Category: London

Lon­don

Five hundred flashmob at heathrow

[London,Sat 17] Mid­day today, five hun­dred peo­ple flash­mobbed Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5 in protest at the gov­ern­ments deci­sion to give the go-ahead on build­ing a third run­way and yet anoth­er ter­mi­nal. Among the mob were four naked women, lots of red ‘no expan­sion’ t‑shirts, umbrel­las and Heathrow’s largest con­ga dance.

Heathrow Terminal 5 Decision Day Flash mob[London,Sat 17] Mid­day today, five hun­dred peo­ple flash­mobbed Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 5 in protest at the gov­ern­ments deci­sion to give the go-ahead on build­ing a third run­way and yet anoth­er ter­mi­nal. Among the mob were four naked women, lots of red ‘no expan­sion’ t‑shirts, umbrel­las and Heathrow’s largest con­ga dance. It was all fin­ished with­in an hour.

The flash­mob had been called for the first Sat­ur­day after the deci­sion on the air­ports expan­sion plans and comes at the end of a packed week of protests which has already seen the domes­tic depar­tures lounge of ter­mi­nal three occu­pied by a Cli­mate Rush din­ner, a plot of land pur­chased by cam­paign­ers in the mid­dle of the pro­pose new run­way and suf­fragettes esca­lat­ing the mil­i­tan­cy of the cam­paign by smash­ing win­dows at the gov­ern­ments Depart­ment of Trans­port.

The week also saw twen­ty four Plane Stu­pid activists qui­et­ly sen­tenced for their part in the blockad­ing of Stanst­ed air­port late last year.

Many more actions are expect­ed and the Cli­mate Camp is hold­ing a nation­al gath­er­ing in Oxford next week­end at which pro­pos­als to shut down Heathrow air­port down com­plete­ly for a day are expect­ed to be dis­cussed.

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Attract­ing most press atten­tion were four brave young ladies who had saved the ten quid for a red ‘STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION’ t‑shirt and instead opt­ed for red body paint with a black mes­sage across their midriffs, ‘Sim­ply No Slaugh­ter’ and a pair of strate­gi­cal­ly placed gold stick­ing plas­ters pro­claim­ing ‘art’ and ‘port’ (port was indeed on the left.)

Among them were many of the locals who have led the long term oppo­si­tion to the project, includ­ing some I pho­tographed on the march in 2003 in Sip­son and Har­mondsworth, as well of course as John Stew­art of HACAN and local MP John McDon­nell who many were con­grat­u­lat­ing for his seizure of the mace in the House of Com­mons when the announce­ment was made.

For three-quar­ters of an hour the demon­stra­tors chant­ed, threw red bal­loons in the air and red ten­nis balls at an ‘Aunt Sal­ly’ of Trans­port Sec­re­tary Geoff Hoon and con­ga’ed around the area and had there pic­tures tak­en by a large squad of pho­tog­ra­phers includ­ing some from the nation­al press and some TV crews.

They were watched by a few of those wait­ing to check in and rather more police and air­port secu­ri­ty staff who made a loose ring around event. But although the atmos­phere before the demon­stra­tion had appeared a lit­tle tense, with police mak­ing con­tin­ued patrols through the depar­ture area pre­sum­ably look­ing for trou­ble-mak­ers, they seemed pret­ty relaxed — and some were clear­ly amused by what was hap­pen­ing.

Final­ly Stew­art thanked us all for com­ing, and repeat­ed the deter­mi­na­tion of all those involved to keep up the fight to ensure that despite the deci­sion, the run­way will nev­er be built. McDon­nell was giv­en a cheer for his action in par­lia­ment and every­one was invit­ed to take a last chance to pelt Hoon before we all slipped away to the und­e­dr­ground and bus sta­tions.

Climate Activists smash windows at The Department for Transport

16.01.2009
Cli­mate Suf­fragettes smashed glass front doors at The Depart­ment for Trans­port ear­ly this morn­ing in protest against the gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion to expand Heathrow.

Suffra-jet broken windows at Dept for Transport16.01.2009
Cli­mate Suf­fragettes smashed glass front doors at The Depart­ment for Trans­port ear­ly this morn­ing in protest against the gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion to expand Heathrow.

At 4 am, three women, wear­ing red cli­mate sash­es, hurled bricks and broke the glass doors of The Depart­ment for Trans­port, on Mar­sham Street, Lon­don. Echo­ing the protests of the Suf­fragettes, they wrapped their bricks in notes that read: ‘NO THIRD RUNWAY, THE SUFFRA-JETS ARE BACK before hurl­ing them at the gov­ern­ment build­ing. They also hurled green paint to sym­bol­ise the green­wash they heard from the gov­ern­ment today. They tar­get­ed the build­ing as a direct response to yes­ter­day’s deci­sion to allow a third run­way at Heathrow.

A spokes­woman said: “The gov­ern­ment has opened the flood-gates for rad­i­cal action. Yes­ter­day they sac­ri­ficed all of our futures and spat in the face of democ­ra­cy. The third run­way is unwant­ed and is a glob­al threat. When they make democ­ra­cy mean­ing­less what oth­er
reac­tion could they expect?

“We have less than ten years to turn cli­mate change around. Women can­not just stand by and let this gov­ern­ment treat our futures as a joke. We fight for the safe­ty of human­i­ty, and if the gov­ern­ment will only lis­ten to the smash of win­dows, then so be it.”

Not­ing that their elect­ed MPs had been refused a vote on this issue, she added;

“The gov­ern­ment has bypassed demo­c­ra­t­ic process for the sake of cor­po­rate prof­it. The Suf­fragettes died for the demo­c­ra­t­ic rights that the gov­ern­ment so sweeps aside. We take our lead from our past to defend our future.”

Heathrow runway ‘gets go-ahead’ — flashmob this Saturday

A flash­mob action is planned for this com­ing Sat­ur­day:

Min­is­ters have approved a con­tro­ver­sial plan to build a third run­way at Heathrow, the BBC under­stands.

Heathrow decision flashmobA flash­mob action is planned for this com­ing Sat­ur­day:

Min­is­ters have approved a con­tro­ver­sial plan to build a third run­way at Heathrow, the BBC under­stands.

Despite oppo­si­tion from res­i­dents, envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers and many of its own MPs, Labour is set to con­firm the deci­sion offi­cial­ly on Thurs­day.

Lead­ing busi­ness and union fig­ures back the project, say­ing it will cre­ate jobs and boost the UK’s com­pet­i­tive­ness.

But crit­ics have said it will irrepara­bly dam­age the UK’s cre­den­tials on tack­ling cli­mate change.

Labour unease

The gov­ern­ment has long argued, in prin­ci­ple, that it is in favour of the scheme, sub­ject to noise and air pol­lu­tion lim­its, and under­tak­ings about access and traf­fic con­ges­tion.

Along­side the com­mit­ment to a new run­way, Trans­port Sec­re­tary Geoff Hoon is expect­ed to announce increased invest­ment in pub­lic trans­port, includ­ing a new high-speed rail link from the air­port to cen­tral Lon­don.

There has been deep unease with­in Labour ranks about the deci­sion, with sev­er­al cab­i­net mem­bers report­ed to be uncon­vinced about the project and more than 50 MPs open­ly opposed.

In an effort to appease its crit­ics, BBC polit­i­cal cor­re­spon­dent Jo Coburn said the gov­ern­ment would announce new safe­guards for lim­it­ing emis­sions with air­lines using the new run­way required to use the newest, least pol­lut­ing air­craft.

Busi­ness Sec­re­tary Lord Man­del­son defend­ed the gov­ern­men­t’s com­mit­ment to envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns over Heathrow.

He said: “It’s a clas­sic dilem­ma — we want to forge ahead in imple­ment­ing our cli­mate change ambi­tions when oth­ers are not but we don’t want to lose our eco­nom­ic com­pet­i­tive­ness in the process. We want to do both these things.”

But back­bench Labour MP John McDon­nell, whose con­stituen­cy includes the air­port, said the fight against the expan­sion was only just “begin­ning” and oppo­nents would “use every mech­a­nism pos­si­ble” includ­ing legal chal­lenges, to stop the run­way going ahead.

“If the gov­ern­ment is not will­ing to lis­ten to Par­lia­ment or the peo­ple then there is no oth­er option but to mobilise the largest coali­tion of pub­lic oppo­si­tion and protest to halt this dis­as­trous pro­pos­al in its tracks,” he said.

The Con­ser­v­a­tives say a new run­way would be an “envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter” and have pledged to reverse the deci­sion should they win the next elec­tion.

Shad­ow trans­port sec­re­tary There­sa Vil­liers said approval of the scheme would show Gor­don Brown was “deaf to the con­cerns of his own par­ty and mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing under the flight path”.

The Lib­er­al Democ­rats have urged min­is­ters to invest in high-speed rail links instead.

Asked about the deci­sion on Wednes­day, Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown declined to guar­an­tee MPs a vote on the issue.

Should the gov­ern­ment give the go-ahead, he said there would be a debate in Par­lia­ment and that the scheme would have to be grant­ed plan­ning per­mis­sion.

This is like­ly to be a lengthy process, with work on a new run­way unlike to be com­plet­ed before 2019.

Pub­lic protests

Protests have been grow­ing in antic­i­pa­tion of a deci­sion, which was due to be made in Decem­ber but was delayed amid reports of divi­sions with­in gov­ern­ment over the issue.

