Essay by Eric Worrall
The climate zealots at the Sunderland council have axed their annual airshow, a major event which attracts two million visitors every year, because they don’t want anything to distract from their keep fit message.
Council refreshes its approach to events
Sunderland City Council is refreshing its approach to events as it looks to grow and evolve the city’s annual programme in response to resident feedback.
Sunderland’s events plan will focus on key areas to grow the city’s offer for residents and visitors:
Source: https://www.sunderland.gov.uk/article/25597/Council-refreshes-its-approach-to-events
– Attracting new events such as the World Triathlon Championship Series next summer and others from outside the city
– Developing innovative new events as part of Sunderland’s Smart City initiative, bringing technology to life and creating an offer that is unique to Sunderland
– Supporting established events organised by local communities such as the Boxing Day Dip, the Waves Music Festival and Summer Streets
– Maximising the potential of concerts and other major events by animating the city and creating a programme of activity around those dates
Councillor Graeme Miller, Leader of Sunderland City Council, said: “Our residents have told us that they want to see new and different events, and ones that they themselves can get involved in. That’s why this last year we have attracted new and exciting events to the city, including the Tour Series, British Triathlon Super Series Grand Final and the Tour of Britain this summer which we hope will inspire more people to become physically active and enjoy all the physical and mental health benefits this brings with it.”
In light of the new approach to events and the council’s ambitions to be carbon neutral by 2030 and the city’s to be carbon neutral by 2040, the council has confirmed it has no plans to run the Sunderland Airshow in the future.
Cllr Miller said: “No-one who has witnessed the extreme weather events of recent years, from wildfires and droughts across Europe to the storms and heatwaves we’ve experienced here this last year, can be in any doubt about the devastating impact that climate change is having on our planet. Residents have identified the environment as one of their top concerns and both the council and the city have committed to tackling the global climate emergency by reducing carbon emissions. This makes it all the harder to justify events such as the airshow, which generate large amounts of carbon, going ahead in the future.
“But residents can rest assured that we remain wholeheartedly committed to delivering events for families at our wonderful seafront. For next summer we have secured the World Triathlon Championship Series which will bring some of the world’s best athletes to Roker seafront in a thrilling action-packed weekend for residents and visitors alike as well as attracting national and international coverage for our fabulous city. We are also looking to hold an Armed Forces event at the seafront next summer, so that we can continue our longstanding and valued relationship with our partners and veterans across the Armed Forces community.
“It’s vital that we continue to grow and evolve our events programme with a mix that appeals to residents and visitors alike, which is why we’re working hard to bring new and exciting events to our city alongside firmly established family favourites.”
How many jobs did Sunderland town council just wipe out, to score a cheap political point? How much local business and employee income has been lost because those two million air show fans may no longer have a reason to visit?
It takes a tremendous amount of effort to put an event like Sunderland Airshow together, to nurture it for years, to grow it into a community icon which attracts visitors from far and wide. An event where kids can learn about and even meet the heroes who put their lives on the line to defend British territory against foreign aggression.
Now, thanks to Sunderland Council, all that time and effort building something wonderful for the community has been cancelled, all that effort has been for nothing, all that hard won achievement has been wiped out by the stroke of a climate zealot’s pen.
In my opinion this is just a taste of the wanton economic destruction greens want to inflict on society. Unless we convince our politicians to change course, we are inviting a green economic wrecking ball into our lives.
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Developing innovative new events
Somebody ought to teach Sunderland Council what the word ‘innovative’ means. Anybody with a bit of Latin education knows that ‘nova; is Latin for ‘new’.
How about Javelin Catching? That would be new and exciting.
You get style points depending on where it pierces your body.
“9.4, 9.4, 9.7, 9.3, oh, and there’s an 8.8 from the Russian judge,”
“…Sunderland’s Smart City initiative”
Oh dear. They have obviously not noticed yet that “smart” prefixed to anything negates the sense, so that “smart” becomes “thick”. How sad.
Roll on the Mid-Terms so this type of insanity can begin to be addressed. Europe is waiting for the inevitable hobbling of Biden.
Russia will likely occupy Ukraine by spring and the west can begin negotiations to lift sanctions and restore at least some Russian gas flowing to Europe.
