Author: earthfirst

rampART losses possesion case but buys two more weeks

20.12.2007
Today the ram­pART social cen­tre lost in court against a claim for pos­ses­sion. A pos­ses­sion order will now be grant­ed although not until the 3rd Jan 2008.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE NEWS ALERTS ABOUT LONDON SOCIAL CENTRES?

20.12.2007
Today the ram­pART social cen­tre lost in court against a claim for pos­ses­sion. A pos­ses­sion order will now be grant­ed although not until the 3rd Jan 2008.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE NEWS ALERTS ABOUT LONDON SOCIAL CENTRES?
Text ‘fol­low lon­don­scn’ to 07624801423 then reply with a name as instruct­ed.

If you are inter­est­ed in mak­ing sure there are new social cen­tres to fill the void, please come along to the meet­ing on the 6th. (more details clos­er to the time).

In the mean­time, in their last newslet­ter, the ram­pART col­lec­tive made a call out for help sort­ing out RAMpart2 (toward bot­tom below)…

The whole out of the blue evic­tion threat smacks of a vin­dic­tive puni­tive reac­tion to the cam­paign of objec­tion against the pro­posed demo­li­tion of the hous­es next to the social cen­ter. It turns out that the so-called new own­ers of the hous­es are in fact a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary of the ‘pre­vi­ous own­er’, the Ram­part Trust Co Ltd that still owns the ware­house which the social cen­ter occu­pies. Even though there is no plan­ning per­mis­sion in place or applied for in rela­tion to the social cen­tre, they claim that they intend to start demo­li­tion in Jan/Feb 2008. Obvi­ous­ly this is impos­si­ble and they know it, so their attempt to have us evict­ed is not real­ly because of any impend­ing work in the new year.

Speak­ing of plan­ning, it is still pos­si­ble to lodge objec­tions against the pro­posed new hous­es on the site of the exist­ing hous­es. The offi­cer deal­ing with the case is cur­rent­ly on leave and so the con­sul­ta­tion peri­od has appar­ent­ly not been closed. If you’ve not yet writ­ten and espe­cial­ly if your address is one in Tow­er­ham­lets, then please write a let­ter per­haps object­ing to the pro­pos­al on the grounds that it involved a demo­li­tion inside the con­ser­va­tion zone and the new con­struc­tion will total­ly change the char­ac­ter of this piece of east end her­itage. You might also men­tion that the own­er is on record as plan­ning to make an appli­ca­tion relat­ing to the build­ing next door and there­fore the devel­op­ment should be con­sid­ered as a whole to real­ly under­stand the visu­al impact that the changes cur­rent­ly pro­posed might have.

As well as pro­vid­ing your name and address, you need to clear­ly spec­i­fy in the sub­ject the appli­ca­tion num­ber PA/07/02707 and the fact that the let­ter is for OBJECTION (eg. sub­ject : Objec­tion to Appli­ca­tion PA/07/02707 — 7–11a Ram­part Street)

All the objec­tion let­ter can be sent to Ben­son Olaseni, who will cir­cu­late the let­ter to Simon Ryan the case offi­cer.

Here is the email : benson.olaseni@towerhamlets.gov.uk

You might be inter­est­ed to know that the solic­i­tors work­ing for the own­er in their claim to have us evict­ed are Brech­er Solic­i­tors who are at Heron Place, 3 George Street, Lon­don ( admin@brecher.co.uk, 02075631000) and give that address as the care of address for the co-claimants, the Ram­part Trust Com­pa­ny Ltd (owned by Mr Wolfe) and RMO Devel­op­ments Ltd (owned by Ram­part Trust Co. Ltd)

While they keep their address­es off the claim, an inter­net search pro­vides the fol­low­ing info.

RAMPART TRUST CO LIMITED (Reg­is­tered No. 00394626)
27 NORRICE LEA, LONDON, N2 0RD

Rmo Devel­op­ments Ltd. (Reg­is­tra­tion Num­ber: 6183351)
Mow­bray House, 58/70 Edg­ware Way
Edg­ware Mid­dle­sex HA8 8DJ

A lit­tle over a year ago, a prop­er­ty com­pa­ny sent some­body called Richard Sel­by to vis­it the build­ings with Mr Wolfe, the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the Ram­part Trust — appar­ent­ly to show a financier around for the pur­pos­es of a val­u­a­tion. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly this Her­itage Group (020 8958 0000 info@heritagegroup.co.uk) actu­al­ly shares the same address as RMO Devel­op­ments Ltd.

The agent act­ing for the own­er in all deal­ings relat­ing to the pro­posed devel­op­ments is Alan Camp Archi­tects ( +44 (0)20 7593 1000 mail@alancamp.com 88 Union Street Lon­don SE1 0NW). They’ve also had the involve­ment of Miller Prop­er­ty Con­sul­tants (17 Hog­a­rth Avenue, Brent­wood, Essex CM15 8BE 01277 233 100 / 07957 544 007 advice@millerproperty.co.uk).

