Category: Action Reports

Sabotage and digger-diving – work stopped twice in two days at Mainshill Wood

For the past two weeks Scot­tish Wood­lands and oth­ers con­tract­ed by Scot­tish Coal have been dev­as­tat­ing parts of Main­shill Wood, those beyond the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. Plan­ta­tion for­est is being felled at an alarm­ing rate, with mas­sive har­vest­ing machines and JCBs tear­ing up more of Scotland’s coun­try­side. Scot­tish Coal is estab­lish­ing its own site, south of the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and right in the mid­dle of Main­shill Wood. Your sol­i­dar­i­ty is urgent­ly need­ed – this work must be stopped.

Machinery on siteHarvesting machineryTree felling stopped at nightTree felling and machinery working close to tunnelsFor the past two weeks Scot­tish Wood­lands and oth­ers con­tract­ed by Scot­tish Coal have been dev­as­tat­ing parts of Main­shill Wood, those beyond the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. Plan­ta­tion for­est is being felled at an alarm­ing rate, with mas­sive har­vest­ing machines and JCBs tear­ing up more of Scotland’s coun­try­side. Scot­tish Coal is estab­lish­ing its own site, south of the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and right in the mid­dle of Main­shill Wood. Your sol­i­dar­i­ty is urgent­ly need­ed – this work must be stopped.

Sab­o­tage

An anony­mous com­mu­nique was received after three of the four large pieces of har­vest­ing machin­ery on site were sab­o­taged in the ear­ly hours of Thurs­day morn­ing. Work is on-going round the clock, but did not start until 4 or 5pm on Thurs­day, being delayed for many hours. The com­mu­nique reads:

“On the morn­ing of Thurs­day 8th of Octo­ber three heavy vehi­cles had their locks glued. These vehi­cles belong to Scot­tish Wood­lands Ltd, who have been sub­con­tract­ed by Scot­tish Coal to clear­fell Main­shill Wood.

The vehi­cles dam­aged have been work­ing to pre­pare the Main­shill Wood area for coal extrac­tion. If it is open cast­ed then it will join sev­er­al oth­er mines in the Dou­glas Val­ley, two of which are cur­rent­ly expand­ing.

Scot­tish Coal, the land own­er Lord Home and the gov­ern­ment and more than pre­pared to sac­ri­fice the health of local com­mu­ni­ties and envi­ron­ment, as well as con­tribute to cli­mate change and near­ly uni­ver­sal envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion for wages, bonus­es, tar­gets and prof­its.

This action was tak­en by a group of autonomous peo­ple in sol­i­dar­i­ty with all those who oppose the devel­op­ment of Main­shill Wood into an open cast coal mine.”

Dig­ger-Div­ing

On Tues­day night at around 9:30pm, long after it had got dark, res­i­dents of the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp sud­den­ly realised that a mas­sive har­vest­ing machine was cut­ting through the last line of trees sep­a­rat­ing the camp from the rest of the site, dan­ger­ous­ly close to where peo­ple live and were sleep­ing, both in tree­hous­es and tun­nels.

Res­i­dents quick­ly sur­round­ed the machine, and tried to explain that the dri­ver was putting people’s lives at risk. The dri­ver, break­ing the com­pa­nies own health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, con­tin­ued work­ing despite peo­ple being with­in metres of the machine. At one point the saw blades on the end of the harvester’s arm were swung with­in a metre of a resident’s head. Even­tu­al­ly after much shout­ing and whis­tle-blow­ing, the har­vester was chased back to the access gate.

Short­ly after, anoth­er piece of heavy machin­ery that col­lects the felled trees tried to make its way up the access path, but was blocked by res­i­dents of the camp. The dri­ver refused to stop and kept mov­ing towards the peo­ple block­ing its path, and only did when it was clear that the wind­screen might be redec­o­rat­ed if the machine wasn’t stopped. One dri­ver exclaimed “I don’t care” in response to a res­i­dent shout­ing “you’re going to kill some­one!”, while the sec­ond dri­ver at one point jumped out of the cab in pur­suit of a res­i­dent and shout­ed “I’m going to kill you”.

That same night, a res­i­dent in a sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ty had called Strath­clyde police after a house was attacked with air-rifles. The police didn’t both­er to show up. At the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, how­ev­er, with­in 20 min­utes two police vehi­cles and four offi­cers braved the mud and threat­ened to arrest any­one stop­ping work, claim­ing the res­i­dents were endan­ger­ing them­selves by com­ing close to the machin­ery, despite the fact that the machin­ery prac­ti­cal­ly came on to the camp! The only com­pro­mise was that Scot­tish Wood­lands agreed to stop felling trees at night.

The above high­t­lights the dis­re­gard that Scot­tish Wood­lands and Scot­tish Coal have for the safe­ty of Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp res­i­dents (not to men­tion the health of local com­mu­ni­ties) and how Strath­clyde Police are com­plic­it in pro­tect­ing prop­er­ty and the inter­ests of pri­vate busi­ness, and not peo­ple.

Come to Main­shill

Your sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty is urgent­ly need­ed at Main­shill. Even if just for a few hours, peo­ple are need­ed. You can go and stop work for the day, chop wood, build bar­ri­cades and defens­es, or do the wash­ing up. It is impos­si­ble to stress how fast the work on the site is hap­pen­ing, and how quick­ly the area is being dev­as­tat­ed.

Main­shill Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp
— e‑mail: mainshill@riseup.net
— Home­page: http://mainshill.noflag.org.uk/

*Hit the Production of Climate Chaos — get involved* — 13th December call for actions

The cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe has not hap­pened by ran­dom chance and the melt­ing glac­i­er is not its place. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem, the way it pro­duces goods, and the way they are trans­port­ed and final­ly con­sumed is the root of cli­mate change.

The cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe has not hap­pened by ran­dom chance and the melt­ing glac­i­er is not its place. Our eco­nom­ic sys­tem, the way it pro­duces goods, and the way they are trans­port­ed and final­ly con­sumed is the root of cli­mate change.

We do not believe that this COP will solve the cli­mate cri­sis. The del­e­gates, NGOs and com­pa­ny rep­re­sen­ta­tives are stuck in an ide­ol­o­gy of nev­er end­ing eco­nom­ic growth and uni­ver­sal mar­ket solu­tions to all human-made prob­lems, such as eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion. Social jus­tice issues are con­se­quent­ly ignored.

On Decem­ber 13th we call for action on this eco­nom­ic sys­tem. We encour­age affin­i­ty groups to take action on tar­gets in Copen­hagen, and abroad. In the Morn­ing of Decem­ber 13th we will also shut down the har­bour of Copen­hagen through a mass action block­ade. The har­bour is a key sym­bol of the glob­al free-mar­ket econ­o­my. Here becomes vis­i­ble what is usu­al­ly hid­den: eco­log­i­cal dete­ri­o­ra­tion, eco­nom­ic and social exploita­tion, and utter injus­tice.

Since the dawn of colo­nial­ism the glob­al ship­ping indus­try has been char­ac­ter­ized by vio­lence. What was once gold pil­laged from the Incas is these days prof­it based on cheap resources and cheap labour — usu­al­ly trans­port­ed by ships. Today, con­tain­er ship­ping is one of the foun­da­tions of cap­i­tal­ism. There are hard­ly any reg­u­la­tions: fuel is not taxed, emis­sions are not sub­ject to con­trol and bor­ders are seem­ing­ly non-exis­tent for con­tain­er ships. At the same time, the nev­er end­ing need for more cheap goods is almost lim­it­less. The ‘free’ glob­al flow of goods con­tin­ues to grow — with ben­e­fits for only the few.

But where­as these flows of goods can enter the EU/ rich world freely, humans can­not. As soon as peo­ple do not have the right pass­port or enough mon­ey when enter­ing rich coun­tries, they are put in pris­ons, deport­ed and deprived of the most basic human rights. And the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the seas is not just hap­pen­ing around the EU bor­ders. It is also used to pro­tect inter­na­tion­al ship­ping, like in Soma­lia where inter­na­tion­al fish­ing fleets have robbed Soma­li fish­er­men of the fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of their exis­tence.

Final­ly, inter­na­tion­al ship­ping is more than just a method of trans­port for the glob­al econ­o­my. It is in itself a pri­ma­ry cause of cli­mate change. Approx­i­mate­ly 5% of Glob­al Green­house Emis­sions are pro­duced by the ship­ping indus­try. Con­tain­er ship fuel is basi­cal­ly tox­ic waste left over from petrol pro­duc­tion, con­tain­ing high amounts of sul­phur and mer­cury. And like inter­na­tion­al flights, nobody is respon­si­ble for ship­ping indus­try emis­sions under the Kyoto Pro­to­col.

Cli­mate jus­tice and real social change will not come from above. Effec­tive change has to come from every­one — affect­ed, respon­si­ble, and observ­er. True change has to be orga­nized and real­ized by peo­ple all over the world — all peo­ple on the streets and in the fields. We say no to the pow­er of gov­ern­ments, com­pa­nies and so-called non-gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions which are only inter­est­ed in main­tain­ing their pow­er, influ­ence and flows of cap­i­tal.

We will try to stop this mad­ness for a day. Fight­ing for cli­mate jus­tice means chang­ing our eco­nom­ic sys­tem and this needs to hap­pen here in the rich glob­al north, which reaps the most ben­e­fits from the dis­as­ter. For the free flow of peo­ple and ideas, instead of flows of goods to ben­e­fit the few.

Con­tact htp@riseup.net to get involved with plan­ning the action, or come to one of our next meet­ings: Berlin Octo­ber 3–4 & Copen­hagen Octo­ber 18.

‘Ratcliffe 114’ Protestors at Court — Callout for support — updated

The Rat­cliffe pro­tes­tors being per­se­cut­ed for ‘con­spir­a­cy’ are at court next week — show some sup­port!

There are 3 groups appear­ing in Not­ting­ham Mags on the 12th 13th and 14th — they need our sup­port to show we will not be intim­i­dat­ed.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty — No con­spir­a­cy!

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Rat­cliffe 114 — one more charged, now 25

The Guardian men­tions the M1 case:

The Rat­cliffe pro­tes­tors being per­se­cut­ed for ‘con­spir­a­cy’ are at court next week — show some sup­port!

There are 3 groups appear­ing in Not­ting­ham Mags on the 12th 13th and 14th — they need our sup­port to show we will not be intim­i­dat­ed.

Sol­i­dar­i­ty — No con­spir­a­cy!

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Rat­cliffe 114 — one more charged, now 25

The Guardian men­tions the M1 case:

“Some­times these cas­es – such as the con­spir­a­cy to com­mit pub­lic nui­sance charge brought against mem­bers of the “No M1 Widen­ing” cam­paign in 2007 – are just thrown out by the judges. But some­times, as in the con­spir­a­cy cas­es against ani­mal rights activists and anti-arms man­u­fac­tur­ing cam­paigns, they are treat­ed extreme­ly seri­ous­ly. The impact on the lives of the accused is enor­mous, because under the terms of a con­spir­a­cy charge, you can be for­bid­den to talk to any­one involved, which can involve house­mates, fam­i­ly, friends. Your pos­ses­sions can be seized (Julie White of the M1 cam­paign had her door bro­ken down by police, her com­put­er seized and held for a year, and even items tak­en off her wash­ing line) and held on remand for the dura­tion of the tri­al.”

