Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

Titnore Woods threat — Tescos every little Hurts!!!

1.8.2009
Tescos & Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil agree to devel­op­ment of Tit­nore Woods!

Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil and Tescos HAVE agreed to destroy the ancient Tit­nore Woods,it was passed yes­ter­day.

Words fail me but Tescos REALLY are liv­ing in the age of stu­pid!

Please bring canned food and rope to the protest camp and your­selves please.

1.8.2009
Tescos & Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil agree to devel­op­ment of Tit­nore Woods!

Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil and Tescos HAVE agreed to destroy the ancient Tit­nore Woods,it was passed yes­ter­day.

Words fail me but Tescos REALLY are liv­ing in the age of stu­pid!

Please bring canned food and rope to the protest camp and your­selves please.

More Includ­ing direc­tions to camp can be found at www.protectourwoodland.co.uk

Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil please hang your heads in shame those that vot­ed this insane appli­ca­tion through!

Latest EF! Action Update bursts forth

Car tyres deflate in the night, dig­gers halt­ed in their tracks, build­ings and MPs cov­ered in slime…airports plagued by crazy golf, pic­nics, city gents and hostage-taking…eco-villages and oth­er autonomous spaces sprout, as oth­ers are under threat…tree-sits, banks evict­ed, fake phone-masts and whal­ing ships sunk.…it must be time for anoth­er Earth First! Action Update, bring­ing you a con­cen­trat­ed quar­ter­ly blast of inspi­ra­tion and con­tacts to get out there and take direct action against the bas­tards threat­en­ing this plan­et and its inhab­i­tants.

News from the front-lines — per­ma­nent protest camps old and new, and tem­po­rary gath­er­ings in a field near you, all the dates and info you need for a sum­mer of blis­ter­ing action and tor­ren­tial out­pour­ings!

Suc­cess­es here, across the pond and round the very oth­er side of the world.

People stop logging trucksCar tyres deflate in the night, dig­gers halt­ed in their tracks, build­ings and MPs cov­ered in slime…airports plagued by crazy golf, pic­nics, city gents and hostage-taking…eco-villages and oth­er autonomous spaces sprout, as oth­ers are under threat…tree-sits, banks evict­ed, fake phone-masts and whal­ing ships sunk.…it must be time for anoth­er Earth First! Action Update, bring­ing you a con­cen­trat­ed quar­ter­ly blast of inspi­ra­tion and con­tacts to get out there and take direct action against the bas­tards threat­en­ing this plan­et and its inhab­i­tants.

News from the front-lines — per­ma­nent protest camps old and new, and tem­po­rary gath­er­ings in a field near you, all the dates and info you need for a sum­mer of blis­ter­ing action and tor­ren­tial out­pour­ings!

Suc­cess­es here, across the pond and round the very oth­er side of the world.

A report back from the Coal Car­a­van, plus info about the com­mu­ni­ties along its route.

Court news — what hap­pened after pro­test­ers planned to shut a coal-fired pow­er plant, and climbed atop a train, plus handy Secu­ri­ty Tips for Going on Actions.

Leav­ing it All in the Ground — news of glob­al fights against the min­ing of gold, cop­per, baux­ite and alu­mini­um — blockad­ing, torch­ing and night-time pix­ieing.

A View from the Trees — a sto­ry from our eco-cen­tric cousins. And indige­nous Peru­vians fight on against the whole­sale onslaught on our world.

And a round-up of your favourite pub­lic order sit­u­a­tions — G20, SmashE­DO and Athen­ian rub­bish dumps!

Read, down­load and print it here, sub­scribe so you get it direct to your door, or look out for it at a cli­mate camp near you.

If you want to be list­ed or get a bunch of them to dis­trib­ute, please get in touch.

Share your inspi­ra­tional news at EF! Action Reports, and it’ll find it’s way into your very own print­ed EF!AU, in good old black and white print.

Daring Action Gets Supplies To Vestas Workers Occupation

30.7.2009
A group of twen­ty peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly brought vital sup­plies into the Ves­tas wind tur­bine fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight this after­noon, to the whoops and cheers of the occu­py­ing work­ers.

