Category: Capitalism / Globalisation

THE BATH BOMB

@nti-copyright: copy and dis­trib­ute!
Issue #18
free/donation
Jan 09

“Steal this new­sheet!”

Look­ing Back At A Busy Year

2009 promis­es to be a busy year for BAN and friends, but before we look for­ward, let’s look take a look back at 2008. The year start­ed with a con­tin­u­ing spate of foie gras, forc­ing the sick dish off the menus of many a restau­rant. The FreeShop went from strength to strength, dis­trib­ut­ing goods to thou­sands of sat­is­fied anti-shop­pers and spread­ing its month­ly anti-con­sumerist (2nd Sat­ur­day of each month, 12–3pm, Stall Street, oppo­site Hol­land and Bar­rett). In a new twist, BAN­ners also dis­trib­uted free eth­i­cal, eco-friend­ly veg­an food to hun­gry passers­by at the ‘There is such thing as a free lunch!’ stall. Pun­ters of the Porter were kept enter­tained at ‘Bub­bling Under’, Bath’s ongo­ing free month­ly rad­i­cal film show­ings. Mem­bers of BAN also helped open ‘The 78’, Chippenham’s first squat­ted social cen­tre, and joined dozens in Bris­tol to resist the evic­tion of ‘Ash­ley Road’.

Bath’s ani­mals rights advo­cates have been equal­ly busy, demo­ing Bath race­course dur­ing a vis­it by Rolf Har­ris, trav­el­ling to Oxford Uni and Hunt­ing­don for anti-vivi­sec­tion events, sab­o­tag­ing local fox hunts, trav­el­ling to Cardiff for an anti-bad­ger cull demo and feed­ing hun­dreds at the first Bath Veg­an Fayre. Bath activists also spent a fair bit of time in Bris­tol, help­ing organ­ise the Bris­tol Anar­chist Book­fair, sev­er­al days of cred­it crunch-relat­ed work­shops, the first Bris­tol Anar­chist Games Day (high­ly rec­om­mend­ed!) and also helped organ­ise anti-cap­i­tal­ist demos around the open­ing of the mon­strous Cabot Cir­cus shop­ping cen­tre, which was invad­ed by zom­bie pro­test­ers. Get­ting active for the envi­ron­ment, BAN joined 3,000 oth­ers at Kingsnorth Camp for Cli­mate Action, help­ing to seize the site, and caus­ing seri­ous dis­rup­tion to the coal plant by scal­ing the perime­ter fence. Ear­li­er in the year, mem­bers of BAN joined oth­ers from Bris­tol, Oxford and Wales to suc­cess­ful­ly block­ade Aberthaw coal-fired pow­er plant, whilst more recent­ly, anoth­er BAN­ner helped out at the Plane Stu­pid block­ade at Stanst­ed. We were also busy with No Bor­der­s/pro-asy­lum seek­er events, like the anti-IOM demos in Bris­tol and ID cards protest at Cardiff, and joined the anar­chist ‘Free­dom of Move­ment’ bloc and 5,000 oth­ers at the Man­ches­ter anti-Labour Par­ty Con­fer­ence.

We’ve teamed up with Bath Mad Hat­ters to high­light the dan­ger­ous effects of forced med­ica­tion, and our new ped­al-pow­ered sound sys­tem is justin about ready to go, after a year of hard work. Fas­cists failed to escape our atten­tion, with local activists head­ing up north to oppose and con­front the BNP’s annu­al Red, White and Blue fes­ti­val (due to this year’s dis­rup­tion, it is unlike­ly to hap­pen again). Com­bined events and forces helped to delay the open­ing of Bath­wick Hill Tesco for near­ly a year, and BAN were there to greet them when they arrived. BAN­ners cel­e­brat­ed Buy Noth­ing Day, and twice jour­neyed down to Brighton to join the ‘Smash EDO/ITT’ demos, aimed at clos­ing down a weapons fac­to­ry sup­ply­ing geno­ci­dal states such as Israel and the US of A; after the demos (both of which got a bit ‘rio­ty’) and a four-year cam­paign, the fac­to­ry is on its last legs – don’t miss the next demo on 04/05/09: www.smashedo.org.uk. BAN also launched its anti-cred­it crunch cam­paign, aimed at defend­ing our com­mu­ni­ties against unem­ploy­ment, bailiffs, cor­po­rate greed and reces­sion. The cam­paign kick-start­ed with a 35-strong, noisy demo in Novem­ber and will con­tin­ue on as reces­sion deep­ens, with a focus on prac­ti­cal­ly resist­ing reces­sion and direct­ly defend­ing our rights and liveli­hoods. And we even man­aged well-earned group hol­i­days at Tolpud­dle fes­ti­val and the beau­ti­ful Gow­er, too!