…

“if the court allows the case and con­vic­tions fol­low, it has cat­a­stroph­ic impli­ca­tions. Any activist involved with plan­ning any kind of ille­gal direct action could be charged with con­spir­a­cy to com­mit aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

As White says: “You could pick up any­one you want­ed. We’re get­ting into thought crimes now.” Is that what the police are after?”

Disrupting E.ON at London City University undergraduate fair + Kingsnorth shelved, or not? (+ Tilbury)

7th Octo­ber 2009

7th Octo­ber 2009
E.ON, were hold­ing a talk at the stu­dent recruit­ment fair yes­ter­day. The com­pa­ny is respon­si­ble for the planned new coal pow­er sta­tions at Kingsnorth, which com­bined would pro­duce the same car­bon emis­sions as Ghana. With the report by the Glob­al and Human­i­tar­i­an forum stat­ing that three hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple are already dying already each year due to cli­mate change, it isn’t a viable option.

The group of activists stormed the talks yes­ter­day by E.ON, get­ting past the secu­ri­ty guards who were hold­ing a pret­ty tight pres­ence out­side the doors, quite pos­si­bly due to the con­tin­ued protests against E.ON at stu­dent fairs last year http://leaveitintheground.org.uk/?p=185 .

While three burly guys jumped on one activist, the oth­ers hand­ed out fly­ers to the bemused stu­dents wok­en up from the cor­po­rate Pow­er­Point slum­ber. An activist took to the podi­um to tell the audi­ence what E.ON are real­ly about. Claim­ing them­selves as a Green Ener­gy Com­pa­ny while 95% of their invest­ment is into non renew­able ener­gies is a clear sign of green­wash­ing and the cor­po­rate bull­shit that stu­dents have to lis­ten to.

—–

Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion plans axed — Local Cam­paign­ers Respond

8.10.2009
The tim­ing couldn’t be bet­ter, Kingsnorth Cli­mate Action Med­way (KCAM) and WDM host­ed a debate tonight to dis­cuss the future of coal in Med­way. The meet­ing cul­mi­nat­ed in the announce­ment that E.on have essen­tial­ly pulled out of build­ing a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth.

Local cam­paign­er Trish Marchant said “Its fan­tas­tic news for us, but it’s a small vic­to­ry. We in Med­way will be send­ing our sup­port to the next local group who take on the fight” In a heavy blow to the government’s plans to pro­mote ener­gy from coal, the Ger­man com­pa­ny have said they will not pur­sue the new plant in the UK until at least 2012.

Jane Har­ris, a local KCAM cam­paign­er said “This is a step in the right direc­tion, it shows that peo­ple real­ly do have the pow­er to chal­lenge the gov­ern­ment and cor­po­ra­tions. How­ev­er, accord­ing to UN fig­ures cli­mate change is cur­rent­ly respon­si­ble for 300,000 deaths per year. We need to seri­ous­ly rethink any plans to use new coal, we need to be focus­ing on renew­able green ener­gy”.

Should the project have gone ahead, the coal units would have been be the first to be built for more than 20 years.

Dave David­son, a res­i­dent of the penin­su­la said “I’m cau­tious about Eons real agen­da. Are they try­ing to apply pres­sure to Ed Mil­liband to make a deci­sion or are we real­ly see­ing the change we have been work­ing for. I hope for the future of our plan­et that it’s the lat­ter.”

Jill Osborne of Tip­ping Point said “Its been amaz­ing work­ing along­side such com­mit­ted locals. The peo­ple of Med­way cer­tain­ly know how to mount a resis­tance. This vic­to­ry will be a huge inspi­ra­tion to cli­mate change cam­paign­ers across the world.”

http://kcam.co.cc

—

- Cli­mate Camp responds

Wednes­day, 7 Octo­ber 2009: Cli­mate activists cel­e­brat­ed vic­to­ry against car­bon inten­sive coal pow­er last night, as ener­gy com­pa­ny E.ON announced they were indef­i­nite­ly delay­ing build­ing a new pow­er sta­tion in Kent. The Camp for Cli­mate Action tar­get­ed the Kingsnorth site in August 2008 1 as coal is one of the most envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive ways of gen­er­at­ing electricity.2

E.ON’s anounce­ment comes as hun­dreds of activists pre­pare for the Great Cli­mate Swoop on 17th Octo­ber, when they plan to take con­trol of Rat­cliffe-on-Soar3, anoth­er coal-fired pow­er plant oper­at­ed by E.ON 4. Activists will be co-ordi­nat­ing the protests through text mes­sages and twit­ter, which were also used to plan the G20 protests.

Activist Den­nis Stevens said: “This is an amaz­ing vic­to­ry which shows how ordi­nary peo­ple can take back the pow­er from cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ment which do not val­ue peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment. We need a social move­ment to devel­op com­mu­ni­ty con­trol of our ener­gy sup­ply and our soci­ety; not our cur­rent sys­tem which ignores the needs of peo­ple and the cli­mate.”

Resis­tance by Cli­mate Camp activists to the Kingsnorth plan has been wide­spread, includ­ing the Tip­ping Point shop in near­by Gilling­ham which works with­in the local com­mu­ni­ty to expose E.ON’s green­wash, and actions tar­get­ing E.ON’s PR firm Edel­man and con­struc­tion firms bid­ding for the Kingsnorth con­tract. Cli­mate Camp activists have also dumped coal at E.ON stu­dent recruit­ment events, giv­en out leaflets at FA Cup foot­ball match­es spon­sored by E.ON, and even dis­rupt­ed a cli­mate change con­fer­ence spon­sored by the ener­gy giant itself.5

Emma Jack­son added: “E.ON are final­ly recog­nis­ing that the days of build­ing new coal-fired pow­er sta­tions are over. Now we have to start shut­ting down exist­ing pow­er sta­tions, and that’s why we’re going to Rat­cliffe-on-Soar next week. And if E.ON try and bring back their plans for Kingsnorth then we’ll be back there too”.

