cllr Milligan who declared an interest) decided otherwise and I could not find a seconder.

This is where the story gets interesting.

Getting planning permission for a site not in the local plan for development - particularly in the countryside - can be a highly lucrative business. Without permission, the land value is quite low. With permission it can go sky high.

The developer for the Arniston site is a company called Pegasus Flooring, based at Dalhousie Business Park in Bonnyrigg. A little investigation (e.g. here) identifies a director and, as far as I understand, its owner, to be none other than James McHale (aka Seamus).

Those with long memories will recognise this name from the scandal surrounding the council's missing £37,500, meant to pay for a new car park at Bonnyrigg Rose Football Club but as far as we are aware, still missing (reminders here and here).

Now I don't know if anything untoward has been happening, and certainly have no hard evidence, but I doubt if I'm the only one who is puzzled by it all. And this is not the first time I have complained that applications for housing contrary to the local plan have been successful (see reference to Fordel application here), and they are far from isolated cases. So what on earth is going on?

Building a reputation for destruction

At yesterday's Planning committee meeting of Midlothian Council, the contentious item was supposed to be the proposal for two small wind turbines at Springfield Farm near Leadburn (voted down, in the main by SNP councillors, despite my pleas for Midlothian to step up to the plate on our - and the SNP government's - carbon reduction targets).

However, it was an application for a hotel in the Pentland Hills Regional Park which troubled me more. Within the boundary of Hillend Country Park and in an area designated as an Area of Great Landscape Value, the site is also in the Pentland Hills Special Landscape Area in the proposed MLDP, "assessed as being of high value in terms of scenic quality, enjoyment and naturalness". The site includes a large number of mature trees and shrubs.

So on an elevated site, viewed from much of the Damhead area, what currently looks like a small woodland will be replaced by a three storey hotel and holiday chalets.

The response from the Scottish Wildlife Trust, referring to the woodland, is littered with phrases such as "should as much as possible be left intact" and "if possible, continuous strips of woodland should be retained". I won't be holding my breath.

Edinburgh Council's response asks what alternative sites had been assessed and discounted to justify the location in a sensitive site (none as far as I know), pointing out that the tree removal "will impact adversely on the character of the landscape", suggesting any tree replacement would be "a long term prospect" and highlighted the site's prominence, with concern about lighting from within the site. You could argue that Edinburgh Council is unlikely to welcome new hotels just across the border, but you can't argue that the points they make are not valid.

It seems that the rationale behind Planning officials recommending approval is that the hotel would 'complement' the adjacent Snowsports centre. In what way? It suggests there is a need for people to be accommodated close to the centre - despite it lying beside the terminus of the number 4 bus which takes all of 25 minutes to arrive from Haymarket.

At the Planning meeting, councillors repeatedly referred to 'demand' for a hotel. The original application included four houses on part of the site (since amended to holiday chalets). If the project is expected to be profitable, why the need to boost its income with spinoff houses? More importantly, if there is clear demand for a hotel close to the Snowsports centre, whatever happened to applications 09/00614/PPP (hotel and restaurant/bar, approved 19 June 2012) and 10/00529/DPP (hotel, approved February 2011)? Both sites are a matter of yards from this one, in one case directly across the road. Both, it should be said, are in much less sensitive sites and, crucially, neither development has been progressed.

During the debate, one Labour councillor said he was "absolutely amazed that anyone would oppose this application". The SNP, with one notable exception, fell in to line, bleating about how this was needed to boost the local economy. As I pointed out when I voted against adopting the proposed Midlothian Local Development Plan, the council is fond of using the term 'sustainable development' while either not knowing what it means, or willingly setting out to deceive. It is only when applications like this come forward that it gets found out.

When it came to the vote, I proposed rejection of the application. To his credit, SNP councillor Andrew Coventry seconded my proposal. Every other councillor, Labour, SNP and Independent, voted for approval.

Whether it's small scale wind turbines or building in sensitive areas, someone needs to explain to Midlothian's Planning Department and its councillors either what sustainable development means, or remind them they should be adhering to it.

Return of the one party state?

As I've often reminded people, Midlothian used to be called "the one party state". A legacy from its mining community days, for a while Labour had 17 of the 18 councillors, held on to its Westminster constituency - solidly - since its inception in 1955 and likewise the Holyrood constituency before it was split in 2011.

All that started to change in 2011, when both the 'Midlothian North and Musselburgh' and 'Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale' Holyrood constituencies went SNP. Labour then lost control of the council in 2012 and now this.

Just two General Elections ago in 2005, Labour and the Liberal Democrats picked up over 70% of the Midlothian vote between them. Ten years later it was just 32.5%. Who knows where we'll be ten years from now.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The political landscape in Midlothian is changing so fast, and unless those lessons are quickly learned, history will indeed repeat itself, but not in the way many people think.

Midlothian is in danger of becoming a one-party state once again, this time in the colours of the SNP, but would that be good for democracy, or for the people of Midlothian?

In November of last year, it did look like a Labour revival might be on the cards when Kenny Young won the Midlothian East by-election, but as I wrote in a previous blog that particular campaign was unusual. The result this month seems to confirm it's business as usual for Labour's decline in one of its heartlands.

In an article in today's Scotland on Sunday, former Labour MP Ian Davidson put Scottish Labour's decline down to the four 'C's - complacency, conservatism, cronyism and careerism. Is that also true in Midlothian? I don't know for sure, but I would certainly say complacency has played a big part.

I still fail to grasp why the Labour group on the council continues to boycott two committees after three years. The Business Transformation Steering Group (comprising 2 SNP, 2 Labour, 1 Green) was set up to oversee a programme of change to address the budget gap over the next few years. So that committee now sits with only three councillors, and the official opposition intends to play no part in addressing how we provide much needed services with greatly reduced income and rising costs.

The Safer Communities Board (previously Police & Fire liaison) also sits without its two Labour representatives. Why? Apparently because they don't agree with those services being restructured by the Scottish Government. For the record, neither do I agree with it, but we have to play with the cards we're dealt, I'm afraid.

Instead of building trust and acting like a potential ruling administration, Labour continues to act with a 'Labour good, Nats bad' rhetoric which does nothing for politics, and it does nothing for the people of Midlothian, whose interests we're all here to represent.

I had hoped for better from Kenny Young. Kenny is bright, he's young and he's articulate. He has potential. However, he too has adopted the tribal mentality of his peers with relish.

I don't know what Kenny learned from the bubble he worked in beside Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown, but deleting Facebook comments and blocking people on Twitter just because they challenge your views is not the stuff of grown-up politics.

I am particularly disappointed that he hasn't apologised for going into a Twitter frenzy over the Nicola Sturgeon/French consul alleged conversation when this has now been found to be a fabrication. Sometimes we screw up, Kenny. When we do, admit it, apologise and move on. Saying nothing and blocking people who challenge you doesn't look good.

I certainly don't want to go back to the days of the one-party state, of whatever colour, where all parliamentary representatives belong to one party - with huge majorities; where that party runs the council with a significant overall majority; and where huge numbers of voters feel there's no-one there to represent them.

What's clear from this month's election result - across the UK - is that people want change. And people want politicians to change too. What they don't want is to replace one lot of complacent politicians with another.