About 700 homes will have to be demol­ished to make way for the run­way, which will increase the num­ber of flights using Heathrow from about 480,000 a year now to 702,000 by 2030.

Cam­paign­ers have bought some land ear­marked for the con­struc­tion of the run­way in an effort to frus­trate the expan­sion plans.

Envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers say pro­ceed­ing with the new run­way will leave the gov­ern­men­t’s legal com­mit­ment to cut car­bon emis­sions by 80% by 2050 in tat­ters.

“Expand­ing Heathrow would shat­ter the gov­ern­men­t’s inter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion on cli­mate change,” said Andy Atkins, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Friends of the Earth.

“We need bold and urgent action to cre­ate a low-car­bon econ­o­my, not more back­ing for the cli­mate-wreck­ing activ­i­ties of the avi­a­tion indus­try.”

But the gov­ern­ment believes the new run­way will not vio­late its EU com­mit­ments on air and noise pol­lu­tion, point­ing out that new air­craft being built will reduce emis­sions sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

‘At risk’

Sup­port­ers of the run­way say Heathrow is already oper­at­ing at full capac­i­ty and the UK econ­o­my will lose busi­ness to the rest of Europe if it does not go ahead.

They point out that rival air­ports such as Paris, Frank­furt and Ams­ter­dam already have at least four run­ways and that Heathrow is at risk of falling fur­ther behind.

For­mer Labour MP Lord Soley is the cam­paign direc­tor of Future Heathrow, which rep­re­sents groups in favour of expand­ing the air­port.

He told BBC News that Heathrow brought jobs and “pros­per­i­ty” to the sur­round­ing areas and in an “ide­al world” the expan­sion would not be need­ed.

“But the ide­al world does­n’t exist and it isn’t true to say that Heathrow isn’t at risk.

“It is at risk and if it con­tin­ues to decline, then the con­se­quences for west Lon­don and the Thames Val­ley will be very, very seri­ous indeed,” he said.

British Air­ways, the largest air­line at Heathrow, has said expand­ing the air­port is the only “cred­i­ble option”.

Manchester & Heathrow Climate Rush picnics

North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter Air­port

While 500 pro­test­ers occu­pied the domes­tic depar­ture lounge at Heathrow air­port at 7pm on Mon­day 12th Jan, oth­ers tried a simul­ta­ne­ous occu­pa­tion at Man­ches­ter air­port.…

Climate Rush Manchester
North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter Air­port

While 500 pro­test­ers occu­pied the domes­tic depar­ture lounge at Heathrow air­port at 7pm on Mon­day 12th Jan, oth­ers tried a simul­ta­ne­ous occu­pa­tion at Man­ches­ter air­port.…

At the North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter air­port between 50 and 100 peo­ple attempt­ed to occu­py the domes­tic depar­tures lounge but found large num­bers of police screen­ing entry at the doors. The police cor­doned off pro­test­ers in an area away from pas­sen­gers.

The group spelled out ‘fly­ing kills’ in coats, scarves and an umbrel­la on the floor. A man with a cel­lo and a woman with a vio­lin played music by the com­pos­er Han­del while oth­ers ate food from a pic­nic ham­per. How­ev­er, frus­trat­ed at being moved out of pas­sen­gers sight one of the pro­test­ers attempt­ed to breech police lines and was arrest­ed.

Supt Dave Hull said: “Despite repeat­ed attempts to con­tact the organ­is­ers, they failed to engage with us. There­fore, offi­cers did not know how many pro­tes­tors would attend so we had to pre­pare for a range of con­tin­gen­cies. One man was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of a pub­lic order offence.”

For VIDEO footage see
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1586371503/bctid6995110001

Around 50 cli­mate change activists gath­ered in Ter­mi­nal 3 of Man­ches­ter Air­port last night to protest against air­port expan­sion and domes­tic flights. The demo mir­rored the Cli­mate Rush ‘Din­ner at Depar­tures’ protest at Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 1 at the same time. ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/2009/01/418105.html)

There are around 32 flights a day between Man­ches­ter and the Lon­don hubs, despite the high speed rail con­nec­tion. ( http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1026945_plea_to_scrap_london_air_link)

The pro­test­ers dressed in Edwar­dian peri­od arrived to find Ter­mi­nal 3 locked down with around 70 police offi­cers, includ­ing For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan police. They were read parts of the Riot Act before enter­ing a ‘des­ig­nat­ed protest area’.

For­mer Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil­lor, Vanes­sa Hall, who attend­ed the North­ern Cli­mate Rush said:

“ With the speed of inter­ci­ty trains there is no longer any just or sen­si­ble rea­son to take domes­tic flights. All expan­sion plans, includ­ing those at Man­ches­ter and Heathrow should be shelved. Pas­sen­ger num­bers at Man­ches­ter Air­port have been falling for at least the last 6 months.”

She added, “In a time of reces­sion and cli­mate cri­sis, gov­ern­ment mon­ey should be spent on improve­ments to rail, trams, and bus­es, not on sub­si­dies and infra­struc­ture for the avi­a­tion indus­try.”

Avi­a­tion accounts for 13% of UK glob­al warm­ing emis­sions and is the fastest-grow­ing source of green­house gas­es. Air­lines pay no tax on avi­a­tion fuel, cost­ing the pub­lic purse an esti­mat­ed £10 bil­lion.

Man­ches­ter Air­port claims it intends to go car­bon neu­tral by 2015 — but this will not include the emis­sions from the aero­planes.

www.stopmanchesterairport.org.uk

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Climate Rush HeathrowHeathrow Ter­mi­nal One Cli­mate Rush Pic­nic a suc­cess!

I arrived at Heathrow ter­mi­nal one with alot of trep­i­da­tion and cau­tion. Not know­ing what to expect, I dressed in a suit and tie to avoid attract­ing inter­est. It did not work.

I entered the ter­mi­nal and when up to domes­tic depar­tures to see what was hap­pen­ing. I found a place to sit and enjoy a cof­fee whilst wait­ing. Being near the place where alot of BAA secu­ri­ty guards were gath­er­ing, I over­heard them try­ing to guess who was a pro­test­er and who was a passenger…it was very fun­ny know­ing I sat yards away and they had did not realise.…

The air­port was in a state of some con­sid­er­able alert. It seems that Cli­mate Rush and a dev­il­ish­ly crim­i­nal plan to have a mil­i­tant pic­nic (by most­ly women) in depar­tures had BAA on the run.

The cops were anoth­er mat­ter. FIT crews were on the upper gang­ways and over 100 police occu­pied the depar­tures lounge when i arrived about an hour before. Even more arrived as I sipped my cof­fee and read the Guardian.

After twen­ty min­utes, two cops saun­tered over to me and ask whether they could search me. I asked why. they said there is a protest planned and they were look­ing for cli­mate chaos extrem­ists. I said I was wait­ing for a friend. After find­ing noth­ing and believ­ing my sto­ry, they let me go. I decid­ed to move to Cafe Rouge where every­body was gathering…safety in num­bers I thought. soon as I got up there, there was anoth­er 30 cops watch­ing absolute­ly every­one…

As the min­utes count­ed down, I moved with under­cur­rents down into the depar­ture check in area and was joined by about 50 or 60 peo­ple who start­ed to lay out a ban­ner and a well stocked organ­ic and home cooked pic­nic. Ten min­utes lat­er, the bulk of pro­test­ers arrived and the depar­tures check in filled up fast. Real pas­sen­gers moved aside and the police moved in to encir­cle the pic­nic. By this stage close to 500 cli­mate rush pro­test­ers were spread­ing them­selves out in a ever widen­ing cir­cle. The strings Quar­tet began play­ing and a few peo­ple start­ed play­ing with a big ball which looked like the plan­et.

The BAA cor­po­rate media descend­ed and so did lots of TV cam­er­a’s hop­ing for an inter­view. at one such so many inter­views were being giv­en, it became dif­fi­cult to move around. Speak­ing with some of the orga­niz­ers, they claimed an enor­mous suc­cess in sus­pend­ing the oper­a­tion of ter­mi­nal 1. It cer­tain­ly looked like a suc­cess to me.

A while lat­er and after most of the food had been eat­en (flushed down with a lit­tle wine), every­one rose to their feet and start­ed chant­i­ng. After Stanstead, the gov­ern­ment, media and police were say­ing that every­one was an extrem­ist and pos­si­bly eco-ter­ror­ists. So the pro­test­ers, most­ly women (some in the 50 and 60’s) start­ed chant­i­ng ” do we look like ter­ror­ists?” and ‘down with BAA’

After one hour, the cops were clos­ing the cir­cle fear­ing a block­ade or a long-term occu­pa­tion. I feared we were all going to be hemmed in and arrest­ed so I decid­ed to retreat with my video cam­era intact and get back home.

Wor­ried about what I had walked away from, I rang a friend who said that every­thing was alright. the demo had fin­ished 15 min­utes after I left and there had been no arrests. In fact the cops relaxed and got quite bored as cli­mate-rush activists offered them food!

http://www.climaterush.co.uk/

Blockade stops British company’s midnight entry into tribes’ land

7/1/09 — A block­ade mount­ed by more than 50 pro­tes­tors stopped British min­ing com­pa­ny Vedan­ta enter­ing the land of the Don­gria Kondh and oth­er Kondh tribes under cov­er of dark­ness last night.

