Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #26
free/donation
Nov 09

“A noisy con­science ham­mer­ing away on the shoul­der of Bath”

Shock Exposé: B&NES To Slash 90% Of Pub­lic Sec­tor Jobs

Bath Bomb has received a shock­ing set of doc­u­ments that reveals B&NES Council’s plans to cut its work­force by 90% from 6,000 work­ers down to just 600. To make it worse, the ‘lucky’ 600 will have their job descrip­tions tak­en away, mean­ing they could be col­lect­ing bins one day and deal­ing with your coun­cil tax claim the next. On the 8th of Octo­ber, unions were invit­ed to a meet­ing with the coun­cil in which they were told that they could expect the mas­sive job loss­es as part of a pack­age that includes the mass pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic ser­vices and jobs in the Bath area.

The pro­pos­al to pri­va­tise 90% of coun­cil ser­vices and jobs is not just a mas­sive assault on work­ers, it is also the most wor­ry­ing attack on the peo­ple of Bath and the ser­vices they receive yet from a coun­cil that is increas­ing­ly show­ing itself to be inter­est­ed in prof­it and greed over the needs of B&NES res­i­dents. This thrust to pri­va­tise ser­vices will lead to a dec­i­ma­tion of the care pro­vid­ed for those most in need. There will be no pub­lic account­abil­i­ty, no secu­ri­ty of ser­vices, and of course, no care at all for those who can­not afford it. If this pro­pos­al goes ahead in any form, it will mean the end of local gov­ern­ment and all the vital pub­lic ser­vices that go with it, and the intro­duc­tion of care and social ser­vices run by for-prof­it com­pa­nies who put their own prof­its above the needs of the ser­vice users.

As recent his­to­ry has shown us, pri­va­ti­za­tion has nev­er brought about greater effi­cien­cy and mon­e­tary sav­ing for the end user (trains, bus­es and ener­gy com­pa­nies any­one?) – it has always led to a sad shad­ow of a ser­vice, hang­ing the peo­ple who rely on the ser­vices out to dry while pri­vate com­pa­nies line their pock­ets. This is not just the sack­ing of many thou­sands of work­ers, it is the sack­ing of pub­lic ser­vices in Bath, and fight­ing to make sure that these crazy, greed-dri­ven plans nev­er go ahead will be one of the great­est chal­lenges the peo­ple of Bath have ever faced. A mas­sive cam­paign aimed at fight­ing back against the Council’s plans involv­ing local trade unions, com­mu­ni­ty groups and local activists is already gain­ing momen­tum. To get involved, con­tact bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk

What the pro­pos­als mean:

• 5,400 coun­cil employ­ees sacked, or hand­ed over to pri­vate com­pa­nies
• Our pub­lic ser­vices pri­va­tized
• No account­abil­i­ty in local ser­vices
• Pub­lic ser­vices slashed, or cut alto­geth­er
• Pub­lic ser­vices only for those who can afford them

What we can do to stop the pro­pos­als:

• Send a let­ter of com­plaint to the Coun­cil
• Email us to get involved in the fight back
• Email local trade unions to send them your sup­port
• Let coun­cil work­ers know that you sup­port them

News From The Pick­et Lines

Local activists have been gear­ing up to sup­port the posties in what looks set to be a long bat­tle between work­ers and man­age­ment. The posties are out on strike as a result of a series of attacks by Roy­al Mail and the gov­ern­ment that would see postal ser­vices slashed, work­ers’ con­di­tions changed for the worst and the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the post ser­vice. This is not just a fight for jobs and con­di­tions, but for front­line postal ser­vices such as post offices and reg­u­lar deliv­er­ies which Roy­al Mail man­age­ment are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly try­ing to destroy. If we allow the postal ser­vice to fall into pri­vate hands, it will go the same way as the trains, the bus­es and the ener­gy com­pa­nies – more cost for a worse ser­vice, all for the sake of pri­vate prof­it.

Octo­ber the 22nd saw the start of two days of postal strikes, includ­ing a 50-strong pick­et line at the Man­vers Street post depot in Bath. The strik­ers were sup­port­ed by local activists from the Trades Coun­cil, Bath Activist Net­work and the Bath I.W.W Branch who brought down sol­i­dar­i­ty dona­tions and snacks for the strik­ing work­ers. The strikes look set to con­tin­ue, so why not show your sup­port by pop­ping down to the pick­et lines with some snacks or cof­fee or by pop­ping a mes­sage of sup­port near your let­ter­box. This is not just a fight for jobs, it is a fight to save a vital pub­lic ser­vice – if the posties lose, it could be week­ly deliv­er­ies and £1 stamps by next year!

