The billboard for my local newspaper has been shouting the news that the council is planning to save £1m next year by – among other things – closing down local recycling points. That follows just a year on from an act of vandalism by the county council when it closed the so-called ‘neighbourhood recycling centre’ (or tip, as it used to be called) in my town. It was an issue the victorious Labour candidate in my county council ward fought his campaign on. Now the newly-elected Labour borough council is to take the axe to more recycling facilities.

Still, at least Ed Davey has taken up the cudgels against climate change sceptics. After all, he is the Energy and Climate change Secretary. 

At the launch of the Met Office’s new Climate Service UK, he said: “Some sections of the press are giving out uncritical campaigning platforms to individuals and lobby groups who reject outright the fact that climate change is the result of human activity.

“This is not the serious science of challenging, checking, and probing; this is destructive and loudly clamouring scepticism born of vested interest, nimbyism, public-seeking controversialism, or sheer blinkered, dogmatic, political bloody-mindedness.”

But it’s not just “sections of the press”, though, is it Ed? When Prince Charles attacked climate change sceptics in May his remarks were attacked by, among others, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank founded by former-Chancellor Lord Lawson. Its director Benny Peiser accused the prince of “…apocalyptic language that a government minister would not use”. Other, more senior, politicians are not exactly lining up to endorse action on climate change.

I’m currently sojourning on a Greek island, where climate issues have been pressing for a while. Aside from the increasing ferociousness of the mosquitos (I have never suffered from bites before last year), water has been a precious commodity for some years. It is saved and recycled where possible – a course of action we may soon have to contemplate.

It won’t be just yet in my part of the world (Lancashire – not a Greek island!). A land drain from the hillside at the back of our house with a historic outlet into my garden has begun flowing for the first time since we moved there in 1998. The hillside itself is alive with springs that have appeared in the past couple of years.

Chris Stokes