Author: earthfirst

Early Feb Critical Masses

4.02.2007 — York:

Anoth­er month, anoth­er ride, and this time around we nar­row­ly exceed­ed the pre­vi­ous months atten­dance. How­ev­er, the police made anoth­er brief inter­ven­tion, as two cycle police and an offi­cer on foot joined the ride.

4.02.2007 — York:

Anoth­er month, anoth­er ride, and this time around we nar­row­ly exceed­ed the pre­vi­ous months atten­dance. How­ev­er, the police made anoth­er brief inter­ven­tion, as two cycle police and an offi­cer on foot joined the ride.

The women PC (on foot) was imme­di­ate­ly very hos­tile, demand­ing that cyclists pro­ceed sin­gle file, essen­tial­ly mak­ing the ride point­less. How­ev­er, they bizarrely van­ished, and the ride fin­ished off more or less in one piece. This did have the effect of encour­ag­ing a few rid­ers to leave ear­ly. There was a bizarre moment where an offi­cer announced into their radio that they’d found the organ­is­er. Iron­i­cal­ly, this was the one reg­u­lar rid­er who’d been much qui­eter than usu­al!

The ride head­ed out through Monkbar and along the last untouched sec­tion of the inner ring: Lord May­or’s Walk. The ride than head­ed past the hos­pi­tal, where the ride had to evac­u­ate the road to allow an ambu­lance through. Over the bridge into the Clifton area, and along Bur­ton Stone Lane, before head­ing out to Clifton Green. Here the ride crossed the riv­er, and head­ed through Lee­man Road, before rid­ing along Rougi­er Street and back across Ouse­bridge.

The next ride will be on 3rd March, when skies will just about still be light when we set off. And look­ing ahead, the first “sum­mer time” ride will be on 6th April, Good Fri­day, when the ride will be adver­tised as fam­i­ly friend­ly (and much eas­i­er to pho­to­graph!!). It’ll be inter­est­ing to see what the police decide to do next: it won’t be sur­pris­ing if they fail to show up until mid­way through yet again. Legal­ly, they have no right to pre­vent the ride, nor to inter­fere with it, oth­er than if the ride stops mid-road or mid-junc­tion. What­ev­er hap­pens, it should be fun non-the-less.

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Fri­day 2nd Feb­ru­ary – St Philip’s Cathe­dral, Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre:

The sec­ond Crit­i­cal Mass cycle ride of 2007 was to cel­e­brate the legal appeal vic­to­ry of Daniel Cad­den who refused to cycle in the gut­ter.
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/01/361089.html

Crit­i­cal Mass has steadi­ly seen increas­ing num­bers of rid­ers tak­ing part. This month almost 30 Birm­ing­ham cyclists met up for a cycle ride around the city cen­tre to high­light the increas­ing pres­ence of cyclists on our streets. The rides are expect­ed to increase the con­scious­ness of oth­er road-users to the safe­ty needs of cyclists as well as demon­strat­ing that cycling is a fun, viable, healthy and envi­ron­men­tal­ly-benign alter­na­tive to infer­nal com­bus­tion pow­ered vehi­cles.

This month’s ride saw the arrival of Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass’ first junior rid­er in the shape of a two-year-old trail­er pas­sen­ger. Through­out the ride she was able to lux­u­ri­ate in her car­riage and enjoy a range of pop­u­lar songs relat­ed to cycling. The ride was also pub­li­cised on the sound sys­tem using a sam­pled voice declar­ing ‘We are Crit­i­cal Mass, come ride with us’.

Next month’s Mass will also be accom­pa­nied by a musi­cal trail­er and it is hoped that peo­ple will sub­mit their favourite tunes before­hand for inclu­sion in a com­pi­la­tion to be played as the ride goes on. This will take place over the Brum Crit­i­cal Mass riseup.net group. Sign up now, sub­mit your tune ideas and come and hear them on 2nd March. The rise­up group has now exceed­ed 50 mem­bers and more are expect­ed fol­low­ing this month’s ride.
Future ride ideas include a ride of suits with bowler hat­ted cyclists Mass­ing through Birmingham’s rush hour and heavy fly­er­ing along busy city cycle routes.

http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/brumcriticalmass

Oil spill at the Natural History Museum (& demos in Aberdeen & Manchester)

3.02.2007

Today at the Shell-spon­sored Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, 20 activists inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action (1), smeared oil over the pho­tographs. This was an act of out­rage at Shell’s painful­ly trans­par­ent attempts to green­wash its rep­u­ta­tion via cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship.