More infor­ma­tion on the Great Cli­mate Swoop at Rat­cliffe on Soar is avail­able at thegreatclimateswoop.org

Ends.

NOTES FOR EDITORS

1 Kingsnorth would have been the first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the UK for more than 30 years.

2 If built, Kingsnorth will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year. If all the coal plants pro­posed for Britain are built, an extra 50 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide a year would be pumped into the atmos­phere, almost a tenth of the UK’s cur­rent total emis­sions.

3 Rat­cliffe-on-Soar is the UK’s third most pol­lut­ing pow­er sta­tion and emits more CO2 each year than Cos­ta Rica.

4 climatecamp.org.uk/actions/climate-swoop-2009

5 leaveitintheground.org.uk/?p=185

Tel: 07772861099, 07040900905 or 07932096677
Email: press@climatecamp.org.uk

http://tippingpoint.co.cc

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Or is it real­ly a suc­cess?

Head­lines would sug­gest a major ground break­ing vic­to­ry for the envi­ro­men­tal move­ment and the cam­paign against new coal with the announce­ment by Eon how­ev­er the Tip­ping Point blog sug­gests the news might not be so sig­nif­i­cant (see http://climateshop.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/news-sinking-in/). Eon has since con­firmed that it remains in the gov­ern­ments com­pe­ti­tion to build a demon­stra­tion car­bon cap­ture and stor­age facil­i­ty attached to a coal-fired pow­er plant by 2014 and since the win­ner is unlike­ly to be announced untill 2011 how can Eons annouce­ment be tak­en as a vic­to­ry?

All Eon are say­ing is that they a like­ly to delay com­mit­ing cash to build the new plant for the next two or three year so that cer­tain­ly does not trans­late as shelv­ing the project, not when they are still seek­ing the bil­lion pound gift from Ed Miliband to tri­al the CCS.

—

What does this mean for coal in the UK?

It is the sus­pen­sion of the key project that has so far defined the bat­tle over new coal in the UK. It is there­fore high­ly sig­nif­i­cant, but not a fatal blow. The invest­ment freeze could be un-frozen with the right lev­el of sub­sidy, and has no direct impact on the oth­er plants being con­sid­ered for CCS demon­stra­tion. There is now a new threat emerg­ing at Hunter­ston in Scot­land, from a con­sor­tium includ­ing RWE and Dong ener­gy (a Dan­ish util­i­ty) for a plant iden­ti­cal to Kingsnorth, and they are claim­ing they will build with or with­out Gov­ern­ment assis­tance.

—–

Health warn­ing — report from main­stream news­pa­per, hence “ecofriend­ly”!!!

POWER FIRM HALTS PLANS FOR NEW GREEN STATION 12th Novem­ber 2009.

PLANS to build a new, ecofriend­ly pow­er sta­tion in South Essex have been put on hold.

The exist­ing pow­er coal­fired pow­er sta­tion at Tilbury is due to be decom­mis­sioned in 2014,possibly even in 2013.It had been expect­ed that its oper­a­tors, npow­er, would replace it with a new pow­er sta­tion, but on Mon­day they announced they would­n’t now be mak­ing an appli­ca­tion to build a new super­crit­i­cal coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at the site.

There has been a pow­er sta­tion at Tilbury since 1956, with oil-fired Tilbury ‘A’ com­ing online to the nation­al grid a year later.Coal-fired Tilbury ‘B’ fol­lowed in 1967 and has oper­at­ed, with sig­nif­i­cant effi­cien­cy upgrades since then. The orig­i­nal sta­tion was moth­balled in 1981 and even­tu­al­ly demol­ished in 1999, allow­ing the cre­ation of the sta­tion’s inno­v­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal cen­tre.

How­ev­er, a Euro­pean direc­tive which came into force on 1 Jan­u­ary, 2008 gave the pow­er sta­tion just 20,000 hours of oper­at­ing life before it has to be replaced by a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly, car­bon effi­cient sys­tem (see fur­ther below for data *1* ). Nigel Staves, Tilbury Pow­er Sta­tion man­ag­er, esti­mates that timescale will run out as ear­ly as 2013. He says: “Giv­en the cur­rent mar­ket, we are unable to make an eco­nom­ic case for this new coal pow­er sta­tion. “We are also con­sid­er­ing the out­come of the Gov­ern­men­t’s pol­i­cy review on the con­di­tions for new coal sta­tions. For this rea­son, our plans for Tilbury are now on hold. “However,we firm­ly believe new, more effi­cient, coal-fired gen­er­a­tion should ulti­mate­ly have a role to play in a low ‑car­bon econ­o­my along­side gas, nuclear pow­er and increas­ing­ly renew­able ener­gy sources. “We con­tin­ue to see the Tilbury site as an impor­tant one, both to RWE npow­er and in terms of the future of pow­er gen­er­a­tion in the UK. “Giv­en the exist­ing ener­gy infra­struc­ture and prox­im­i­ty to areas of high demand for elec­tric­i­ty, it is an obvi­ous choice for pow­er gen­er­a­tion. “We are now review­ing poten­tial options.”

RWE npow­er said this meant it would not be pro­gress­ing with its bid for Gov­ern­ment funds to devel­op a car­bon diox­ide cap­ture demon­stra­tion plant at a new Tilbury sta­tion, but it remained inter­est­ed in oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties to devel­op the tech­nol­o­gy.

Sheffield Social Centre — New Location & another eviction hearing!

New loca­tion announced for the Anti-Cap­i­tal­ist, Non-Hier­achi­cal, Lib­er­at­ed Space.

Sheffield social cen­tre has moved, noth­ing else has changed.