I’m sure that in some coun­tries there would be hordes of angry direct action anar­chist types and cyber hack­ers caus­ing obstruc­tion and dis­rup­tion to the evil ones but here things are usu­al­ly done dif­fer­ent­ly. We are mak­ing a call out for the fol­low­ing…

Offers of vans and dri­vers for trans­port when we have to move out.

Ideas and offers of stor­age space for the resources in the ram­pART

Noti­fi­ca­tion of emp­ties for future new social cen­tres

Mobile phone num­bers of those will­ing to drop every­thing to come defend the space.

Vol­un­teers for peo­ple to rec­cy and access short­list­ed build­ings

Mobile num­bers of peo­ple up for ini­tial­ly hold­ing down a new­ly opened build­ing.

A signup sheet of those up for help­ing clean up and fix up such a build­ing.

A list of those peo­ple either want­i­ng to act as live in ‘care tak­ers’ or those up for being on an occu­pa­tion rota.

email ram­part at mutu­alaid dot org

We are also organ­is­ing a meet­ing which aims to breath new life into open­ing not just one new space to replace the ram­pART but ini­ti­ate a lon­don social cen­tres col­lec­tive which would try to ensure that there are plen­ty of social cen­tres, prefer­able through­out Lon­don on an ongo­ing basis.

It will take place 2pm Sun­day 6th Jan 08
please pass the word and come along if this inter­ests you.

Aldermaston bike ride March 2008

Bikes against the bomb!
Bike ride March 22nd-26th 2008

Bikes not bombs are plan­ning a bike ride from Lon­don to Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment and back again, as part of the 50th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the first Alder­mas­ton march

Bikes against the bomb!
Bike ride March 22nd-26th 2008

Bikes not bombs are plan­ning a bike ride from Lon­don to Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment and back again, as part of the 50th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions of the first Alder­mas­ton march

The bike ride is expect­ed to take 4 days (22nd March – 26th March 2008). If you would be inter­est­ed in attend­ing, or even bet­ter, in help­ing to organ­ise it, then please email info@bikesnotbombs.org.uk .

Fifty years on from the first Alder­mas­ton march, anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers need to work quick­ly to halt the tri­dent replace­ment. Alder­mas­ton atom­ic weapons estab­lish­ment is now build­ing research facil­i­ties to build the next gen­er­a­tion of nukes, despite this being ille­gal under the inter­na­tion­al non-pro­lif­er­a­tion treaty. Grab your bikes and come and help us stop them.

More than 5000 peo­ple are expect­ed to attend the sur­round the base event at Alder­mas­ton on the 24th March and we will form part of the bike block.

The bike ride will take an active role in anti-arms trade activ­i­ties

The first organ­is­ing meet­ing will be at the Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre (LARC) on Jan­u­ary 26th, at 2 p.m.

For more info please con­tact info@bikesnotbombs.org.uk

For direc­tions to LARC

62 Fieldgate Street, Whitechapel, Lon­don E1 1ES. http://www.remotegoat.co.uk/venue_view.php?uid=20591 for direc­tions

http://www.bikesnotbombs.org.uk

Shell to Sea protesters scale government building to reach Minister’s Office

Wednes­day Decem­ber 19, 2007

A small group of Shell to Sea activists scaled the heights of the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources today, to place a ban­ner read­ing PROTECT IRISH NATURAL RESOURCES on the bal­cony out­side Eamon Ryan’s office.

Natural Resources Department roof-top occupationWednes­day Decem­ber 19, 2007

A small group of Shell to Sea activists scaled the heights of the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources today, to place a ban­ner read­ing PROTECT IRISH NATURAL RESOURCES on the bal­cony out­side Eamon Ryan’s office.

Split­ting into two small teams, the pro­test­ers used advice from Green­Peace to dis­tract the secu­ri­ty and gain access to the Min­is­ter’s top floor office and leave a mes­sage for him.

This action was car­ried out to bring to pub­lic atten­tion the gov­ern­men­t’s sup­port for every aspect of the Ross­port pipeline/refinery scheme, and the give­away of Irish Nat­ur­al resources to multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies like Shell, with no last­ing ben­e­fit for peo­ple in Ire­land. The Green par­ty have now had a full term of the Dáil to hon­our their elec­tion promis­es, but sad­ly, their end of term report is is marked FAIL.

None of the gas or oil in the wells off the west­ern coast of Ire­land will belong to the state, since the gov­ern­ment still plans to give it all away for free to pri­vate com­pa­nies. The recent changes to licens­ing agree­ments won’t apply to the eight bil­lion euro Cor­rib project, and don’t amount to a seri­ous stake for the peo­ple of Ire­land in their own nat­ur­al resources, 100 per cent of which is still being giv­en away to com­pa­nies like Shell and Sta­toil.

None of the mon­ey from these fos­sil fuels will be invest­ed in renew­able sources of ener­gy like wind and wave pow­er, and no thought has been giv­en to the impact that the exploita­tion of these resources will have on cli­mate change.