3.02.2007

Today at the Shell-spon­sored Wildlife Pho­tog­ra­ph­er of the Year exhi­bi­tion at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um, 20 activists inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action (1), smeared oil over the pho­tographs. This was an act of out­rage at Shell’s painful­ly trans­par­ent attempts to green­wash its rep­u­ta­tion via cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship.

Shel­l’s spon­sor­ship of the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um is deeply iron­ic, since it dev­as­tates wildlife and the envi­ron­ment around the world through the extrac­tion and pro­duc­tion of ever more oil and gas.

Today’s action comes hard on the heels of the release of Shel­l’s 2006 finan­cial fig­ures, doc­u­ment­ing the 13 bil­lions of pounds made at the expense of peo­ple and the plan­et. Shell’s activ­i­ties extract­ing oil result in major eco­log­i­cal and social impacts. Trad­ing 3.6 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil equiv­a­lent a day, the com­pa­ny is also a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change, which has been pre­dict­ed to wipe out a quar­ter of all species on the plan­et by 2050, and to dev­as­tate the poor­est regions of the plan­et (2). The extent of the threat was high­light­ed on Fri­day with the release of the UN’s Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change fourth report.

For all these rea­sons, the cli­mate camp activists are call­ing on the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um to end its oily spon­sor­ship deal with Shell.

As the black oil-like liq­uid has been spread over the glass cov­er­ing the pho­tographs, the activists have not dam­aged the work itself. As Dan Bak­er said, “This is not an attack on the work of the pho­tog­ra­phers. Shell does not deserve to have its name asso­ci­at­ed with their beau­ti­ful images.” A ban­ner read­ing “Make Nature His­to­ry Muse­um — spon­sored by Shell” was also unfurled.

Activist Daisy Williams said, “This action sheds light on the ugly stain that cov­ers this exhi­bi­tion as a result of the Muse­um’s col­lu­sion with Shell. We’re here to make sure every­one knows about this despi­ca­ble green­wash spon­sor­ship deal. With more pub­lic pres­sure, we can kick Shell out of the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um!”

For high res­o­lu­tion pho­tos of today’s action, vis­it this image site:
https://www.theimagefile.com/?skin=2903&ppwd=ks8551dt&Action=_VC&id=59798

A short video of the Shell Oil Wildlife Pho­to­graph Exhi­bi­tion at the Lon­don Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um get­ting pol­lut­ed with sticky black stuff.
NHM_Shell_painting — video/x‑ms-wmv 12M

For inter­views call: 07913 299 852

And also today, on the occa­sion of the UN Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change releas­ing it’s lat­est report ->

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Well done! Ten of us held a protest out­side a Shell petrol sta­tion in Aberdeen at the same time, with a large ban­ner and plac­ards, and we men­tioned the Lon­don action in our press release, too.

aberdeen_climatechange@yahoo.co.uk
http://climatechangecampaign.blogspot.com
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On 3rd Feb­ru­ary 07 the Cli­mate Change cam­paign­ers were joined by Rhythms of Resis­tance Man­ches­ter to raise aware­ness about glob­al cli­mate change issues. The event took place in the city cen­tre. Cam­paign­ers gave out news­pa­pers and leaflets inform­ing peo­ple about what they could do to make a dif­fer­ence and high­light­ing detri­men­tal gov­ern­ment plans regard­ing future ener­gy pro­vi­sion for the UK.

Rhythms of Resis­tance played draw­ing in spec­ta­tors who were then treat­ed to envi­ron­men­tal street the­atre. The atmos­phere was pos­i­tive and peo­ple seemed to engage with the issues.

Environment minister pied as he tried to GreenWash the governments destructive environmental policies.

