Category: Unnecessary Developments

Radley Lakes: Join the protest march on legs and cycles on 10 March

Join a Cycle Ride and March to Say No to NPow­er’s “Crim­i­nal Dam­age” to Radley Lakes on Sat­ur­day 10 March

Repost from Live Jour­nal:

You are invit­ed to join cyclists from across Oxford­shire in a bicy­cle ride in sup­port of the cam­paign to “Save Radley Lakes” next Sat­ur­day. Cyclists in Oxford are invit­ed to con­gre­gate in Broad Street, Oxford City (OX1 3AS) out­side the Oxford Cam­pus Store, at 12.45pm on Sat­ur­day 10th March, 2007, while walk­ers from Abing­don and Did­cot are invit­ed to con­gre­gate at 1.10pm in Abbey Mead­ow (OX14 3JE) in Abing­don to hear speak­ers, then walk to Thrupp Lake. The cyclists will pro­ceed toward Radley Lakes, with bells, whis­tles and ban­ners, coin­cid­ing with a march by Save Radley Lakes the same day at Thrupp Lake at 1.55pm.

Join a Cycle Ride and March to Say No to NPow­er’s “Crim­i­nal Dam­age” to Radley Lakes on Sat­ur­day 10 March

Repost from Live Jour­nal:

You are invit­ed to join cyclists from across Oxford­shire in a bicy­cle ride in sup­port of the cam­paign to “Save Radley Lakes” next Sat­ur­day. Cyclists in Oxford are invit­ed to con­gre­gate in Broad Street, Oxford City (OX1 3AS) out­side the Oxford Cam­pus Store, at 12.45pm on Sat­ur­day 10th March, 2007, while walk­ers from Abing­don and Did­cot are invit­ed to con­gre­gate at 1.10pm in Abbey Mead­ow (OX14 3JE) in Abing­don to hear speak­ers, then walk to Thrupp Lake. The cyclists will pro­ceed toward Radley Lakes, with bells, whis­tles and ban­ners, coin­cid­ing with a march by Save Radley Lakes the same day at Thrupp Lake at 1.55pm.

Every­one is wel­come to join the cycle ride as a planned show of sup­port for the cam­paign, and the ride will end at the lakes. Bring bells, whis­tles and ban­ners if you can.

The ride will take place at a leisure­ly pace. Radley Lakes have been used by Oxo­ni­ans for over 30 years as a leisure site to walk, cycle and enjoy the envi­ron­ment. Npow­er has filled all the lakes east of the rail­way with ash, and now it wants to destroy the remain­der in the same way, com­plete­ly destroy­ing habi­tat for many species of birds, fish, ani­mal, and plant. News of the cycle ride is being broad­cast to Cyclox, Crit­i­cal Mass, Sus­trans, CTC, and of course Save Radley Lakes. Cyclists are angry that the Npow­er’s dam­age to the lakes will also ruin the beau­ti­ful views of the lake envi­ron­ment on the Sus­trans cycle route than runs between two of the lakes, and there are reports that Npow­er’s site work­ers are already tak­ing lib­er­ties with the cyclists “right of way” block­ing the path to cyclists.

An expe­ri­enced cyclist will lead the ride along an offi­cial cycle route from Oxford to Thrupp Lake (dis­tance 5 miles). Feel free to for­ward this mes­sage to peo­ple or groups who you think might be inter­est­ed, or email jon.rees@gmail.com Please send me an SMS on 07970 893371 if you intend to join us.

See you Sat­ur­day

Route: http://www.sustrans.org.uk/webfiles/leaflets/Hanson%20Way.pdf

Invite to Tara

1.3.2007
The last in a series of legal chal­lenges against the road through the Tara ‑Skyrne val­ley has failed today. There are 72 hours left before the road works which will not alone bisect the his­toric val­ley, but place a

1.3.2007
The last in a series of legal chal­lenges against the road through the Tara ‑Skyrne val­ley has failed today. There are 72 hours left before the road works which will not alone bisect the his­toric val­ley, but place a
land grab and ugly plan­ning in and around the whole area will com­mence.
And Yes the process was cor­rupt.

What you can do:

The vig­il keep­ers are peace­ful NVDA pro­tes­tors.
Some are quite young.
They are very iso­lat­ed.

They have asked for sup­port, so if you are vis­it­ing Ire­land in the next weeks you could come with cam­eras and food and even help in block­ades.