30.7.2009
A group of twen­ty peo­ple suc­cess­ful­ly brought vital sup­plies into the Ves­tas wind tur­bine fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight this after­noon, to the whoops and cheers of the occu­py­ing work­ers.

The group includ­ing work­ers, local sup­port­ers, and cam­paign­ers from the Cli­mate Camp, Work­ers Cli­mate Action, the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion and Work­ers Lib­er­ty split into two teams. At around 2pm, one team approached the main entrance of the fac­to­ry, car­ry­ing decoy bags of food, to draw off police and secu­ri­ty guards. While this first team was being escort­ed and car­ried bod­i­ly from the site, a sec­ond team ran through a hedge and were able to pass a large sack of sup­plies up to the occu­py­ing Ves­tas work­ers. The sup­plies were based on a wish­list pro­vid­ed by the occu­piers, and includ­ed food, drink, and cru­cial­ly a ket­tle with tea and cof­fee.

Jim Spencer, a mem­ber of the Cli­mate Camp who took part in the action, said the Ves­tas man­age­ment have been attempt­ing to starve the occu­piers out. After much protest, they are cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ing them with one insub­stan­tial meal per day such as a sin­gle slice of piz­za or a lone sand­wich per work­er. This is an utter dis­grace, and so many of us camped out­side have been think­ing about how to get sup­plies in to them. It turned out that some of the fac­to­ry work­ers and their local sup­port­ers were think­ing the same way, so we all decid­ed to work togeth­er.

Mr Spencer went on: The fact that work­ers, locals, envi­ron­men­tal­ists and labour cam­paign­ers are all work­ing togeth­er reflects how impor­tant this occu­pa­tion is. It’s vital to the fac­to­ry work­ers and their fam­i­lies, it’s vital to the local econ­o­my, and it’s vital in the fight to avert cli­mate dis­as­ter. The Ves­tas wind tur­bine fac­to­ry must be saved.

ENDS

For inter­views with some­one onsite, call 07932 096677
To con­tact the Cli­mate Camp media team:
phone: 07040 900 905 (or 07772 861 099 or 07932 096 677)
email: press@climatecamp.org.uk

Flotilla / vigil against nuclear power, Bradwell, Essex — Sun 9 August

Sun­day, 9th August 2009 — from 14.00 to 16.00 hrs
join a peace­ful sum­mer vig­il in the Black­wa­ter Estu­ary

The future of the Black­wa­ter Estu­ary should con­cern every­one. Any despoil­ing of this unique facil­i­ty will take away the oppor­tu­ni­ty for its enjoy­ment for many gen­er­a­tions to come.

Sun­day, 9th August 2009 — from 14.00 to 16.00 hrs
join a peace­ful sum­mer vig­il in the Black­wa­ter Estu­ary

The future of the Black­wa­ter Estu­ary should con­cern every­one. Any despoil­ing of this unique facil­i­ty will take away the oppor­tu­ni­ty for its enjoy­ment for many gen­er­a­tions to come.

This does not apply just to “the water­folk”, but to all who enjoy out­door pur­suits and activ­i­ties around the Estu­ary, such as local res­i­dents, fish­er­men, bird­watch­ers, ram­blers and walk­ers, wild­fowlers and for those who just like the “open and peace­ful space of the Estu­ary”.

If we are not vig­i­lant, the Estu­ary, as we like it, could be irre­triev­ably ruined for the future.

The inten­tion is to attract recre­ation­al and com­mer­cial users of the estu­ary and its sur­round­ings to join a PEACEFUL VIGIL at Brad­well in protest against the devel­op­ment of a pro­posed new nuclear pow­er sta­tion (pos­si­bly more than one) and the asso­ci­at­ed high lev­el radioac­tive waste dump.