Dongria Kohnd 1

7/1/09 — A block­ade mount­ed by more than 50 pro­tes­tors stopped British min­ing com­pa­ny Vedan­ta enter­ing the land of the Don­gria Kondh and oth­er Kondh tribes under cov­er of dark­ness last night.

The FTSE 100 com­pa­ny plans to mine baux­ite on the Don­gria Kondh’s sacred moun­tain in the state of Oris­sa, lay­ing waste to the forests they depend on for their sur­vival.

Last night’s action fol­lows high lev­el meet­ings at the week­end between Vedanta’s bil­lion­aire chair­man Anil Agar­w­al and Oris­sa Chief Min­is­ter Naveen Pat­naik, who backs the mine. After the meet­ing, Agar­w­al told jour­nal­ists that min­ing would start ‘with­in a month or two’.

India’s Supreme Court has approved Vedanta’s plans, but the mine is yet to receive the envi­ron­men­tal clear­ance required for it to go ahead.

The stand-off between local vil­lagers and Vedanta’s bull­doz­ers at the block­ade site con­tin­ues. Pro­tes­tor Ajun Chan­di, who has received a series of threat­en­ing phone calls from Vedan­ta, says, ‘You must let the whole world know what Vedan­ta is doing.’

The Don­gria Kondh have said they will mount armed resis­tance if Ven­dan­ta try to evict them and destroy the for­est cov­ered moun­tains they call home.

More info at: www.survival-international.org/tribes/dongria

Santas Against Excessive Consumption, London UK, Xmas 08

Five brave coun­ter­cul­ture war­riors don San­ta Suits, sing anti-con­sumerist and anti-cap­i­tal­ist Xmas car­ols, and leaflet for more mind­ful atten­tion to love, gifts, and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change – in Oxford Street, in the heart of the shop­ping dis­trict of Old Lon­don Town, on the busiest shop­ping day of the year: Sat 13 De

London consumption climate santas 2008Five brave coun­ter­cul­ture war­riors don San­ta Suits, sing anti-con­sumerist and anti-cap­i­tal­ist Xmas car­ols, and leaflet for more mind­ful atten­tion to love, gifts, and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change – in Oxford Street, in the heart of the shop­ping dis­trict of Old Lon­don Town, on the busiest shop­ping day of the year: Sat 13 Dec 08.

Turn­ing mate­r­i­al wealth into pos­ses­sions makes you hap­py; shop­ping till you drop and retail ther­a­py are good for every­body; prov­ing you love some­body means giv­ing them an expen­sive present. The bullplop pro­mot­ed by Capital’s adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing psy­che-manip­u­la­tors has nev­er need­ed chal­leng­ing more than it does today, in the worst of the mad­ness of Xmas shop­ping mass-psy­chosis dur­ing a cash-strapped cred­it crunch reces­sion.

Our yule­tide ‘tra­di­tion’ at Lon­don Ris­ing Tide [1] involves a ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion’ [2] choral street action – mass dress­ing as San­ta Claus, social singing of anti-con­sumerist Xmas car­ols, and let­ting folks know by leaflet that there is an alter­na­tive to the dom­i­nant the-one-who-dies-with-the-most-toys-wins idio­cy of hyper­con­sumerism. Since the rain was heavy and steady, we sought shel­ter and per­for­mance space in the West One indoor shop­ping mall on Oxford Street, by Bond Street tube sta­tion. But anti-cap­i­tal­ist cho­ris­ters only damp­ened what lit­tle Xmas spir­it the secu­ri­ty boss had left – and he threat­ened to call the cops if we didn’t leave forth­with.

Thank­ful­ly, his remit seemed to run out at the doors to Oxford Street, which still left us with a suit­ably sized cov­ered area in which we could sing to our hearts con­tent, and com­pete with the McDon­alds McFly­er to see who could give away the most leaflets per unit time. The applause of shop­pers hap­py to be spared, if only tem­porar­i­ly, from the soul-rot­ting rounds of shop­ping for tat was much appre­ci­at­ed.

The lyrics of the songs you can hear us singing in the video (so you can sing along, or even stage your own San­tas Against Con­spic­u­ous Con­sump­tion street action) are as fol­lows.

___________________________________________________________________
1 (& 3). Jin­gle All The Way – to the tune of Jin­gle Bells

Cho­rus:
Prof­its here, prof­its there,
prof­its every­where
Christ­mas time is fun­ny
we smell mon­ey in the air
Adver­tise, glam­or­ize,
fool you with a flair.
Let’s make sure that Christ­mas
is a busi­nesslike affair.

You’re eat­ing up our lies and dash­ing to the stores
Then all our prices rise and how the mon­ey pours
If we don’t keep you drugged and watch­ing your TV
You might see the hypocrisy
then where would busi­ness be?

Cho­rus

We’ll tell you how to think and tell you what to try
What to eat and drink and how to live and die
And if our plan suc­ceeds, when Christ­mas-time is nigh
Instead of seek­ing love and peace you’ll hunt for gifts to buy

Cho­rus

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2. Con­sumer Won­der­land – to the tune of Win­ter Won­der­land, lyrics by Eri­ca Avery

The TV’s on / are you watch­ing?
Anoth­er prod­uct / that they’re hawk­ing
one more thing you need
to make life com­plete
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

In the stores / you will hear it
“Pricey gifts / show hol­i­day spir­it”
That’s what they call it
to get to your wal­let
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

At the mall we can go out shop­ping
and buy lots of stuff we can’t afford
we’ll have lots of fun with our new toys
until we real­ize that we’re still bored

When you shop / ain’t it thrilling
until / you get the billing
the mon­ey you still owe the stuff broke long ago
Wel­come to Con­sumer Won­der­land

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4. Oh Come All Ye Shop­pers – to the tune of Oh Come All Ye Faith­ful

Oh come all ye shop­pers
Bur­dened and despon­dent
Come all ye fol­low­ers of ma-a-mon
Come and buy things
Spark­ly and redun­dant

Oh come let us ignore it
Oh come let us deplore it
Oh come let us abhore it
Mon­ey and greed.

Ring tills with prof­it
Ring in exploita­tion
Ring all ye reg­is­ters of cap­i­tal­ism
Glo­ry to prof­it
At it’s high­est

Oh come let us ignore it
Oh come let us deplore it
Oh come let us abhore it
Mon­ey and greed.

___________________________________________________________________

For cap­i­tal­ists, giv­ing means buy­ing tat from them first. For anti-cap­i­tal­ists, a gift econ­o­my can under­mine the mar­ket eco­nom­ics that poi­son our envi­ron­ment, our cul­ture and our minds – for exam­ple, see ‘Cre­at­ing Our Future World One Gift At A Time’ – http://tinyurl.com/gift-economy

Foot­notes

[1] Lon­don Ris­ing Tide – http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk

[2] The Ris­ing Tide “tra­di­tion” of ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion’:
▪ ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion hit Lon­don, 16.12.06’ – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/12/358481.html
▪ ‘San­tas Against Exces­sive Con­sump­tion invade Oxford Street’ – http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk/node/33
▪ ‘Sub­ver­sive Singing San­tas Spread Sea­son­al San­i­ty in Lon­don and Nor­wich’ – http://risingtide.org.uk/node/247

[2] Car­ol resources:
▪ Christ­mas Car­ols – http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/resources/carols.html
▪ Our Entire 11-song Song­sheet – http://www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/17929

Christmas consumption causes climate chaos leaflet - frontChristmas consumption causes climate chaos leaflet - back

London Critical Mass report (& recent legal ruling), & Exeter CM announcement

In the week of the law lords’ final rul­ing on the legal sta­tus of crit­i­cal mass, fri­day night saw around 200 cyclists brave the damp and cold to take part in the “com­mon­ly or cus­tom­ar­i­ly held pro­ces­sion” — for the third month in a

London Critical Mass penny farthingsIn the week of the law lords’ final rul­ing on the legal sta­tus of crit­i­cal mass, fri­day night saw around 200 cyclists brave the damp and cold to take part in the “com­mon­ly or cus­tom­ar­i­ly held pro­ces­sion” — for the third month in a row, no police direct­ly accom­pa­nied the ride. the ride itself was most­ly fun and smooth-going, but there was a col­li­sion at mar­ble arch that marred an oth­er­wise suc­ces­ful evening.

the mass went over water­loo bridge and then along the strand to white­hall and par­lia­ment square. after a few cir­cles there, the next stop was out­side new scot­land yard, where a very loud cycle sound sys­tem noti­fied their pres­ence to the police (along with chants of “one-nil, one-nil”). mov­ing on past buck­ing­ham palace and round the back streets of pic­cadil­ly, there was a brief stop at pic­cadil­ly cir­cus.

this is the third month with­out direct police accom­pa­ni­ment, and it seems each time the mass is get­ting bet­ter at con­trol­ling itself and oth­er road traf­fic for the safe­ty and ben­e­fit of all. it seemed that almost every­one was empow­ered to have a go at ‘cork­ing’ (block­ing incom­ing side roads at junc­tions to stop motor vehi­cles from min­gling with the mass). if done firm­ly and polite­ly, the road is kept clear for the whole mass to pass, and then the incon­ve­nience to oth­er motorists is min­imised and the cyclists keep mov­ing safe­ly and freely. also, the front rid­ers stopped every now and then to allow the mass to regroup. mean­while pedes­tri­ans were often catered for and let through at cross­ings etc.