The Irish Gar­dai are not known for their patience.
[as we have seen and indeed expe­ri­enced in both Ross­port and The Glen Of the Downs]

The vig­il is peace­ful and non hier­ar­chi­cal and they are very wel­com­ing of peo­ple who come to sup­port them espe­cial­ly if ye bring bis­cuits to have with the cup of tea at the vig­il fire.

*There are 72 hours left to legal­ly stop the road.
the PPP has been signed.
Works are due to com­mence on Mon­day.
Mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty are wel­come.

The group though it best to ask for help and to warn every­one that if you want to help- now is the time.

Gur a Mhaith agat!

Southend: Hundreds gather to oppose controversial F5 road widening

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre this evening for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.
The event fol­lows the recent ‘storm­ing’ of the British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards cel­e­bra­tion at Prit­tlewell Pri­o­ry in January(1), when dozens of local res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed an invite only ‘wine and cheese’ event held for local dig­ni­taries, in cel­e­bra­tion of the dis­cov­ery of the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial, which would be destroyed, should the £25m road scheme get the go ahead.

As promised by local cam­paign­ers, and expect­ed by the wider pub­lic, hun­dreds of local peo­ple con­verged upon Southend Civic Cen­tre this evening for the ‘Parkral­ly’, to oppose con­tro­ver­sial plans to widen the A127/A1159 Pri­o­ry Cres­cent, or ‘scheme F5’ as it has come to be known.
The event fol­lows the recent ‘storm­ing’ of the British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards cel­e­bra­tion at Prit­tlewell Pri­o­ry in January(1), when dozens of local res­i­dents dis­rupt­ed an invite only ‘wine and cheese’ event held for local dig­ni­taries, in cel­e­bra­tion of the dis­cov­ery of the East Sax­on king’s bur­ial, which would be destroyed, should the £25m road scheme get the go ahead.

Feel­ings con­tin­ue to run high, with major­i­ty pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the scheme repeat­ed­ly being shown by local groups, and press, six years into the cam­paign to stop the road.
Speak­ing from the steps of the Civic Cen­tre, where a meet­ing of the full Coun­cil was tak­ing place inside, cam­paign­er and local res­i­dent Shaun Qureshi said, ‘Southend Bor­ough Coun­cil are either some­how still igno­rant of the fact that so many peo­ple con­tin­ue to demon­strate, or they are arro­gant enough to feel that they can sim­ply push us aside.
‘They have only time and silence on their side, and the com­mon­ly held mis­con­cep­tion that the scheme has already been canned by the Depart­ment for Trans­port, who would be required to pro­vide the fund­ing. The feel­ing that the scheme will not now go ahead is due to the delay in any­one in author­i­ty either tak­ing any respon­si­bil­i­ty, or com­ing to a deci­sion on the issue.
‘How­ev­er, recent events have proven that despite this, sig­nif­i­cant num­bers of the local pub­lic can still be mobilised to take action, that we do have major­i­ty sup­port, and should the go-ahead be giv­en, that there will be out­rage across the town if attempts are made to evict Camp Bling, con­crete over the bur­ial or to destroy yet anoth­er green space.’(2)
A deci­sion to fund the road widen­ing has been await­ed from the DfT 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 (3), mak­ing it poten­tial­ly, ‘The most expen­sive stretch of road in the world.’(4)
—————————————————————-
ENDS.

NOTES TO EDITORS:
1 British Archae­o­log­i­cal Awards 2006:
www.britarch.ac.uk/awards/winners2006.html
2 Camp Bling web­site: www.savepriorypark.org
3 East of Eng­land Region­al Part­ner­ship Group region­al fund­ing allo­ca­tions advice to Gov­ern­ment report Jan­u­ary 2006, page 25:
http://www.eera.gov.uk/Documents/About%20EERA/Policy/Regional%20Governance/Regional%20Funding%20Allocations/Final%20EoE%20RFA%20300106.pdf
4 Southend Evening Echo Mon­day 13th Feb­ru­ary 2006

Beat the Chainsaw Pledge, Hereford

HEREFORD GREEN PARTY PRESS RELEASE:

Forty-nine locals vow to stand in front of chain­saws to pre­vent loss of Mead­ow trees.

HEREFORD GREEN PARTY PRESS RELEASE:

Forty-nine locals vow to stand in front of chain­saws to pre­vent loss of Mead­ow trees.