On 2 Febuary at around 3pm, a group of peo­ple under the guise of fic­tion­al com­pa­ny ‘Green­wash & Co’, did a satir­i­cal per­for­mance at a talk being giv­en by the cur­rent UK min­is­ter for the envi­ron­ment, David Miliband, at Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty. The min­is­ter was then pied in the face by a lone pie-bear­er in an unre­lat­ed inci­dent.

Edinburgh greenwash Milliband pieOn 2 Febuary at around 3pm, a group of peo­ple under the guise of fic­tion­al com­pa­ny ‘Green­wash & Co’, did a satir­i­cal per­for­mance at a talk being giv­en by the cur­rent UK min­is­ter for the envi­ron­ment, David Miliband, at Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty. The min­is­ter was then pied in the face by a lone pie-bear­er in an unre­lat­ed inci­dent.

One Mem­ber of Green­Wash & co said
“We are here to put a green sheen over the ter­ri­ble envi­ron­men­tal track record of the New Labour gov­ern­ment. Our assis­tance was thought to be par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant giv­en the pres­ence of the Rt Hon. Mr Miliband as fig­ure­head of the gov­ern­men­t’s lat­est wave of envi­ron­men­tal spin and green rhetoric. With air­port expan­sions, road build­ing schemes and con­tin­ued ille­gal for­eign pol­i­cy in the scram­ble for oil con­trol, the gov­ern­ment need all the help they can get in green­ing up their image.”

Anoth­er Mem­ber of Green­Wash & co said
“Green­wash has become a wide­spread and very harm­ful issue in the fight for envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Now any polit­i­cal body or cor­po­ra­tion can reel off a few well-placed buzz­words or imple­ment an insub­stan­tial pol­i­cy and appear ‘green’ with­out real­ly hav­ing to make any seri­ous changes. This is lulling peo­ple into a false sense of secu­ri­ty. The pur­pose of protests like this is to show peo­ple what lies beneath the rhetoric and to wake up to the in-action and spin that sur­rounds us regard­ing envi­ron­men­tal issues. Ques­tion every­thing: ‘green’ is not always what it seems.”

Green­Wash & Co use satire and pan­tomime to per­form a new kind of polit­i­cal protest through clown­ing and audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion. They aim to change the grounds upon which protest is con­duct­ed by per­form­ing at a cul­tur­al lev­el and mock­ing exist­ing pow­er struc­tures so as to reveal their con­tra­dic­tions, untruths, spin and con­trol. They have a strict­ly non-vio­lent phi­los­o­phy and always try to keep things as light heart­ed as pos­si­ble despite the incred­i­ble seri­ous­ness of issues like cli­mate change.

The group stormed the talk with a ban­ner say­ing “GREENWASH pol­lut­ing real­i­ty with rhetoric” and got straight to work clean­ing all of those dirty gov­ern­ment poli­cies and brush­ing all of our car­bon under the car­pet (through the car­bon mar­ket). The crowd cheered at the well humoured the­atrics but after a few min­utes as the secu­ri­ty amassed, the per­form­ers made a dig­ni­fied exit to the applause of the crowd.

Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly in a total­ly unre­lat­ed inci­dent an autonomous indi­vid­ual call­ing him­self Colonel Crust used the the­atrics as a dis­trac­tion to thrust a veg­an short-crust pas­try con­fec­tion into the well kept hair of Rt Hon Mil­liband. Wit­ness­es said the min­is­ter appeared dis­pleased until he tast­ed the bright green cus­tard and was present­ly sur­prised by the qual­i­ty of the pie.

You can con­tact David Mil­liband to con­grat­u­late him for his Green-wash­ing abil­i­ties via his email address, david.miliband (at) defra.gsi.gov.uk

The Trebanos Five — “Ramblers” arrested on route of National Grids Pipeline

This morn­ing ( Wed 31-01-2007 ) five peo­ple were arrest­ed on the pub­lic foot­path run­ning through the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos, South Wales.

The Tre­banos Five.…. Whose quick deci­sion mak­ing left a bit to be desired were arrest­ed today for “learn­ing Ital­ian, hav­ing a pic­nic and read­ing” on an ille­galy closed pub­lic foot­path in Tre­banos.….. Hav­ing being giv­en 5 min­utes to move on, they were hand­cuffed and man­han­dled whilst decid­ing what to do next( three min­utes lat­er.…) They are now known as The Tre­banos Faffing Five !!!