Hel­phire Help Them­selves, We Suf­fer

To any­one not liv­ing in a man­sion and dri­ving a Bent­ley, the government’s claims that the reces­sion is over comes across as a sick joke. Sure, the econ­o­my may have sta­bilised, and the bankers are once again pock­et­ing wedges of our cash (like they ever real­ly stopped), but what does it mean for the rest of us? Politi­cians across the spec­trum are start­ing to think about where all of that mon­ey they gave to the banks will come from, and CEOs are won­der­ing how to claw back their prof­it loss­es, and they are all reach­ing the same answer — cuts! All three par­ties have announced that they intend a whole­sale round of pub­lic sec­tor cuts if elect­ed, all promis­ing mea­sures such as a one third cut in the num­ber of fire­fight­ers, £2 bil­lion off the edu­ca­tion bud­get, the pri­vati­sa­tion of the postal ser­vice, green­light­ing more odi­ous ‘acad­e­my’ schools and the whole­sale dis­man­tling of the NHS. Boss­es, on the oth­er hand, are going redun­dan­cy mad, with local firm Hel­phire shed­ding hun­dreds of jobs over the past year, and hun­dreds more in the pipeline as just one exam­ple of a pat­tern repeat­ed up and down the coun­try.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us pick­ing up the tab for greedy, cor­rupt politi­cians, bas­tard bankers and scum­my boss­es who are all in the rich man’s club togeth­er, while they let us suf­fer. This does­n’t have to be the way though; fight­ing trade unions such as the I.W.W, FBU, RMT and the CWU are lead­ing a fight­back local­ly and nation­al­ly to ensure that we, as work­ers and ex-work­ers get what we deserve. Our advice — join your sector’s union, join the IWW (a mil­i­tant union for all work­ers that is grow­ing by the day), get involved in the fight­back for what you deserve — don’t bear the brunt of a reces­sion that you had no part in cre­at­ing, and next time you see your boss, take that old school tie and fuck­ing choke him with it! Is the reces­sion over? Of course not, so get involved in the local cam­paign against reces­sion, or for debt, bailiff, rent or employ­ment advice by con­tact­ing bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk

http://www.iww.org.uk

GOT A STORY? WANT TO RECEIVE THE BATH BOMB BY EMAIL? HOPING TO SUE? Con­tact us by e‑mailing bath­bomb­press [at] yahoo.co.uk. Large print e‑versions avail­able on request. For fur­ther info on any of our sto­ries see www.thebathbomb.blogspot.com

Direct Action Sta­tions At Bathamp­ton Mead­ows!

The Gov­ern­ment Office of the South West have denied a pub­lic enquiry into the con­cret­ing of Bathamp­ton Mead­ows, mean­ing the Council’s orig­i­nal green(ha ha)light for the project still stands. It also looks like the ‘Rapid’ Tran­sit route, which ploughs through a nature reserve and dozens of back gar­dens (acquired by Com­pul­so­ry Pur­chase Orders — forc­ing the gar­den own­ers to hand over the land) has got the go-ahead. The Mead­ows are home to bats, fox­es, bad­gers, herons and cor­morants, not to men­tion being a beau­ti­ful green space right on our doorstep, and not for­get­ting the fact that con­cret­ing over impor­tant flood­plains has led to tragedy else­where (includ­ing the mas­sive floods in Glouces­ter­shire a cou­ple of years back).

This deci­sion is pret­ty bad news, but it is what we expect­ed from greedy and cor­rupt politi­cians. The bat­tle is not over, but now we are fight­ing on more famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry — direct action and protest. There will hope­ful­ly be a pub­lic meet­ing very soon involv­ing BAN and oth­er groups opposed to the plans, so let’s start dream­ing up some schemes to save the Mead­ows now! As is often the case, appeal­ing to the good side of politi­cians has failed (large­ly due to politi­cians not hav­ing a good side), so now it is up to the enraged pop­u­la­tion of Bath, who put ecol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ty before prof­it, to jam a span­ner in the works of this stu­pid and eco­ci­dal scheme once and for all!

http://www.response2route.co.uk/wordpress/?p=221
http://www.savebathamptonmeadows.org.uk/

