The time has come to announce the 100-strong shortlist of UK groups competing to earn a share of the million-pound Big Green Challenge prize fund.

The big green ideas shortlisted range from a ‘Carbon Watchers’ club to monitor CO2 emissions in Yorkshire and a Sussex prison’s bio-fuels production scheme, to the creation of a volunteer workforce in the West Midlands to help local people take energy-efficient measures in their homes and a virtual farmer’s market in Bristol.

You can find out more about the selected groups on the Big Green Challenge website. Hopefully you’ll find an idea among the shortlist that you could build on, or a nearby group to cheer on!

I included an item in this week’s VolResource email newsletter on the government’s ‘Power of Information Task Force’ before I had a chance to read the speech from minister Tom Watson. This amuses me for a number of reasons.

Firstly the effort that has gone in to giving web links to as many items in the speech as possible - so much that it is a little distracting when reading if you start following them!

Secondly this excerpt: “Take a motor industry analogy, in some ways the policy process is a bit like building a Morgan [External website] in Malvern [External website]: a handful of people taking years to create beautiful, hand-crafted model.” Apart from the fact that he then implies he wants boring mass-produced and short-lived policies to replace tailored quality, given a strong south westerly the Morgan factory is in spitting distance of VolResource towers. Pity the web link for Malvern doesn’t go my hobby site.

Despite that, the speech is worth a read. Also see the interim reports on progress on recommendations of the Power of Information review.

UPDATE: for some reason they moved the speech - link now corrected.