A capac­i­ty crowd of near­ly 300 peo­ple filled two floors of Here­ford’s Water­shed build­ing last night, to hear a coali­tion of groups talk about the Envi­ron­ment Agen­cy’s poor­ly-designed flood defence scheme for the City. Atten­dees expressed sup­port for the pro­vi­sion of effec­tive flood defences — but also con­cern over the Coun­cil’s lack of vision and lead­er­ship in pass­ing the cur­rent scheme by which estab­lished trees on Bish­op’s Mead­ow will be need­less­ly cut down. Green Par­ty prospec­tive Coun­cil can­di­date Mar­tin Wyness asked peo­ple if they would be will­ing to stand under the affect­ed trees, there­by mak­ing it impos­si­ble for work­ers to fell them. Forty-nine peo­ple expressed a com­mit­ment to stand in the way of the chain­saws in order to pro­tect Here­ford’s won­der­ful cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al her­itage.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic attend­ing the meet­ing expressed sur­prise that local ward Coun­cil­lors were not present to take ques­tions as to why they had not robust­ly chal­lenged the scheme dur­ing the plan­ning process. Dis­ap­point­ment was voiced as to why that process was not pub­li­cised suf­fi­cient­ly for res­i­dents to engage with it effec­tive­ly.

The Green Par­ty hopes that Coun­cil­lors who felt they could not chal­lenge the Envi­ron­ment Agency and DEFRA before, because of fears of los­ing fund­ing, will now find the courage to stand with the coali­tion as it demands that the scheme is rethought.

Green Par­ty prospec­tive Coun­cil can­di­date Mar­tin Wyness asked the Envi­ron­ment Agency rep­re­sen­ta­tive present at the meet­ing: “Can you give an assur­ance that the trees affect­ed will not be cut down in a rush in order to beat restric­tions caused by the immi­nent bird nest­ing sea­son?” The Envi­ron­ment Agency’s reply was that a sur­vey would be car­ried out.

Because it is still too ear­ly for nest­ing, this effec­tive­ly means that the chain­saws can come at any moment, even before the Envi­ron­ment Agency or Coun­cil looks at any alter­na­tive pro­pos­als.

The Green Par­ty is dis­ap­point­ed that Here­ford Lib­er­al Demo­c­rat MP Paul Keetch has until now, not seen fit to ques­tion the scheme prop­er­ly until he saw the scale of pub­lic con­cern. Here­ford needs a dynam­ic and pas­sion­ate Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who will argue the case for keep­ing the mon­ey on the table while we amend the detail of these plans that would do so much dam­age to Here­ford’s his­toric envi­ron­ment. A some­what reluc­tant Mr. Keetch said on radio yes­ter­day “I am assured by the Envi­ron­ment Agency that if there is fine tun­ing that can be done, it will be done”. Let us hope he holds the agency to that promise.

ENDS

NOTES FOR EDITORS

It is quite pos­si­ble that Elgar walked beneath the trees that will be destroyed by this scheme. There is also a memo­r­i­al on the site that says that Elgar penned The Enig­ma Vari­a­tions after see­ing the Cathe­dral organist’s dog fall into the riv­er at this spot.

The coali­tion is ful­ly in favour of a flood defence scheme for the city, but not this one.

RRA Archi­tects showed their alter­na­tive and sym­pa­thet­ic pro­pos­al to the pub­lic meet­ing.

The coali­tion in favour of bet­ter flood defences includes: -

Cycle Here­ford
The Dis­abled Users Access Group
Friends of Cas­tle Green
Friends of the Earth
Fod­der
The Green Par­ty
The Here­ford Civic Soci­ety
RRA Archi­tects
St James and Bar­ton­sham Com­mu­ni­ty Asso­ci­a­tion
Water­shed

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please con­tact:
Mar­tin Wyness
Media — Here­ford & South Here­ford­shire Green Par­ty
07809 150344
mediasouth@herefordshiregreens.org.uk
www.herefordshiregreens.org.uk

M1 widening actions pigged

Police News Man­age­ment, Incom­pe­tence and Poor Atti­tude To Peace­ful Protest Exposed After They Pre­vent Peace­ful Cli­mate Camp Action With Mas­sive Over Reac­tion

Today, Mon­day 19th of Feb­ru­ary, peace­ful pro­test­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action had planned a series of events to high­light the envi­ron­men­tal cost of widen­ing the M1. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a mas­sive police pres­ence, total­ly out of pro­por­tion to the pro­posed protest, appears to have con­tributed to mas­sive tail-backs on the motor­way near Sheffield. The pro­test­ers decid­ed not to go ahead with their event after being offered a ridicu­lous­ly lim­it­ed space in which to make their point and no pro­test­er actions took place at any time. At no point did any of them approach close to the motor­way, and they could not have there­fore caused the tail­backs as the Police sug­gest­ed to local radio. In fact, there had been an acci­dent on that stretch, which com­bined with the road­works and the police pres­ence, was prob­a­bly the cause of the delays.