Sheffield Social Centre 2New loca­tion announced for the Anti-Cap­i­tal­ist, Non-Hier­achi­cal, Lib­er­at­ed Space.

Sheffield social cen­tre has moved, noth­ing else has changed.

The new loca­tion is 10 Northum­ber­land Road, just off Glos­sop Road. The build­ing was vacant when we entered and no crim­i­nal laws were bro­ken.

We are keen to enter into dis­cus­sion with the build­ings own­er to avoid cost­ly legal pro­ceed­ings. In the mean­time the cafe and the full pro­gramme of events are run­ning as usu­al in this open and inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ty space. Come down any time, all are wel­come.

http://sheffieldsocialcentre.org.uk/

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9.10.09: yes­ter­day, at around 5pm, notices were served at 10 Northum­ber­land which state that a tres­pass hear­ing is due to take place at Sheffield Coun­ty Court at 10:30am on Wednes­day 14th Octo­ber.

Reclaim the Earth Centre at Doncaster — People needed for planned occupation

The Earth Cen­tre in Don­cast­er has been left to ruin for 5 years. We intend to take it back. This site now owned by the coun­cil was devel­oped to be a sus­tain­able liv­ing edu­ca­tion cen­tre and com­mu­ni­ty farm. It is cur­rent­ly being used as a fir­ing range by weapon enthu­si­asts Cer­berus Air­soft.

reclaim the earth centreThe Earth Cen­tre in Don­cast­er has been left to ruin for 5 years. We intend to take it back. This site now owned by the coun­cil was devel­oped to be a sus­tain­able liv­ing edu­ca­tion cen­tre and com­mu­ni­ty farm. It is cur­rent­ly being used as a fir­ing range by weapon enthu­si­asts Cer­berus Air­soft. Its time to bring this valu­able resource back to the peo­ple before it is sold off for devel­op­ment.

The Earth Cen­tre was devel­oped on derelict land left over from for­mer coal pits, it was intend­ed to be the muse­um for the mil­le­ni­um. Ini­tial plans were for a grad­ual devel­op­ment of the site, incor­po­rat­ing com­mu­ni­ty-led projects and with much con­struc­tion work being under­tak­en by Mowlem, who used the site to train appren­tices. The first stage of that project opened in 1994, includ­ing a sus­tain­able aqua­cul­ture cen­tre and a com­mu­ni­ty farm.

In 1995 the Mil­len­ni­um Com­mis­sion made an award to Earth Cen­tre, which became one of its Land­mark Mil­len­ni­um projects. The site was com­plete­ly redesigned and vir­tu­al­ly all exist­ing land­scap­ing and projects were destroyed, which lost the good­will of the local com­mu­ni­ty who felt exclud­ed from the project. From 1996 work pro­gressed on the reme­di­a­tion of the remain­ing pol­lut­ed land and the design and con­struc­tion of the many build­ings and exhi­bi­tions.

In Sep­tem­ber 2004 the attrac­tion closed to the pub­lic, and only pre-booked school par­ties were allowed. By the end of Octo­ber, the Earth Cen­tre, mon­u­ment to Sus­tain­abil­i­ty, was to the mon­ey men un-sus­tain­able and was put in the hands of admin­is­tra­tors. It is now in the hands of the Coun­cil who sur­prise sur­prise have made no effort to return it to its orig­i­nal intent. Instead the coun­cil choos­es to allow access to Cer­berus Air­soft a com­pa­ny spe­cial­is­ing in pro­vid­ing war games and shoot­ing out­ings to a select mem­ber­ship group. Gen­er­al pub­lic will be thrown off by the police!!

We think that this is an amaz­ing site and the orig­i­nal con­cept behind the Earth Cen­tre is a fan­tas­ti­cal­ly intel­li­gent way of edu­cat­ing com­mu­ni­ties about sus­tain­able liv­ing. It is now the time to return the Earth Cen­tre to the peo­ple.

We need sup­port in many forms to make this hap­pen. To begin with we need peo­ple to come and help occu­py the site, we will need tools and vol­un­teers. This is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for any­one that has been want­i­ng to live in a com­mu­ni­ty, in an eco vil­lage set­ting and a real chance to put South York­shire on the map for envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion and lifestyle.

We’re plan­ning a swoop on the site and then aim to trans­form it so that every­one can use it and ben­e­fit from its resources.

Please help con­tact — thereismore2lfefolks@yahoo.co.uk

This is a very urgent mat­ter!
The fol­low­ing sto­ry was pub­lished in local paper ‘Peter­bor­ough Today’ 15 Feb­ru­ary 2007