This morn­ing ( Wed 31-01-2007 ) five peo­ple were arrest­ed on the pub­lic foot­path run­ning through the con­struc­tion site in Tre­banos, South Wales.

The Tre­banos Five.…. Whose quick deci­sion mak­ing left a bit to be desired were arrest­ed today for “learn­ing Ital­ian, hav­ing a pic­nic and read­ing” on an ille­galy closed pub­lic foot­path in Tre­banos.….. Hav­ing being giv­en 5 min­utes to move on, they were hand­cuffed and man­han­dled whilst decid­ing what to do next( three min­utes lat­er.…) They are now known as The Tre­banos Faffing Five !!!

The foot­path was sub­ject to an “undat­ed” clo­sure notice on Thurs­day 25th Jan­u­ary 2007. The notice gave 7 days notice. Today’s arrests on the foot­path were with­in the 7 day peri­od and those arrest­ed are seek­ing legal advice with regards their wrong­ful arrest.

Neath Port Tal­bot CBC who closed the foot­path are soon to be sub­ject to a Judi­cial Revue for the way they han­dled the plan­ning process. Nation­al Grid are now threat­en­ing local peo­ple in South Wales that they will sue them should their work be delayed any longer.…

Nation­al Grids Secu­ri­ty Guards, sor­ry I mean The South Wales Police Force, seemed very pleased with them­sleves and were filmed and pho­tographed by a local res­i­dent con­cerned for the safe­ty of those arrest­ed.
Up to 40 police offi­cers were on hand to arrest the five young peo­ple.

Nation­al Grids 48″ dia, high pres­sure pipeline has caused a storm of con­tro­vesy. The envi­ro­men­tal issues, safe­ty issues, the lack of democ­ra­cy and the abuse of human rights have drawn sup­port for the pro­tes­tors from all of the UK, The Bahamas, Cal­i­for­nia and Ross­port.

The Tre­banos Five were arrest­ed with­in a few feet of the site where Nation­al Grid are attempt­ing to dig a 30 mtrs deep ver­ti­cal shaft through which will trav­el the 48″ pipe. The pipe goes through much of the South Wales Coal­field and also through the Bre­con Bea­cons Nation­al Park.

Nation­al Grid claim this pipeline is essen­tial for our future ener­gy needs. That has been dis­proved using their own data. This pipeline is not need­ed, it is not want­ed and it is a dan­ger­ous project which will only add to our car­bon foot­print. The con­tin­ued use of fos­sil fuels, which is clear­ly sup­port­ed by our gov­ern­ment and police force, can only end in dis­as­ter. We may not see all of the effects today, but our chil­dren and their chil­dren will have to live with the results of our bla­tant dis­re­gard of the Earth.

The Bristol Alliance Against Urban 4x4s celebrated its launch on Saturday

30.01.2007

Cam­paign­ers gath­ered on Col­lege Green, after spend­ing the morn­ing issu­ing over 1,000 mock park­ing tick­ets to 4x4s in areas of cen­tral Bris­tol includ­ing Red­land, Clifton and Broad­mead. The paper tick­ets, which are placed harm­less­ly under the wind­screen wipers of parked vehi­cles, are titled ‘Poor Vehi­cle Choice’ and chal­lenge the need to own and dri­ve a 4x4 vehi­cle in town.