Police News Man­age­ment, Incom­pe­tence and Poor Atti­tude To Peace­ful Protest Exposed After They Pre­vent Peace­ful Cli­mate Camp Action With Mas­sive Over Reac­tion

Today, Mon­day 19th of Feb­ru­ary, peace­ful pro­test­ers from the Camp For Cli­mate Action had planned a series of events to high­light the envi­ron­men­tal cost of widen­ing the M1. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a mas­sive police pres­ence, total­ly out of pro­por­tion to the pro­posed protest, appears to have con­tributed to mas­sive tail-backs on the motor­way near Sheffield. The pro­test­ers decid­ed not to go ahead with their event after being offered a ridicu­lous­ly lim­it­ed space in which to make their point and no pro­test­er actions took place at any time. At no point did any of them approach close to the motor­way, and they could not have there­fore caused the tail­backs as the Police sug­gest­ed to local radio. In fact, there had been an acci­dent on that stretch, which com­bined with the road­works and the police pres­ence, was prob­a­bly the cause of the delays.

In a sec­ond embar­rass­ing mis­take, the Police seem to have believed that the action had been planned by the No M1 Widen­ing Cam­paign. In fact, the Camp For Cli­mate Action was sole­ly respon­si­ble. The police prob­a­bly don’t realise the link between traf­fic growth and wors­en­ing cli­mate change which threat­ens us all.

Sam Nex­ter said “Tony Blair has claimed that the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing cli­mate change seri­ous­ly but bil­lions of pounds of tax­pay­er’s mon­ey is now being wast­ed on a scheme that will do noth­ing to ease con­ges­tion but will increase emis­sions. There are much more effec­tive and eco­nom­ic ways to tack­le con­ges­tion such as improv­ing pub­lic trans­port and trans­fer­ring freight onto the rail­ways.”

“Its mad that, on top of pay­ing for dan­ger­ous motor­way build­ing, mon­ey is also wast­ed pay­ing large num­bers of police to sit around in vans.” he added.

The work to widen this stretch of M1 start­ed a month ago, and work on the sec­tion between junc­tion 6a-10 is already well under way. In total 115 miles of the M1 is due to be widened from the M25 to Mil­ton Keynes and from Leices­ter to Leeds, cost­ing a total of over £3.74 bil­lion. Many peo­ple believe the widen­ing will allow traf­fic to grow, caus­ing more CO2 emis­sions. Road trans­port already accounts for 21% of emis­sions in the UK and ris­es every year.

info@climatecamp.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Activists shut down construction of LNG gas terminal in Milford Haven

14th Feb 07

Pro­test­ers against the con­tin­ued and unre­strained pro­mo­tion of fos­sil fuel projects by the UK gov­ern­ment have block­ad­ed the main vehi­cle access route into the new LNG pipeline ter­mi­nal near Mil­ford Haven, South Wales. Their aim is to high­light the seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal and safe­ty issues sur­round­ing this project, and to call for a more sober approach to the impend­ing ener­gy cri­sis.

Construction traffic prevented from entering LNG terminal14th Feb 07

Pro­test­ers against the con­tin­ued and unre­strained pro­mo­tion of fos­sil fuel projects by the UK gov­ern­ment have block­ad­ed the main vehi­cle access route into the new LNG pipeline ter­mi­nal near Mil­ford Haven, South Wales. Their aim is to high­light the seri­ous envi­ron­men­tal and safe­ty issues sur­round­ing this project, and to call for a more sober approach to the impend­ing ener­gy cri­sis.

Eight peo­ple have phys­i­cal­ly blocked the site access road, south of the vil­lage of Her­branston, S. Wales, pre­vent­ing con­struc­tion vehi­cles from enter­ing the giant LNG ter­mi­nal.

These pro­tes­tors, inspired by the 2006 Camp for Cli­mate Action, are tar­get­ting the con­struc­tion of the Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ter­mi­nal and pipeline in South Wales. The actions aim to dis­rupt the work to the largest extent pos­si­ble. Cli­mate chaos is the great­est threat human­i­ty has ever faced yet the British gov­ern­ment and a con­glom­er­ate of Cor­po­ra­tions are reck­less­ly con­struct­ing this new car­bon inten­sive ener­gy project.