Oppo­si­tion Increas­es As Attacks Inten­si­fy

On Sat­ur­day 3rd Jan­u­ary, 400–500 gath­ered in Bris­tol to oppose the con­tin­ued Israeli attacks on Pales­tine. The march, attend­ed by young and old, anar­chists, stu­dents, Mus­lims and social­ists alike, took place on the after­noon of the day that Israel was report­ed to have begun its land incur­sion in Pales­tine. The demon­stra­tion coin­cid­ed with var­i­ous oth­ers around the coun­try, and indeed around the world, includ­ing a 50,000-strong march in Lon­don. The fol­low­ing week­end 100,000 peo­ple attend­ed a march in Lon­don in oppo­si­tion to the con­tin­ued dev­as­tat­ing attacks which have since includ­ed the bomb­ing of a school being used as a shel­ter for civil­ians, in which more than 40 peo­ple were killed. The IDF have also dropped leaflets over Gaza threat­en­ing to increase the feroc­i­ty of their attacks. In the five years that pre­ced­ed the recent attacks, around 5,000 Pales­tini­ans are report­ed to have been killed by the Israelis’ advanced weapon­ry. In spite of the British Gov­ern­men­t’s renewed call for cease­fire, fig­ures report­ed in the Guardian in 2006 tell a dif­fer­ent sto­ry: the Gov­ern­ment approved £22.5m of weapon­ry exports to Israel in the pre­vi­ous year. If you would like to get involved in oppos­ing the attacks, there is a vig­il in Bath every Sat­ur­day out­side the Abbey between 11.30 and 12.30. In Bris­tol, there is a vig­il every night at 5pm in the cen­tre, oppo­site the Hip­po­drome, and Bristol’s also home to the ‘Raytheon Out’ cam­paign, who are now in the fifth week of their rooftop occu­pa­tion of that arms man­u­fac­tur­er. And let’s not for­get neigh­bour­ing deathdeal­ers Boe­ing, who recent­ly found all their win­dows smashed! In Frome too, 40 peo­ple recent­ly occu­pied Lloyds TSB, who have ridicu­lous­ly closed the account of human rights char­i­ty Inter­Pal. Oth­er cor­po­rate nas­ties with ties to Israel include M&S and Star­bucks, and be sure to boy­cott Israeli super­mar­ket goods, where many pep­pers, sweet pota­toes and avo­ca­dos are grown on stolen land.

http://www.bathstopwar.org.uk/index.html
www.stopwar.org.uk/
http://palsolidarity.org/
http://raytheonout.wordpress.com/
http://electronicintifada.net
http://www.maannews.net/en
http://www.freegaza.org
http://talestotell.wordpress.com

Bash Back Against Bath’s Bas­tard Bailiffs!

Recent arti­cles in the Chron­i­cle have stark­ly con­tra­dict­ed asser­tions by gov­ern­ment and aca­d­e­m­ic think tanks that Bath would “weath­er the worst effects of the reces­sion.” At the last count, 1,542 peo­ple are claim­ing ben­e­fits in the Bath area, an increase of 59% on last year, with 600 peo­ple hav­ing lost their jobs in the city since last Novem­ber — a dra­mat­ic rise. And how are we reward­ed when we’re laid off and forced onto the dole? Do we enter a nur­tur­ing wel­fare sys­tem that caters for the needs and skills of the unem­ployed? No, it’s more author­i­tar­i­an than ever — ben­e­fits have not risen with the increas­ing cost of liv­ing, and claimants are harassed into search­ing for non-exis­tent jobs under the con­stant threat of ben­e­fit stop­page for fail­ure to con­form to the infu­ri­at­ing­ly bureau­crat­ic world of Job­seek­ers. As a direct result of this and the rise in bills, food and liv­ing costs, Bath res­i­dents are see­ing a lot more of everyone’s least favourite par­a­site, the bailiff. Recent fig­ures show that bailiffs chas­ing unpaid coun­cil tax vis­it­ed 2,400 homes in Bath last year. With three/four peo­ple in the aver­age house­hold, that means that 8,000 (10% of Bath’s pop­u­la­tion) were vis­it­ed for coun­cil tax alone! When we take into con­sid­er­a­tion bailiffs sent out by banks, loan com­pa­nies and ener­gy sup­pli­ers, we can real­is­ti­cal­ly increase the num­ber of Batho­ni­ans being harassed sev­er­al times over. At this point the old reac­tionary cry that peo­ple who are unem­ployed or bailiff-rid­den are ‘layabouts’ who have ‘brought it on them­selves’ sim­ply no longer holds true. The major­i­ty of us are now feel­ing the pinch, some hard­er than oth­ers, and it’s sim­ply not our fault. If your boss fires you and the job mar­ket is emp­ty, what choice is there but ben­e­fits? If you were going to pay your coun­cil tax, but had to spend the mon­ey on the 40% gas and elec­tric bill increase and feed­ing your fam­i­ly, what would you do?