Áine, one of the Shell to Sea pro­tes­tors, said “The gov­ern­men­t’s supine sup­port for the oil com­pa­nies shows that they pri­ori­tise the wel­fare of Shell share­hold­ers over the well­be­ing of their own cit­i­zens. Shell are being allowed to keep all the gas and sell it to the high­est bid­der, almost cer­tain­ly in Britain. The refin­ing of 4 mil­lion euro worth of raw gas per day will clear­ly degrade the envi­ron­ment, both local­ly for the peo­ple of Mayo, and also in terms of car­bon diox­ide emis­sions when the gas is used. From an Irish point of view, we would be bet­ter off leav­ing the gas where it is, under the sea.”

Shell to Sea pro­tes­tors have also point­ed out that the gov­ern­men­t’s dou­ble talk on cli­mate change can be clear­ly seen when they are sup­port­ing the con­struc­tion of a raw gas refin­ery, and say they are hop­ing for fur­ther exploita­tion of fos­sil fuels in the Atlantic mar­gin.

ÁÍne con­tin­ued: “Until sup­ply-side solu­tions are put in place, the con­tin­u­ing exploita­tion of fos­sil fuels will be adding to car­bon diox­ide emis­sions which is caus­ing cli­mate change. Any pos­si­ble ben­e­fit from this is lost because the gas and oil are sim­ply hand­ed over to the big cor­po­ra­tions. The peo­ple of Ire­land will see no advan­tage, either envi­ron­men­tal or finan­cial, from their own gas and oil resources.”

“Mean­while the cor­po­ra­tions which will see huge prof­its from Irish resources, seek to use the cheap­est and most dan­ger­ous way of exploit­ing them. Our gov­ern­ment is hap­py to see lives of peo­ple in Ire­land put at risk by the use of an onshore pipeline and refin­ery in Mayo, sim­ply to max­imise returns for Shell share­hold­ers. ”

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com

Short haul flight Manchester adverts cancelled

18.12.2007
Shock­ing U‑turn from short-haul car­ri­er!

Appar­ent­ly, Fly­Be has spot­ted the errors of their ways and can­celled their short-haul sum­mer routes. Bra­vo Fly­Be!

Domestic flights advert cancelled18.12.2007
Shock­ing U‑turn from short-haul car­ri­er!

Appar­ent­ly, Fly­Be has spot­ted the errors of their ways and can­celled their short-haul sum­mer routes. Bra­vo Fly­Be!

All they need now is to con­vince their mates Ryanair, Easy­jet, et al. that short-haul avi­a­tion is unsus­tain­able and head­ing us towards run-away cli­mate change.

jeremy Clarkson adverts subvertised

Spot­ted on the Under­ground at Kings Cross Sta­tion; two adverts pro­mot­ing DVD’s by Top Gear’s Jere­my Clark­son with large stick­ers stuck on declar­ing ‘This caus­es cli­mate change’.

Spot­ted on the Under­ground at Kings Cross Sta­tion; two adverts pro­mot­ing DVD’s by Top Gear’s Jere­my Clark­son with large stick­ers stuck on declar­ing ‘This caus­es cli­mate change’.

Community Day at Bellanaboy

Sun­day Decem­ber 16, 2007

A spe­cial prayer and car­ol ser­vice was held today at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, mark­ing the end of anoth­er year of com­mu­ni­ty strug­gle against Shel­l’s pro­posed raw gas pipeline and inland refin­ery.

Bellanboy carols 2007 1
Bellanboy carols 2007 2Sun­day Decem­ber 16, 2007

A spe­cial prayer and car­ol ser­vice was held today at Bel­lan­aboy, Coun­ty Mayo, mark­ing the end of anoth­er year of com­mu­ni­ty strug­gle against Shel­l’s pro­posed raw gas pipeline and inland refin­ery.

A good humoured gath­er­ing of more than 150 local peo­ple braved the bit­ter­ly cold east wind to take part in the occa­sion, which was presided over by local priests Fr. Michael Nallen PP and Fr. Sean Noone.

A ban­ner declar­ing “Gan Cead an Phobail” (No Com­mu­ni­ty Con­sent) was draped over the main gates while peo­ple sang Christ­mas Car­ols to wel­come in the fes­tive sea­son.

Also present was Lelia Doolin, a high pro­file cam­paign­er and mem­ber of the Bur­ren Action Group, who trav­elled from Gal­way espe­cial­ly for the day. Ms Doolin spoke of the sim­i­lar­i­ties between the Clare and Mayo cam­paigns, and how the deter­mi­na­tion of ordi­nary peo­ple can bring about real change.

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com/

Shell Oil and the Institutions Greenwashing Them Feel the ‘Heat’ on Climate Change, in Bristol

Sat­ur­day, Decem­ber 15th 2007

Effec­tive Direct Action and Pub­lic Protests Mark Exhibition’s Release in Bris­tol

It hasn’t been an easy week for the organ­is­ers of the Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award and the Bris­tol Muse­um, or their spon­sor and proud wildlife destroy­er— sug­ar­dad­dy Shell Oil Com­pa­ny. All week, con­cerned indi­vid­u­als from around Bris­tol have been expos­ing the truth about Shell and the pub­lic insti­tu­tions who are help­ing to green­wash them.