The devel­op­ment of LNG ter­mi­nals in the UK is lock­ing us into thir­ty years of yet more fos­sil fuels, in an era in which dra­mat­ic cuts in car­bon are cru­cial. The Depart­ment of Trade Indus­try last week, gave per­mis­sion for phase two of the LNG pipeline to be built. Yet, this project stark­ly reveals the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ty between the so-called need for ‘ener­gy secu­ri­ty’, and the far more press­ing need to sub­stan­tial­ly dimin­ish our use of fos­sil fuels.

Lim­it­ing glob­al warm­ing to a 2 degree increase with a rel­a­tive­ly high cer­tain­ty requires the equiv­a­lent con­cen­tra­tion of CO2 to stay below 400 ppm. Achiev­ing this means rich coun­tries, like the UK, cut­ting their aver­age emis­sions by around 90% by 2030.

A pro­tes­tor said “A 90% cut in 25 years is going to require not just new tech­nolo­gies, but dif­fer­ent cul­tures, dif­fer­ent economies, dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions — in short, a dif­fer­ent way of life.”

The devel­op­ment of LNG ter­mi­nals in the UK opens up pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able car­bon inten­sive nat­ur­al gas to our ener­gy mar­kets, to the severe detri­ment of sup­port for clean decen­tralised renew­ables. Fur­ther­more, bring­ing gas from the Mid­dle East is a much more ener­gy inten­sive process than retriev­ing gas from the North Sea.

There are also sub­stan­tial safe­ty issues attached to this project. Stud­ies show that an acci­dent or ter­ror­ist attack at the Mil­ford Haven ter­mi­nals would cause “major injuries and sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to struc­tures” with­in a radius of a third of a mile and could cause sec­ond-degree burns more than a mile away.

The ter­rain through which the pipeline will run has been exten­sive­ly mined and is prone to sub­si­dence in places. Need­less to say, the instal­la­tion of a mas­sive­ly pres­surised gas pipeline through unsta­ble land is high­ly dubi­ous. Locals, fear­ing for their safe­ty, have had their ques­tions ignored. Con­cerns about the mate­r­i­al used and qual­i­ty of weld­ing employed have not been prop­er­ly addressed. Many mem­bers of affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties con­tin­ue to vocal­ly protest, but with lit­tle recog­ni­tion.

Pro­tes­tors have cho­sen to take direct action today to show their sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties along the pipeline and to stop this moral­ly inde­fen­si­ble fos­sil fuel de-struc­tion project.

Con­tact: Sarah White 07901862522

Notes to Edi­tor

The project:
Gas, liq­ue­fied in Qatar by cool­ing to ‑162C, is going to be shipped to West Wales on super tankers. There, at Mil­ford Haven, it will be regasi­fied in one of the two onshore ter­mi­nals being built by:
· Drag­on LNG, a con­sor­tium whose main part­ner is the BG Group (for­mer­ly British Gas).
· South Hook LNG, part of a new busi­ness, Qatar­gas II,owned by Qatar Petro­le­um and Exxon. This £6 bil­lion project finances the work from well to ter­mi­nal. It is the sin­gle largest ener­gy-project financ­ing ever[1] and this ter­mi­nal alone will be the biggest LNG receiv­ing ter­mi­nal in the world[2].
The Pipeline: Nation­al Grid are con­nect­ing the gas to the nation­al net­work. They are doing so by build­ing a pipeline in two phas­es from Mil­ford Haven to Glouces­ter­shire. Phase 2 of the project was giv­en the green light on 7th Feb­ru­ary 2007. This huge pipeline, 4ft in diam­e­ter, will run at 94bar pres­sure – that is 96kg/cm2.
Nation­al Grid’s (for­mer­ly known as Transco) Safe­ty Record
In 1999, a fam­i­ly of four were killed in Scot­land when a high pres­sure gas pipe explod­ed by their home. Mas­sive cor­ro­sion in the pipeline, and a fail­ure on the part of Nation­al Grid/Transco (NG/T) to keep ade­quate records on what kind of pipes were being used, led to the explo­sion. Cor­ro­sion has already been seen on the welds in the South Wales pipeline
Since pri­vati­sa­tion, NG/T have shed thou­sands of engi­neer­ing jobs and cut main­te­nance work. In 2000 it was revealed that Transco had under­spent its agreed pipeline main­te­nance and replace­ment pro­gramme by £358m over the pre­vi­ous two years[3]. This same cor­po­ra­tion, account­able to only its share­hold­ers and board, is now respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of thou­sands of peo­ple along the route of this pipe, which is run at a pres­sure, unprece­dent­ed in Europe and US, of which Nation­al Grid have no expe­ri­ence of run­ning. Already, there is evi­dence of their cost sav­ing strat­e­gy: the Health and Safe­ty Exec­u­tive stip­u­lates the use of poly­ethe­lene in gas pip­ing, yet Nation­al Grid is using oth­er mate­ri­als.