Bristol anti-urban 4x4 launch30.01.2007

Cam­paign­ers gath­ered on Col­lege Green, after spend­ing the morn­ing issu­ing over 1,000 mock park­ing tick­ets to 4x4s in areas of cen­tral Bris­tol includ­ing Red­land, Clifton and Broad­mead. The paper tick­ets, which are placed harm­less­ly under the wind­screen wipers of parked vehi­cles, are titled ‘Poor Vehi­cle Choice’ and chal­lenge the need to own and dri­ve a 4x4 vehi­cle in town.
—-break—->
The depen­dent media were inter­est­ed in the launch of the cam­paign. HTV shot a TV news item. Mem­bers of the group were inter­viewed by BBC Radio Bris­tol / GWR and Star. Sto­ries appeared in the Bris­tol Evening Post and BBC Online. The Alliance aims to use peace­ful and humor­ous means to raise aware­ness of the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with 4x4 usage in cities like Bris­tol, led by con­cerns over road safe­ty, road space and cli­mate change. Although 4x4s are mar­ket­ed as being safer than small­er cars – and many dri­vers buy them on this assump­tion – a series of expert reports warns this is not the case. Euro-NCAP crash tests and acci­dent fig­ures show that the greater weight and height of 4x4s increas­es the risk of rollover and makes them more dan­ger­ous in acci­dents with small­er vehi­cles, cyclists and pedes­tri­ans. The British Med­ical Jour­nal has run arti­cles call­ing for ‘health warn­ings’ on 4x4s due to their increased injury risk, and a recent study in the US found the like­li­hood of a pedes­tri­an fatal­i­ty is near­ly dou­bled in the event of a col­li­sion with a large 4x4 com­pared with a pas­sen­ger car. There is also evi­dence that 4x4s pose extra dan­gers to the dri­vers of oth­er cars – the Trans­port Research Lab­o­ra­to­ry has found that in a crash, the per­son dri­ving a small­er car is 12 times more like­ly to be killed than the per­son in the 4x4. 4x4s also pro­duce far more car­bon diox­ide – the main gas asso­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change – per kilo­me­tre than small­er cars. A large 4x4 such as the Range Rover Dis­cov­ery 4.4 pro­duces 354g CO2/km – more than three times that of a Ford Fies­ta, Peu­geot 206 or Renault Clio (diesel mod­els). TV pre­sen­ter David Atten­bor­ough has said that dri­ving a 4x4 is “moral­ly wrong” and the ener­gy min­is­ter Mal­colm Wicks has crit­i­cised the “crass irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty” of those who dri­ve large 4x4s around the sub­urbs. The Alliance has received offers of help from over 100 Bris­tol res­i­dents so far, and sent out over 3,000 spoof park­ing tick­ets for dis­tri­b­u­tion. On Mon­day we received a huge num­ber of email orders for spoof park­ing tick­ets from con­cerned Bris­tol res­i­dents. Many new mem­bers have joined and are enthu­si­as­tic to start local groups in Red­land and Bish­op­ton. They plan to stage humor­ous direct actions against the 4x4s in Bris­tol that endan­ger the lives of peo­ple and the future of the plan­et. Thanks to every­one who helped organ­ise our suc­cess­ful launch and came to Col­lege Green on Sat­ur­day and thanks to Claire for the inspi­ra­tion.

bristol4x4alliance at yahoo.co.uk for more infor­ma­tion on how you can be part of this cam­paign.

Foe of the 4x4
e‑mail: bristol4x4alliance at yahoo dot co dot uk
Home­page: http://www.stopurban4x4s.org.uk/

Protests at Irish embassy in London against Shell’s hell in north west Ireland

30.01.2007

At mid­day today, while a sam­ba band played below, a man who wished to be known as “G” climed the Irish embassy. This was in protest over the Irish gov­ern­ments col­lu­sioin with Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in North West Ire­land where they are con­struct­ing a pipeline and refin­ery. Many cam­paign­ers claim this pipeline and refin­ery pose as seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal risk. While there have been wide­spread protests in Ire­land itself many claim that the gov­ern­ment of Ire­land has giv­en Shell sus­pi­cious­ly favourable busi­ness terms on the deal. “G” was arrest­ed for on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age though there was no dam­age vis­i­ble from ground lev­el. For fur­ther details see the cor­po­rate watch web­site.

30.01.2007

At mid­day today, while a sam­ba band played below, a man who wished to be known as “G” climed the Irish embassy. This was in protest over the Irish gov­ern­ments col­lu­sioin with Shel­l’s activ­i­ties in North West Ire­land where they are con­struct­ing a pipeline and refin­ery. Many cam­paign­ers claim this pipeline and refin­ery pose as seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal risk. While there have been wide­spread protests in Ire­land itself many claim that the gov­ern­ment of Ire­land has giv­en Shell sus­pi­cious­ly favourable busi­ness terms on the deal. “G” was arrest­ed for on sus­pi­cion of crim­i­nal dam­age though there was no dam­age vis­i­ble from ground lev­el. For fur­ther details see the cor­po­rate watch web­site.

