Category: Transport

Edinburgh CRITICAL MASS Fri 23/02

Fol­low­ing on from last mon­th’s suc­cess­ful ride, Fri­day (23/02) sees Feb­ru­ary’s Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride in Edin­burgh. Meet 5.30pm foot of the Mound (by the Nation­al Gal­leries). Ride off 6pm.

We enjoy cycling. We enjoy cycling togeth­er. Cycling togeth­er makes Edinburgh’s some­time haz­ardous streets a more plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence. Let’s ride and cel­e­brate the won­der­ful inven­tion that is the cycle (bi/tri/uni — all vari­eties wel­come)! Pos­i­tive atti­tudes essen­tial!

Fol­low­ing on from last mon­th’s suc­cess­ful ride, Fri­day (23/02) sees Feb­ru­ary’s Crit­i­cal Mass bike ride in Edin­burgh. Meet 5.30pm foot of the Mound (by the Nation­al Gal­leries). Ride off 6pm.

We enjoy cycling. We enjoy cycling togeth­er. Cycling togeth­er makes Edinburgh’s some­time haz­ardous streets a more plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence. Let’s ride and cel­e­brate the won­der­ful inven­tion that is the cycle (bi/tri/uni — all vari­eties wel­come)! Pos­i­tive atti­tudes essen­tial!

Edin­burgh is dom­i­nat­ed, clogged and pol­lut­ed by the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine. Peo­ple sit for hours in their met­al box­es — typ­i­cal­ly trav­el­ling a few miles – detached from but destroy­ing the envi­ron­ment around them. Let’s demon­strate the free­dom, joy and sim­ple prac­ti­cal­i­ty that cycling could bring to every­ones’ lives!

CAMP BLING Photo report

Show your sup­port by com­ing to the fol­low­ing: PARKRALLY ‘SAVE PRIORY PARK!!’ A fund­ing deci­sion on the con­tro­ver­sial Pri­o­ry Cre­sent road widen­ing is due. Please join us for a mass ral­ly and demon­stra­tion from 6.30pm on Thurs­day 22nd Feb­ru­ary, at Southend Civic Cen­tre, to show the deci­sion mak­ers your oppo­si­tion to the scheme. Videos, pho­tos, … Con­tin­ue read­ing “CAMP BLING Pho­to report”

camp bling bender
camp bling knight
camp bling platform
camp bling house & tower
camp bling treehouse
camp bling visitors centre
Show your sup­port by com­ing to the fol­low­ing:

PARKRALLY ‘SAVE PRIORY PARK!!’

A fund­ing deci­sion on the con­tro­ver­sial Pri­o­ry Cre­sent road widen­ing is due. Please join us for a mass ral­ly and demon­stra­tion from 6.30pm on Thurs­day 22nd Feb­ru­ary, at Southend Civic Cen­tre, to show the deci­sion mak­ers your oppo­si­tion to the scheme.

Videos, pho­tos, events etc.….
http://www.ppps.org.uk/ -

Con­tacts, blog, news, events.…
http://www.savepriorypark.org.uk/

>VISTORS ALWAYS WELCOME

Check http://www.savepriorypark.org.uk/ for direc­tions to the site.

photos of Manchester carbon footprint stencils

7.02.2007

Last Thurs­day, to coin­cide with the IPCC report, a group of Man­ches­ter cli­mate activists dec­o­rat­ed the pave­ments out­side flight cen­tres, petrol sta­tions, super­mar­kets and a humvee garage with car­bon foot­prints.


7.02.2007

Last Thurs­day, to coin­cide with the IPCC report, a group of Man­ches­ter cli­mate activists dec­o­rat­ed the pave­ments out­side flight cen­tres, petrol sta­tions, super­mar­kets and a humvee garage with car­bon foot­prints.

Rough­ly a dozen sten­cils appeared Fri­day morn­ing in var­i­ous city cen­tre loca­tions. The stunt fol­lowed a num­ber of oth­er aware­ness rais­ing actions in Man­ches­ter, such as the block­ade of the humvee garage a few weeks ear­li­er.

Notts Critical Mass Relaunch for 23rd February 2007 with NEW Meeting Point

Let’s get this ride on the road!!!
Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary is Not­ting­ham’s next Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride with a NEW Meet­ing Point in Mar­ket Square. This change is for every­one who rides a bike in Not­ting­ham and wants to take part.

Nottingham Critical Mass Feb 07 flierLet’s get this ride on the road!!!
Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary is Not­ting­ham’s next Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride with a NEW Meet­ing Point in Mar­ket Square. This change is for every­one who rides a bike in Not­ting­ham and wants to take part.