[1] The agree­ment was the third-largest project financ­ing of any kind, after the Chan­nel Tun­nel and a Tai­wanese high-speed rail financ­ing. Banks with major roles in the project financ­ing include HSBC, Bar­clays, Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Cit­i­group.
[2] http://education.independent.co.uk/careers_advice/engineering/article1946244.ece
[3] http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=662322003

===================================================================
ACTION REPORT

Since Novem­ber there has been lots of protests around the gas pipeline cur­rent­ly being con­struct­ed in Wales, and short­ly Englans. Today peo­ple paid a vis­it to sun­ny pem­bokeshire to take direct action on one of the root caus­es of cli­mate change; fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tions seek­ing more prof­its for their share­hold­ers.

Five peo­ple block­ad­ed the main access to the con­struc­tion site for six hours, result­ing in huge tail­backs and the typ­i­cal enor­mous police pres­ence. Peo­ple laid on the ground are appar­ent­ly a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty. What real­ly is a threat to our secu­ri­ty is the con­tin­u­a­tion of yet more fos­sil fuel projects, more car­bon in the atmos­phere and more death, mis­ery and hunger. The peo­ple were even­tu­al­ly arrest­ed at mid­day and are now enjoy­ing a well deserved sleep in the lux­u­ri­ous sur­round­ings of Haver­ford­West Police sta­tion.

Around the same time this morn­ing peo­ple also approached the kilo­me­ter long jet­ty, which will car­ry the liq­uid from the super­tankers to the ter­mi­nal. They were pre­vent­ed from get­ting on to the jet­ty; appar­ent­ly it’s dan­ger­ous unless you have been giv­en health and safe­ty train­ing. Lets hope the peo­ple of Mil­ford Haven have been giv­en some train­ing for what to do if there is acci­dent. Mil­ford Haven’s most expe­ri­enced ship­ping pilots have described the risk of a fatal col­li­sion at one of the ter­mi­nals as a ‘real every­day real­i­ty’ which would put 20000 peo­ple lives at risk.

Just twen­ty peo­ple have man­aged to cause a splen­did com­mo­tion at the build­ing site of the South Hook Liq­uid Nat­ur­al Gas (LNG) ter­mi­nal in West Wales. It is an inspir­ing exam­ple of how a few peo­ple can take respon­si­bil­i­ty for theirs and our future.

While work may con­tin­ue tomor­row on the ter­mi­nal, yet anoth­er span­ner has been thrown in their LNG pipedream (I had to have one pipe pun).

See
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/362275.html
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/362322.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6360281.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6365223.stm
http://www.pembrokeshiretv.com/content/templates/v6-article.asp?articleid=3163&zoneid=33

Back­ground
http://bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=25798

Colombian farmers evicted by British mining companies

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of African-Colom­bian and Indige­nous fam­i­lies evict­ed from their land in the province of La Gua­ji­ra, Colom­bia to make way for a mas­sive open­cast coal mine will speak in Lon­don on Mon­day 29th Jan­u­ary, 6.30pm‑8.30pm at The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of African-Colom­bian and Indige­nous fam­i­lies evict­ed from their land in the province of La Gua­ji­ra, Colom­bia to make way for a mas­sive open­cast coal mine will speak in Lon­don on Mon­day 29th Jan­u­ary, 6.30pm‑8.30pm at The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2.

Many com­mu­ni­ties have been forced from their land since the mine opened in the 1970s. The vil­lage of Taba­co was demol­ished in 2001 just after British-based com­pa­nies bought into the project. Many inhab­i­tants accept­ed the inad­e­quate finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion on offer, oth­ers are still hold­ing out for com­mu­ni­ty relo­ca­tion so that they can con­tin­ue liv­ing as a com­mu­ni­ty and farm­ing the land as they did before.