Bristol Shell exhibition opening protest 1
Bristol Shell exhibition opening protest 2
Bristol Shell exhibition opening protest 3
Sat­ur­day, Decem­ber 15th 2007

Effec­tive Direct Action and Pub­lic Protests Mark Exhibition’s Release in Bris­tol

It hasn’t been an easy week for the organ­is­ers of the Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award and the Bris­tol Muse­um, or their spon­sor and proud wildlife destroy­er— sug­ar­dad­dy Shell Oil Com­pa­ny. All week, con­cerned indi­vid­u­als from around Bris­tol have been expos­ing the truth about Shell and the pub­lic insti­tu­tions who are help­ing to green­wash them.

On Tues­day, activists staged a protest in the nation­al offices of the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine in Broad­mead, bring­ing work to a halt and reviv­ing con­tro­ver­sy with­in the orga­ni­za­tion about their rela­tion­ship with the oil indus­try. See fur­ther details of this action in pre­vi­ous arti­cle

On Fri­day evening, Bris­tol Muse­um host­ed a pri­vate, posh wine and cheese recep­tion to kick off their host­ing of Shell’s exhib­it, with atten­dees includ­ing Dawn Pri­maro­la, Labour MP from South Bris­tol and Helen Hol­land, leader of the Bris­tol City Coun­cil, who were all pat­ting them­selves on the back for car­ing about wildlife. Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide activists, dressed up to the nines, were admit­ted to the event under fake names, with one activist gain­ing access to the mic, and pos­ing as the Shell pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor. He then launched into a two minute speech (in the style of the yes men) thank­ing the city coun­cil and muse­um for help­ing to allow Shell’s destruc­tion of wildlife to con­tin­ue and call­ing the melt­ing of the Arc­tic ice cap a “tremen­dous busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty” by allow­ing access to mil­lions of bar­rels of oil under the ice cap. Amaz­ing­ly the mic was kept on through the entire­ty of the speech. (Full text of speech and video below)

Sat­ur­day saw a high­ly suc­cess­ful and well-attend­ed protest, mark­ing the open­ing of the SHELL spon­sored Wildlife pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the year exhi­bi­tion. Dozens of humans, about a dozen polar bears, a snow leop­ard, and a tiger gath­ered, com­plete with the Wild Lie counter-exhib­it. Pro­test­ers gath­ered in front of the muse­um, hand­ed out leaflets, cre­at­ing quite a spec­ta­cle. Some even­tu­al­ly made their way into the exhi­bi­tion hall, where Shell’s crimes were recount­ed, and a die-in took place to sym­bol­ize all the wildlife who have been killed because of oil greed, and who con­tin­ue to suf­fer the effects of cli­mate change. The protest, orga­nized by Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide, Friends of the Earth, and Peo­ple and Plan­et, showed that Bris­to­lians will not be qui­et in the face of cor­po­rate green­wash in our pub­lic insti­tu­tions.

Protests are expect­ed to con­tin­ue at the muse­um through Jan. 13, in an effort to edu­cate the pub­lic about the true nature of Shell’s activ­i­ties, and to main­tain pres­sure on the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine and Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um to drop Shell as a spon­sor. Peo­ple are encour­aged to go and see the pho­tographs and let the muse­um know about their dis­plea­sure about allow­ing a Shell spon­sored exhib­it space in a city-owned muse­um.

The protest today also coin­cid­ed with a shock­ing report in this week­end’s Finan­cial Times. It high­lights Shel­l’s role in the immi­nent dev­as­ta­tion of the athabas­ca tar sands.
See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/53058af8-aaaf-11dc-a779-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

Bri­an Straub, Shell Canada’s vice-pres­i­dent for oil sands makes the com­pa­nies posi­tion very clear: “We’re clear­ly putting all we have across the Shell world toward devel­op­ing this resource. If we weren’t here it would just be woods”

Take action:

If you want to protest about Bris­tol Muse­um and the BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine green­wash­ing Shell then please write briefly to each of these organ­i­sa­tions. There will be many with­in each organ­i­sa­tion sym­pa­thet­ic to our stance — let­ters will sup­port their posi­tion.

Bris­tol Coun­cil: customer.services@bristol.gov.uk

Bris­tol Muse­um: general.museum@bristol.gov.uk

BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine: wildlifemagazine@bbcmagazinesbristol.com

Edi­tor Evening Post: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=144933&command=newPage

Read more about Shell’s hor­rif­ic envi­ron­men­tal record and the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing oil com­pa­ny spon­sor­ship of cul­tur­al events:

“Shell Wildlife Destroy­er of the Year”, Friends of the Earth,
Octo­ber 2006
http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/shell_wildlife_destroyer.pdf

Arc­tic Ice Free by 2013: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm

Trag­ic His­to­ry Muse­um: http://www.shelloiledwildlife.org.uk/

Art Not Oil: http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/gallery/v/shell

Full text of speech read by Der­rick Leavus­sum, “pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor for Shell”

Good evening my name is Derek Leavus­sum, pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor for Shell. I want to wel­come you all to the 2007 Shell Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year Award. As you can imag­ine- I don’t have an easy job, what with all this fuss about melt­ing glac­i­ers, extreme weath­er and wildlife extinc­tions. I’d like to thank the Bris­tol City Coun­cil, BBC Wildlife Mag­a­zine and the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um for mak­ing my job all that much eas­i­er by allow­ing us to spon­sor your wild lie- I mean wildlife- exhi­bi­tion.