DONCASTER Coun­cil is poised to sell off the ill-fat­ed Earth Cen­tre to devel­op­ers after admit­ting run­ning costs mean it would be “extreme­ly unlike­ly” it could be used by com­mu­ni­ty groups.
The prob­a­ble fate of the 200 remain­ing acres of the for­mer £38 mil­lion green vis­i­tor attrac­tion was revealed in the coun­cil’s Cor­po­rate Asset Man­age­ment Plan, pre­sent­ed to coun­cil­lors last week.
The Earth Cen­tre has been moth­balled with 24-hour secu­ri­ty patrols since it was wound up in 2004.
The Asset Man­age­ment Plan pre­sent­ed to a meet­ing of the Econ­o­my and Enter­prise Scruti­ny Pan­el describes the Earth Cen­tre as “extreme­ly unlike­ly to find sus­tain­able use from com­mu­ni­ty or oth­er not for prof­it groups because of the very high cost of run­ning and main­tain­ing both the build­ings and the grounds.” The report goes on to say that a “dis­pos­al solu­tion” would be the “only viable option” for the site.
Ripon-based Pear­son Devel­op­ments Lim­it­ed have sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to build 300 hous­es, flats and offices on 17.5 acres of the 30 acres the com­pa­ny bought from the Mil­len­ni­um Com­mis­sion. This land includes the for­mer car park area and the lodge facil­i­ties.
Don­cast­er Coun­cil owns the remain­der of the 200-plus acre site, includ­ing green­belt land and the show­piece con­fer­ence cen­tre and gal­leries.
Their report adds: “Adja­cent land owned by the Mil­len­ni­um Com­mis­sion was sold in spring 2006 to a devel­op­er and dis­cus­sions are in hand regard­ing a pos­si­ble sale of the coun­cil’s land­hold­ing poten­tial­ly to the same devel­op­er.”
For­mer Earth Cen­tre mem­ber Bernard Pear­son said: “All the mon­ey spent there was spent by the Mil­len­ni­um Com­mis­sion from lot­tery mon­ey — I think the peo­ple who have paid into this should be tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion. I don’t think the Coun­cil has tried very hard to get rid of it.”
Mr Pear­son, who claims the main­te­nance bill for the site is in the region of £30,000 per month, added of the like­ly sell-off: “I think it is sad but it was what one would expect after two and a half years. I would look for­ward to see­ing what pro­pos­als are put for­ward for the site. A lot of pub­lic mon­ey was invest­ed in the site and I would hope the pub­lic will get some­thing out of the arrange­ments.”
Opened in March 1999 as one of the Gov­ern­men­t’s flag­ship mil­len­ni­um projects, the Earth Cen­tre was orig­i­nal­ly billed as an ‘envi­ron­men­tal theme park’.
But the pro­ject­ed vis­i­tor num­bers failed to appear. A relaunch in 2001 saw the cen­tre rebrand­ed to appeal to busi­ness and edu­ca­tion users, but its for­tunes did not revive enough for the attrac­tion to break even. It went into liq­ui­da­tion in 2004 and has been moth­balled ever since.
Nobody at Don­cast­er Coun­cil was avail­able for com­ment this week.

We will not allow this to hap­pen action must be tak­en!

The Earth Cen­tre is key in edu­cat­ing the world about the effects of cli­mate change and sus­tain­able liv­ing solu­tions

Check out what it’s got to offer!

• 80% of build­ing mate­ri­als were either reclaimed or recy­cled
• Europe’s largest flat-foot pho­to­volta­ic installation.1,300 m² canopy con­tain­ing 250 pho­to­volta­ic pan­els – gen­er­at­ing 80,000 KW of elec­tric­i­ty per year and would run the sys­tems and the gal­leries.
• Con­fer­ence cen­tre con­struct­ed large­ly from reclaimed mate­ri­als includ­ing tele­graph poles, crushed con­crete, glass and radi­a­tors.
• A shop and café area
• 6500 m² black box gallery space con­di­tioned through an under­ground ther­mal store called the Labyrinth
• “Liv­ing Machine” sewage treat­ment plant. A local water treat­ment sys­tem pro­cess­ing all waste water com­ing from Earth Cen­tre toi­lets, basins and kitchens, oper­at­ing entire­ly through bio­log­i­cal reac­tions, using both bac­te­ria and nutri­ent-demand­ing trop­i­cal plants in the warmth of a green­house.
• Ful­ly inte­grat­ed net­work of water man­age­ment that incor­po­rates rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing and the treat­ment, stor­age and recy­cling of water for use in irri­ga­tion and water fea­tures and as a wildlife habi­tat.
• 100,000 new trees includ­ing 15 acres of wil­low as well as some ancient wood­lands, two rivers and a vari­ety of eco­log­i­cal grass­lands and wet­lands
• Demon­stra­tions of organ­ic gar­den­ing meth­ods, fruit orchards, wil­low sculp­tures, for­est and bog gar­dens, and oth­er flower and sculp­tur­al gar­dens

All this and a pirate ship!

……Atten­tion……
We need sup­port for the takeover of the Earth Cen­tre, we intend to trans­form it into a camp for sus­tain­able liv­ing and com­mu­ni­ty activism con­tact us now! A swoop date will be announced soon.

Scottish Power, Hatfield Moor Gas Storage Facility, URGENT HELP REQUIRED!!! Protest, Sunday 11th October

HATFIELD MOOR GAS STORAGE FACILITY, LINDHOLME, DONCASTER, SOUTH YORKSHIRE.

HATFIELD MOOR GAS STORAGE FACILITY, LINDHOLME, DONCASTER, SOUTH YORKSHIRE.

Scot­tish Pow­er, the cur­rent own­ers of the site, have just sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion to DONCASTER METROPOLITAN BOROUGH COUNCIL seek­ing per­mis­sion to both extend, and rein­state a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring gas field sit­u­at­ed under the area. The site stands adja­cent to a small res­i­den­tial estate, a cou­ple of pris­ons, and a NATURE RESERVE which already is des­ig­nat­ed as an area of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est.

Dur­ing the con­struc­tion phase of the project, Scot­tish Pow­er them­selves admit that they will be run­ning drilling oper­a­tions 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, for at least 10 months.What effect will this have on local res­i­dents, wildlife and environment.Also, the orig­i­nal geo­log­i­cal sur­vey of the area to which Scot­tish Pow­er base their plan­ning appli­ca­tion is some 30 yrs old now and has been shown to have been rid­dled with flawed data in any case.
In addi­tion, our local MP, who ini­tial­ly seemed hap­py to sup­port us, appears to have changed sides, hmm, inter­est­ing but not sur­pris­ing!

We have arranged the first of many peace­ful protests, which is to be held on Sun­day 11th Octo­ber, start­ing at 2pm, meet­ing up point: Lind­holme ‘Green Gym’ Play­ing Field, Lind­holme, Don­cast­er, South Yorks (adja­cent to Lind­holme Immi­gra­tion removal cen­tre. DN7 post­code. Sup­port des­per­ate­ly need­ed!!!).