Posh Par­a­sites Pooh Pooh Punt

In between rant­i­ng, pro­pa­gan­dis­ing and gen­er­al­ly get­ting on the nerves of Bath’s well-to-do, some of us at Bath Bomb HQ like noth­ing more than a gen­tle stroll down the canal to unwind. On our way down, we find friend­ly faces, decent con­ver­sa­tion and beau­ti­ful boats dot­ting the tow­path. One of the most spec­tac­u­lar boats belongs to a Mr Ian Gill, who has cov­ered his home in elab­o­rate carv­ings and designs. Mr Gill is also a cen­tral part of Bath life, get­ting involved in var­i­ous local cul­tur­al and char­i­ta­ble events — an all round decent bloke, with a very inter­est­ing boat. But, the boat is not just inter­est­ing, it is an eco boat! In an attempt to low­er his eco­log­i­cal impact, Mr Gill punts his engine­less boat from place to place, gen­er­al­ly between Bathamp­ton and Bath so that he is close to his work. But British Water­ways (boo hiss) and an array of local snobs (big­ger boos and hiss­es) have decid­ed that the boat is an ‘eye­sore’ and that he is not trav­el­ling far enough to be con­sid­ered a ‘con­tin­u­ous cruis­er’ (this issue start­ed when he was too ill to move his boat). So now the NIMBY brigade, backed up by BW, are attempt­ing to boot Ian off the cut. If we allow them to get rid of our artis­tic friend, we will not only see some­one lose their home, but we will lose anoth­er lit­tle bit of what makes Bath such an inter­est­ing and quirky place to live. Ian’s boat is cov­ered in ban­ners and peti­tions, so next time you take a stroll down the beau­ti­ful Ken­net and Avon, why not stop to sign and give sup­port to a bloke who is the vic­tim of the prej­u­dice that is all too com­mon in some areas of our fair city.

Enough Room To Swing A Cat

It’s been a long time com­ing, but activists in Bath are soon hop­ing to open up a rad­i­cal social cen­tre in the heart of the city. Locat­ed at a large for­mer­ly com­mer­cial build­ing on Upper Bris­tol Road left aban­doned by its own­ers since at least 2001, the renamed Black Cat cen­tre (in hon­our of the indus­tri­al tra­di­tion of the ‘wild­cat strike’ for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in these hard times) is due for open­ing soon. Although com­mer­cial­ly unmar­ketable due to its loca­tion and state of repair, the build­ing is per­fect for uses such as this.

But what is a social cen­tre? Well, a social cen­tre can mean many things to many peo­ple; in this case, Black Cat will be a con­sen­sus-run counter-cap­i­tal­ist ini­tia­tive, where every­one has an equal stake and an equal say, offer­ing up a liv­ing exam­ple of a world based on sol­i­dar­i­ty, mutu­al aid and co-oper­a­tion, rather than self­ish­ness and author­i­ty. Oper­at­ing as eco-friend­ly and free as pos­si­ble, the space is open for use by all the local com­mu­ni­ty, for non-com­mer­cial and pro­gres­sive pur­pos­es. Estab­lished so far is a per­ma­nent FreeShop, an info-stall for local events and cam­paigns, a rad­i­cal lend­ing library for your edu­ca­tion­al needs, and sam­ba danc­ing class­es, but oth­er things are in the pipeline: legal rights self-edu­ca­tion ses­sions, read­ing groups, art work­shops, nature walks, and dona­tion-based com­mu­ni­ty cafe, among oth­ers. If you or your group needs an afford­able meet­ing space, ther­a­py room, art stu­dio, rehearsal space, exhi­bi­tion venue, or if you have any oth­er such schemes you’d love to become real­i­ty, get in touch: bath­so­cial­cen­tre [at] gmail.com

Black Cat’s is sched­uled for its open­ing night on Fri­day the 20th Novem­ber, with a gig fea­tur­ing folk artists Robb John­son, Tracey Cur­tis and Cos­mo, and a com­mu­ni­ty open day on the Sat­ur­day.