We pre­fer not to see the melt­ing of the Arc­tic ice cap as a threat to human civ­i­liza­tion. We see it as a busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ty. After all, there are mil­lions of bar­rels of oil under there just wait­ing to be extract­ed. And we’ll need all the ener­gy we can get since we’ve just aban­doned our solar pro­gram. When you see the Shell logo, we don’t want you to think about the whale habi­tat we’re destroy­ing in Siberia and Ire­land, human rights vio­la­tions in Nige­ria, and espe­cial­ly not cli­mate change. This may all be true but the fact is that the world needs oil and this is sim­ply the price of progress.

Some say it’s iron­ic that the world’s sec­ond largest oil com­pa­ny is spon­sor­ing a wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy exhi­bi­tion- but Shell is tru­ly com­mit­ted to preser­va­tion of the polar bear and oth­er wildlife- in pho­tographs if not in the real world. Some say it’s the end of the oil age- but we say it’s just the begin­ning- we’re thrilled about dig­ging into Canada’s oil sands and with your help we can con­tin­ue to deceive the pub­lic into think­ing we’re a respon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen. Thank you all for com­ing tonight and we hope you enjoy view­ing these amaz­ing pho­tographs of wildlife that Shell is destroy­ing- I mean con­serv­ing.

Also a spe­cial thanks to Dawn Pri­maro­la and the Labour par­ty for sup­port­ing a third run­way at Heathrow and ensur­ing that there remains a healthy demand for our prod­ucts.

The rev­o­lu­tion will not be motorised!

Video of Der­rick Leavus­some, Shell “pub­lic rela­tions direc­tor” speaks to the posh recep­tion at Bris­tol Muse­um.

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

Santas of Excessive Consumption in Norwich & London

Sub­ver­sive Singing San­tas Spread Sea­son­al San­i­ty

15.12.2007
Today, on one of the busiest shop­ping days of the year, activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide dressed up as San­tas and vis­it­ed Chapelfield Mall to sing a dif­fer­ent tune to the usu­al buy, buy, buy mad­ness of the hol­i­day sea­son.

Norwich SantasSub­ver­sive Singing San­tas Spread Sea­son­al San­i­ty

15.12.2007
Today, on one of the busiest shop­ping days of the year, activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide dressed up as San­tas and vis­it­ed Chapelfield Mall to sing a dif­fer­ent tune to the usu­al buy, buy, buy mad­ness of the hol­i­day sea­son.

Bear­ing a fes­tive ban­ner read­ing Lap­land is Melt­ing and singing sub­vert­ed Christ­mas car­ols (Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land, Oh Lit­tle Town of Chapelfield, etc.), the San­tas set up out­side the tem­ple to con­sump­tion that is Chapelfield Mall.

Many stressed-out shop­pers broke into smiles of recog­ni­tion as the lyrics reached their ears: ‘Hit the malls with wads of mon­ey fa la la la / Breath­ing air that’s stale and ster­ile fa la la la’ or ‘To some folks Christ­mas means a time for gath­er­ing with friends / But TV says it’s time for pricey gifts and self­ish ends’. Mall secu­ri­ty how­ev­er were not so pleased with the ‘please don’t shop here’ tunes, and the San­tas were moved on – but not before send­ing a streak of san­i­ty through con­sumer won­der­land.

The San­tas’ car­ols also high­light­ed the fact that binge con­sump­tion at Christ­mas-time is direct­ly linked to cli­mate change (‘This shop­ping toil is wast­ing oil’). Hol­i­day food, trav­el, lights, and gifts pro­duce on aver­age 650 kg of CO2 emis­sions per indi­vid­ual. In total, that’s 5.5% of the year­ly car­bon foot­print of the UK.

‘Every gift that’s pro­duced, trans­port­ed, bought, used, and thrown away uses up ener­gy that we don’t have, and cre­ates emis­sions that our cli­mate can’t han­dle. And if that prod­uct is made of plas­tic (like all those cheap toys that will be bro­ken or dis­card­ed in a week’s time), then it’s lit­er­al­ly made of oil’, said one San­ta from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide.

Said anoth­er: ‘Us San­tas aren’t sug­gest­ing you don’t give your loved ones presents this year. But why not make one or two of them, trade with friends, or buy local­ly. Think about the prod­ucts you’re buy­ing – what they’re made of, where they came from, how they got from there to here… and whether they’re actu­al­ly going to make some­one any hap­pi­er.’

norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich

—————————————-

London Santas 2
San­tas of Exces­sive Con­sump­tion on Oxford Street

San­tas singing alter­na­tive car­ols on Oxford street in Lon­don today (15 Decem­ber).