The British-based com­pa­nies that now own the mine are Anglo Amer­i­can, BHP­Bil­li­ton and Xstra­ta. All raise mon­ey on the Lon­don Stock Exchange. Anglo Amer­i­can has its head office in Lon­don. Many pen­sion funds invest in these com­pa­nies. Many ordi­nary work­ing peo­ple in Britain, with­out know­ing it, are ben­e­fit­ing from the destruc­tion of farm­ing com­mu­ni­ties in Colom­bia by the world’s rich­est min­ing multi­na­tion­als. All three com­pa­nies have good rep­u­ta­tions as social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble enter­pris­es. The real­i­ty is very dif­fer­ent. Come and hear the com­mu­ni­ties’ side of the sto­ry

Loca­tion: The Audi­to­ri­um, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al UK, The Human Rights Action Cen­tre, 17–25 New Inn Yard, Lon­don EC2
Con­tact:  info@colombiasolidarity.org.uk
(near­est tube Old Street)

ex-vortex eviction thwarted this morning (pics and film)

dozens of sup­port­ers arrived this morn­ing to ensure that no ille­gal evic­tion could take place at the occu­pied social squat in the build­ing that used to host the vor­tex jazz club in stoke new­ing­ton church street.

dozens of sup­port­ers arrived this morn­ing to ensure that no ille­gal evic­tion could take place at the occu­pied social squat in the build­ing that used to host the vor­tex jazz club in stoke new­ing­ton church street.

there was much local sup­port as res­i­dents don’t want more lux­u­ry flats, a tesco, or a star­bucks, all of which are pos­si­ble plans for the site under own­er richard mid­da’s stew­ard­ship.

mid­da is so unpop­u­lar in the area that a pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio was sold to alex ross (the present own­er of the spence bak­ery) at under mar­ket val­ue, rather than allow mid­da to buy it, even although he was offer­ing far more.

a woman police offi­cer who attend­ed the scene was clear­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the squat­ters, and after seek­ing advice and clar­i­fi­ca­tion, report­ed that the bailiffs would have to return once they had writ­ten clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the court (which may take up to two weeks).

one inde­pen­dent pho­tog­ra­ph­er was so tak­en with the offi­cer that he asked if she had a boyfriend — his hopes were dashed when she told him she was mar­ried.

quick­time — video/mp4 6.5M
flip4mac/wmv — video/x‑ms-wmv 7.1M

films attached in wmv and mp4 for­mats

if you can’t see the film just by click­ing on it (and wait­ing awhile, as these are sev­er­al megabytes of data), then right-clik-hold (ctrl-clik on mac) instead and ‘down­load linked file’ before watch­ing it on your view­er of choice
on mac or pc, i rec­om­mend down­load­ing vlc which is a free view­er from viedolan, or also mplay­er (free too)
on a mac, if you insist on watch­ing the wmv, then down­load ‘flip4mac’ so you can watch it on quick­time, as the win­dows media view­er itself puts all sorts of nas­ties on your sys­tem.

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Ear­li­er report:

From 8.30am around 70–80 peo­ple, the major­i­ty local res­i­dents, turned out to sup­port the resis­tance to the threat­ened evic­tion of the Vor­tex Occu­pied Social Cen­tre. The own­er, Richard Mid­da, a well known thug and prop­er­ty devel­op­er threat­ened to use force to evict the occu­piers if they did not leave by 9.00am.

But like the say­ing goes “they make plans we make his­to­ry”! After see­ing such a response, com­posed of all age ranges and faced with no few­er than 15 film and video cam­eras the police inter­vened and there­by start­ing a debate on the fin­er points of law. With the cops in the mid­dle of this legal debate a deci­sion was made to send one per­son from the Social cen­tre and the own­er, mid­da, to Stoke New­ing­ton Police sta­tion where inde­pen­dent legal advise is now being sort.

This is cur­rent as of 9.50am.

This occu­pa­tion has its roots in both the tra­jec­to­ry of occu­pa­tions from the Rad­i­cal Dairy (Stoke New­ing­ton) in 2002 and the sub­se­quent spaces (Occu­pied Social Cen­tre — Ken­tish Town,Ex-Grandbanks — Tufnell Park, Insti­tute of Auton­o­my — Blooms­bury, The Square — Blooms­bury), BUT also in last years occu­pa­tion of “Francesca’s Cafe” on Broad­way Mar­ket — Hack­ney and Daslton the­atre in Dal­ston.

It shows that rad­i­cal polit­i­cal inter­ven­tions in the form of occu­pied social cen­tres can res­onate with pre-exisit­ing social ten­sions and anto­gan­isms, espe­cial­ly around gen­tri­fi­ca­tion and “com­mu­ni­ty” issues and acti­vate peo­ple to self-organ­ise and take some con­trol on how their environment(and qual­i­ty of life) are shaped.
If your in the area come down, we have now occu­pied both sides of the pave­ment due to num­bers.
one of the Vor­tex Anar­chists

occupiedsocialcentre@hushmail.com
http://www.londonsocialcentre.org.uk

March on Worthing Police Station in support of Titnore, 17th Feb

A PROTEST march on Wor­thing Police Sta­tion has been called for Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17 in the face of police intim­i­da­tion of Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers.