Bailiffs are famed for their ruth­less­ness — a recent court case tells of a bailiff who posed as an ambu­lance dri­ver to gain entry to an elder­ly couple’s house to repos­sess goods, while the elder­ly occu­pant suf­fered a heart com­plaint. And this is the norm, not the excep­tion. Par­lia­ment recent­ly passed laws allow­ing bailiffs to break into your house, so with­out our elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to rely on, it looks like it’s up to us! In Bath dur­ing the Poll Tax cam­paign of the ear­ly 90s, and today in Edin­burgh, Lon­don and else­where, bailiffs have met com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty. Organ­is­ing amongst your neigh­bours to face off bailiffs when they turn up on your street is a pow­er­ful way of defend­ing your­self, your prop­er­ty and your com­mu­ni­ty against these vul­tures. Bailiffs prey on the weak, the strand­ed and the vul­ner­a­ble. Resist­ing bailiffs is to be a key part of BAN’s anti-reces­sion cam­paign in the com­ing year, and they will be hold­ing an infor­mal day of dis­cus­sion, net­work­ing and organ­is­ing on Sat­ur­day the 28th of Feb­ru­ary; loca­tion TBC. To get involved in the cam­paign, if you need help organ­is­ing resis­tance to bailiffs or if you can name and shame any bailiffs, e‑mail BAN at bathac­tivist­net [at] yahoo.co.uk

EVENTS

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

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

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

Broad­lands Orchard­share Was­sail­ing, Sat­ur­day 17th Jan­u­ary, 3pm, Broad­lands Orchard, £2 entry

Israel Out of Gaza demon­stra­tion, Sat­ur­day 17th Jan­u­ary, 12.30 start, Abbey Court­yard

Bub­bling Under, Sun­day 18th Jan­u­ary, 1–5pm, Porter Cel­lar bar, George Street

Talk: ‘Eco Upgrad­ing of Exist­ing Hous­es — Chal­lenges and Oppor­tu­ni­ties’, Mon­day 19th Jan­u­ary, 7.30pm, Quak­er Meet­ing House, Brad­ford on Avon, free entry

Seed Swap, Sun­day 1st Feb­ru­ary, 3–5pm, St Marks Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, Wid­combe, £2 entry

Bath Friends of the Earth meet­ing, Mon­day 2nd Feb­ru­ary, 8pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place

Talk: ‘Com­post­ing — how to make it and when to use it’, Wednes­day 4th Feb­ru­ary, 7.30pm, Grove St Church Halls

Bath Ani­mal Action meet­ing, Wednes­day 4th Feb­ru­ary, 7.30–8.30pm, back room of The Bell

Bath Activist Net­work meet­ing, Thurs­day 5th Feb­ru­ary, 7.30–9pm, down­stairs Hob­gob­lin

Earth First! Win­ter Moot, Sat­ur­day 7th Feb­ru­ary-Sun­day 8th, 10am start, Cow­ley Club, Brighton, e‑mail: moot2009 [at] earthfirst.org.uk

Bath Green­peace meet­ing, Mon­day 9th Feb­ru­ary, 7.30–9pm, Still­point, Broad Street Place

Tran­si­tion Bath Forum, Tues­day 10th Feb­ru­ary, 7pm, Wid­combe Social Club

Bath Green Drinks, Wednes­day 11th Feb­ru­ary, 8.30pm, the Rum­mer, Grand Parade

Bor­ders & Immi­gra­tion work­shop, Sat­ur­day 14th Feb­ru­ary, 1–3pm, Bris­tol venue tbc email trapeze [at] riseup.net

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

‘Beat the Bailiffs’ lis­ten­ing post, Sat­ur­day 28th Feb­ru­ary, more details tbc