Today, on the last big shop­ping week­end of the year, LRT went to Oxford street to sing alter­na­tive car­ols for all the love­ly boys and girls who were busy rac­ing around in a rush to spend.

Dressed as San­tas and Elves, we brought not only cheer, but some hope too, as we got loads of pos­i­tive feed­back. The San­tas sang for about two hours.

Christ­mas Car­ols (thanks to The Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Dream)

1
Con­sumer Won­der­land
(To the tune of Win­ter Won­der­land, lyrics by Eri­ca Avery)

The TV’s on / are you watch­ing?
Anoth­er prod­uct / that they’re hawk­ing
one more thing you need
to make life com­plete
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

In the stores / you will hear it
“Pricey gifts / show hol­i­day spir­it”
That’s what they call it
to get to your wal­let
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

At the mall we can go out shop­ping
and buy lots of stuff we can’t afford
we’ll have lots of fun with our new toys
until we real­ize that we’re still bored
When you shop / ain’t it thrilling
until / you get the billing
the mon­ey you still owe the stuff broke long ago
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

2
Uh Oh We’re In The Red, Dear

(To the tune of Rudolph the red-nose rein­deer)

Uh oh we’re in the red, dear
On our cred­it card it shows
Christ­mas is almost over
But the deb­it line still grows
Shop­ping like San­ta’s zom­bies
Sent our bud­get down in flames
But all our Christ­mas spir­it
Helped the giant retail chains

I’m so fog­gy Christ­mas Eve
Won­der­ing how we’ll pay
Christ­mas does­n’t seem so bright
When our finances are tight

So here’s a plan for next year
Let’s for­get the shop­ping spree
Let’s give a gift of love, so
All our Christ­mas gifts are free

3
God Rest Ye Mer­ry Gen­tle­men

Slow down ye fran­tic shop­pers for there’s some­thing we must say
If you would spare a moment all the stores would go away
Big busi­ness has been telling us what Christ­mas means today

Now it’s time we decid­ed for our­selves, for our­selves
Yes it’s time we decid­ed for our­selves.

To some folks Christ­mas means a time for gath­er­ing with friends
And ene­mies might take it as a time to make amends
But TV says it’s time for pricey gifts and self­ish ends

Now it’s time we decid­ed for our­selves, for our­selves
Yes it’s time we decid­ed for our­selves.

Some peo­ple feel that Christ­mas is when Jesus makes a call
For oth­ers it’s a time to stress good will and peace to all
But adver­tis­ers tell us it means San­ta’s at the mall

Now it’s time we decid­ed for our­selves, for our­selves
Yes it’s time we decid­ed for our­selves.

4
Jin­gle All The Way
To the tune of Jin­gle Bells

Cho­rus:
Prof­its here, prof­its there,
prof­its every­where
Christ­mas time is fun­ny
we smell mon­ey in the air
Adver­tise, glam­or­ize,
fool you with a flair.
Let’s make sure that Christ­mas
is a busi­nesslike affair.

You’re eat­ing up our lies and dash­ing to the stores
Then all our prices rise and how the mon­ey pours
If we don’t keep you drugged and watch­ing your TV
You might see the hypocrisy
then where would busi­ness be?

Cho­rus

We’ll tell you how to think and tell you what to try
What to eat and drink and how to live and die
And if our plan suc­ceeds, when Christ­mas-time is nigh
Instead of seek­ing love and peace you’ll hunt for gifts to buy

Cho­rus

5
To the tune of Lit­tle Town of Beth­le­hem

Oh gen­tle folk of Lon­don Town
Think how they feed us lies
All through the streets the shops com­pete
Urg­ing us to buy and buy
Whilst else­where explodeth
Anoth­er bomb tonight
As inno­cents fall
Were in the shop­ping mall
This doesn’t quite seem right.

Spend all our cash, we’re feel­ing flash
As the queues grow and grow
Buy­ing lux­u­ry goods and loads of food
for folks we hard­ly know
Whilst in so many places
The peo­ple starve and die
As I carve my bird
It’s quite absurd
We buy into this lie

Then at new year the sales appear
And everything’s reduced
In store we see new prod­uct lines
And know that we’ve been duped
We wish that we had wait­ed
Until now to buy
The model’s been updat­ed
It makes us want to cry.

6
To the tune of Once in Roy­al David’s City

Once in dirty Lon­don City
Stood a huge big fuck off shop
Where they sold their goods aplen­ty
And the shop­ping did not stop
Brand­ed bags all over­flow­ing
All their sav­ings quick­ly going
Thus con­sumerism wild
Yule’s cheer mes­sage has defiled
Thus con­sumerism wild
Yule’s cheer mes­sage has defiled

7
To the tune of Silent Night

Silent night holy night
Bombs go boom,Soldiers fight
Round the stores the suck­ers trawl
Buy­ing crap for one and all
Shop until you drop
Shop until you drop

8
To the tune of Oh Come All Ye Faith­ful

Oh come all ye shop­pers
Bur­dened and despon­dent
Come all ye fol­low­ers of ma-a-mon
Come and buy things
Spark­ly and redun­dant

Oh come let us ignore it
Oh come let us deplore it
Oh come let us abhore it
Mon­ey and greed.

