Our AGM this year features Father John Baines of St Georges Church who will talk about the recently launched Foodie Friends Café, a project which chimes strongly with Transition New Mills’ aims of bringing the community together to make our town fairer and more vibrant, whilst reducing waste.

The AGM will begin at 7.30pm, Thursday 30 June at the Volunteer Centre, Union Road. We’ll keep it short and from 8pm or before, we move on to the session with Father John. We’ll be out and finished by 9.30pm at the latest.

The AGM is the time to elect people to manage and facilitate activities for the group. We have an Administrative Group of 3 people, currently Julian Ashworth, Mike Daw and Angharad Hughes. However, both Mike and Angharad are stepping down this year so we have two vacancies. If you would like to nominate yourself for this group, please let us know. We can take nominations up to one hour before the meeting. If you’re thinking about seeking election to the Administrative group, do get in touch and one of us will be happy to talk with you about what’s involved (without any commitment!). Note that we’ll be asking each of the candidates to say a few words about themselves before holding the vote so, if you are nominating yourself, please come prepared.

Once again, the Steering Group aren’t proposing any changes to our constitution but if you wish to propose any, or any other motion, please let us know in advance so that we can make sure time is given to discuss and vote on them.

Everyone is welcome but you will only be able to vote at the AGM if you’re a member.

An agenda for the AGM plus this year’s reports are linked below. Please note that we have had to amend last year’s accounts because we uncovered a minor error relating to how much was allocated to grant expenditure so a new version is also below. The overall balances remain the same.

We hope to see you there!

AGM 2016 Agenda

Activity report 2015-16

Grants Summary 2016

Membership report 2015-16

Transition 2015 Accounts-Revised

Transition 2016 Accounts

New Mills is to host a screening of the film “This Changes Everything”, inspired by Naomi Klein’s excellent book of the same name.

It’s free, everyone is welcome and it’s at 7.30pm Thursday 12th May at Spring Bank Arts Centre, Spring Bank, New Mills, SK22 4BH.

The topic of the next meeting of the Transition New Mills discussion group will be a screening of the multi-award winning film Taking Root. It’ll take place on Monday February 29th at Dee’s.

If you’re interested in coming along, please contact Mike Daw for more info.

Or at least that’s what you might be forgiven for thinking if you read summaries in the mainstream media such as this one from the BBC.

Some see things rather differently, such as this analysis you can read on Kevin Anderson’s blog.

Or, there’s this more reflective piece from Rob Hopkins, founder of our Transition movement.

Whatever conclusions you might come to reading these three very different articles, below are two upcoming opportunities to hear more and discuss the Paris deal, its implications, and the future for our planet.

• Jane Ayres tells us that the aforementioned Kevin Anderson is to attend an open Labour Party meeting at 7.30pm on 22 January in the Royal Hotel Hayfield where he’ll speak. There will also be time for open discussion.
• The Transition Discussion Group is meeting at 8pm on 25 January at Jill Hulme’s house to discuss the outcome of the Paris climate deal. If you want to attend this meeting, please email Jill at jillhulme@gmail.com.

Please sign this petition (of which Transition New Mills is a named supporter) to urge Derbyshire County Council to divest from fossil fuels and join the new zeitgeist…

https://campaigns.gofossilfree.org/petitions/divest-derbyshire

Derbyshire County Council Pension Fund has £290 million invested in fossil fuel industries, including Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Rio Tinto. Fossil fuel industries make up nearly 6% of the pension fund.

The petition calls on DCC to immediately freeze any new investments in fossil fuels and divest from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.

Kevin Anderson poster

A message from Laurie James, Sustainable Hayfield…

Later this month, the world’s leaders will start 2 weeks of talks in Paris about how best to limit greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the risk of irreversible climate change. Many headlines will be written and hard negotiations undertaken. Now there’s an almost unique chance to hear locally what’s at stake, and what’s possible.

We’re delighted to invite you, THURSDAY NOVEMBER 12TH, to an expert presentation at the Royal Hotel, Hayfield, on the impact and challenges of climate change by Professor Kevin Anderson, Professor of Energy and Climate Change at theSchool of Mechanical, Aeronautical and Civil Engineering at Manchester University. He is also Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, one of the UK’s leading research institutes in this field.

Professor Anderson is a scientific advisor to the Welsh Government’s climate change commission, reports on shale gas and aviation-related emissions to the UK and EU Parliaments, and advises the Prime Minister’s office on carbon trading and the development of national carbon budgets. An engineer by training, his industrial experience has been mainly in the petrochemical industry.  

It’s a privilege to have such expertise, honed from practical skills in industry, available to us. We hope this interests you too. His talk ‘Ostrich or Phoenix? – Climate Change, Facts and Futures’, is hugely topical and relevant. You are warmly invited to this open event, which is free to all. Professor Anderson will give his illustrated presentation from 7.30p.m., for about an hour, and then take questions. We hope to see you there.

The next meeting of the Transition discussion group is 8pm Monday 30th November in Marple Bridge.

The ‘reading’ for this meeting is a short pamplet The Viable Economy by Steady State Manchester. We have 2 copies to pass round and you can also find it at https://steadystatemanchester.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/the-viable-economy-master-document-v4-final.pdf

Please let Sue Cooper (suecoopernewmills@hotmail.com) know if you want to co-ordinate transport from New Mills to Marple Bridge and also let her know if you are coming.