there were an array of dif­fer­ent bikes too, with a cou­ple of mod­ern pen­ny far­things, a very tall ‘dou­ble deck­er’ bike (whose rid­er was heard now and then shout­ing for peo­ple to keep mov­ing — it was a long way down!!), there was a rick­shaw, and at least two sound sys­tems.

after a damp start, the rain held off, things were going smooth­ly until at mar­ble arch, a bicy­cle was hit by an irate motorist who had been briefly held up by a ‘cork’ at the top of park lane and then decid­ed to dri­ve like a lunatic. as sev­er­al cyclists went to aid, the dri­ver at first tried to dri­ve from the scene of the acci­dent, then scraped his own car door by push­ing it hard open against a near­by bicy­cle, and then assault­ed the cyclist by pok­ing him in the eye.

sev­er­al rid­ers kept the car sur­round­ed until police arrived. the first cops were from char­ing cross, and they seemed to be very much on the side of the motorist, even sug­gest­ing that they’d arrest the cyclist who was assault­ed! after a while some padding­ton offi­cers turned up, and act­ed more pro­fes­sion­al­ly, tak­ing details of the var­i­ous wit­ness­es, and even­tu­al­ly arrest­ing and hand­cuff­ing the crazy dri­ver.

a shout out to the cyclists that stuck around to help. next mass on box­ing day — meet (as cus­tom­ar­i­ly!) under water­loo bridge on the south bank at 6–6.30pm (last fri­day of every month)

—

Since 1994, Lon­don cyclists have been gath­er­ing every sin­gle month to cycle, par­ty and assert their right to the road — the famous Crit­i­cal Mass. 

Amidst oth­er police tac­tics aim­ing to break the d.i.y spir­it of the event, the Police attempt­ed to ban the ride in Sep­tem­ber 2005. The court case and oblig­a­tory appeals that ensued last­ed for 3 years until the 26th of Novem­ber 2008 when the Law Lords ruled in favour of Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass. A vic­to­ry for Lon­don — but an unclear result for oth­er Crit­i­cal Mass­es around the coun­try.

The Crit­i­cal Mass bicy­cle ride has been going on in Lon­don since 1994 — a month­ly gath­er­ing of cyclist who cycle togeth­er through Lon­don with no planned route and no defined lead­ers or organ­is­ers.

In Sep­tem­ber 1995, the police effec­tive­ly tried to ban Crit­i­cal Mass by claim­ing it was an ille­gal pro­ces­sion, and that the organ­is­ers had to inform the police of the route ahead of the event. This is an exerpt from the leaflet they dis­trib­uted on that occa­sion :

“…Police can impose con­di­tions on pro­ces­sions, demon­stra­tions and oth­er assem­blies, and par­tic­i­pants ren­der them­selves liable to arrest if they fail to com­ply with those con­di­tions. These cycle protests are not law­ful because no organ­is­er has pro­vid­ed police the with the nec­es­sary noti­fi­ca­tion. Your par­tic­i­pa­tion in this event could ren­der you liable to pros­e­cu­tion. Police pol­i­cy in facil­i­tat­ing these events is cur­rent­ly under review…”

It may be dif­fi­cult for the police to accept it, but it is a well known fact that Crit­i­cal Mass has no set organ­is­ers. While some may print leaflets and oth­ers host a web­site, it’s a spon­ta­neous event ; peo­ple just show up on the last Fri­day of the month and ride togeth­er, any­one can go at the front and sug­gest ite­nar­ies. Claim­ing that Crit­i­cal Mass is organ­ised is like claim­ing that traf­fic jams are organ­ised. By their let­ter, the police refused cyclist the sta­tus of ‘traf­fic’ — one of Crit­i­cal Mass’ aim being to show that cyclists are traf­fic and should be allowed to use the road as much as cars.

The Octo­ber 2005 mass saw one of the biggest turnout ever in Lon­don — show­ing how many peo­ple care about Crit­i­cal Mass, and that peo­ple would not let the police stop it. Soon after, Des Key and Friends of the Earth start­ed a court case against the police.

The court case took sev­er­al years and went up to the House of Lords before fin­ish­ing, on the 26th of Novem­ber 2008, rul­ing in favour of crit­i­cal mass. The rul­ing stat­ed that Crit­i­cal Mass was cus­tom­ary, and there­fore did not need to apply for per­mis­sion, or to inform the police.

The rul­ing how­ev­er sug­gests that Crit­i­cal Mass is a pro­ces­sion — refus­ing the idea that cyclist are traf­fic. As such it is not clear how the rul­ing may be used in the future for peo­ple set­ting up new Crit­i­cal Mass­es around the UK who will not be able to claim these are cus­tom­ary events.

Police has been a reg­u­lar fea­ture at Crit­i­cal Mass for the past 3 or 4 years — occa­sion­aly pro­tect­ing cyclists from angry dri­vers, but always try­ing to man­age the ride, shout­ing at peo­ple who tried to do it them­selves and gen­er­al­ly being intim­i­dat­ing towards peo­ple who showed any form of ini­tia­tive. The police were try­ing to trans­form Crit­i­cal Mass into some­thing they could under­stand : an event where par­tic­i­pants are sheep­ish and sim­ply do as the organ­is­ers tell them to do.

It is unclear whether it is relat­ed to this judg­ment, the leav­ing of Ian Blair or oth­er inter­nal police mat­ters, but the police has not been at Crit­i­cal Mass for the past two months. Now that the judge­ment has ruled  in favor of Crit­i­cal Mass, they have even less of a rea­son for show­ing up — and we are going to have to re-learn how to man­age this event our­selves prop­er­ly.

—

Exeter Crit­i­cal Mass — meet 12.00 on Cathe­dral Green on Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 6th. To get in the mood come along to a screen­ing of “We are traf­fic” at Exeter Phoenix on Thurs­day Decem­ber 4th at 19.00

Thurs­day Decem­ber 4th@ 7.00 — We are Traf­fic Screen­ing -
Exeter Phoenix , Brad­ninch Place, Gandy St, Exeter,

We Are Traf­fic! chron­i­cles the his­to­ry and devel­op­ment of the “Crit­i­cal Mass” bicy­cle move­ment– one of the most spir­it­ed and dynam­ic social/political move­ments of the apa­thet­ic 90’s. In over 200 cities in 14 dif­fer­ent coun­tries, Crit­i­cal Mass has now become a month­ly rit­u­al.

With traf­fic con­ges­tion, pol­lu­tion, and road rage on the rise, grow­ing num­bers around the world are advo­cat­ing for trans­porta­tion alter­na­tives, and Crit­i­cal Mass is at the cut­ting edge of this mind­set.

Show­ing in the Black Box Film, every­one wel­come to stay after to talk about future events/critical mass­es etc and maybe for a drink at North­bridge Inn

Snacks pro­vid­ed — feel free to bring more snacks though!

——————————————————————————

Exeter Crit­i­cal Mass — Sat­ur­day 6th Decem­ber @ 12.00 Cathe­dral Green, Exeter -

Xmas Theme option­al — dec­o­rate your bikes!

WHAT’S IS ALL ABOUT?
Crit­i­cal Mass is often described as an ‘unor­gan­ised coin­ci­dence’. It hap­pens when a lot of cyclists hap­pen to be in the same place at the same time and decide to cycle the same way togeth­er for a while

WHAT’S THE PURPOSE?
“Every­day, all over the world, peo­ple are resist­ing the prob­lem cul­ture of the car by get­ting on their bikes and rid­ing, instead of dri­ving.

Crit­i­cal Mass is a cel­e­bra­tion of the alter­na­tives to cars, pol­lu­tion, acci­dents and the loss of pub­lic spaces and free­doms.

Not an organ­i­sa­tion or group, but an idea or tac­tic, Crit­i­cal Mass allows peo­ple to reclaim cities with their bikes, just by get­ting togeth­er and out-num­ber­ing the cars on the road”

WHAT HAPPENS ON A CRITICAL MASS?
Each one is dif­fer­ent and they fol­low no set route, with the direc­tion being spon­ta­neous­ly cho­sen as peo­ple cycle along. Any­one is free to join or leave the ride as it ped­als along.

The ride lasts no more than a cou­ple of hours (depend­ing on the weath­er!) and usu­al­ly ends in a con­ve­nient­ly placed pub for more drinks.

Most all, they are peace­ful, safe and fun!

DO I NEED A BIKE?
Nope! Crit­i­cal Mass is not just for bikes — skate­boards, roller blades, wheel­chairs, pogo sticks — in fact any form of non-motorised, non-pol­lut­ing are all very wel­come!

Buy Nothing Day reports — London x2, Norwich, Wrexham, Liverpool & Manchester

“Take your clothes off!

Swap Shop 1Swap Shop 2“Take your clothes off! Swap them with your friends for FREE!” was the mes­sage from the Space Hijack­ers http://www.spacehijackers.co.uk/html/welcome.html, who decid­ed to set up their clothes swap — “the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year” — on the low­er ground floor of TOPSHOP at Oxford Cir­cus (Lon­don). The idea was to demon­strate that “we don’t need to spend mon­ey we don’t have on things we don’t need.”

The action, designed as it was to sub­vert one of the icon­ic tem­ples of con­sumerism seemed to baf­fle police and did­n’t amuse the secu­ri­ty staff, who stopped me tak­ing pic­tures there. One oth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er was man­han­dled out of the store, but I was treat­ed very polite­ly, with sev­er­al secu­ri­ty men stand­ing between me and the action and telling me that pho­to­graph was not allowed. On of the store man­agers even offered to per­son­al­ly help me find any clothes I might wish to buy else­where in the store, a pos­si­bil­i­ty I found most unlike­ly.

