Having spent most of this week in non-stop meetings in the UK, I headed back to Brussels on the Eurostar this afternoon hoping to grab some time with my son on his birthday tomorrow. Everyone in the UK is understandably focused on the local elections taking place today, while in London, the real debate is obviously over who will become the capital’s next mayor…
More on my mind, however, is the decision by oil giant Shell to withdraw from the London Array windfarm project, the proposed site for which lies just off the Kent coast and is therefore important to my constituency. This windfarm would have provided Shell, hardly a company with a sparkling environmental record, with an opportunity to show that it was ready to move away from polluting fossil fuels to cleaner renewable energy. Sadly, this was not to be. We now see Shell for what it truly is, despite its talk of ‘green’ commitments. I really hope the windfarm scheme still goes ahead regardless of this setback.
On a completely different note, I have received hundreds of letters from constituents about Kate and Gerry McCann’s campaign which calls on the EU to introduce the US Amber Alert system for the early detection of missing children. I have signed the written declaration (like an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons) in support of this call and hope to see a positive outcome.
