Shiremoor saw the inaugural meeting of the North Tyneside Green Party on Thursday 26th. June. There was an unexpectedly high turn-out at the meeting and they were able to agree a constitution for the party and elect its two required officers in Martin Collins as co-ordinator and Penny Remfry as Treasurer.

IN OUR VIEW - it is appalling that our elected Members of Parliament have voted through this plan to extend the detention without charge time to 42 days. Even our current legislation allows suspects to be detained for up to 28 days - the longest time in Europe.

However, by focussing only on the 42 days we are in danger of overlooking other measures in the bill which are equally problematic, especially given the excessively broad definition of terrorism contained in the 2000 Terrorism Act.

'Anti-terror' powers are increasingly being used to incriminate innocent people and this bill will further exacerbate this. The Bill also proposes forms of punishment that may be imposed after conviction, without further due legal process and even on the basis of secret evidence withheld from defendants. In addition, the measures to allow no-jury inquests in the name of 'national security' would seriously undermine police accountability.

Counter-terror powers are already more than sufficient and the counter-terrorism bill as it stands does more to endanger than to enhance public safety.

It seems that Gordon Brown has either completely lost it, or is so cynical as to think that the British public will swallow the idea that yet more nuclear plants might be the answer to rising oil prices. In 2006, only 1% of our electricity was generated by burning oil, whereas 67% of all petroleum used in the UK was for transport fuels. According to the BBC website, the government has ruled that energy companies wanting to run the new nuclear power plants will have to pay the costs for decommissioning existing sites, and pay their share of waste management costs. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority estimated the cost will be £72bn over 20 years - up from an estimate two years ago of £56bn. The plants themselves will cost up to £2bn and take 15 years to build.