There will be little appetite amongst the public for NetZero or net anything else in Europe and America after the economic wasteland it will leave in its wake.
Russia did “attempt” to coccupy Ukraine last spring and it didn’t work out too well cos the UKRs didn’t take to kindly to not being consulted.
The result was predictable, about half the half baked but much hyped Russian army were blown to simthereens, returned in body bags and their much vaunted tanks turned out to be made of chocolate.
I can see your “hot scot” opinions were much formed by being involved with the equally corrupt and stupid UK Police force, which claims many of the same crony and much vaunted things the Russian army would also like to believe about itself (fairness, nice people, liberators of the opressed and so forth).
Kindly do yerself a favour Mr Hot Scot, learn you can be very very wrong and look incredibly stupid in public on occasions.
As for our/ my friends in Ukraine, they ain’t looking too much like being occupied, last spring, next spring or any bloody spring in the near future…never mind the sanctions on the bloody stupid russkies being lifted in anything under a decade.
Incidentally, I think that Sunderland City Council might be a bit miffed at being described as a Town Council. In England a Town Council is a much lower level of local government to the type of Council that runs Sunderland.
I’ve been to Sunderland once and have no desire to go back. I might for an event like an airshow, veteran car meet or a FIFA World Cup Final if Scotland were involved but there’s more likelyhood of a display by flying pigs at the 2023 Sunderland Airshow than the latter happening.
At the Scary Pockets concert in Paris on 11/10/22 one of the band members noted that proposed legislation in UK to ban private air travel would hit professional musicians hard.
Sounds more like a Dumb City initiative. Pure empty-headed symbolic virtue signaling, costing money.
XH558 has not been flying since 2015 when Bae suspended it’s financial and technical commitment to the Vulcan Trust. Sad sad.
From the article: “Cllr Miller said: “No-one who has witnessed the extreme weather events of recent years, from wildfires and droughts across Europe to the storms and heatwaves we’ve experienced here this last year, can be in any doubt about the devastating impact that climate change is having on our planet.”
No, that’s not true. I, for one, am not convinced that CO2 is causing any changes in the Earth’s weather, and there is no evidence supporting such claims. So you are wrong. There are some who have witnessed what you have witnessed and have come to a different conclusion based on a lack of evidence that CO2 is doing anything to the Earth’s weather.
Your climate change claims are delusional because they are not backed up by the facts. Your subjecive judgement is not a fact.
Talk about gullible adults. Somebody tells them a scare climate change story and they believe it without question. These idiots and their delusions are in the process of destroying all we have built.
Michael Mann, anyone?
They were doing fine with the efforts to highlight physical activities and fitness. They should have stopped there before claiming climate change and net zero were good reasons to cancel an air show. All credibility flew out the window at that point.
If you ever get the chance to attend the Nellis AFB (outside Las Vegas), open house and airshow, go! Great show. Best airshow I’ve seen. It’s worth going just to see the F-22 fly.
They should dedicate the show to Climate Change. If the elites can buzz around in private jets to attend climate change conferences, why can’t Sunderland sponsor exhibition flights to stop climate change.
I wonder if all wars will be cancelled due to climate change. Nah…just the airshows
We had a zero emission society in the 1800’s. There were no coal fired power plants, no natural gas power plants, no nuclear power plants, and oil was not yet discovered. We also had no air shows. Life was hard and short (about 40 years of age).
Banning the air show is like saying “don’t look”, as the planes continue to exist with or without viewers!
“We had a zero emission society in the 1800’s.”
But on the plus side, there were no extreme weather events; armadas didn’t get destroyed in hurricanes, floods didn’t wipe out low lying delta areas in India, California had no forest fires. right?
RIGHT??
They get the bad leaders they voted for thus they got bad decisions like this now they will have to change their voting habits to get better leaders.
Sounds like Sunderland just dropped an income bracket and perhaps more.
Those citizens now unemployed should train in France on how to handle XR and similar protestors. As employment controlling weirdos and nuts appears to be improving.
Last time I went to Le Bourget air show, I was quite disturbed by the fuss and emotion and ostensible promotion of Solar Impulse…