As I men­tioned ear­li­er, we are a small com­mu­ni­ty, with lit­tle chance of suc­cess­ful­ly hold­ing any real form of protest on our own, so any sup­port would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. Many thanks

Sheffield Social Centre Injunction Hearing

At around 1pm today notices were served at the Sheffield Social Cen­tre, http://sheffieldsocialcentre.org.uk/ giv­ing notice of an evic­tion hear­ing at 3pm today, Tues­day 6th Octo­ber 2009.

At the 3pm pos­ses­sion case hear­ing the judge agreed to give until 10am tomor­row to con­test the pos­ses­sion case.

Pigsah bannerAt around 1pm today notices were served at the Sheffield Social Cen­tre, http://sheffieldsocialcentre.org.uk/ giv­ing notice of an evic­tion hear­ing at 3pm today, Tues­day 6th Octo­ber 2009.

At the 3pm pos­ses­sion case hear­ing the judge agreed to give until 10am tomor­row to con­test the pos­ses­sion case.

So I guess that means that every­body should get down to the Court on West Bar (the new ugly, neo-clas­si­cal one) tomor­row morn­ing to protest!

Key Coal Terminal Shut By Climate And Community Campaigners

Update: After a six hour block­ade, one man had been arrest­ed at the scene for assault and three women and a man had been arrest­ed for breach of the peace. They’ve been charged with caus­ing about £200,000 ‘dam­age’ to the coal ter­mi­nal oper­a­tion.

—-

At 6.30 this morn­ing ten cam­paign­ers, togeth­er with local res­i­dents, peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed Raven­struther coal load­ing ter­mi­nal in South Lanark­shire. Hav­ing stopped its reopen­ing after the week­end, they are cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing coal being loaded and trans­port­ed. [1] Pro­test­ers plan to stay in place as long as pos­si­ble.

Ravenstruther lock-onRavenstruther banner & conveyor lock-onUpdate: After a six hour block­ade, one man had been arrest­ed at the scene for assault and three women and a man had been arrest­ed for breach of the peace. They’ve been charged with caus­ing about £200,000 ‘dam­age’ to the coal ter­mi­nal oper­a­tion.

—-

At 6.30 this morn­ing ten cam­paign­ers, togeth­er with local res­i­dents, peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed Raven­struther coal load­ing ter­mi­nal in South Lanark­shire. Hav­ing stopped its reopen­ing after the week­end, they are cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing coal being loaded and trans­port­ed. [1] Pro­test­ers plan to stay in place as long as pos­si­ble.

Two pro­test­ers are locked on top of the coal con­vey­or belt, hold­ing a large ban­ner with the words “No New Coal” high over the ter­mi­nal. Oth­ers are blockad­ing the front gate with their bod­ies, arm tubes and bike locks.

The action is aim­ing to dis­rupt the oper­a­tions of Scot­tish Coal in the region. The pro­test­ers are act­ing to oppose the five open cast coal mines active in the area, and in resis­tance to the thir­teen new open cast coal mines due to open in Scot­land. [2] [3]

Bill Reid who is at the site said: “In the face of dan­ger­ous run­away cli­mate change, increas­ing our depen­dence on coal – the most pol­lut­ing of the fos­sil fuels – is sim­ply unac­cept­able. We urgent­ly need to switch to renew­able ener­gy and close exist­ing mines. We shouldn’t even be think­ing about new ones.”

The demon­stra­tion today is in sup­port of the Lanark­shire com­mu­ni­ties who are oppos­ing new open cast mines. [4] Anna Macken­zie, a local res­i­dent said: “We’re here today to send a clear mes­sage that we don’t want parts of Scot­land such as South Lanark­shire to become the most heav­i­ly mined areas in Europe, as they will be if per­mis­sion is grant­ed for all the new open cast coal mines cur­rent­ly being pro­posed. Direct action is not just the only avenue left open, it is also an effec­tive one, as demon­strat­ed by the occu­pa­tion of Main­shill Wood which has been pre­vent­ing an open cast mine from start­ing and fur­ther­ing high­light­ing the neg­a­tive health impact which open cast­ing has been hav­ing on the peo­ple of Dou­glas.” [5]

Anoth­er pro­test­er, Helen Forbes said: “Local author­i­ties, the Scot­tish gov­ern­ment and com­pa­nies like Scot­tish Coal and Scot­tish Pow­er are ignor­ing the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence on cli­mate change. We have to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for our cli­mate and our future, and stop the coal indus­try and its expan­sion. Today at Raven­struther we’re act­ing respon­si­bly”.

With Scotland’s CO2 emis­sions increas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly, con­tin­u­ing the con­sump­tion of coal will make it impos­si­ble for Scot­land to meet its 80% tar­get reduc­tion in CO2 emis­sions by 2050. Jo Price said “The Scot­tish gov­ern­ment is pay­ing lip ser­vice to the dan­gers of cli­mate change. As long as they allow com­pa­nies like Scot­tish Coal to dig up our coun­try­side and burn the prod­uct we won’t meet the tar­gets.” [6]

It is esti­mat­ed that 6,380 tonnes of coal were stopped from being loaded, equiv­a­lent to 11,675,400 kg CO2 released into the atmos­phere.

The block­aders apol­o­gized to any work­ers affect­ed by today’s demon­stra­tion, but in rec­og­niz­ing the des­per­ate need to stop burn­ing coal sees no oth­er choice but to tar­get the com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for min­ing it.

ENDS ~ NOTES SEE BELOW
NOTES FOR EDITORS

[1] There is cur­rent­ly a coal freight train sit­ting in Raven­struther coal-rail ter­mi­nal, which this action is pre­vent­ing from being loaded. Five such trains leave Raven­struther every day.