Ring tills with prof­it
Ring in exploita­tion
Ring all ye reg­is­ters of cap­i­tal­ism
Glo­ry to prof­it
At it’s high­est

Oh come let us ignore it
Oh come let us deplore it
Oh come let us abhore it
Mon­ey and greed.

9
To the tune of Away in a Manger

Away in a sweat­shop
A pit­tance for pay
Work under age chil­dren
With no time to play
Mak­ing train­ers and T‑shirts
And lux­u­ry goods
Threat­ened with vio­lence
And giv­en no food

The stars in the media
Encour­age our greed
They’re mak­ing us want things
We don’t real­ly need
Still wast­ing resources
And scram­bling our brains
We’re using up car­bon
With lit­tle to gain.

10
To the tune of “Frosty the Snow­man”

Cheney the oil man
Was a jol­ly hap­py crook
With a secret past and alot of cash from cook­ing up the books
Cheney the oil man
Was a greedy guy I’m told
Because he want­ed Hal­libur­ton to buy up all the oil
There must have been some mag­ic in that pace­mak­er he wore
Because some­how his heart could han­dle the vio­lence and the gore
Thumpi­ty Thump Thump Thumpi­ty Thump Thump Look at Cheney toil
Thumpi­ty Thump Thump Thumpi­ty Thump Thump Over fields of oil.
Cheney the oil man
got his dream come true
He stole 87 Bil­lion from me and you.

11
To the tune of “Joy to the World”

Joy to the World the Love has come
To Lib­er­ate us all.
The work­ers all are poor
From shop­ping at these stores
Let heav­en and nature sing,
Let heav­en and nature sing,
And stop and stop shop­ping.
Joy to the World the Love has come
To Lib­er­ate us all
No one can afford
This birth­day for Lord
Lets join togeth­er and sing
Lets join togeth­er and sing
And stop and stop shop­ping

info@londonrisingtide.org
http://londonrisingtide.org.uk

Rising Tide Rooftop Protest at Newquay airport 15.12.07

Some­times you’re lucky…

For the recent­ly formed Ker­now and Ply­mouth Ris­ing Tide groups, yes­ter­day marked an esca­la­tion in their fight against cli­mate change and for envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. How­ev­er the planned rooftop protest at Newquay air­port was giv­en an unlike­ly boost when builders at the air­port left a lad­der propped up…which was just as well because ours broke!

Newquay Airport actionSome­times you’re lucky…

For the recent­ly formed Ker­now and Ply­mouth Ris­ing Tide groups, yes­ter­day marked an esca­la­tion in their fight against cli­mate change and for envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice. How­ev­er the planned rooftop protest at Newquay air­port was giv­en an unlike­ly boost when builders at the air­port left a lad­der propped up…which was just as well because ours broke!

Newquay air­port spe­cialis­es in cli­mate-wreck­ing short haul flights and is an obvi­ous legit­i­mate tar­get for envi­ron­men­tal action. How­ev­er, we were also rais­ing the issue of a recent report into the air­port which shows that the eco­nom­ic case for expan­sion is unsound.
http://www.groundswellcornwall.org/newquayairport

Yes­ter­day we arrived at the air­port on the bus. We weren’t the most like­ly look­ing bunch, but as usu­al the place was pret­ty desert­ed and we were able to reach our cho­sen point to access the roof. How­ev­er our lad­der ( from a kid’s bunk-bed ) broke, leav­ing our bird­man dan­gling com­i­cal­ly. Luck­i­ly for us, the builders’ shiny new lad­der was unat­tend­ed, so we used that one instead! The bird­man regained his foot­ing and five activists occu­pied the roof. We had two big ban­ners read­ing; NO PUBLIC DEBATE, NO PUBLIC DEMAND, ALL PRIVATE GAIN and NO MORE HOT AIR ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

We man­aged to get the press there before the police. When the police did arrive they were hap­py to let us have some cov­er­age and even com­plete a TV slot before ask­ing us to get down or get arrest­ed. The five activists on the roof were sup­port­ed with music, danc­ing and pup­petry from the ground. We also had a media team and legal observ­er present.

We made local TV and radio head­lines and expect good cov­er­age in the local papers. All in all it was a fan­tas­tic day, if a bit nip­py! For the groups involved it was an ener­gis­ing, empow­er­ing expe­ri­ence.

We are also arrang­ing a pub­lic meet­ing about the expan­sion plans ( St. Maw­gan Com­mu­ni­ty Hall 12.1.08 at 7pm. ) and are hop­ing to get rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Grounswell and the air­port along­side our­selves.
Here’s a link to a BBC report on the action; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7146159.stm

15.12.2007
PRESS RELEASE

Cli­mate Activists Spot­light Newquay Air­port

Cli­mate activists from Ris­ing Tide[1] have occu­pied Newquay air­port today. The demon­stra­tors are call­ing for an imme­di­ate halt to expan­sion of the airport[2] and a pub­lic debate on its future. With ban­ners, leaflets and cos­tumes — the peace­ful protest calls atten­tion to the air­port as an obsta­cle to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment in the Coun­ty.

