The London Eye is expected to be granted permanent status by planners after becoming one of the capital’s most popular tourist attractions.
Officials from Lambeth Council will recommend at a meeting next Tuesday that the 450ft Ferris wheel remain at its site opposite the Houses of Parliament on the Thames.The existing planning permission runs out in March 2005 and the council recommends that the status of the Eye is reviewed in 20 years. It is under- stood that despite the differences, there was no acrimony.A budget of £3m has already been set aside for the construction, but the Government’s intention to have it built at a site in Hyde Park by August next year now looks optimistic.A department spokesman said Ms Jowell was considering the committee’s proposal.. Again the projects tied.Ms Monckton said the committee had held a “constructive meeting” and had made a recommendation on an appropriate way forward. Lawyers established that Ms Monckton had the right to cast a deciding vote, but pointed out that a simple show of hands did not meet European Union rules on tendering government contracts.On Monday, the committee had to vote again, this time filling in complicated documents in which the two fountain projects were graded on grounds of ecology, appropriateness to their surroundings, quality and so on. Everybody who’s studied this problem says this had to change and one way is by some form of carbon tax,” Professor Ash said.”The polluter has had it all his own way and something needs to be done about it,” he added.A carbon tax aimed at limiting the effects of global warming would also encourage the development of renewable sources of energy, which for decades have suffered from under-investment in research. As things stand, no one is planning to build new nuclear plants in Britain – and the Government insists this is a decision for the private sector – but that could change if changing conditions make nuclear power economically attractive.”The economics of building new nuclear plants do not stack up at the moment, but they are not far from stacking up,” said Professor Eric Ash, chairman of the Royal Society’s energy policy advisory group.Introducing carbon taxes to penalise organisations that burn fossil fuels could be one measure that tips the balance in favour of nuclear power “People who burn fossil fuels can do so for free.

On current forecasts electricity generation from nuclear power plants is clearly set to fall to a fraction of what it is now, as old plants are decommissioned with no new ones being built to replace them. The industry will also have to compete with even cheaper coal from abroad, making it increasingly likely that existing mines will go the way of Selby, which is to be closed completely over the next 20 months.An important question is what will happen regarding nuclear power. Clearly, within 20 years Britain will go from a net exporter of oil to a big importer.Coal, which presently accounts for 15 per cent of our energy supplies, will continue to decline in importance as the existing reserves in deep mines are progressively exhausted. By 2020, we will be producing only 20 per cent of the oil we now produce. At present, the UK is a significant exporter of oil, but based on current known reserves our production of oil is expected to fall by a half by 2010. This is expected to rise to 80 per cent of its demands by 2020.The story for oil is similar.

According to the London Evening Standard yesterday, Ms Monckton’s faction was opposed to Kapoor’s design, which was described as “striking but stark – possibly shocking”, while Mr Lingwood’s camp favoured it. Ms Monckton was a close friend of the Princess of Wales and has canvassed for a design that she believes Diana would have liked.In the other corner is James Lingwood, a renowned proponent of cutting edge Britart, sculpture and performance art. Almost five years after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, plans to build a memorial fountain have reached a stalemate because of a disagreement over who should design it and EU guidelines on how it should be chosen.
A committee that was to have picked a winner from more than 100 designs reached an impasse on Monday after its members split into groups supporting Anish Kapoor, the Britart sculptor, and Kathryn Gustafson, an American landscape architect.Leading the fight for Ms Gustafson’s “restrained and elegant” submission, backed by half of the eight-strong committee, is Rosa Monckton, the wife of Dominic Lawson, who edits The Sunday Telegraph. It remains to be seen whether Russian gas comes with the sort of price tag that can prevent a future rise in the number of British families struggling to keep warm.. But it will mean that the UK has less control over its energy costs, which could lead to a rise in the number of households falling into “fuel poverty” – officially defined as when a family spends more than 10 per cent of its income on heating its home to an adequate standard.Cheaper electricity and gas have helped to reduce the number of households falling into fuel poverty from about 5.5 million in 1996 to fewer than 4 million in 2000. Relying on other nations for energy is not in itself an untenable prospect – after all, most developed countries do it. This expansion would not be without costs, however; the unit predicts that electricity prices would have to rise by up to 6 per cent more than they would have otherwise.Which brings us finally to what this will all mean to the average household.

Environmentalists have long argued that if they had been given the research funding that the nuclear industry has enjoyed, wind, tidal and solar energy would be far better placed to take up the energy slack left by the demise of Britain’s coal, gas and oil.The Performance and Innovation Unit has recommended the expansion of the renewables target from 10 per cent of power generation by 2010 to 20 per cent by 2020. Although the UK is still a net exporter of natural gas, there are times during peak demand when we have to import foreign gas to meet our needs.The Department of Trade and Industry estimates that by 2010 the UK will have to import one third of its gas requirements. It would be wrong to try to plan the energy system, but equally, given the often long lead times within the energy system, a long-term vision is sometimes needed if we are to avoid commitments which may be found wanting as policy needs change.”Natural gas fuelled the British economy through the economic boom years of the 1980s and 1990s but this is likely to change. “The important thing is to reflect this uncertainty in policy-making, so that it is flexible in the face of new information. “This review is unlikely to prove an exception,” the unit acknowledged in its report.