[2] 3 open cast coal mines deliv­er coal to the Raven­struther coal-rail ter­mi­nal. The new mines pro­posed for Lanark­shire are like­ly to use it too (as is the case with Poniel open cast, which start­ed pro­duc­ing coal in
Sep­tem­ber).

[3] Raven­struther coal-rail ter­mi­nal deliv­ers coal to pow­er sta­tions through­out Eng­land includ­ing Drax (Drax Group plc.), Ruge­ley (Inter­na­tion­al Pow­er), and Iron­bridge (E.on).

[4] Dou­glas host­ed a Com­mu­ni­ty Health Pub­lic Meet­ing on 23rd Sep­tem­ber 2009, after a Com­mu­ni­ty Health Study of the heav­i­ly-mined Dou­glas­dale area revealed it as a trou­bling sig­nif­i­cant hotspot for res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness­es
and can­cer.

“Stud­ies per­formed in the Unit­ed States indi­cate high­er lung can­cer rates, and high­er mor­tal­i­ty rates for res­pi­ra­to­ry, heart, and kid­ney dis­eases in com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing in prox­im­i­ty to open-cast coal extrac­tion
oper­a­tions. ” (See Coal Health Study, below)

Dou­glas­dale Health Study 2009:

& (PDF):
http://coalactionscotland.noflag.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Douglasdale_v4.pdf>

“Open­cast mines will lead to pub­lic health dis­as­ter, warns poi­son expert”
(The Her­ald, 26/09/09)
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/opencast-mines-will-lead-to-public-health-disaster-warns-poison-expert‑1.922198>

“Health should come before open­cast prof­it in Dou­glas” (Lanark Gazette,
1/10/09)
http://www.lanarkgazette.co.uk/news/Health-should-come-before-opencast.5696870.jp>

[5] Accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion (WHO), 160,000 peo­ple
already die each year as a direct result of glob­al warm­ing.
http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/World_Health_Day_2008_FactSheet2.pdf>

[6] For more on the case against coal min­ing in Lanark­shire, see Coal
Action Scot­land’s excel­lent brief­ing.

Today’s cam­paign­ers are NOT from the group Coal Action Scot­land.

Citizen weapons inspectors visit Manchester factory

Tar­get Brimar cam­paign press release
Mon­day 5th Octo­ber 08:00
— for imme­di­ate release

Cit­i­zen Weapons Inspec­tors vis­it Man­ches­ter Fac­to­ry

Tar­get Brimar cam­paign press release
Mon­day 5th Octo­ber 08:00
— for imme­di­ate release

Cit­i­zen Weapons Inspec­tors vis­it Man­ches­ter Fac­to­ry

At just before 8 o’clock this morn­ing, sev­er­al cit­i­zen weapons inspec­tors from the Tar­get Brimar cam­paign vis­it­ed the Chad­der­ton premis­es of mil­i­tary com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­er Brimar.[1] They were seek­ing infor­ma­tion on pos­si­ble con­nec­tions between Brimar’s prod­ucts and human rights abus­es com­mit­ted in Gaza and the West Bank, Iraq, and Afghanistan.[2]

Tar­get Brimar cam­paign­ers, in a research dossier released today,[3] have raised con­cerns that the com­pa­ny’s prod­ucts may have been used in the com­mis­sion of human rights abus­es includ­ing attacks on civil­ians dur­ing the ‘Oper­a­tion Cast Lead’ inva­sion of Gaza by the Israeli Defence Forces in Decem­ber 2008/January 2009. Brimar direc­tors admit­ted in 2006, dur­ing the war in Lebanon, that the com­pa­ny sup­plied com­po­nents used in Apache attack heli­copters sold to the Israeli mil­i­tary.

There is also evi­dence that prod­ucts devel­oped dur­ing a research col­lab­o­ra­tion between Brimar and the US Marine Corps were deployed with Marine tank bat­tal­ions in Iraq in 2004–5, includ­ing with forces direct­ly involved in the Sec­ond Bat­tle of Fal­lu­jah in Novem­ber 2004. And there is con­cern that Brimar prod­ucts may be incor­po­rat­ed into heli­copters cur­rent­ly being used to fire ther­mo­bar­ic mis­siles in Afghanistan.

The Tar­get Brimar cam­paign is call­ing on the com­pa­ny, which is owned by pri­vate investors and has a sig­nif­i­cant finan­cial rela­tion­ship with the Bank of Scotland/Lloyds Bank­ing Group and there­fore with the British tax­pay­er, to return to its his­tor­i­cal­ly peace­ful man­u­fac­ture of spe­cial­ist screens and view­ing equip­ment, and on the British gov­ern­ment to reviews its arms export pol­i­cy and to cease its immoral and eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­tort­ed sub­si­dis­ing of the arms indus­try.

The Tar­get Brimar cam­paign is call­ing for a pub­lic demon­stra­tion on 17th Octo­ber 2009 call­ing on Brimar to rethink its mil­i­tary man­u­fac­ture oper­a­tions. Full details are avail­able on http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk

Notes for edi­tors

1. the weapons inspec­tors are, at the time of writ­ing, still at Brimar. They can be con­tact­ed direct­ly for inter­view on 07866 001207. Video footage and stills images will be made avail­able as soon as pos­si­ble via press@targetbrimar.org.uk and http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk. Gen­er­al ques­tions regard­ing the cam­paign and research should be made to 07506 551323 or to press@targetbrimar.org.uk.

2. the inspec­tors will be direct­ing ques­tions to Brimar regard­ing its aware­ness of doc­u­ment­ed human rights abus­es which are like­ly to have involved the use of its prod­ucts, and the com­pre­hen­sive­ness of its knowl­edge of the final des­ti­na­tions of its prod­ucts once sold.

3. copies of the dossier can be down­loaded at: http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk/downloads/target_brimar_dossier_october_2009‑1.pdf