Talk: ‘Por­trait of a Road Protest’, Sun­day 1st March, 3–4pm, Bath Cen­tral Library, £6/£4 entry

Res­cue Rangers

Appar­ent­ly, a dog’s not just for Christ­mas, and nei­ther is the rest of the four-legged fur­ry world, too. Fol­low­ing the usu­al sea­son­al peak in lit­tle Tim­my and Sarah’s pass­ing whim for cute lit­tle caged pets, a huge num­ber of unwant­ed rodents need re-hom­ing. Whilst the major­i­ty of humankind can’t get over the crazed notion that oth­er ani­mals exist pure­ly to enter­tain, feed and oth­er­wise serve them, and pet breed­ers are always out to make a quick buck, offi­cial res­cue author­i­ties such as the RSPCA cen­tres and Bath Cats & Dogs Home are full to burst­ing, with many hap­less beasts not lucky enough to reach res­cue cen­ters fac­ing lethal injec­tion. If you can offer a lov­ing and respon­si­ble home for any of four mice, 21 ger­bils or 60 rats in the near­by area, please drop us a line.

www.fancy-rats.co.uk/

Greece Is The Word

Last month’s issue of the Bath Bomb car­ried a hasti­ly-writ­ten report of the mur­der of a Greek teenag­er, and the night of riots fol­low­ing his death. Since then, the riots have giv­en birth to a full-blown revolt and although (or prob­a­bly more accu­rate­ly, because) a gen­uine­ly rev­o­lu­tion­ary sit­u­a­tion has emerged in Greece, the media has lost inter­est. Don’t let the sub­si­dence of the sen­sa­tion­al­ist tabloid press’s rant­i­ng of ‘bomb-throw­ing youths’ fool you though, the insur­rec­tion in Greece is as alive as ever. Coin­cid­ing with a gen­er­al strike, the riots expand­ed beyond the anar­chist move­ment and became a coher­ent expres­sion of anger at the deep­en­ing eco­nom­ic cri­sis. For three weeks, riot­ing involv­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands raged across all of Greece, with sym­bols of cap­i­tal­ism and the state, such as police sta­tions and banks, tar­get­ed by Molo­tovs, bricks and graf­fi­ti. Uni­ver­si­ties, schools and work­places were occu­pied and self-man­aged by work­ers and stu­dents, and many dis­tricts of Greece remain in con­trol of the res­i­dents, as no-go areas for the police. So why have the events in Greece fall­en from the eye of the world’s media? It is because revolt and rev­o­lu­tion almost always ini­tial­ly man­i­fest them­selves in riot­ing and ‘chaos’. It is the instinct of most peo­ple, when lib­er­at­ed from the oppres­sive yoke of their for­mer mas­ters to cel­e­brate, rev­el, and attack the sym­bols of the old order — this makes excit­ing footage, which can eas­i­ly be por­trayed as mis­guid­ed vio­lence. The next step in a revolt is thought­ful­ness, of organ­i­sa­tion, of order, and of begin­ning to think about how to organ­ise and prac­ti­cal­ly man­i­fest a lib­er­at­ed space. The media have giv­en this phase no atten­tion, as first­ly, it’s less dra­mat­ic, and sec­ond­ly, and most impor­tant­ly, because it is against the ethos of the cor­po­rate media to report on rad­i­cals as ratio­nal peo­ple capa­ble of, and seri­ous about, organ­is­ing a soci­ety free of lead­ers, pover­ty and cap­i­tal­ist greed. Make no mis­take, Greece is still in revolt, and is prov­ing that as the old say­ing goes “cap­i­tal­ism is chaos, anar­chy is order.”

Wel­come To The New Year

2008 fin­ished with riots in Greece, as peo­ple on the streets fought back against the cor­rupt gov­ern­ment and police who gunned down Alexan­dros-Andreas Grig­oropou­los. 2009 has opened with a blood­bath in Gaza car­ried out by the Israeli Defence Force, while world lead­ers blame the vic­tims and refuse to inter­fere like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan, all because Israel is their friend. Only ordi­nary peo­ple through­out the world have raised their voic­es against this new wave of killing. Mean­while, over here, unem­ploy­ment and house repos­ses­sion are up because we pay for the cri­sis caused by pol­i­cy mak­ers and politi­cians. Let’s try to make 2009 a year when we can shake off these lead­ers who run this sick sys­tem. A year like Eng­land 1381, Great Britain 1640, France 1789, Europe 1848, Mex­i­co 1914, Rus­sia 1917, Kro­n­stadt and the Ukraine 1921, Spain 1936, Hun­gary 1956, every­where 1968 and East­ern Europe 1989. Most of these strug­gles fell just short, per­mit­ting dic­ta­tor­ships of the left and right, but these were still years in which ordi­nary peo­ple strived to bring about a bet­ter world, and will try again. (Oscar Nom­i­nee inspi­ra­tional speech time:) the time is always now, and if you’re inter­est­ed in join­ing the strug­gle in a move­ment where every­body is equal and val­ued, join us in Bath Activist Net­work. A bet­ter world is pos­si­ble!