EVENTS

Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs meet­ings, 2nd and 4th Mon­day of the month, 8pm, The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Debt advice drop-in, Tues­days, 4–7pm, Black Cat social cen­tre, Upper Bris­tol Road

Lon­don Road Food Co-op, Wednes­days, 4–7pm, River­side Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Lon­don Road

The Lost Plot work­day, Thurs­days, 10am-dusk, Bathamp­ton

Bath Stop The War Coali­tion vig­il, Sat­ur­days, 11.30am-12.30, Bath Abbey Court­yard

Recy­cle Your Sun­days, Sun­days, 10.30am, starts Abbey Church­yard, the reg­u­lar series of socia­ble, easy-paced cycle rides, http://www.rysbath.org.uk/ Hazel 01225 469199

Bath postal office work­ers’ pick­et, Sat­ur­day 31st Novem­ber, from 4.30am(!), Man­vers Street entrance to the sort­ing office,

Free Veg­an Food Fayre, Sat­ur­day 31st Novem­ber, 12–4pm, Broad­mead Bap­tist Church, Union Street entrance Bris­tol

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 5th Novem­ber, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs at The Hob­gob­lin, St James Parade

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Mon­day 9th Novem­ber, 8–9pm, back­room of The Bell, Wal­cot Street

Tran­si­tion Open Forum, Tues­day 10th Novem­ber, 7.15pm, Wid­combe Social Club, http:// www.transitionbath.org

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 11th Novem­ber, 8pm, Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street

Bath FreeShop, Sat­ur­day 14th Novem­ber, 12–3pm, out­side Pump Rooms, Stall Street

Broad­lands Orchard­share Vol­un­teer­ing Day, Sat­ur­day 14th Novem­ber, 12–4pm, Broad­lands Orchard, Box Road, Bath­ford, email broad­land­sor­chard­share [at] googlemail.com or phone 07532 472 256

Bath Cycling Cam­paign meet­ing, Mon­day 16th Novem­ber, 7.30pm, The Ris­ing Sun, Grove Street, http://www.bathcyclingcampaign.org.uk

Bath Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Wednes­day 18th Novem­ber, 8pm, The Cork, West­gate Build­ings, http://www.bath-foe.org.uk

Black Cat social cen­tre open­ing night, Fri­day 20th Novem­ber, time tbc, Upper Bris­tol Road

The Big Kebele Par­ty ’09, Sat­ur­day 21st Novem­ber, 9–2am, Eas­t­on Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Chelsea Road, Bris­tol, £6 entry, http://www.kebelecoop.org

Tran­si­tion Drinks, Wednes­day 25th Novem­ber, 8pm, upstairs at The Raven, http://www.transitionbath.org.uk/events.html

The­o­ry Cor­ner: Debt Con Gone?

A work­shop at last month’s Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair brought out some inter­est­ing ideas about debt. At the Gle­nea­gles G8 meet­ing of the indus­tri­al world’s so-called lead­ers in 2005, it was agreed that 18 of the world’s poor­est coun­tries would be for­giv­en $40 bil­lion of their offi­cial state debt. Even though that orig­i­nal sum was incurred arm­ing para­mil­i­tary police forces to crush demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ments in those coun­tries, or was squan­dered on build­ing Sub-Saha­ran pala­tial swim­ming pools and oth­er lux­u­ries for the rich, it was the com­mon peo­ple that suf­fered through debt, with IMF adjust­ment pro­grams wip­ing away their pub­lic ser­vices and self-suf­fi­cien­cy, oblig­at­ing them to sell away neces­si­ties like food and tex­tiles for rock-bot­tom prices to the west. The IMF didn’t send bailiffs round to Idi Amin’s son. Wip­ing that finan­cial slate clean was unar­guably the right thing.

And yet when a sim­i­lar­ly delib­er­ate process is used to destroy the lives of peo­ple here, with more and more pet­ty laws send­ing high­er pro­por­tions to prison, the sell-off of pub­lic trans­port and under­min­ing of hos­pi­tals, edu­ca­tion and wel­fare, the smash­ing of unions and com­mu­ni­ty, and the increas­ing pre­car­i­ous­ness of mod­ern work­ing con­di­tions, no one real­ly bats an eye­lid. We get a sec­ond or third job, we get wast­ed on the week­end, we take out a loan on a widescreen TV, all in a bid to tem­porar­i­ly side­step the anx­i­ety and stress that’s on its way. Rather than being paid suf­fi­cient wages, we’re encour­aged to bor­row more and more. An excess of cap­i­tal is cre­at­ed by exploit­ing a resource – us – and then lent back to that same exploit­ed resource to gen­er­ate inter­est, and tie us into a web of mort­gages, loans, crip­pling repay­ments, repos­ses­sions and red let­ters. And if you escape this, it’s not down to being more respon­si­ble or a bet­ter per­son, it’s just a mat­ter of pure chance.