301007_Irish_Embassy_Shell_Hell — video/x‑ms-wmv 5.4M

Press Release

Today, sup­port­ers for the Anti-Shell Cam­paign took their protest to the Irish Embassy. The action was to tar­get the Irish State; Shell; Sta­toil and Marathon who are attempt­ing to con­struct a dan­ger­ous and exper­i­men­tal onshore raw gas pipeline and refin­ery in Coun­ty Mayo; a beau­ti­ful remote part of North West Ire­land.

There is mas­sive oppo­si­tion to this pro­posed pipeline by the local com­mu­ni­ty, Ire­land and inter­na­tion­al­ly. A cam­paign of direct action against this plan has been ongo­ing since 2005.

The action at the Embassy today is to demon­strate that this pol­lut­ing project will not just affect the area in which it is to be built, but will con­tribute to the ongo­ing organ­ised destruc­tion of the plan­et by Shell. The action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple direct­ly affect­ed by this unprece­dent­ed raw gas pipeline, which has been con­demned as pos­ing an unac­cept­able risk to health and safe­ty.

The Irish State active­ly encour­ages the Shell led con­sor­tium – Nor­we­gian owned Sta­toil and U.S. owned Marathon — by facil­i­tat­ing stages of the con­struc­tion project, includ­ing the chang­ing of laws to allow the project go ahead. These com­pa­nies are tax exempt, thus there is no finan­cial ben­e­fit to the Irish peo­ple. Shell are also deploy­ing hun­dreds of police, who dai­ly intim­i­date peo­ple and use vio­lence to deter them, espe­cial­ly at recent demon­stra­tions.

The action at the Embassy today is to show the con­cern which many peo­ple share about the cor­rup­tion and com­plic­i­ty of the Irish Dáil, using its pow­er to sell out the inter­ests of the Irish peo­ple, putting per­son­al prof­it before pub­lic inter­est, safe­ty and health.

Events at Cowley Club, Brighton

Here is the lat­est list of events at the Cow­ley Club, 12 Lon­don Road, Brighton, East Sus­sex.

Weds 31st Jan, 7pm: V is for Video Activist — Schnews film show­ing

Thurs 1st Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Veg­etable and nut bake with mush­room sauce, parsnip mash and sal­ads

Here is the lat­est list of events at the Cow­ley Club, 12 Lon­don Road, Brighton, East Sus­sex.

Weds 31st Jan, 7pm: V is for Video Activist — Schnews film show­ing

Thurs 1st Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Veg­etable and nut bake with mush­room sauce, parsnip mash and sal­ads

Fri 2nd Feb, 8pm: Ground Zero DJs

Mon 5th Feb, 6.30pm: Gen­er­al Meet­ing — all mem­bers wel­come to dis­cuss the run­ning of the club, make pro­pos­als etc.

Thurs 8th Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Jew­ish food, plus cock­tails.

Fri 9th Feb, 8pm: Gig: Ast­pai, Aus­tri­an punk, The Steal, pos­i­tive hard­core, and Andy Fic­tion, melod­ic punk

Sun 11th Feb, 5pm: Film and dis­cus­sion with Oax­a­ca activist

Tues 13th Feb, 7pm: Film show­ing: And still they dance, doc­u­men­tary about the com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the build­ing of a Shell pipeline in Ross­port, Co. Mayo, Ire­land.

Thurs 15th Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Cur­ry Night

Fri 16th Feb, 8pm: Gig: Breach plus sup­port

Sat 17th Feb, 8pm-late: Dub night, fundrais­er for del­e­ga­tion to Pales­tine

Sun 18th Feb, 2–6pm: Sun­day roast fundrais­er for Brighton ABC

Thurs 22nd Feb, 8–9pm: Evening Meal in the bar — Ital­ian delights

Thurs 22nd Feb, 8pm: Bar col­lec­tive meet­ing, all vol­un­teers wel­come!