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, ring us on 07949 611912, email bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk, or see our web­site: www.myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

Earth First! Things First

Dur­ing the com­ing Bath Book fes­ti­val on the 1st of March, Bath Cen­tral Library will be host­ing the exhi­bi­tion ‘Por­trait of a Road Protest,’ about the goings on at Sols­bury Hill in the ear­ly 90s. It’s free entry to see the images, but a talk will take place from 3–4pm, £6 entry waged, £4 unwaged. Here’s a lit­tle his­to­ry les­son. The direct action protest against the would-be Bath­eas­t­on Bypass began in March ‘94, fol­low­ing the pub­lic enquiry sev­er­al years before. Bath­eas­t­on did have a traf­fic prob­lem, and a small bypass, traf­fic calm­ing or improved pub­lic trans­port (we’re still wait­ing) would have been accept­able, but the sheer scale of the road, destroy­ing water mead­ows and slic­ing through the low­er slopes of Sols­bury Hill, was mad­ness. The non-vio­lent direct action that took place con­sist­ed of sit­ting on dig­gers, build­ing tree camps, squat­ting, blockad­ing, and stand­ing up to the most­ly bru­tal secu­ri­ty guards (rumour has it that one was fed raw meat!). The protest brought many dif­fer­ent peo­ple togeth­er: locals, Earth First!ers and Don­gas, all fight­ing the Depart­ment of Trans­port. Over all, it went on for sev­er­al months, with reunion actions the fol­low­ing year, received lots of cov­er­age and, along with oth­er road protests round the rest of the coun­try, cut back around 90% of the UK road build­ing pro­gramme start­ed by the dread­ed iron lady.

Bath Bomb Word­watch: Don­ga, Don­ga Tribe (noun) — a group of semi-nomadic hip­pies and squat­ter-punks that joined to defend Twyford Down and oth­er road protest sites

www.earthfirst.org.uk

Air­port Expan­sion Is Plane Stu­pid

The run­way of Stanst­ed air­port was invad­ed by activists from the group Plane Stu­pid at 3.15am on 8th Decem­ber, while closed for main­te­nance work. Sched­uled to be reopened at 5am, the run­way was closed for three hours while con­fused cops and secu­ri­ty guards strug­gled to remove 57 pro­tes­tors. 56 flights were can­celled. The aver­age flight out of Stanst­ed releas­es 41.58 tonnes of CO2 into the atmos­phere. We lit­er­al­ly can’t go on like this – hopes of the UK meet­ing even the ridicu­lous­ly low gov­ern­ment-set tar­gets for emis­sions are screwed if we don’t cut our reliance on avi­a­tion, yet Neo-Labour has approved the capac­i­ty increase of Stanst­ed by ten mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year. So yeah, this action no doubt pissed many peo­ple off, but noth­ing else has worked so far. Who now would deny the wor­thi­ness of the cause of the suf­fragettes, and the effec­tive­ness of their tac­tics (which were far more dis­rup­tive than those of Plane Stu­pid, who’ve nev­er turned to explo­sives)? Thou­sands of well-behaved pro­tes­tors marched against the war in Iraq and got nowhere. The media claim that pro­tes­tors dis­rupt­ed work­ing class fam­i­lies’ hol­i­days, yet it is the poor who will be hit hard­est by cli­mate change — who gen­er­al­ly lack the means to sur­vive floods, famine and freak weath­er. Indeed, sta­tis­tics show that the major­i­ty of flights are still tak­en by busi­ness peo­ple and rich hol­i­day-mak­ers. Plane Stupid’s stunt comes at a crit­i­cal time when the gov­ern­ment is soon to make their deci­sion on Heathrow’s third run­way, and des­per­ate times call for rad­i­cal mea­sures. To pro­tect the very near future, we must act now.