Water­craft -

anchor/float about off the beach to include yachts, motor­boats, dinghies, kayaks canoes and “what­ev­er” between 14.00 and 16.00 hrs

Show your par­tic­i­pa­tion by dis­play­ing flags/banners, if afloat — from the rig­ging – make these up out of old bed­sheets or some­thing sim­i­lar. Just dis­play any­thing to show your protest!

Walk­ers, bird­watch­ers and beach­combers -

make it an out­ing – bring fam­i­ly and friends and enjoy a pic­nic or bar­be­cue on the beach in front of the old sta­tion.

If you unable to get afloat or vis­it Brad­well, a group will be meet­ing for a pic­nic from 1.30 onwards on West Mersea beach, close to St Peter’s Steps, and just a short walk down Coast Road from West Mersea Church. — Don’t for­get to bring a sun­shade if it’s a sun­ny day, espe­cial­ly if you are bring­ing any chil­dren!

DIRECTIONS: If com­ing by rail and/or bus, the two-hourly West Mersea bus 67 leaves the North Sta­tion bus stop from 8.10am onwards on the south side of the bridge. So for exam­ple if you get the one which leaves North Sta­tion at 12.10pm, Colch­ester High Street at about 12.15pm, and the bus sta­tion at 12.20pm it gets to Mersea near the church at 12.50pm.

Don’t for­get there are spe­cial bar­gain bus fares on Sun­days. The bus returns at 3pm, 5pm, 7pm, 9pm and 11pm so you can make a day of it. Cut your car­bon foot­print and leave your car at home for a change per­haps if you would nor­mal­ly trav­el by car???

There is free car park­ing behind the library if there are any spaces, or you can park along var­i­ous roads includ­ing St Peter’s Road — go past the church and it’s to the right off Coast Road.

We want to high­light:

* Envi­ron­men­tal dam­age to the Estu­ary fore­shore, wildlife, plea­sure and com­mer­cial fish­ing and local oys­ter indus­tries
* Poten­tial restric­tion on access for recre­ation­al use to the Estu­ary and its fore­shore
* Long term on site stor­age of high­ly radioac­tive waste
* Increased health risks to sur­round­ing pop­u­la­tion result­ing from tox­ic waste and from the lack of long term evac­u­a­tion plans for the sur­round­ing areas
* Neg­a­tive Visu­al impact of the new facil­i­ty and the reten­tion of the for­mer sta­tion

Black­wa­ter Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG)
http://www.banng.org.uk

Cambridge Activists slow down Tesco’s Building work

22.07.2009
Cam­bridge activists sab­o­tage machin­ery in a bid to slow down the build­ing work of a new Tescos’s on Mill Road

22.07.2009
Cam­bridge activists sab­o­tage machin­ery in a bid to slow down the build­ing work of a new Tescos’s on Mill Road

Last night local activists sab­o­taged a dig­ger being used by Tesco’s who have start­ed work on a new store on Mill Road in Cam­bridge. A selec­tion of glues was used to dis­able machin­ery and door­locks. Reports from an eye­wit­ness saw the dig­ger being trans­port­ed away this morn­ing.

Tesco’s, true to form are using heavy hand­ed tech­niques. They have announced open­ing dates, com­menced works with­out hav­ing the nec­es­sary per­mis­sions to do so. They have no deliv­ery access and do not have an alco­hol license. This is designed to intim­i­date local cam­paign­ers and the coun­cil.

Last nights action was not aimed at work­ers from the hire com­pa­ny or the peo­ple work­ing on the site but to send a strong mes­sage to Tescos.

One activist said:
“we’ve no quar­rel with the peo­ple being paid to work on the site, they’re just doing a job and we under­stand their need to get paid for their jobs.HOWEVER we pub­licly invite them to help us to give them a well earned break, by let­ting us know how we can best slow down the work!”

Save Vestas — Defend Jobs, Save the Planet — Support the Occupation — UPDATE below: arrests, cops starving them out…

Work­ers at the Ves­tas Wind Tur­bine fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight have JUST NOW occu­pied their fac­to­ry. They are fight­ing for 600 jobs and the future of the plan­et. They need help now.