Avi­a­tion cur­rent­ly accounts for 13% of the UK’s con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change and is the fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emissions[3]. Newquay air­port offers only domes­tic and short haul flights[4], con­demned by MPs[5]. Fly­ing does ten times more dam­age to the cli­mate than tak­ing the train[6], while des­ti­na­tions served from Newquay are easy to reach by train or coach[7].

This year we have seen the worst flood­ing in decades, from cen­tral Africa and South Asia to York­shire and Glouces­ter­shire. Mean­while, Greece, Italy and Cal­i­for­nia have strug­gled with bush-fires in tin­der-dry con­di­tions. Despite these warn­ings, del­e­gates at the UN cli­mate talks in Bali con­tin­ued to resist mean­ing­ful cuts in green­house gas emis­sions.

Today’s demon­stra­tors are also alarmed fol­low­ing the con­clu­sions of a recent report[8] com­mis­sioned by Groundswell[9], which refutes the Coun­ty Coun­cil’s claim that Corn­wal­l’s future devel­op­ment depends upon expan­sion of the air­port. The report con­cludes that the eco­nom­ic case for expan­sion of the air­port is weak and that the air­port’s cur­rent oper­at­ing deficit of around one mil­lion pounds per year is met by Corn­wall Coun­ty Council[10], through high­er coun­cil tax or cuts in ser­vices.

In light of the immi­nent prob­lems of cli­mate change and peak oil it is cru­cial that local gov­ern­ment invest in sus­tain­able pub­lic trans­port. A recent report by Vis­it Scot­land con­cludes: “A tourism econ­o­my with­out a sus­tain­able trans­port pol­i­cy and sys­tem means less tourism in the long term” [11]

Sub­stan­tial pub­lic funds must not be invest­ed in a project which would increase Corn­wal­l’s CO2 emis­sions and dam­age the local envi­ron­ment, under a plan which takes no account of ris­ing oil prices. The expan­sion of Newquay air­port must be stopped.

Notes:

1. Ris­ing tide is a glob­al net­work of local groups, tak­ing action against cli­mate change and build­ing a move­ment based on social and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice.
2. Expan­sion plans, backed by…
3. 13% — from Answer to Com­mons Par­lia­men­tary Ques­tion 2 May 2007.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/emissions
4. http://www.flightmapping.com/UK/Newquay/
http://www.newquaycornwallairport.com/index.cfm?articleid=40516
5. The Bat­tle of Newquay: Green lob­by launch­es war to curb domes­tic flights
By Jonathan Brown and Ian Her­bert
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2366512.ece
6. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/tags/emissions
7. http://www.seat61.com
8. Newquay Air­port Expan­sion The Case Exam­ined
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9dytjtz5n2v
9. Groundswell is an inde­pen­dent group of Cor­nish deci­sion mak­ers
http://www.groundswellcornwall.org/who
10. Newquay Air­port Expan­sion: The Case Exam­ined, Eliz­a­beth Baines,
Com­mis­sioned by Groundswell Corn­wall. Page 40.
11. Vis­it Scot­land Research ( http://www.visitscotland.org),
Tomorrow’s World: Con­sumer and Tourist, vol. 2, no. 1, May 2006, page 12:
http://www.scotexchange.net/tomorrow_s_newsheet_180506.pdf

NB: Corn­wall Coun­ty Coun­cil became sole own­ers of the air­port in 2004… Newquay Air­port Expan­sion: The Case Exam­ined, Eliz­a­beth Baines, Com­mis­sioned by Groundswell Corn­wall. Page 5.

NB: Ris­ing Tide activists in Corn­wall also took part in a recent nation­al day of action to high­light the cli­mate impact of RBS (Roy­al Bank of Scot­land) invest­ments, RBS brand­ed itself The Oil and Gas bank. The activists appeared with ban­ners and leaflets out­side the RBS branch in Truro.

ker­now [at] risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk

Save the Woodhead Tunnel — first meeting details

A pre­vi­ous post here out­lined the threat to the Wood­head Rail­way Tun­nel by the multi­na­tion­al ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion, Nation­al Grid.

A pre­vi­ous post here out­lined the threat to the Wood­head Rail­way Tun­nel by the multi­na­tion­al ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion, Nation­al Grid.

A new cam­paign has organ­ised a meet­ing for those who wish to become involved in the fight against these pro­pos­als. It is to be held at Brad­bury Com­mu­ni­ty House (Mar­ket Street, Glos­sop, Der­byshire, SK13 8AR) on Tues­day 18th Decem­ber, com­menc­ing at 7.00 p.m.

The pur­pose of the meet­ing is pri­mar­i­ly to hear more infor­ma­tion about the sit­u­a­tion and to debate and for­mu­late ideas and action to keep the Wood­head Tun­nel open for what it was built for — trains and not cables that facil­i­tate unsus­tain­able — and ris­ing — ener­gy con­sump­tion.

The cam­paign has a web­site www.savethewoodheadtunnel.blogspot.com and an email address savethewoodheadtunnel@gmail.com.