Crit­i­cal Mass is a month­ly bike ride to cel­e­brate cycling and to assert cyclists’ right to the road. With no set routes and no lead­ers, it’s sim­ply a bunch of peo­ple enjoy­ing clean healthy trans­port.

Check out the web­site at  http://www.criticalmassrides.info/nottingham
Join the dis­cus­sion group at http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/nottcriticalmass

In addi­tion to all of the worth­while issues that Crit­i­cal Mass high­lights, it’s a great way to meet peo­ple and per­haps do a bit of net­work­ing to pro­mote oth­er cam­paigns.

So why start from the Mar­ket Square? Well Crit­i­cal Mass should appeal to any­one that rides a bike so it should start from the most cen­tral loca­tion for every­one’s ben­e­fit. Plus, prac­ti­cal­ly every oth­er Crit­i­cal Mass around the globe starts from a cen­tral, well-known loca­tion which makes it easy to remem­ber and easy to find.

It’s nev­er more than a cou­ple of hours. Bring bright cloth­ing, lights, horns, bells, NOISE and FRIENDS.
The next one is Fri­day 23rd Feb­ru­ary from Mar­ket Square, Not­ting­ham (Last Fri­day of every month). Gath­er at 5.30pm to depart at 5.45pm. Let’s get on our bikes and make this, the sim­plest of actions, hap­pen.

Early Feb Critical Masses

4.02.2007 — York:

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

4.02.2007 — York:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

30.01.2007

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

Bristol anti-urban 4x4 launch30.01.2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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crit­i­cal mass man­ches­ter last fri­day and the next one..

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

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

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

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

Man­ches­ter I bike Mcr fes­ti­val:

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

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

Timetable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical Masses This Friday (& others)

This is the first crit­i­cal mass of 2007. Lets start as we mean to go on and make it a big one!

We cycle round the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle:
It’s for any­one that rides a bike;
Its a cel­e­bra­tion of get­ting round the city with­out pol­lut­ing it;

This is the first crit­i­cal mass of 2007. Lets start as we mean to go on and make it a big one!

We cycle round the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle:
It’s for any­one that rides a bike;
Its a cel­e­bra­tion of get­ting round the city with­out pol­lut­ing it;
Its about every jour­ney being an adven­ture instead of just sit­ting on a bor­ing bus or in a stress­ful car;
Its about cyclists rid­ing togeth­er to demand more respect from oth­er road users;
Its a way to meet oth­er cyclis­tas;
At rough­ly the same time on Fri­day hun­dreds of cities around the world do the same thing…all get togeth­er for crit­i­cal mass. its beau­ti­ful to know that as you ride with your mates through your own city that all around the world thou­sands of peo­ple are doing the same thing…

Rides in the UK this Fri­day include:
* Brighton — Gath­er 18:00 at the Lev­el (BN2 3FX)
* Cam­bridge — Maybe gath­er 18:30 Cam­bridge Mar­ket Square
* Leeds (This mon­th’s call­out) — Gath­er 17:30–18:00 Mil­le­ni­um Square
* Lon­don — Gath­er 18:30 Water­loo Bridge, by the Nation­al Film The­atre
* Man­ches­ter (videos of pre­vi­ous rides) — Gath­er 18:00 Cen­tral Library
* Not­ting­ham — Gath­er 17:30 Savoy cin­e­ma on Der­by Road in Lenton
* Oxford — Gath­er 17:45–18:00 Corn­mar­ket end of Broad Street out­side The Oxford Sto­ry
* Read­ing — Gath­er 17:30, Read­ing Town Hall

Please leave a com­ment if your ride has been left off (or is incor­rect).
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York Crit­i­cal Mass

In order not to clash with oth­er rides in the vicin­i­ty, York Crit­i­cal Mass is on the first Fri­day of every month mean­ing that the next ride is next Fri­day on 2nd Feb­ru­ary. Assem­ble at 5pm out­side Cost­cut­ters at the Uni­ver­si­ty or 5:30pm out­side York Min­ster. See you there!

Birm­ing­ham Crit­i­cal Mass: Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 2nd

Brum’s crit­i­cal mass is also on the first fri­day of the month, Fri­day 2nd Feb­ru­ary.
We meet up at Pigeon Park (St. Philip’s Cathe­dral) at 5:30pm and set off at 6pm.
The rides are get­ting more pop­u­lar and more cre­ative. There’s now a mobile soundsys­tem and for win­ter crit­i­cal mass’ rid­ers bring along fairy lights to illu­mi­nate the ride.
Sub­scribe to the list below if you want to get more involved!
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/brumcriticalmass

Glas­gow CM

This Fri­day at 5:30, George Square.
http://www.citystrolls.com/strolls/pages/critical.htm
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For list of UK rides & links, see also http://criticalmass.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Critical_Mass_rides#United_Kingdom

New Year Destruction at the Hill of Tara, Ireland

In fla­grent con­tempt of best archae­o­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal prac­tice, a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign of tree felling, earth clear­ance and mon­u­ment removal has begun at the Hill of Tara. This is even before the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) con­tract for the M3 Motor­way, through the Tara / Skryne Val­ley, has even been signed. Dai­ly protests are tak­ing place, every 7am in the morn­ing at the Hill of Tara car park.