PLEASE TEXT AND CALL EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

Vestas OccupationWork­ers at the Ves­tas Wind Tur­bine fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight have JUST NOW occu­pied their fac­to­ry. They are fight­ing for 600 jobs and the future of the plan­et. They need help now.

PLEASE TEXT AND CALL EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

There is a large pick­et of sup­port start­ing out­side the fac­to­ry. This will be cru­cial in giv­ing peo­ple con­fi­dence inside. We want hun­dreds of peo­ple by morn­ing.
If you are not work­ing, come now, by car, bus or train.
If you are on the South Coast and work­ing, come for the night and go to work exhaust­ed and proud.

If you can’t come, call up friends and offer to pay the fare or petrol mon­ey for some­one else to come down. Or part of the fare.
Don’t just call the envi­ron­men­tal and union activists you know. Call your friends and ask them who they know. Call your brother’s friends or your children’s friends. Text every­one. Get your friends call­ing and tex­ting.

WE WANT HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE NOW. SAVE THE JOBS — SAVE THE PLANET.

The work­ers want Gor­don Brown to step in as if it was a trou­bled bank and save the jobs and keep mak­ing wind tur­bine blades. They gave the bankers tril­lions. They say they care about cli­mate change. He has talked about cre­at­ing 40,000 “Green Jobs”, the first step should be pro­tect­ing these 600.

The work­ers will need sol­i­dar­i­ty — dona­tions of mon­ey, food and oth­er assis­tance. In the first instance please send mes­sages of sol­i­dar­i­ty to savevestas@gmail.com

We will sug­gest oth­er forms of sol­i­dar­i­ty soon. Do this now. Reach for your phone.

—-

How to get there, and more info at:

http://savevestas.wordpress.com/

—-

A pro­test­er claims the 30 demon­stra­tors at a sit-in at the Ves­tas wind tur­bine fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight have been told they will be sacked.

Dan­ish com­pa­ny Ves­tas Windsys­tems plans to make 625 work­ers redun­dant at the end of July, despite ris­ing prof­its.

One of the pro­test­ers, who occu­pied the New­port site on Mon­day, said man­agers gave them until 2230 BST on Tues­day to end their action or face the sack.

Ves­tas said con­sul­ta­tion on the site was on-going and would not com­ment.

The work­er, who did not want to be named, said: “We have been told we will be sacked.

“We were giv­en the choice to leave by 2230 BST last night and keep our redun­dan­cy pack­age and walk out with no charges.

“Obvi­ous­ly we have stayed in. We did­n’t want it to come to this.

“We want the com­pa­ny to explore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment tak­ing the site over and improv­ing the redun­dan­cy pack­age.”

The cam­paign­ers have called on Ed Miliband, the ener­gy and cli­mate change sec­re­tary, to trav­el to the island and speak to them.

Luke, one of the pro­test­ers, said: “We’re pre­pared to stay here for as long as it takes.”

About 200 work­ers staged a protest out­side the fac­to­ry on Tues­day after being turned away when they arrived for work.

They were also joined by cli­mate change pro­test­ers who are sup­port­ing them.

Police said Ves­tas has start­ed legal action to gain an injunc­tion which would remove the pro­test­ers.

The com­pa­ny said the fac­to­ry was being closed next week due to reduced demand for wind tur­bines in north­ern Europe

—-

Update, 22nd July: ARRESTS AT VESTAS + FOOD IN

At 5.10am this morn­ing, a cli­mate activist at the protest out­side the Ves­tas plant attempt­ed to take a bag of food to the occu­py­ing work­ers by means of a rope which the work­ers had low­ered from the bal­cony. The activist was grabbed by 5 police offi­cers and arrest­ed. On his release he obtained the police report of his arrest, which stat­ed that the rea­son for his arrest was that, as his bring­ing food to the occu­piers had the stat­ed inten­tion of pro­long­ing the protest, it was facil­i­tat­ing a breach of the peace – clear­ly ludi­crous as the police have them­selves admit­ted that the protest is not breach­ing the peace.

