Rupert Murdoch -  Right now, you are a pain in my backside. Considering how much you’re worth, you do look awfully miserable. Why don’t you just dish out some of the conglomerates you have and share the love?

( just to let you know, I wrote this before the spending review, i’m not that dim)

Will the dream of making Norwich greener be shunted due to spending cuts?

Once the Comprehensive Spending Review is out in the open from tomorrow, will Norwich’s potential “ green new deal” dream be out of the window?

The ‘Green New Deal’ is a scheme that Birmingham have taken on board and now Norwich City Council’s Green Party Leader, Claire Stephenson, wants Norwich to follow in their footsteps.

The scheme in Birmingham has been funded £100m from investment banks, energy suppliers and from the council. It has been able to produce 10,000 solar panelled council homes, slashing of carbon emissions and an increase of local jobs.

Samir Jeraj, the Deputy Leader of the Green Party for the Norwich City Council believes the Green New Deal would benefit Norwich, “ Norwich has about 16,000 council properties, so if the council decided to go down the Birmingham route, then those, potentially, could all benefit from that, as well as being able to sell those services to people in the private sector homes too, and so being able to bring in that additional money as well.”

The reason for the Green New Deal being put in place is to tackle the recession as well as the climate crisis at the same time, but with the Comprehensive Spending Review in mind, would the Green New Deal concept be at risk for Norwich?

“ Well it will part depend upon the level of cuts in tomorrow’s Spending Review,

That’s the most potentially significant threat to that not happening, but, one kind of stream of funding which should still be around tomorrow is the feed-in tariff, which you (the council) are provided with money for installing solar panels, things like that. And that’s how Birmingham has used that to fund its adoptions of solar panels.” Samir comments.

He also continues to say, “There’s 10,000 council houses being made and for each one of those houses it’s putting a large amount of people into work, putting all the infrastructure in and it also means that the household will have lower bills for their electricity and potentially, water too. So they will be able to spend that money and keep the economy going in that sense.”

Norwich is a very ‘green’ city, with the highest amount of green councillors of any UK council ever. Samir feels that the Green New Deal would help Norwich and would suit being greener, “There’s a lot of opportunity and I think, Norwich being quite green minded and being the urban centre of quite a rural area, there is a well placed level of demand.”

With the Spending Review being announced tomorrow and whether the feed-in tariff stays on board, will the Green Party’s optimism for Norwich being the next Green New Deal city, get the ball rolling?

Tides of Virtue show

28^th September 2010 at The Marquee, Norwich.

Tides of Virtue have been a well-known and dedicated metal band in the UK since 2008. With their debut album being released earlier this year, they are now hitting the UK with a line of shows as well as a new line up. Nick Jupp (vocalist) and James Sweeting (bassist) are the new profound members of Tides of Virtue, giving the band a new beginning and an opportunity to play their new material off the Malevolence Album.

As usual, The Marquee venue wasn’t exactly packed to the brim full of raging metal fans, but the small handful that made an appearance definitely enjoyed one of the first come back shows for Tides of Virtue.

Along with TOV were, Dead Winter, a hardcore band from Norwich, The Elijah, a rock/synth band from Shropshire and Broken Jaws, a hardcore/metal beat down band from Reading, all of which fitted the bill for this show. Broken Jaws in particular really stood out of the crowd with their parkway Drive/Emmure sound.

Tides of Virtues Nick Jupp made a good first impression as the new vocalist, starting the set with ‘No Coming Back ‘. The hellish vocals that were produced that evening were something Nick wasn’t afraid of even remotely troubled by, proving he’s got what it takes to make Tides of Virtue even better than before.

The set was just a taster of their most recent album, with technical and aggressive riffs, something Tides of Virtue are known for. ‘ Emperors’ and ‘ Fabric of Destiny’ were amongst the new titles, as well as a brand new track that the 2 new members have written up themselves called ‘Stowaway’ a very heavy vocal sounding tune with really gritty and intense guitars.

I asked Nick a few quick fire questions to see how he is getting on with being the new vocalist.

What did you think of the show in Norwich?

“ It’s always great getting asked to play a new place we haven’t been to yet, however, with that, you never know what the turn out is going to be. Although it wasn’t packed out, I still think we got a good response and I hope that the people that did come out had as much fun as we did!”

How does it feel to be the new vocalist of Tides of Virtue?

“Being the new vocalist, I feel like there is a lot of pressure on me to keep up the high standards set by the old vocalist (Louis.) It’s his vocals on the debut album and I think my style is very much different to his, but I hope that gives the band a fresh new sound that people will enjoy. It has been hard learning and performing the songs which lyrics have been written by someone else, however I have just tried to give it my all every time we have played and seeing fans scream back the lyrics in my face is just amazing.

Our new material is shaping up quite nicely too and I’ve really enjoyed putting my own lyrics over the top of these new songs. We can’t wait to record a couple of tracks in November/December time.”

What do you want to achieve with the band in the future?

“With TOV I just hope to play as many shows as we can and get around to see as many people as possible. It’s great making new fans and meeting long standing ones too.

We’re currently sorting out a few big tours for next year and writing new material for our next album to be released early 2011, which we’re all really excited about!”

So, I’ve been a “trainee journalist” for around a month now and it’s made me realise that you have to me damn cheeky to get a successful news story. I have been trying to finish off this particular story but a) it’s to do with a huge organisation b) it’s not black and white facts c) everyone seems to take forever to get back to you.I don’t want to be up against a huge organisation in court, so I have to be very careful what I say, I know the stories that we write aren’t being published but I want to know what my rights are. This has made me realise that I need to swot up on my law some more.I am soon to be writing for an Australian music magazine called No Heroes Magazine : http://www.noheroesmag.com/It’s a really interesting online magazine which has only been around for about a year. It’s hoping to go into print soon and it comes out monthly. I am really looking forward to becoming their English ” correspondent” for this magazine haha.
In fact, I shall put up my review I did for Tides of Vritue, a metal band from Essex/Kent area, this is what I sent off to No Heroes to see if I was good enough.Apparently the editor is a bit of a ” punctuation Nazi” but it’s something that will boot me up the bum.
I’ve been writing up a story about the Green Party in Norwich and how they have been praising Birmingham’s ” Green New Deal”, which personally, I think would be a good idea for Norwich.Although the feed-in tariff is staying until at least 2013, which, to a certain extent is really good, what is the point if the council housing rent is going to soar through the roof? I know that the Green New Deal is potentially a money saving scheme and will increase jobs etc but why make solar panelled houses if people can’t afford to live in them. £250 a week could be the amount a council house family might have to pay as opposed to the £82 a week they pay for now.

proscratinating.