2003-4 proved to be a busy year for our Group with activities covering a wide range of interests and some notable successes in our major campaigns. We were sorry to lose Tony Harding as our Coordinator and we owe him our gratitude for all his hard work for the group over many years. Happily, both he and Christine remain active members and with their support, and those of the other officers who all continued in post, my assumption of the Coordinator role has been much easier than I had feared; my thanks to everyone. Sadly, we had one death this year: as we reported in our January-March newsletter, Billy the budgie, our GM-Free Campaign mascot, died in January; he will be a very hard act to follow! On the positive side, our new Website was formally released and is proving to be very popular, thanks to Jon Buckingham who works tirelessly to keep the site attractive and topical. We were also nominated for a Nationwide Award for Voluntary Endeavour in recognition of the highly successful anti-GM campaign led by Tony Harding last year.

The main features of our other activities were as follows:

• Our Group held 22 group meetings in members' homes with attendance varying from 4 to 18. We were delighted to welcome new members Andrew Mearman, Heather Witham and Becca Lush who have proved to be very willing helpers for many of our activities. There were three social meetings during the year: a Christmas Meal at the Globe Inn, Frampton Cotterell, an Easter supper at the White Hart in Littleton on Severn and a BBQ at Stable Cottage in the summer. Our social events proved to be very popular and an excellent way to meet fellow members in a relaxed, convivial setting. With thanks again to Jon, we published four newsletters in the course of year which were distributed to all our members, South Gloucestershire libraries, other local FoE Groups and local MPs and Councillors.
• We held three special open events during the year: a Green Electricity Meeting addressed by 'Ecotricity' which our Group organized and a 'Green Event' at Acton Court to celebrate World Environment Day which was organized jointly by ourselves, CPRE and the Hawk and Owl Trust. Both events were well attended and generated lots of interest in green issues. Judy Hampshire held another very successful Open day in her organic garden.
• Members attended numerous environmentally-related meetings, either in an individual capacity or representing the Group. These included the LA 21 Forum, Environmental Link Group, the South Gloucestershire Waste Management Forum, the launch of the Local Communities Sustainability Campaign in Bristol, Oldbury Power Station Decommissioning briefings, the Gloucester Green Fayre, the Winterbourne Medieval Barn Project and Marinet (to whom we increased our annual donation in recognition of their campaign against aggregate dredging).
• The Group contributed or responded to a number of national and local consultative documents and petitions, including the South Gloucestershire Local Plan and Community Strategy, the 'Biteback' petition to George Bush for complaining about the EU's stance on GM Crops at the WTO and the Citizen's Objection form complaining about the US bullying attitude on this issue. We wrote to Deutsche Bank in support of National Foe's campaign against the felling of virgin forests to plant oil palms and Angie Moran once again did sterling work in coordinating our input to the annual FoE Apple Survey. More recently, Becca Lush has become involved in coordinating a road protest network to challenge the Government's Ten Year Transport Plan. We supported the revised Planning Guidance PPS22 which closes off the loopholes used by Nimby protestors to obstruct wind farms such as Hinkley Point and Edward Courtney corresponded at length with CPRE and the National trust challenging their opposition to wind turbines.
• More locally, we, together with other local environmental groups succeeded in stopping Network Rail's embankment clearance programme at Westerleigh and, thanks again to Edward's persistence, we persuaded Boots at Thornbury to stock potassium iodate tablets - a successful campaign widely reported in the local media.
• We have been particularly active on waste management, supporting S. Gloucestershire Council's appeal to Government to do more to reduce packaging, commenting on the SW Regional Waste Strategy and attending consultation meetings on the Regional and local waste strategies. Judy and Tony had letters published in the Gazette supporting the South Gloucestershire Council's 'Sort It' two bin system. Some members are pressing for kerbside plastics recycling collections.
• We have continued to work closely with local Councillors and MPs. Alan Pinder represented us when Dave Hockey's proposal that S.Gloucestershire Council should formally support the Local Communities Sustainability Bill was agreed. We have also requested local MPs to sign EDM 1774 for urgent action against the commercial planting of GM crops and EDM 1548 on low level radiation. Edward has continued his extensive research and correspondence on mobile phone and tetra radiation, sustainable energy and nuclear power issues and his correspondence with Steve Webb and BNFL about the unfilteres incineration of radioactive waste at Oldbury Power Station and has been reported in the local press. The purchase of a calibrated microwave detector (kindly donated by Paul Young) has allowed us to monitor some local transmitters and significant 'hot-spots' were found in the centre of Downend.

Denise

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