In fla­grent con­tempt of best archae­o­log­i­cal and eco­log­i­cal prac­tice, a sys­tem­at­ic cam­paign of tree felling, earth clear­ance and mon­u­ment removal has begun at the Hill of Tara. This is even before the Pub­lic Pri­vate Part­ner­ship (PPP) con­tract for the M3 Motor­way, through the Tara / Skryne Val­ley, has even been signed. Dai­ly protests are tak­ing place, every 7am in the morn­ing at the Hill of Tara car park.

The sit­u­a­tion at Rath Lugh: Rath Lugh is “ownedâ€? by Coillte, the State Forestry Board. Native trees are being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly felled, even though Rath Lugh is a des­ig­nat­ed nation­al mon­u­ment, and strate­gi­cal­ly placed as part of the defen­sive for­ti­fi­ca­tions at Tara, on the north­ern slope of the Skyrne Val­ley. A new area is being worked just behind Lis­mullen. There are oth­er wood­ed areas between Rath Lugh and Blun­del­stown. It is vital that these be pre­served from the van­dal­ism that has already been per­pe­trat­ed. Coillte is legal­ly oblig­ed to pro­tect nation­al mon­u­ments on land in its care.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=234 Coillte’s con­tempt for the archae­o­log­i­cal sites on the land it over­sees has already been dis­played in the case of the Mooghaun hill­fort, which has been dam­aged by Coillte’s plant­i­ng of conifer trees there. Mooghaun hill­fort (Moghane in Irish), locat­ed in Co. Clare, is thought to be the largest hill­fort in Ire­land. Built c.1260–930 B.C., it is sit­u­at­ed “on a low hillock in a fair­ly gen­tly undu­lat­ing land­scape of good agri­cul­tur­al land dot­ted with many small lakesâ€? Gro­gan 1993: 39  http://historical-debates.oireachtas.ie/D/0392/D.0392.198910240071.html

Coillte is a state body; it is, how­ev­er, behav­ing as if it were a pri­vate cor­po­ra­tion, enti­tled to dis­pose of its “propertyâ€? as it sees fit. Again, Coillte’s record speaks for itself. In March 2001, Coillte approved the sale of 250 acres of land at Bel­lan­aboy, Co Mayo for the Cor­rib Gas Ter­mi­nal. In Decem­ber of 2004 the remain­ing area of 160 hectares was sold by Coillte to Shell for €2.75 mil­lion. Sub­se­quent­ly Coillte grant­ed Shell “wayleaveâ€? per­mis­sion to build a high-pres­sure raw gas pipeline through 3km of adja­cent Coillte land at Augh­oose, Co Mayo.  http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=439
Coillte over­sees more than 1.5 mil­lion acres on behalf of the State, so the stakes are high.

The sit­u­a­tion at Baron­stown:
Baron­stown lies in the heart of the Tara-Skyrne Val­ley, and has been described by the Archae­ol­o­gists who under­took the Dis­cov­ery Pro­gramme sur­vey at Tara as a Nation­al Mon­u­ment. It was how­ev­er, exclud­ed from the Envi­ron­men­tal Impact State­ment (EIS). There is grow­ing evi­dence of improp­er exca­va­tion meth­ods by the pri­vate archae­o­log­i­cal com­pa­nies over­seen by the Nation­al Roads Author­i­ty. Plas­tic bags con­tain­ing bones, lack­ing num­bers or mark­ings, are being found lying in ran­dom places. This in itself is proof of inad­e­quate archae­o­log­i­cal super­vi­sion.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=289

The sit­u­a­tion at Col­lier­stown: Again this was not­ed by the Dis­cov­ery Pro­gramme as being wor­thy of des­ig­na­tion as a Nation­al Mon­u­ment, but was exclud­ed from the EIS. It is a bur­ial site, with many graves of rec­tan­gu­lar shape, edged with stone slabs. These appear to be children’s graves.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=273