www.planestupid.com/

Review Cor­ner: Off The Hoof

As we always say, going veg­an is a way for­ward to save the world against cli­mate change and to take a stand against the cru­el and mur­der­ous meat indus­try, so we here at the Bath Bomb thought we’d take a look at this lat­est news agent addi­tion. Off the Hoof is a mag­a­zine that pur­ports to cater for “veg­gies, veg­ans and meat eaters every­where.” How­ev­er, a clos­er inspec­tion reveals that this is unfor­tu­nate­ly a veg­an mag for veg­an peo­ple, with some of the con­tent sure to offend all but the thick­est-skinned of meat eaters. This first win­ter issue has inter­views with veg­an celebs such as con­tor­tion­ist Rub­ber Richie, medal-win­ning body builder Pete Ryan, and musi­cian Deb­bie Leigh Dri­ver, and fea­tures on veg­an stars like Natal­ie Port­man and Chris Mar­tin. Oh, and an arti­cle on non-veg­an Har­ry Hill and his fair trade nuts. The mag­a­zine is gen­er­al­ly a very good read with inter­est­ing arti­cles, and a style all of its own. Why not give it a read?

www.offthehoof.co.uk/

Duck Tales

It may be a new year, but some things nev­er change. The epic war between com­pas­sion­ate do-good­ers and the arro­gant ani­mal-abus­ing restau­ra­teurs of Bath over the issue of foie gras con­tin­ues. But enough objec­tive jour­nal­ism. The pro­duc­tion of foie gras is banned in this coun­try and many oth­ers, and involves tak­ing oth­er­wise free-range ducks and geese and forc­ing them to spend the last 12 weeks of their lives in tiny cages, being force-fed corn mash up to three times a day via gav­age pipes shoved down their throats. Even­tu­al­ly, as well as suf­fer­ing throat lac­er­a­tions and find­ing it painful to move, the birds’ liv­ers become infect­ed with the dis­ease ‘hepat­ic steato­sis’ and expand to up to ten times its nat­ur­al size – which is then served up as pâte de foie gras. Haute cui­sine this is not. Though restau­rants present this as an exot­ic del­i­ca­cy, the scale and eth­ic of pro­duc­tion is clos­er to that of fast food, and then they just slap on a hefty mark-up.

Over the Christ­mas peri­od, reg­u­lar protests and vis­its from Bath Ani­mal Action, Bath Activist Net­work and Bris­tol Ani­mal Rights Coali­tion per­suad­ed The Pinch and Bistro Num­ber 5 to stop pub­licly sell­ing, but they are both expect­ed to resume the dirty habit soon. The Olive Tree and Roy­al Cres­cent Hotel both appar­ent­ly only serve ‘faux gras,’ a sea­son­al, rar­er dish, based on the nat­ur­al over-eat­ing ten­den­cies of geese before migra­tion, and involves much less ani­mal tor­ture. Bathamp­ton Mill has been found to be sell­ing foie gras, as have Beau­jo­lais, who’ve been serv­ing dodg­i­ly under the counter ever since pre­vi­ous protests; didn’t your mum ever tell you lying was wrong? Whilst around 800 mem­bers of the pub­lic have now added their sig­na­tures to a peti­tion call­ing for a city-wide ban on the sale of the stuff, the offend­ing eater­ies should be expect­ing mys­tery shop­pers and more demos soon.

Here endeth the ser­mon.

www.banfoiegras.org.uk/
www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/foiegras/index.html

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For Fox Sake

Box­ing Day saw hunt sabs from Bath team­ing up with Pewsey and Wales to stop the cru­el ‘sport’ of fox hunt­ing — we fol­lowed the hunters with video cam­eras to ensure they obeyed the law, and used cit­ronel­la spray to mask the fox’s scent. This jit­tery reporter was con­cerned by the hunt sup­port­ers’ his­to­ry of vio­lence towards sabo­teurs, yet the bar­bar­ic scum gave up after a piti­ful hour and a half. Maybe it had some­thing to do with the high­ly effec­tive hunt sab­bing seen on the day, or maybe the hunt mas­ter just realised he’d left his cousin hand­cuffed to the bed. It is ille­gal to hunt with dogs in the UK, although it is still legal to exer­cise hounds, chase a scent and flush out fox­es to be shot, mak­ing the ban vir­tu­al­ly un-enforce­able. Police gen­er­al­ly don’t give a shit, so sabo­teurs are need­ed as much as ever. To get involved con­tact Bath Hunt Sabs at bath­huntsabs [at] yahoo.co.uk, or find your local group at http://hsa.enviroweb.org/contact/index.html

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…

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