The Cit­i­zens Advice Bureau report­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2009 that the aver­age client owes near­ly 17,000, a 66% increase since 2001. Thus, the aver­age debt lev­el is 18 times the person’s month­ly income, and would take 93 years to clear at an afford­able rate – lead­ing to men­tal break­down, rela­tion­ship dis­in­te­gra­tion, and sui­cide: a death sen­tence, in effect. Repos­ses­sions are up 36% from last year, 20 homes are repos­sessed each week, and bailiffs vis­it 50 a day for coun­cil tax alone – using loud knock­ing, shout­ing and neigh­bours as a weapon to embar­rass peo­ple on their vis­its; when what real­ly should hap­pen is that neigh­bours come out in their mass­es to see these vul­tures off – bailiffs should be too scared to stick around. Wip­ing all per­son­al debt would lib­er­ate mil­lions and is unar­guably the right thing to do. So begs the ques­tion: how do we do it?

http://www.eb-da.org/?p=105

One Down…

Ger­man ener­gy giant E‑on have repeat­ed­ly put off mak­ing a deci­sion as to whether to build a new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth. Now they’re say­ing their plans are put off indef­i­nite­ly, cit­ing the reces­sion as a con­cern. Couldn’t have any­thing to do with those pesky activists, could it?

E‑on’s head office has been invad­ed; they were forced to aban­don their grad­u­ate recruit­ment dri­ve last year after protests at sev­er­al cam­pus­es; Kingsnorth’s cool­ing tow­ers have been dam­aged by Green­peace; last year a week­long camp was held there by the Camp For Cli­mate Action, dur­ing which activists tried to break in by land and by boat; last Fos­sil Fools Day some­one snuck in all on their own and pressed the big red off but­ton!

It’s very like­ly that Kingsnorth will nev­er be built. We can’t afford to for­get though, that there are still plans to build sev­en oth­er coal plants around the coun­try – an EU deci­sion is immi­nent as to whether to grant fund­ing for a Car­bon Cap­ture and Stor­age (CCS) demon­stra­tion plant at Hat­field, near Don­cast­er, which is wide­ly expect­ed to get approval. Aside from the fact that “cap­tur­ing” emis­sions and “stor­ing” them under the ground sounds pret­ty dodgy, the tech­nol­o­gy won’t be com­mer­cial­ly avail­able for at least 20 years, yet it’s being used as an excuse to press ahead with new coal. We don’t have time to wait for CCS – we need to dras­ti­cal­ly cut emis­sions now.

This is why we need to stop coal, and the deci­sion on Kingsnorth shows that we can do it. We’ve got a big job ahead of us, but through­out his­to­ry changes have been made by ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things.

http://www.wdm.org.uk/campaign-success-eon-shelves-plans-dirty-coal-kingsnorth

Bath Activist Net­work are a local umbrel­la group cam­paign­ing on issues as diverse as devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal­ism, anti-war, ani­mal rights, work­ers’ rights and more. Help­ing to pro­duce The Bath Bomb, we are open to any­one, and our mem­bers range from trade union­ists to anar­chists, lib­er­als to greens, and peo­ple who just want to change Bath for the bet­ter. For details on meet­ings, demos, or just to get in touch, email bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: http://www.bathactivistnetwork.blogspot.com

And now, to the dis­claimer: As any­one is free to con­tribute, the opin­ions expressed in each arti­cle are not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflec­tive of each con­trib­u­tor. Nat­u­ral­ly, any right-wing or cor­po­rate bull­shit will be binned and spat on. Need­less to say, the opin­ions of the author of this dis­claimer does not nec­es­sar­i­ly rep­re­sent the views of any oth­er con­trib­u­tor…

Co-Mutiny On The Briz­zle

As well as all the actions a‑sailing the sev­en days of the Bris­tol Co-Mutiny, work­shops and oth­er such trea­sures were sight­ed. The flag­ship of the fleet was unmis­take­ably the con­ver­gence space, a squat­ted church at Park Place in cen­tral Bris­tol, home port to film exhi­bi­tions and per­for­mances, a kids’ space and freeshop, and reg­u­lar dona­tion-based slap-up din­ners. Of the work­shops, they were many and var­ied, encour­ag­ing sus­tain­able liv­ing and self-empow­er­ment, one way or anoth­er: high­lights include plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, knitting/spinning, sound tech and break danc­ing! Shiv­er me tim­bers, but there were anar­chic mad­ness, too. A 50-strong ‘No-Bor­ders’ demo and work­shop took place at the Trin­i­ty Road police sta­tion (from where asy­lum seek­ers often get detained with­out warn­ing while sign­ing in), and 60 salty seadogs board­ed the cen­tre for the Anar­chist Olympics day.

