Author: earthfirst

Mon­day 22nd of March saw a phone and email block­ade of Bay­er Crop­science, aimed at under­min­ing their com­mu­ni­ca­tions and dis­rupt­ing the smooth run­ning of their offices.

The direct line of Paul Rylott, the head of Bio­science, was cho­sen along with the main Crop­science email address. Unfor­tu­nate­ly Rylot­t’s line appeared to have been dis­conect­ed so for the rest of the day it was the back­up num­ber — for the bio­science depart­ment — which was called instead. It is not known how many peo­ple took part in this action but we must have caused some both­er as the oper­a­tor was tak­en off the phone ear­ly in the day and the answer­phone switched on instead. Hope­ful­ly when they lis­tened to it it was full of anti-gm mes­sages. Hun­dreds of emails were also sent.

This was the lat­est of sev­er­al phone, fax and email block­ades, and a ‘vir­tu­al sit-in’ to have tak­en place against Bay­er over the last 6 months. There will no doubt be more in the future. To be kept informed of them sub­scribe to the Stop Bay­er’s GM Crops email list — you can do this at www.stopbayergm.org.

Bay­er Crop­science are tar­get­ed as they only remain­ing com­pa­ny try­ing to get approval to grow gm crops com­mer­cial­Ly in the UK.

Dig­ger trashed in action relat­ing to 25 mature trees being felled in Man­ches­ter

A prop­er­ty devel­op­er, who plans to build on the Loret­to Col­lege Play­ing Fields, got a vis­it from upset local peo­ple ear­ly on Tues­day 29th July. Around 25 mature trees on the play­ing fields have recent­ly been destroyed and a large JCB dig­ger has start­ed ground works.

Local peo­ple despair at the use­less politi­cians who get vot­ed in for 3–5 years, then enclose green spaces, close swim­ming baths and sell off schools and play­ing fields. These are all sold to pri­vate devel­op­ers, who are only there to make mon­ey for their share­hold­ers, not our local com­mu­ni­ty.

Peo­ple broke into the large dig­ger using cut­ters and doused the cab, elec­tron­ics and com­put­er in paraf­fin. Then stand­ing back, threw in the spark. Dam­age has been esti­mat­ed at up to £100,000.

Hope­ful­ly insur­ance com­pa­nies and con­trac­tors get the mes­sage. Devel­op­ers who destroy our com­mu­ni­ty green spaces, close foot­paths and kill our trees, are not wel­come.

It is sad that new dig­gers only take around a month to build, mature trees take a life time.

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There has been a group set up by local res­i­dents in response to this unex­pect­ed felling of mature trees.

—extract—-
We are a col­lec­tive main­ly based in Hulme but with a net­work of organ­i­sa­tions sup­port­ing our cause from all over the city. Our aim is to halt to fur­ther expan­sion of the con­struc­tion in Bir­ley Fields as well as to activ­ley pro­tect our green spaces that we are sad­ly loos­ing by the day.
Through non-vio­lent, peace­ful but direct action we will pre­vail.
Ral­ly inter­est­ed peo­ple to this egroup and we can start the resis­tance to the destruc­tion of our area, stand up for the envi­ron­ment which we so des­per­at­ley need and prove that peo­ple pow­er is all we need to make a dif­fer­ence.

Sim­ple peat action — DIY at your local DIY — while we can still breathe…

Before the last May Bank Hol­i­day week­end, a time when demand for peat at gar­den cen­tres is high, some were vis­it­ed through­out Greater Man­ches­ter — bags were slashed and stick­ers stuck.

Save our bogs!

For more back­ground info, www.peatalert.org.uk

As part of the need to refo­cus our actions on oth­er com­pa­nies like these and not just Scotts, Bolton Fell peat strip­ping site was vis­it­ed on Sun­day 14 Decem­ber 2002. The works was very busy but the fields were wet and emp­ty. Drain­pipes were blocked with bags of peat, a foot­bridge was pushed into a drainage ditch and a small rail­way bridge was dis­man­tled.

- from longer back­ground arti­cle at http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no10/peat.htm