I left the store (with a rather large escort until I left the premis­es) and walked around to the side exit where I expect­ed the clothes swap­pers to be eject­ed, arriv­ing just before they emerged, and was able to pho­to­graph them con­tin­u­ing to swap clothes on the pave­ment in Regent Street. Here one police­man did attempt to pre­vent me from tak­ing pic­tures, claim­ing I was caus­ing an obstruc­tion (which clear­ly I was­n’t) and as usu­al I moved back a cou­ple of feet before return­ing to take pic­tures when he moved away.

Things did threat­en to get out of hand when a rather elder­ly police offi­cer (at my age all police­men are sup­posed to look young), helped by a ‘Red Cap’ (rather sin­is­ter pri­vate secu­ri­ty war­dens employed by the ‘New West End Com­pa­ny’ to ensure shop­pers don’t step out of line) start­ed to push peo­ple around, but most­ly oth­er offi­cers took a more sen­si­ble approach, some even talk­ing and jok­ing with the swap­pers as they con­tin­ued to exchange items of cloth­ing on the pave­ment.

Some shop­pers pass­ing by stopped to watch, and a few took a leaflet, but there was no evi­dence of any Dam­a­scene con­ver­sions, most hur­ry­ing on clutch­ing their loaded shop­ping bags, des­per­ate to spend more mon­ey.

One of those tak­ing part was held by the police for a while as they had decid­ed he was the ring­leader. He got a big cheer when he was released, wav­ing his pink ‘Get out of TOPSHOP Jail Free’ Chance Card and the Anti-social Behav­iour Act Notice for the Dis­per­sal of Groups (see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2003/ukpga_20030038_en_5 ) which the Met had issued. This required him to leave the Oxford St/Regent St area for the next 24 hours. For­tu­nate­ly the map pro­vid­ed did­n’t include the Red Lion, where he announced his inten­tion of going — and at this point I also left as I was already late for a meet­ing with friends in Streatham. Some of the oth­ers looked as if they were going to con­tin­ue their fun along Oxford Street.

========

All in all, I think it was a good action.

around 30–40 peo­ple turned up and swapped clothes, hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out on oxford street before the action, and when it did hap­pen, Top­Shop had a shop full of Police, PCSO’s and secu­ri­ty, they closed the entrance to the shop and removed the ‘red phone box’ meet­ing point dis­play.

Lots of lit­er­a­ture was hand­ed out, and plen­ty of pret­ty activist flesh, (oh my).

two arrests hap­pened, one for refus­ing to give a name and address (sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act) appar­ent­ly it was anti-social behav­iour. On the con­trary I thought it was incred­i­bly social behav­iour show by the hijack­ers. Both arrests were released with­out charge fair­ly swift­ly. Although one was dri­ven to Trafal­gar square and dropped off there for no appar­ent rea­son?

Lat­er on the actions con­tin­ued with a street par­ty in King­ly Court shop­ping cen­tre, and then a road blo­cade at Sev­en Dials with plen­ty of danc­ing.

thanks to all of the non-shop swap­pers and to the love­ly peo­ple who swapped their clothes with mine for the great new out­fit I have.

========

Buy noth­ing day — brix­ton report

“Buy noth­ing day” is an inter­na­tion­al anti-con­sumerist day. Put sim­ply : peo­ple are encour­aged to stop shop­ing for one day. In Brix­ton, activist set up a stall to give away free food and oth­er free items.

Activists met at 11am at Library House to pick up veg­eta­bles and part of the con­tent of the Library House­’s freeshop. The items were brought to Brix­ton, and were giv­en out for free in front of the super­mar­ket next to the tube sta­tion.

——
Norwich rat race
To mark Buy Noth­ing Day, activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide held a Rat Race in the Nor­wich city cen­tre.

The busiest high street in Nor­wich was today full of rats. The rats were equipped with plac­ards read­ing Work Hard­er, Earn More Mon­ey, Buy More Things, Keep Going, and leaflets telling peo­ple to join the con­sump­tion Rat Race. The reverse of the leaflet, revealed the spoof and informed peo­ple that today was buy noth­ing day and per­haps they should con­sid­er the envi­ron­men­tal and social con­se­quences of exces­sive con­sump­tion.

600 leaflets were hand­ed out in total (see below), and many passers-by expressed their sup­port, although one by pass­er was heard to call “Get a job” to which one of the rat (a teacher) shout­ed back, “It’s a Sat­ur­day you toss­er!” – the crowd of shop­pers that had gath­ered around the rats all laughed.BND Norwich flier front
BND Norwich flier back

——–
Wrexham BND freeconomy leaflet
“Free Socks!” “Why? Who’s hold­ing him?”
29.11.2008
In Wrex­ham town cen­tre this morn­ing, the local Freecon­o­my group held a Sock (FREE) Shop — that’s socks for free, not a shop free of socks or even free­ing Sock. Hun­dreds of pairs of warm socks were dis­trib­uted in sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures to peo­ple with cold feet — and hands — along with leaflets explain­ing what Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham does and invit­ing peo­ple to get involved in the hap­py world of giv­ing and shar­ing.

There was a great deal of puz­zle­ment about a stall offer­ing free socks in the town cen­tre on a busy Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

One pass­ing shop­per came over to find out more about our cam­paign to free the mys­te­ri­ous ‘Socks’ from his cap­tor. More com­mon­ly, peo­ple just could­n’t seem to believe that the socks were for free:

Free? What’s the catch? You don’t get any­thing for free… do you?

But of course you do. Or, at least, some­one does.…

Loads of stuff hap­pens for free all the time. Cap­i­tal­ism has only sur­vived this long because of the free labour which is pro­vid­ed by any­one whose work helps some­one else to get rich­er. Marx had some­thing to say about this. Land and resources stolen from the peo­ple — our own Eagles Mead­ow includ­ed — are used by busi­ness­es to gen­er­ate prof­it, and trashed in the process. We nur­ture our chil­dren for free because we love them, but all that free care and atten­tion is what brings the next gen­er­a­tion of work­ers into being — a free gift to cap­i­tal­ism. Much of the free stuff we do as par­ents, car­ers, part­ners, friends, ‘good neigh­bours’ and so on is large­ly invis­i­ble to the econ­o­my, although with­out it the econ­o­my as it is could­n’t func­tion at all.

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is just doing a bit to raise the pro­file of free giv­ing and encour­age peo­ple to spread their free gifts around rather than trash­ing them, which is what hap­pens when good stuff ends up at the tip, for exam­ple. We hand­ed out socks and leaflets for about 3 hours, by which time even mul­ti­ple lay­ers of our free socks could­n’t keep our feet and hands from freez­ing, so we called it a day.

LEAFLET TEXT

FREECONOMY WREXHAM… Bring and Take… Free for All…

What’s it all about?

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is:
for every­one; envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly; shar­ing; giv­ing; fun!; re-using stuff; com­plete­ly free; sus­tain­able.

Turn over to find out more…

Freecon­o­my Wrex­ham is about gift and shar­ing, show­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make things work with­out pay­ment or finan­cial prof­it. In a world where every­thing seems to have a price — often more than we can afford — it can be dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a com­plete­ly free event. But all the goods on our stalls and at our events are there for the tak­ing. Every­one is invit­ed to come and help them­selves.

Bring and Take is made pos­si­ble by every­one who gives their time and ener­gy to help out, who donates goods to be giv­en away, who loans a venue for free or lets us use a van or bakes a cake, and — most impor­tant­ly — every­one who takes away all the things that are donat­ed!

Re-use for the plan­et. Before you throw any­thing away, think about whether some­one else could use it. Nat­ur­al resources, time and skills were need­ed to make that item. If it’s binned, all those things are lost. By shar­ing and re-using, we can keep wealth in our com­mu­ni­ties, help each oth­er, cre­ate good­will and hap­pi­ness, and do a lit­tle bit to save the plan­et.

freeconomywrexham[at]yahoo.co.uk

——–
What, No Prices?
Liverpool Buy Nothing Day 08
More than 150 peo­ple came to Next To Nowhere’s Free Shop on Sat­ur­day in Liv­er­pool. This was a one-off event to mark Buy Noth­ing Day. The organ­is­ers encour­aged peo­ple to come in by offer­ing free tea and toast and free mistle­toe on the street out­side.

Real­ly, it’s free

Buy Noth­ing Day orig­i­nat­ed in the USA in 1992. It was intend­ed to make a state­ment about over-con­sump­tion and the amount of waste this gen­er­ates, and encour­age peo­ple to re-think their lifestyles. It gen­er­at­ed some con­tro­ver­sy, and still does, if the com­ments to the pre­vi­ous post­ing about Buy Noth­ing Day are any­thing to go by! Some peo­ple think con­sump­tion by itself is not the issue, oth­ers think the event is patro­n­is­ing to peo­ple who can’t afford to buy much any­way.
But none of the peo­ple who wan­dered into the free shop last Sat­ur­day seemed to feel patro­n­ised. Some, who had come to town to do Christ­mas shop­ping, looked in out of curi­ousi­ty, and found they pre­ferred doing some “non-shop­ping”, and get­ting some refresh­ments at the free cafe. Peo­ple with lit­tle mon­ey were hap­py to take away free items they need­ed, and for the peo­ple who had donat­ed things, it was sat­is­fy­ing to see goods they don’t need any more being tak­en for re-use. Not every­body who came had heard of Buy Noth­ing Day, and had to be reas­sured that every­thing real­ly was free!
What­ev­er the gen­er­al crit­i­cisms, this par­tic­u­lar free shop worked as a co-oper­a­tive event, it intro­duced peo­ple to the social cen­tre who had nev­er been there before, and it gave peo­ple a taste of how lib­er­at­ing it is to do with­out cur­ren­cy for once.