On the Wednes­day, a mot­ley crew of cli­mate refugees and upset pen­guins invad­ed Bris­tol air­port, leaflet­ing pas­sen­gers, and tum­my-div­ing on the lug­gage racks. While busi­ness­men fly short-haul to their meet­ings, thou­sands of peo­ple around the world are being dis­placed by the effects of cli­mate change. Bris­tol Air­port plans to expand must not be allowed to go ahead, savvy?

Things came to a head on Fri­day the 18th Sep­tem­ber with ‘Repos­sess the Banks’, designed to illus­trate the glar­ing inequal­i­ties in our soci­ety that lead to work­ing peo­ple being kicked out of their homes because of the bank­ing cri­sis, whilst those respon­si­ble get paid avast bonus­es with our booty, and also called for com­mu­ni­ty con­trol of all the banks, espe­cial­ly those now kept afloat by pub­lic invest­ments. On the day, over 100 gath­ered bedecked in snap­py car­ni­val masks to make mer­ry in a tour of Bristol’s finan­cial dis­trict. Police were ini­tial­ly wrong-foot­ed in a hec­tic, impromp­tu coal-dump­ing stunt in BT (fun­ders of coal extrac­tion), and retal­i­at­ed with sud­den and sav­age bru­tal­i­ty, drag­ging faces across con­crete and pan­ick­ing their hors­es, against a mod­est sal­vo of paint bombs and cus­tard pies. But once the smoke cleared, the good ship Co-Mutiny set sail, and the hun­dreds involved fond it an edu­ca­tion­al and fun event well worth repeat­ing in the future.

http://comutiny.wordpress.com/
http://bristolnoborders.wordpress.com/
http://www.nobristolairportexpansion.co.uk/

Crap Local Cops Let BAN Meet Cameron!

Fri­day the 18th Sep­tem­ber saw everyone’s least favourite toff scum­bag David Cameron (you know, that bloke who wants to bring back fox­hunt­ing, slash pub­lic spend­ing, give more of our cash to the bankers, dis­man­tle the NHS, con­crete over Bathamp­ton Mead­ows etc. etc.) vis­it Bath for an ‘open’ meet­ing. In fact, to get into this open meet­ing, you had to pre-book, pro­vide ID (despite the Tories alleged­ly being against ID) and sub­mit to var­i­ous secu­ri­ty checks and approval from the local Tory branch leader.

These best laid plans were ruined how­ev­er by an anony­mous whis­tle blow­er who con­tact­ed BAN with the time and loca­tion of the meet­ing. This infor­ma­tion was then ‘acci­den­tal­ly’ plas­tered all over the inter­net, and before long, both BAN and the Save Bathamp­ton Mead­ows crew had called protests. The turnout was pret­ty decent, involv­ing around 20 assort­ed mal­con­tents and a large police pres­ence. The protest gained sup­port from the gen­er­al pub­lic, but not the lads and ladies queu­ing to get into the meet­ing, lit­er­al­ly all of whom were obvi­ous­ly from a cer­tain class (we’ll give you a clue, it was­n’t work­ing or mid­dle!).

The protest passed peace­ful­ly, and as the BAN con­tin­gent were about to call it a night, a posh comb-over in a suit (evi­dent­ly the bloke who put on the event) appeared behind a locked gate and told the cops to make sure that no BAN­ners got inside. The police smug­ly replied that they had the sit­u­a­tion under con­trol, and the BAN activists, who had been prepar­ing to go home, smelt a chal­lenge. As it hap­pened, dodg­ing secu­ri­ty was more than easy, and with­in min­utes, and right under the noses of the dozy plod, two activists were over the wall and into the ‘Cameron com­pound’. As heck­ling was about to begin, the BAN­ners were accost­ed by a posh prat in a tweed suit, issu­ing com­mands in what was either posh speak that the rest of us aren’t privy to, or gib­ber­ish! How­ev­er, the hand­cuffs and equip­ment on his belt got the mes­sage across, and BAN, being rea­son­able folks, left the build­ing, stop­ping only to ask the cops who had promised not to let them in for the keys to the gate. Much hilar­i­ty fol­lowed as the cops got con­fused about the law, rant­ed about foie-gras and des­per­ate­ly tried to con­coct a rea­son to arrest the activists. Hav­ing set alarm bells ring­ing at Cameron’s Eton reunion and con­found­ed the local cops (again), the protest fad­ed into the night for a well-earned pint! Thank god we weren’t the bad type of ter­ror­ists, or there would have been a lot of red faces and embar­rass­ing ques­tions in the Bath cop shop!

