Adrian Hollister

1. Turn it off. Lights at night - especially in offices. Computers, printers, photocopiers, coffee machines. They all consume power most often when they don't need to. Don't forget these devices consume power even when on stand-by or power saving mode.

2. Reuse, Repair and Recycle. IT is a nightmare and throwing things away because they look grubby or out of date.

3. Travel less and work from home. This not only improve a personal local social environment (getting up later, spending more time with family by not commuting), but also reduced our reliance upon heavily polluting transport systems. Of course this needs to be offset by high efficiency household heating and green energy. Perhaps something that employers will assist with in future years.

4. Spend time understanding 'need' and 'want'. Most waste occurs feeding the 'want' - do you need a new computer or want one? do you need the latest version of office or want it?

5. People are part of the environment - we have needs, social needs. Social needs cannot be met by IT, but IT can facilitate it. So when you plan your IT projects and proposals think about how it will help the people socially and the benefits that will bring to the welfare and sustainability of the business (and the communities within that business.)

Adrian Hollister said, "How in the time of such recession is the Council able to justify the cost of £100K+ for three Council Officers? There are plenty of people out there unemployed, give them or their colleagues within the Council a chance at the role with a realistic salary.

If these Council Officers are, as the Conservative 'executive' member Anthony Stansfeld says, lower paid than our neighbouring authorities then they should be able to find another job at the drop of a hat.

If as I suspect, they are all overpaid, then a correction in their salary in line with the performance of West Berkshire and the recession in the Country is due. Perhaps we could use their excessive salaries to fund the sixth form schools shortfall introduced by New Labour?"

Reference: Newbury Today's article 'Three council officers earn six figure salaries'

Adrian Hollister notes the Green Party article that highlights to him an ever more violent Police force and comments: "At the G20 a man who was unarmed, caused no threat and was walking away from the Police with his hands in his pockets died after an assault by the Police. He was hit in back of his legs with a baton designed to collapse his legs and he was pushed over onto his face at the same time. This was is designed to have only one result - pain and injury. Why would the Police look to inflict injury on the people they are here to protect? If thugs had assaulted me in the street this way I would expect justice. This disgusting act must be subject to a criminal inquiry and the whole culture of increasing Police brutality must be stamped out."

Update
Adrian Windisch puts a far more diplomatic description of events on his blog and has a great letter you can send to your MP using www.writetothem.com - you can find his blog entry here.