The sit­u­a­tion at Roestown:
Here, a com­plex of bee­hive souter­rains has been removed. Anoth­er has been new­ly dis­cov­ered, yet is short­ly to be removed. Tree felling has already occurred.  http://tarawatch.org/?p=304
All of this van­dal­ism is pos­si­ble because the Min­is­ter for the Envi­ron­ment has scrapped the her­itage pro­tec­tion pro­vi­sions in Irish law, and sub­sti­tut­ed an Act grant­i­ng him the pow­er to issue licens­es for unsu­per­vised archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion of des­ig­nat­ed sites. Under this con­ven­tion, a host of licens­es have been issued for exca­va­tions in the Tara / Skryne Val­ley.  http://www.sacredireland.org/gallery.html These pic­tures give an indi­ca­tion of the dam­age that occurred in 2005:
The dig­gers move in:  http://www.sacredireland.org/12don.html
Earth Removal:  http://www.sacredireland.org/22don.html
 http://www.sacredireland.org/27don.html
 http://www.sacredireland.org/28don.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/24don.html
The bones of the dead:  http://www.sacredireland.org/bone.html
More exca­va­tor activ­i­ty:  http://www.sacredireland.org/12.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/13.html
Top­soil exca­va­tions:  http://www.sacredireland.org/3.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/18.html  http://www.sacredireland.org/digger.html

Camp Bling at ‘Prittlewel King’ awards

17.01.2007

Southend ‘May­or’ can­cels F5 road widen­ing at ‘Prit­tlewell King’ award cel­e­bra­tions

The cam­paign against the con­tro­ver­sial A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent ‘F5’ road widen­ing scheme took yet anoth­er dra­mat­ic new turn tonight, when dozens of local res­i­dents ‘stormed’ a cel­e­bra­tion at the town’s Clu­ni­ac Pri­o­ry to mark Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil receiv­ing the cov­et­ed British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards 2006 ‘Current Archae­ol­o­gy Devel­op­er-Fun­der Archae­ol­o­gy Award,’ for the dis­cov­ery of the ‘King of Bling,’ in Prit­tlewell in late 2003.

17.01.2007

Southend ‘May­or’ can­cels F5 road widen­ing at ‘Prit­tlewell King’ award cel­e­bra­tions

The cam­paign against the con­tro­ver­sial A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent ‘F5’ road widen­ing scheme took yet anoth­er dra­mat­ic new turn tonight, when dozens of local res­i­dents ‘stormed’ a cel­e­bra­tion at the town’s Clu­ni­ac Pri­o­ry to mark Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil receiv­ing the cov­et­ed British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards 2006 ‘Current Archae­ol­o­gy Devel­op­er-Fun­der Archae­ol­o­gy Award,’ for the dis­cov­ery of the ‘King of Bling,’ in Prit­tlewell in late 2003.

Amid chaot­ic scenes, Coun­cil­lors and Dig­ni­taries attend­ing the cel­e­bra­tion received a speech from Southend ‘Mayor’ John Smith, who apol­o­gised on behalf of the Coun­cil for their inten­tion to destroy the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial site, promised to return the award received last Octo­ber in Birm­ing­ham, and then dra­mat­i­cal­ly announced the imme­di­ate can­cel­la­tion of the F5 road widen­ing, after hav­ing, ‘finally lis­tened to and tak­en note of the major­i­ty of peo­ple in Southend who have been shown repeat­ed­ly to oppose the scheme.’

Local res­i­dent Pat­sy Link who joined the demon­stra­tors said, ‘This award pre­sent­ed to Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil is said to cel­e­brate the mer­its of devel­op­er fund­ed archae­ol­o­gy, which in the case of the dis­cov­ery of the bur­ial has pro­vid­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rewrite his­to­ry. Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil now has a site to rival the Sut­ton Hoo ship bur­ial in Suf­folk, but still seeks to bury it under 10 feet of con­crete for the road widen­ing. To cel­e­brate then destroy it is noth­ing short of sheer luna­cy on the part of the peo­ple here tonight at the Priory.’

A deci­sion to fund the road widen­ing has been await­ed from the Depart­ment for Trans­port since a local Pub­lic Inquiry took place in March 2004. Infor­ma­tion from the East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group shows that costs have now risen to an esti­mat­ed £25m for the 870 metre length of car­riage­way, mak­ing it poten­tial­ly, ‘The most expen­sive stretch of road in the world.’

In the mean time local protest site Camp Bling still occu­pies the land above the bur­ial, 4 as it has for six­teen months since first being set up by locals in Sep­tem­ber 2005. It is rumoured that one of the deep­est protest tun­nel sys­tems ever known has since been dug to help defend the camp, and num­bers have grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly as the fund­ing deci­sion is await­ed.

Mabel Jones of Prit­tlewell said, ‘If the local Coun­cil and cen­tral Gov­ern­ment per­ceive that this cam­paign is only about a hand­ful of peo­ple against the road scheme then they need to think again and quick­ly. Tonight has shown that a large cross sec­tion of the local com­mu­ni­ty are not just against the scheme, but will active­ly attempt to stop it if the fund­ing go ahead is now given.’

 http://blingblog.bravejournal.com/