——–

Buy Noth­ing Day Man­ches­ter: Pri­mark Feels the Wrath of Santa’s Lit­tle Work­ers!

On Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber sev­en stu­dents braved Manchester’s heav­ing Mar­ket Street in sup­port of Buy Noth­ing Day 2008. In fes­tive dress and armed with some thought-pro­vok­ing cloth­ing labels of their own, the aim was to raise aware­ness about unnec­es­sary con­sumerism over Christ­mas, and to reveal the true cost of high street fash­ion to Sat­ur­day shop­pers.

The action began incog­ni­to, as the pro­tes­tors secret­ly deliv­ered mes­sages ques­tion­ing con­sumer greed and the uneth­i­cal sourc­ing of cheap fash­ion into the pock­ets, zips, and cuffs of cloth­ing in Pri­mark. Mes­sages such as “I won­der if the per­son who made this gar­ment is hap­py?”, and “Do you real­ly need anoth­er one of these?” were soon dot­ted around the bustling store and secu­ri­ty quick­ly react­ed, call­ing all clean­ers to the ground floor to remove the labels. The pro­test­ers escaped unscathed, mer­ry in the knowl­edge that the chances of hunt­ing out all the labels would be pret­ty slim.

After a quick change of clothes the pro­tes­tors took to the street, antlers and all. With a splen­did ban­ner and leaflets a‑plenty they approached the swarms of passers-by and announced that they need not spend mon­ey this Christ­mas to be hap­py. Some engag­ing debates ensued con­cern­ing con­sumerism and sweat­shops. It was felt by some that only the finan­cial­ly priv­i­leged could afford to have a con­science, and that out­lets such as Pri­mark offered those with a low­er income the chance to look (and there­fore feel) good. Oth­ers had been so far unaware of shops like Primark’s asso­ci­a­tion with fac­to­ries in India, and were gen­uine­ly shocked at some of the sto­ries the pro­tes­tors relayed about under­paid and mis­treat­ed work­ers. Whilst not every­body agreed, the val­ue of live­ly pub­lic debate can­not be under­es­ti­mat­ed. Talk­ing about some­thing is the first step to chang­ing it and per­haps now a few peo­ple will think twice before buy­ing some­thing just because it is cheap. It’s real cost is inhu­mane­ly high.

E.ON protests & actions — London (x3), Bristol, Norwich, Coventry (x2), Nottingham, Brighton & Kingsnorth

Pix-&-Vidz of E.ON F.OFF, Pall Mall, Lon­don — 28 Nov 08

Pix-&-Vidz of E.ON F.OFF, Pall Mall, Lon­don — 28 Nov 08
E.ON Pall Mall 1E.ON Pall Mall 2
Green­wash Gueril­las Lon­don Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, pay a protest-ori­ent­ed vis­it to the Lon­don Office of filthy cli­mate crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tion E.ON UK to con­front a Short-Sight­ed Fat Cat and PR Push­ers plug­ging ‘Clean Coal’ bullplop.

Cli­mate Camp: How to make an E.ON F.OFF plac­ard
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jbqngfkMZmU
Very use­ful and gen­er­al­ly applic­a­ble method for plac­ard & ban­ner pro­duc­tion using a pro­ject­ed image

Telling E.ON to Take its ‘Clean Coal’ Green­wash & F.OFF

At a time when the glob­al cli­mate cri­sis demands clean, renew­able, ener­gy gen­er­a­tion solu­tions, a Ger­man ener­gy transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion called E.ON want to build a new filthy big coal pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing sta­tion [1] at Kingsnorth in north Kent [2]. All indi­ca­tions are that the UK ‘New’ Labour gov­ern­ment will give them the go ahead, despite the fact that their own Envi­ron­men­tal Audit Com­mit­tee has recent­ly called coal a ‘last resort, even with CCS’; where CCS = Car­bon Cap­ture & Stor­age, an unproven pipedream tech­nol­o­gy that won’t be avail­able for 20 years at the ear­li­est (or so says Alis­tair Dar­ling, the indus­try itself and the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change).

So build­ing on the recent Mass Action Vic­to­ry which scup­pered E.ON’s UK grad­u­ate recruit­ment plan [3], a bevy of cli­mate cri­sis pro­test­ers tar­get­ed E.ON UK’s Lon­don office at 100 Pall Mall [4] from 8:00 this morn­ing. This is one of a num­ber of decen­tralised protest actions aris­ing from a call to ‘Take Back the Pow­er’ through ’48 Hours of Action against E.ON and New Coal’ over Fri 28 and Sat 29 Nov 08 by:
▪ E.ON F.OFF – http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk
▪ Camp for Cli­mate Action – http://climatecamp.org.uk
▪ Ris­ing Tide – http://risingtide.org.uk
▪ Plane Stu­pid – http://www.planestupid.com
▪ Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change – http://www.campaigncc.org

Foot­notes

[1] E.ON’s pro­posed new filthy big coal pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing sta­tion – it will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year (equiv­a­lent to the annu­al emis­sions of Malaw­i’s 13 mil­lion peo­ple or more CO2 than Heathrow’s third run­way would burn) source – http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk/why.html

[2] Kingsnorth in north Kent – http://tinyurl.com/KingsnorthCoal-map

[3] See ‘Mass Action Vic­to­ry Scup­pers E.ON’s UK Recruit­ment Plan’ – http://tinyurl.com/MAV-13-Nov-08

[4] E.ON UK’s Lon­don office at 100 Pall Mall – http://tinyurl.com/EON-LDN-map

All these pho­tos and video clips are ‘Copy­Left’
This means you are free to copy and dis­trib­ute any of my pho­tos you find here, under the fol­low­ing license:
> Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Non­com­mer­cial-Share Alike 3.0 Unport­ed License
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
> Accred­i­ta­tion: tim.dalinian.jones@googlemail.com

NB: These pix are edit­ed and down­sized ver­sions (up to 640x640px, 0.39Mpx, 324 to 728 KB) for onscreen dis­play. If you would like the free, edit­ed, full-sized ver­sions (up to 3072x2304px, 7.1Mpx, 1.0 to 2.9 MB) for print, poster, plac­ard, ban­ner, etc, please email your request to tim.dalinian.jones [at] googlemail.com quot­ing the pic­ture title(s) you’d like.

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E.on at the FA
On Fri­day 28th Novem­ber Lon­don Ris­ing Tide vis­it­ed the FA Head­quar­ters to protest about E‑on’s strive for new coal in the UK.

The FA cup is spon­sored by E.on and a full team of Ris­ing Tiders turned out to play foot­ball in T shirts bear­ing the names of the gov­ern­men­t’s pro­posed new coal fired pow­er­sta­tions.

Yel­low and Red cards explain­ing the facts about dirty coal were hand­ed out to staff leav­ing the head­quar­ters and pass­ing pub­lic.

london@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.londonrisingtide.org.uk/

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NatWest climate spoof
Stu­dents spoof natwest ads — 48hrs action on coal

In the 48 hours of action against e.on and new coal, South Lon­don stu­dents affli­at­ed with Peo­ple and Plan­et use their pho­to­shops skills and sense of fun to tar­get Natwest­’s invest­ment in cli­mate change.

Natwest, part of RBS, were giv­en shiney new posters boast­ing their invest­ment hab­bits to cus­tomers. We had a smashin time putting them up so print some out and have fun to. Also lots of stick­er­ing and fun with the space hijack­ers top­shop swap shop — good day!

see www.oyalbankofscotland.com

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Bristol EON 2Bristol E.ON 3Bristol EON 1
Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide and activists from in and around Bris­tol had a day of shenani­gans direct­ed at the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, E‑on and new coal.

The day start­ed with a ban­ner drop on one of the fly­overs cross­ing the M32 motor­way run­ning into the city cen­tre. Over lunchtime the main RBS branch in the city cen­tre was pick­et­ed, with activists hand­ing out forged £20 ban­knotes (see below) to passers-by and cus­tomers only to have an ‘RBS bank rob­ber’ steal them back to give to E‑on and the coal indus­try (see pho­to). A mock bank state­m­ate was also dis­trib­uted show­ing RBS’s invest­ment in coal around the world set against the tax­pay­er fund­ed bail out of the bank. The pick­et moved on to an E‑on ‘Fam­i­ly Foot­ball’ event in the Broad­mead shop­ping cen­tre (see pho­to). Mid after­noon saw over 50 activists gath­er­ing in the city cen­tre for a reclaim the streets par­ty. The par­ty, with mobile sound sys­tem roamed the city cen­tre forc­ing the city cen­tre branch of NatWest to close ear­ly and leav­ing the RBS branch unus­able after a very messy cake fight!

http://risingtide.org.uk/bristol

—-

Nor­wich RT Spoof E.on Stall
Norwich E.ON spoof stall
29.11.2008
Today six activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide set up a spoof E.on stall on the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s doorstep (RBS is one of E.on’s core sources of fund­ing).