Fri 23rd Feb, 8pm: Gig: Los Alber­tos, fundrais­er for Oax­a­ca

Sat 24th Feb, 8pm: Gig: Crowzone/Scrap Recs

Sun 25th Feb, 2–5pm: Sun­day Roast in the bar, fundrais­ing for The Refugee Trust

Tues 27th Feb, 8pm: Open Mic night

http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk

New Rising Tide Group Starting Up in Norwich

Tired of watch­ing politi­cians and cor­po­ra­tions screw up the plan­et? Think that end­less eco­nom­ic growth is at the heart of the cli­mate cri­sis? Unin­spired by send­ing £3 to Char­i­ty X, but not sure where to put your ener­gy? Want to help build just, sus­tain­able solu­tions here and now? Then come to the first meet­ing of Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide!

Tired of watch­ing politi­cians and cor­po­ra­tions screw up the plan­et? Think that end­less eco­nom­ic growth is at the heart of the cli­mate cri­sis? Unin­spired by send­ing £3 to Char­i­ty X, but not sure where to put your ener­gy? Want to help build just, sus­tain­able solu­tions here and now? Then come to the first meet­ing of Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide!

Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide — Tak­ing Action to Stop the Fos­sil-Fuelled Mad­ness!

Be part of a nation­al net­work com­mit­ted to tak­ing cre­ative direct action against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, and pro­mot­ing local, com­mu­ni­ty-run solu­tions to our ener­gy needs. For five years, Ris­ing Tide groups around the coun­try have tak­en action to pre­vent air­port expan­sion, end oil com­pa­ny spon­sor­ship of the arts, stop con­struc­tion of dodgy BP and Shell pipelines, start con­struc­tion of urban com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens and much, much more – see www.risingtide.org.uk.

We all know it’s time to act, so come along to kick-start an ener­getic new group that can help bring about the rad­i­cal change that’s need­ed.

First Meet­ing:
When — Tues­day 27th Feb­ru­ary, 7.30 — 9.30pm
Where — The Green­house, 42–46 Bethel Street, Nor­wich, NR2

More Info -
www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich
07961 917535

Be part of a Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action!

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

Some Jan Critical Mass reports — London, Leeds, Manchester (& I Bike Mcr festival)

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

You nev­er know what the police are going to do next on the Lon­don ride. They clamp down on some things and relax on oth­ers from one month to the next and from one part of the ride to anoth­er. ‘Sham­bol­ic’ is per­haps the word that best describes their behav­iour. They seem at times to behave more like Anar­chists than the rid­ers. You would think with their radios they could at least arrive at some sort of a con­sen­sus. In addi­tion to our usu­al police overkill the For­ward Intel­li­gence Team were also in atten­dance at the South Bank, pok­ing their cam­eras in peo­ple’s faces. All this just because of a bike ride!

This time the cops decid­ed to get tough with rid­ers with­out lights and those who go through red lights and also with sound sys­tems in the SOCPA zone. Did you know, it is OK for some­one with a car to play their sound sys­tem in the vicin­i­ty or Par­lia­ment but not for a cyclist with a sound sys­tem? How dis­crim­i­na­to­ry is that? Any­way, the cops allowed an extra long ‘bikes high’ stop in Oxford Cir­cus but no stop what­so­ev­er in Pica­dil­ly Cir­cus. Those rid­ers who were pulled for going through red lights are now fac­ing a £30 fine, despite the fact that some cops were actu­al­ly ush­er­ing oth­er rid­ers through red lights!

One of the high­lights of the ride was storm­ing through the Ald­wych under­pass, some­thing the police nor­mal­ly pre­vent. We had a fun time with Bri­an Haw in Par­lia­ment Square, he led the “More bikes less cars!” chants on his mega­phone and seemed in a very good spir­its. The ride split up after that at around 9pm, going off in all direc­tions and leav­ing our yel­low coat­ed ret­inue behind, chin-wag­ging among them­selves.
http://www.criticalmasslondon.org.uk

Quick­time video ver­sion — video/mp4 8.3M
Win­dows video ver­sion — video/x‑ms-wmv 8.6M

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45 peo­ple rode around Leeds for just under an hour last night, with no police inter­ven­tions. The largest ride for some years, its hoped that this is the begin­ning of rever­sal in the down­ward trend of recent times.

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crit­i­cal mass man­ches­ter last fri­day and the next one..