A state­ment from Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA), released on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 18, said:

A PROTEST march on Wor­thing Police Sta­tion has been called for Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17 in the face of police intim­i­da­tion of Tit­nore Woods cam­paign­ers.

A state­ment from Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA), released on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 18, said:
“In the run-up to Christ­mas, sup­port­ers of the Tit­nore Woods cam­paign were try­ing to bring in food and cash dona­tions to the camp, for obvi­ous rea­sons.

“How­ev­er as you may have heard, on no less than two occa­sions Wor­thing Police offi­cers attend­ed the stall and threat­ened with arrest our friends mak­ing the col­lec­tions.

“This is noth­ing short of polit­i­cal harass­ment of Tit­nore sup­port­ers and flies in the face of local democ­ra­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly the fact that the cam­paign has won the sup­port of thou­sands of local peo­ple, who vis­it the stall to make their con­tri­bu­tion to the tree house heroes.

“In protest at this dra­con­ian and unnec­es­sary action, which has stopped vital fund-rais­ing at a vital time, we call for a MARCH ON WORTHING POLICE STATION on Sat­ur­day Feb­ru­ary 17, head­ing off at 2pm from Hold­ers Cor­ner, Mon­tague Place [near Mac­Don­ald’s], Wor­thing.

“This will also be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to express ongo­ing sup­port for the camp and the fight to Save Tit­nore Woods.

“We hope as many of you as pos­si­ble will be there to lend your sup­port for the efforts of our our friends on the stall and in the woods.

Tit­nore Emer­gency Action (TEA)”

Mean­while, cam­paign­ers say they have received some infor­ma­tion sug­gest­ing that an attempt­ed evic­tion of the Tit­nore camp might be very immi­nent. The source also sug­gest­ed that Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Army per­son­nel would be involved.

Wor­thing eco-action added: “While we do not want to “cry wolf” by sound­ing the alarm bells too often, we thought peo­ple should be aware of this. If any­one has any oth­er infor­ma­tion either sup­port­ing or con­tra­dict­ing this rumour, please get in touch with us, Pro­tect Our Wood­land or the camp. Or come to Thurs­day night’s Wor­thing Alliance meet­ing (Jan­u­ary 25). If there are plans to evict soon, there may be a con­nec­tion with the recent heavy-hand­ed treat­ment of Tit­nore sup­port­ers.

Activists stop work on gas pipe line Alltwen, Wales

16th Jan ’07 — At 9am this morn­ing a con­struc­tion site in Alltwen was stormed by activists, climb­ing cranes and lock­ing-on with d‑locks by their necks. Work was stopped on the con­tro­ver­sial LNG pipeline for five and a half hours, adding to the list of recent delays.

Alltwen pipeline protest16th Jan ’07 — At 9am this morn­ing a con­struc­tion site in Alltwen was stormed by activists, climb­ing cranes and lock­ing-on with d‑locks by their necks. Work was stopped on the con­tro­ver­sial LNG pipeline for five and a half hours, adding to the list of recent delays.
The pro­test­ers this morn­ing were met with aggres­sion, one had her cam­era snatched and dam­aged, whilst oth­ers were threat­ened with vio­lence. After one activist climbed a crane, locked on by his neck, the oper­a­tor of the crane then decid­ed to move the crane about, seri­ous­ly endan­ger­ing the activist’s life — watch the video (video/x‑ms-wmv 4.3MB).
Also con­struc­tion work­ers ini­tial­ly kept on using heavy machin­ery on the site despite being advised not to due to health and safe­ty rea­sons.

It is the eighth day that work has been stopped at the Tre­banos camp across the val­ley. Sup­port con­tin­ues to grow for the cam­paign with more num­bers get­ting involved dai­ly.
The pipe, to be 115 miles long rips right through wales, hav­ing dev­as­tat­ing effects on the welsh coun­try­side.
This action is just a small part of a big cam­paign to fight the pipe!
Cur­rent­ly we are occu­py­ing a pub­lic foot­path stop­ping access to the con­struc­tion site in the vil­lage of Tre­banos. We also have a house which is a safe base to do actions from.
Come to wales and be at the front line of britain’s eco-defence! Loads more actions
are planned and more sites too.
con­tact num­bers
07790450747
07733190958