The spoof (despite all mate­ri­als read­ing E.on F.off – includ­ing a table cloth, ban­ner, t‑shirts, leaflets, badges and stick­ers) fooled many of the pub­lic. Passers-by said things like “we don’t want to hear any­thing about E.on” and “I’m not a fan of E.on” (it real­ly was amaz­ing how hos­tile peo­ple were to E.on). Once they were informed that we were reveal­ing the truth about E.on and Coal most then took a leaflet and badge.

In total we gave out 400 leaflets and under­took a ques­tion­naire on behalf of E.on.
Results showed that …

50% of peo­ple didn’t know that E.on plans to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion – they do now.
90% of peo­ple didn’t know that RBS will part fund­ing it – again we made sure to inform them of this fact.
Last­ly, 100% of peo­ple said they thought that coal fired pow­er sta­tions should be shut down and replaced with renew­able ener­gy sources.

We’ll pass on our find­ings to E.on as soon as pos­si­ble!
Norwich E.ON leaflet frontNorwich E.ON leaflet back
norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk/norwich

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Coventry E.ON protest
On Fri­day morn­ing, War­wick Uni­ver­si­ty Peo­ple and Plan­et held a demon­stra­tion at the UK head­quar­ters of E‑ON in Coven­try. This was part of the nation­al 48 hours against E‑ON. The demon­stra­tion was attend­ed by around 30 peo­ple, includ­ing a num­ber from Coven­try uni­ver­si­ty and Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide. The group left cen­tral cam­pus at around mid­day and marched to E‑ON HQ, chant­i­ng and drum­ming. The action was colour­ful and live­ly; enter­tain­ment includ­ed some car­bon cap­ture the­atre and singing (see below). We also leaflet­ed employ­ees walk­ing past. Spir­its were high and strength­ened by the knowl­edge of the oth­er actions to come in the nation­al 48 hours of actions.

Grace Kel­ly, EON

E.ON: I want to talk to you!
Pro­tes­tor: The last time we talk, Mr E.ON, I reduced you to tears! I promise you, it might well hap­pen again!

**Verse 1**

E.ON: Do I attract you?
Do I pol­lute you with my CO2?
Am I too dirty?
Am I too mirky?
Don’t I like what you like?

Pro­tes­tor: You could be whole­some
But you’re still loath­some
I should stop being so shy

E.ON: Why don’t you like me?
Why don’t you like me?
Why are you mak­ing me cry?

**Pre-cho­rus**

Pro­tes­tor: We tried to keep it all pret­ty,
Just a lit­tle ban­ner or two,
But when your plans are so shit­ty,
There’s noth­ing else I could do!

**Cho­rus**

E.ON: I can be Brown
I can be blue
I can pol­lu-ute the sky
I can be hurt­ful
I can burn peo­ple!
I can burn any­thing I like!

Pro­tes­tor: You got­ta be green
Got­ta be clean
Got­ta be every­thing more!

E.ON: Why don’t you like me?

Why don’t you like me?

Pro­tes­tor: Why don’t you walk out the door!

**Verse 2**

E.ON: How can I help it
How can I help it
How could I stop burn­ing coal?
Coal is my baby
My lit­tle lady
I like to get in it’s hole.
Why don’t you buy me
Why don’t you buy me
Why don’t you buy CCS?
When old coal over
I’ll been much bold­er
And still pol­lute noth­ing less.

**Pre-Cho­rus**

Pro­tes­tor: We tried to keep it all pret­ty,
Just a lit­tle ban­ner or two,
But when your plans are so shit­ty,
There’s noth­ing else I could do!

**Cho­rus**

E.ON: I can be Brown
I can be blue
I can pol­lu-ute the sky
I can be hurt­ful
I can burn peo­ple!
I can burn any­thing I like!

Pro­tes­tor: You got­ta be green
Got­ta be clean
Got­ta be every­thing more!

E.ON: Why don’t you like me?
Why don’t you like me?

Pro­tes­tor: Why don’t you walk out the door!

**Bridge**

Pro­tes­tor: Say what you want to sat­is­fy your­self
But you only want what rich investors say that you should want
(should want)

**Cho­rus**

—-
E.ON HQ father christmas1 Decem­ber 2008
E‑ON HQ occu­pied
E.ON HQ occupation 1
E.ON HQ occupation 2
E.ON HQ occupation 3
Short­ly after 9am two mini bus­es packed with San­tas arrived out­side their head­quar­ters and a score of fes­tive pro­test­ers armed with sacks of coal poured in to the build­ing.

For a good half hour they toured the offices, real­ly scor­ing a bulls­eye when they inad­ver­tent­ly crashed the board­room where a full scale meet­ing was in progress. Even after secu­ri­ty man­aged to clear the upper floors the huge recep­tion area was occu­pied until well into the after­noon.

Out­side secu­ri­ty goons and police cre­at­ed a cor­don and refused entry to dozens of vis­i­tors. Clear­ly a good num­ber of meet­ings were post­poned as a result.

The mood soured slight­ly towards the end and extra grumpy police were sum­moned to kill the fes­tive spir­it. After some jostling the spec­tre of Scrooge emerged and four were arrest­ed, charges not known.

—-

Yes­ter­day (1st Decem­ber), activists from across the coun­try staged the third demon­stra­tion against e.on’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try in eight days. Gra­ham, e.on’s secu­ri­ty boss for the day, bemoans the impact on the com­pa­ny…

Yes­ter­day, activists from across the coun­try staged the third demon­stra­tion against e.on’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try in eight days. Gra­ham, e.on’s secu­ri­ty boss for the day, bemoans the impact on the com­pa­ny.

We’d thought we had seen the end of the protests. The 48 hours of action that had been called was annoy­ing enough, but that would be it. We’d tak­en down the Har­ris fenc­ing around our head­quar­ters and were wait­ing for just anoth­er days work run­ning and plan­ning to build coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. Before we knew it two van loads of peo­ple dressed in San­ta Clause cos­tumes with “e.on f.off” embla­zoned on them, were unload­ing coal, scram­bling on our build­ing and gen­er­al­ly run­ning amok.

Just before 9am yes­ter­day morn­ing, about 15 man­aged to get inside the build­ing bring­ing, they say, presents of coal, because appar­ent­ly e.on has been very naughty this year – because we want to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion in Kingsnorth and con­tin­u­ing to con­tribute to cli­mate change. Out­ra­geous. We are a decent, respectable com­pa­ny. Some man­aged to get to a board­room meet­ing and dish out a lump of coal to all sit­ting there. Oth­ers got scar­i­ly close to the CEO’s office. Oth­ers engaged with staff on the large open plan office that made their voic­es heard by all. It took us a good hour to clear the pesky San­tas from the build­ing.

Mean­while there was one unsuc­cess­ful attempt to scale part of the roof, but at the revolv­ing doors at the main entrance, two were able to get up and hold up a ban­ner. Sev­er­al of those in the foy­er glued onto side doors, while yet anoth­er San­ta, found him­self in the mid­dle of the revolv­ing doors, also glued on in the midst of a pile of coal bags with “Co2 al” print­ed on them. Lat­er yet anoth­er San­ta glued them­selves to a bar­ri­er.

Some claimed to have be bring­ing the mys­ti­cal solu­tion of “car­bon cap­ture and stor­age” – coal left as it is.

We had to lock the entire build­ing down, for­bid staff from leav­ing, and turned away loads of vis­i­tors that were arriv­ing, it being a busy day for us. This despite us hav­ing already intro­duced var­i­ous secu­ri­ty mea­sures such as new turn­stiles – maybe next time we’ll have them locked so the pro­tes­tors can­not sim­ply walk through them to the open office.

I can tell you that e.on are deeply unhap­py at being made a fool of so com­pre­hen­sive­ly yet again. On the day that Lord Turn­er released his report that the gov­ern­ment would fail dra­mat­i­cal­ly to reach its CO2 reduc­tion tar­gets if e.on are allowed to build a new pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth before con­tro­ver­sial car­bon cap­ture and stor­age tech­nolo­gies have been devel­oped. The protests made Radio 4 head­line news at mid-day, much of the local media and oth­er press. There were at least four cam­eras from main­stream media while a num­ber of oth­er inde­pen­dent pho­to­jour­nal­ists were also there to make sure it was prop­er­ly cov­ered. The boss­es are not hap­py, and the pro­tes­tors got some good images.

My staff, from Ini­tial Ren­tok­il, were not enthu­si­as­tic about how they had been made to look like bum­bling idiots. They need to calm down a bit and stop kneel­ing on people’s necks because they have been defied. Some of them were not help­ing their boss­es by being rude to the BBC cam­era­man and oth­er media. They strut­ted up and down like lost pen­guins, try­ing to shove peo­ple around and shov­ing cam­eras in to the faces of the San­ta Claus­es – though they all got waves back. We had to seem impor­tant by telling staff in the can­teen that they were not allowed to look at the pro­tes­tors – the top brass were get­ting jumpy by then.

Some of my secu­ri­ty need to think as well, it seems. Wasn’t the bright­est thing to say that pro­tes­tors were fine to stay at the main door. Nor was telling the pro­tes­tors on the roof of the door that they could not attach the ban­ner to the wall because e.on would not be able to get it down.