Review: Bath Bus Sta­tion

Direct­ed by: Mul­ti
Star­ring: First Bus
Dura­tion: Prob­a­bly not many years
Clas­si­fi­ca­tion: Not suit­able for per­sons of 15 years of age or over (or under)
Genre: Road Movie/Horror
Black and white
Eng­land, 2009

In the absence of an ush­erette I found myself a charm­less­ly util­i­tar­i­an met­al seat. How­ev­er, from there I couldn’t see whether the main star – the X39 to Bris­tol – was about to make an appear­ance because it was behind a large map and opaque doors. By the time I’d gone to find out when the lead­ing role was due some­one else had nabbed my seat. Dur­ing the inter­val there were no toi­lets because they only open dur­ing office hours.

There was no kiosk for pop­corn or indeed any kind of refresh­ments – just a vend­ing machine with over­priced, tooth rot­ting multi­na­tion­al juice which was in any case out of order. Rub­bish on the ground because there were no recy­cling bins. Rules, reg­u­la­tions and sur­veil­lance. Three days after it opened the First empire struck back by putting the tick­et prices up. What kind of a show is this?

Stars out of ten: NONE

Any­one who has had a brief encounter with the new Bath bus sta­tion will know it is bad and ugly when it could have been so good. Just imag­ine, gen­tle pas­sen­ger, if there was a com­mu­ni­ty-con­trolled pub­lic trans­port sys­tem in a soci­ety where resources were direct­ed into social­ly use­ful projects. What a tech­ni­colour clas­sic Bath bus sta­tion could have been! The Edwar­dian façade of the much-loved Churchill House retained as a rotun­da with geot­her­mal heat­ing. On the roof-top a café with stun­ning views over the Riv­er Avon and the city of Bath. Room inside the build­ing for trans­port help and book­ings ser­vice, acces­si­ble twen­ty-four hour toi­lets (flushed with rain water and with urine har­vest­ing facil­i­tat­ed of course) and per­haps a small exhi­bi­tion space. The con­course built along the river­side with roof gar­dens and solar pan­els above pro­vid­ing elec­tric­i­ty for real-time elec­tron­ic infor­ma­tion dis­plays. Local art­work on the mod­el of the Lis­bon metro where paint­ing and sculp­ture trans­forms the space for com­muters. Oh and dry secure stor­age for bicy­cles and… sor­ry, got to go now, I’m about to be kicked out for loi­ter­ing.

What A Bunch Of Hunts

Well, here we go again, anoth­er year, anoth­er hunt sea­son. Hunt ban or no hunt ban, the last two months have seen hunts up and down the coun­try engag­ing in ‘cub­bing’ – ear­ly morn­ing for­ays into our delight­ful defor­est­ed coun­try­side, ille­gal­ly teach­ing the new year’s batch of young fox­hounds to get a taste for fox-flesh. Like­wise, hunt sabo­teurs have been equal­ly busy, get­ting up at sil­ly o’clock, dis­rupt­ing the hunts, mask­ing fox scents, call­ing away the packs and avoid­ing hunt vio­lence. How­ev­er, from Novem­ber 1st, hunt­ing sea­son offi­cial­ly starts, horse-rid­ing, horsey-teethed, shiny red coats and all.

Super­fi­cial steps were tak­en with the woe­ful­ly weak hunt ban of Feb­ru­ary ‘05, but if the Tories get in, even that will go, and sabs will be need­ed more than ever. If you have what it takes to save our wildlife, give Bath Hunt Sabo­teurs a call: 07854 062336, or come to the meet­ings on the sec­ond and fourth Mon­day of the month, 8pm at The Bell on Wal­cot Street.

http://www.hsa.enviroweb.org/