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THE ALLEYNIAN 710
Go against the flow. Challenge what people do. “
will be resolved that will enable us to keep it under two degrees. But I’m not even sure about that, hand on heart. We have to complete everything we need to do in the next nine years really, by 2030, and that means we should have started years ago. In the next 10 years, we need to provide people with the means to affordably take out all their gas boilers, super-insulate their homes, and put in heat pumps. We need a transport revolution. We need to radically cut down our meat intake. And that’s not to make it expensive, but to make food affordable, and that is going to take huge investment. And I just don’t see it coming from this government so we’re waiting for another general election. You know, the Tories will probably win again. And that will take us to eight years from now, and things won’t change. DK and GB : Can you tell us about your experience as a local councillor and leader of the opposition on Lambeth Council? JB : I lead the opposition on Lambeth Council. As a result, we were able to table the motion that made Lambeth the first in London to declare a climate emergency and the aim of net zero by 2030. And that was huge. I’m really proud of that. Many of my proudest moments come from the casework that I do as a councillor. I had councillor surgeries before COVID, and a man came in to my surgery, virtually in tears. He was a refugee, and he was just around the corner from where I am now, living in accommodation with his wife and three children. He was disabled himself. And he had just had the bailiffs on the phone, saying they were coming round to repossess several of his possessions because he had a debt that he couldn’t pay. And I said, where does the debt come from? He said that Lambeth Council gave him a council tax bill that he couldn’t pay, and then they took him to court because he couldn’t pay it. He explained that another load of fees had been added on that, which made the bill even higher. So, a £300 council tax bill turned into over £1000 because of the late payment charges and various fees, and he couldn’t pay. He said, ‘I just don’t know what I’m going to do,’ and I said, ‘I don’t think you should have been charged this bill. I’ll go and check it out. But in the meantime, here’s my mobile number. If the bailiffs come to your door, don’t let them in. Call me. I will come around and I will stand in the way, and I will come into your house.’ We managed to find out that the council had wrongly issued this
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