If all that was not enough bum­bling, in a deft move­ment, the San­ta Claus’s realised that the staff had not locked the revolv­ing door and used the fact to get a half-dozen back in to the build­ing were they ran around singing altered Christ­mas hymn about no new coal. Loads of more images for the wait­ing press, includ­ing them congo’ing through our main foy­er.

Even­tu­al­ly they released them­selves, and pro­ceed­ed to leave. West Mid­lands police were there, and had kept a pret­ty use­less, low pro­file through­out the day. Now, at the request of our boss they decid­ed to do some­thing. They were very low on num­bers and clear­ly were not up for remov­ing the actu­al protest, despite the fact the pro­tes­tors were clear­ly peace­ful and most­ly singing their sil­ly songs. The police tried to form a line to stop them leave but their pub­lic order train­ing was woe­ful­ly bad and kept let­ting them escape through despite the fact they were car­ry­ing sacks of coal.

A num­ber were seized and arrest­ed; though some were let go because the police were lit­tle bet­ter than our secu­ri­ty guards in terms of know­ing what they were doing. Four end­ed up going to the cells, of which two have been released. They rest sailed away.

All in all, quite a bad day for us here at e.on. We’re going to have to rethink our entire secu­ri­ty plan, hav­ing been com­pre­hen­sive­ly embar­rassed. The boss­es are fum­ing at hav­ing e.on’s rep­u­ta­tion yet again dragged through the mud, and it is clear that the cam­paign against us is not going to fade away.

By the way, there is a load of email address­es for our var­i­ous com­pa­nies at http://www.eon.com/en/infoservice/3027.jsp

Hope­ful­ly we’ll not see more pro­tes­tors soon.

Anoth­er report, pho­tos of police cor­don­ing Father Christ­mases, and videos
—-

Nottingham E.ON demo 2Nottingham E.ON demo 1
Nottingham E.ON demo 3
As part of 48 hours of nation­wide action against E.ON, called for by the Camp for Cli­mate Action, Ris­ing Tide, Plane Stu­pid and Cam­paign against Cli­mate Change, Not­ting­ham stu­dents called a demon­stra­tion out­side E.ON’s city cen­tre offices (Mount St, NG1 6PG)

They met at 11.45 in front of the the town hall in Mar­ket Square on Fri­day 27th Nov. Then moved over to the offices at 12pm to fly­er and protest about E.ON’s plans to build a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent, a ven­ture that will wreck any seri­ous plans to cut car­bon emis­sions and pro­tect the plan­et and its’ pop­u­la­tion from the most dis­as­trous effects of cli­mate change.

The polic­ing and secu­ri­ty arrange­ments seemed a lit­tle exces­sive to me, to man­age 10 stu­dents and fluffy toy!

Why tar­get EON and Kingsnorth?

The pro­posed pow­er sta­tion will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year, and is just the first in a plan to build up to sev­en new coal fired pow­er sta­tions. This will wreck the UK’s chances of meet­ing its own tar­get of an 80% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by 2050.

Cli­mate change isn’t about warmer sum­mers, here in the UK. It’s about seri­ous changes that will cost mil­lions of peo­ple (par­tic­u­lar­ly those that are the worst off and liv­ing pre­car­i­ous­ly) their liveli­hoods and lives. If we can stop E.ON, oth­er com­pa­nies will be dis­cour­aged from risk­ing sim­i­lar plans, and we will send the strong mes­sage that the ener­gy cri­sis needs to be tack­led pos­i­tive­ly, imple­ment­ing the solu­tions that will get us off fos­sil fuels.

E.ON’s pro­posed new big coal pow­ered elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ing sta­tion – it will emit between 6 and 8 mil­lion tons of CO2 every year (equiv­a­lent to the annu­al emis­sions of Malaw­i’s 13 mil­lion peo­ple or more CO2 than Heathrow’s third run­way would burn) source – http://www.e‑onf-off.org.uk/why.html

Kingsnorth in north Kent – http://tinyurl.com/KingsnorthCoal-map

For pho­tos of the FIT sur­veil­lance again in Not­ting­ham, see also https://indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/11/413951.html

and .…. ear­li­er Not­ting­ham action on the sub­ject:

Not­ting­ham Spring into Action :: Rat­cliffe-on-Soar Pow­er Sta­tion
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/04/367714.html
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/04/367736.html
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2007/04/367757.html

‘Clean’ Coal On Tri­al [Fea­ture] inc Rat­cliffe case court reports
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/01/389386.html

Fos­sil Fools Block­ade E.On Offices in Not­ting­ham : Pic­tures 1
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/04/395382.html

Fos­sil Fools Block­ade E.On Offices in Not­ting­ham : Pic­tures 2
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/04/395403.html

Fos­sil Fools Block­ade E.On Offices Sur­veil­lance and Spe­cial­ist Equip­ment
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/nottinghamshire/2008/04/395429.html

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Brighton E.ON protest
Brighton – 28th
In Response the the 48 hours of action against Eon and new coal Brighton activists staged 2 actions over the 48 hours. The first action on Fri­day 28th Activists staged a demon­stra­tion out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land with a large ban­ner say­ing ‘RBS and EON fund Cli­mate chaos’ With some sub­ver­sive clean­ing ladies attempt­ing to Clean some coal but strange­ly to no avail – (Illus­trat­ing the unfeesabil­i­ty of ‘clean coal’). There was also alter­na­tive ‘bank­ing advice’being offered to passers by, let­ting them know about RBS and its invest­ments in EON and the build­ing of a new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth.

On the Sat­ur­day 29th
A stam­pede of endan­gered ani­mals decend­ed on Brighton Town cen­tre hand­ing out fly­ers to raise aware­ness about EON and its plans to build at Kingsnorth. In the mid­dle of the large shop­ping cen­tre fore­court the ani­mals staged a dra­mat­ic ‘die-in’. With bewil­dered shop­pers and secu­ri­ty guards crowd­ing round this trag­ic scene, Moth­er earth her­self addressed the crowd and explained what might hap­pen to the ani­mal king­dom and the human one if EON and oth­er Coal hun­gry com­pa­nies were allowed to have their way and wreak cli­mate hav­oc!

—-

Kingsnorth action cov­er­age — “Intrud­er enters E.ON pow­er sta­tion and switch­es off 2% of UK sup­plies”

48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal — pre-advertised events this Friday & Saturday

The 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal are near­ly upon us, and final prepa­ra­tions are being made. Below is a selec­tion of pub­lic actions that have been organ­ised. You can also find infor­ma­tion and resources, includ­ing a media Q&A, on the E.ON F.OFF web­site at http://www.eon-foff.com

E.on F.off logoThe 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal are near­ly upon us, and final prepa­ra­tions are being made. Below is a selec­tion of pub­lic actions that have been organ­ised. You can also find infor­ma­tion and resources, includ­ing a media Q&A, on the E.ON F.OFF web­site at http://www.eon-foff.com

Plus invite your friends to the Face­book event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32617789333

Plus post your reports from the day on www.indymedia.org.uk and here

Fri­day 28th Novem­ber

COVENTRY
Join War­wick Uni stu­dents at E.ON’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try.
Meet at 12pm on the piaz­za. We’ll march from there to the Head­quar­ters, arrive there about 12:30. Once there, there’ll be loads going on, includ­ing… .a ‘Catch the Car­bon’ com­pe­ti­tion, drum­ming work­shop, a mass die-in, visu­al­ly show­ing the effects cli­mate change are already hav­ing and more.
For more see: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=34220633837&ref=ts

LONDON
E.ON vs. Green­wash Gueril­las
8am-10am. Meet up in Trafal­gar Square at 8.00am to head down to E.ON’s Lon­don office at 100 Pall Mall and show E.ON their green­wash won’t wash. All inven­tive green­wash actions wel­come!

LONDON
World Devel­op­ment Move­ment kids demo at E.ON
Meet at 10am in Trafal­gar Square for the chil­dren to add their foot­prints to the ban­ner, then take our foot­prints to a ‘No new coal’ protest out­side E.ON’s Lon­don offices in Pall Mall. Come along with your chil­dren and par­tic­i­pate

Sat­ur­day 29th Novem­ber

LONDON
Stop Coal Stick­er Rush
Keep the pres­sure up on E.ON by spread­ing the word and putting up some E.ON F.OFF & Stop Coal stick­ers — you can get them from the Coal Hole (91–92 Strand, WC2R 0DW) from 1pm-3pm on Sat­ur­day.

NORWICH
Spoof E.on Recruit­ment Stall
Loca­tion — Out­side RBS, 5 Queen Street, Nor­wich.
Time — 12noon — 2pm, Sat­ur­day 29 Novem­ber.

Tar­get­ting Roy­al Bank of Scot­land the financier of New Coal and Eon

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide is tar­get­ting the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land the financier or cli­mate chaos

Come and join in a day of shenani­gans tar­get­ted on RBS (now 60% owned by the British Tax­pay­er), the financier of new coal devel­op­ment in the UK. Be a bank rob­ber or help the cooks with their recipe for dis­as­ter!

Meet­ing at the ruined church at 12.00 on Cas­tle Green, then onto the RBS branch in Bald­win Street around 12.15, NatWest in Corn Street around 12.45 and then RBS insur­ance in Nel­son St around 1.15.

Par­ty and Protest in defi­ance of E‑on (own­ers of Kingsnorth) and coal expan­sion with solar pow­ered sound sys­tem and free cake 3.00 pm at the Hip­po­drome, St Augustines Parade