Crit­i­cal Mass on Fri­day was absolute­ly amaz­ing. We stood around chat­ting out­side the library for ages just chill­in and social­is­ing and meet­ing the many new­com­ers to the mass. Peo­ple mak­ing the I Bike MCR did some film­ing for part of the film and some­one tak­ing pho­tos for the bicy­cle exhi­bi­tion in March.

Then the 40 or so of us took to the streets, rid­ing around the city cen­tre and down past the sta­tion right down Grosvenor street and onto oxford road where mass­es of stu­dents wait­ing for some gig cheered us as we rode by the union. We rode through Rusholme and then up to With­ing­ton and back , hard­ly any neg­a­tiv­i­ty at all instead we were greet­ed with cheers and friend­ly beeps and waves from car dri­vers and pedes­tri­ans… woooo!
After the ride we all went for a nice cold beer..mmm

Join us on Fri­day 23rd Feb for the next one, which will end at the ram­pant lion on upper brook st/anson rd where we will have our very own cel­e­brate crit­i­cal mass par­ty with bands and dj’s play­ing reg­gae, ska and punk..

email us at: mcrcriticalmass@yahoo.co.uk
be our myspace friend: http://www.myspace.com/mcrcriticalmass
see our web­site: http://velorution.x21.org.uk

Man­ches­ter I bike Mcr fes­ti­val:

From 30th March to 20th April the I Bike MCR fes­ti­val takes place in
Man­ches­ter. It is a grass­roots fes­ti­val organ­ised by cyclists for cyclists
with diverse events that will entice any cyclist. From Bicy­cle Polo
class­es and match­es to All­ey­cat rac­ing to a Bicy­cle Art Exhi­bi­tion,
there’s some­thing for every­one.

Those involved in organ­is­ing the event are cyclists from dif­fer­ent walks
of life includ­ing cycling instruc­tors, dai­ly com­muters, bicy­cle
mes­sen­gers, Crit­i­cal Mass advo­ca­cy group mem­bers and bicy­cle mechan­ics.

Timetable

Fri­day 30th March
6pm Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride, meet at Cen­tral Library to cel­e­brate the
bicy­cle over car cul­ture.

8pm Exhi­bi­tion Open­ing at The Base­ment, 24 Lever St. The open­ing event
will be one to remem­ber and will fea­ture the pre­mier screen­ing of new
Man­ches­ter bicy­cle film “I bike MCR”. We shall also be show­ing oth­er
bicy­cle films and hav­ing a roller race (an indoor bicy­cle race- on
rollers) with lots of prizes to be won! Local acoustic bands will be
per­form­ing includ­ing the amaz­ing Coop­er Jones and Dr But­ler’s Hat­stand
Med­i­cine Band

Sat­ur­day 31st March
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo class. Oxford bicy­cle polo team are
com­ing to teach us how to play the sport. Please email to reserve a place.
(they return 2 weeks lat­er to play a match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford)

Sun­day 1st April
2pm Cen­tral Library April Fools Day Bicy­cle Trea­sure Hunt. A fun trea­sure
hunt around our city.

Wednes­day 4th April
Moon­light Pub Ride Start 7pm Sand­bar, Grosvenor St (off Oxford Road/opp.
All Saints Park. A night ride out and around the out­skirts of Man­ches­ter
stop­ping off at some love­ly pubs for a drink on the way.

Fri­day 13th April
Hell Of The North West All­ey­cat
Fix­ies and road­ragers ride the all­ey­cat for a fast race round our city. £5
entry, amaz­ing prizes to be won. with some donat­ed by the won­der­ous Twin
Six and Keirin Cul­ture
Email to reg­is­ter

Alleykit­ten
Shop­pers, bmx’s and sil­ly bikes ride alleykit­ten for a ran­dom race full of
games and non­sense round our city cen­tre. £5 entry, amaz­ing prizes to be
won. Email to reg­is­ter

Sat­ur­day 14th April
1pm Platt Fields Park Bicy­cle Polo Match: Man­ches­ter vs Oxford.

For more infor­ma­tion see the web­site: www.ibikemcr.org.uk or email
info@ibikemcr.org.uk