At 1248, a large num­ber of pro­tes­tors walked through the line of police hold­ing food in their hands which they threw up to the bal­cony. The police pushed some of the pro­tes­tors and attempt­ed to obstruct the line but did not offer sub­stan­tial resis­tance. One pro­tes­tor was harassed by a secu­ri­ty guard, and asked a police offi­cer, whose num­ber was 24266, if he intend­ed to do any­thing about it; the offi­cer said he didn’t. Anoth­er pro­tes­tor saw a police offi­cer grab­bing the arm of an activist as he attempt­ed to throw food to the bal­cony – the activist told the police offi­cer that this con­sti­tut­ed harass­ment, the police offi­cer took no notice.

A sec­ond cli­mate activist was arrest­ed and tak­en through the front doors of the fac­to­ry. Lat­er, a sergeant whose num­ber was 3027 came out and said that no-one had been arrest­ed for car­ry­ing food, but that one activist had been arrest­ed for assault. Oth­er pro­tes­tors present have com­ment­ed that as the activist in ques­tion, who has not giv­en per­mis­sion for his name to be released, is a chris­t­ian paci­fist, this seems unlike­ly.

Secu­ri­ty have start­ed putting up a fence around the site, with pro­tes­tors out­side attempt­ing to get a sec­ond food-car­ry­ing walk-in past the police before its com­ple­tion. There are cur­rent­ly around 50 pro­tes­tors out­side the fac­to­ry, over 30 of them Ves­tas work­ers, and sources say they expect num­bers to increase dras­ti­cal­ly around 6pm when the protest starts.

Cambridge Social Centre — evicted & more info

18th July 2009
Last night a large num­ber of police with sev­er­al vehi­cles, riot gear, and dogs evict­ed the new­ly opened social cen­tre, on the pre­text of fire safe­ty. There were no arrests. The pub­lic meet­ing called for tonight will go ahead in a reduced for­mat out­side the bin­go hall.

18th July 2009
Last night a large num­ber of police with sev­er­al vehi­cles, riot gear, and dogs evict­ed the new­ly opened social cen­tre, on the pre­text of fire safe­ty. There were no arrests. The pub­lic meet­ing called for tonight will go ahead in a reduced for­mat out­side the bin­go hall.

Last night the 20 occu­pants of the old bin­go hall were evict­ed by around 50 police includ­ing tac­ti­cal units with riot gear, under the pre­text of fire reg­u­la­tions. Iron­i­cal­ly, the police inter­rupt­ed a meet­ing that had just secured 5 fire extin­guish­ers and was dis­cussing the open­ing up of the remain­ing fire exits in prepa­ra­tion for the planned pub­lic launch tomor­row.

The police ini­tial­ly said that they would not take action on the squat­ted build­ing, as squat­ting is a civ­il mat­ter between occu­pants and build­ing own­er. How­ev­er, the squat­ters gained a high­er pro­file through local media and out­reach work, pro­mot­ing anti-cap­i­tal­ism and social change, and organ­is­ing a pub­lic meet­ing and music event that was antic­i­pat­ed to draw large num­bers of peo­ple. Fol­low­ing this, the police threat­ened the occu­piers over two days, and final­ly moved to pro­tect prop­er­ty and the sta­tus quo, using any pos­si­ble excuse.

The fire offi­cer who accom­pa­nied the police said that the occu­piers would have to imme­di­ate­ly remove the met­al grills cov­er­ing fire doors to make the build­ing safe. This was planned for the fol­low­ing morn­ing, and the occu­piers and fire war­den agreed that this could hap­pen imme­di­ate­ly, how­ev­er the police accom­pa­ny­ing the fire offi­cer made it clear that this would imme­di­ate­ly lead to arrests for crim­i­nal dam­age. It was obvi­ous from the huge num­ber of police in atten­dance that the out­come was already set, and that the only result the police would tol­er­ate was evic­tion. Giv­en the recent rep­u­ta­tion of police actions against polit­i­cal pro­test­ers, the occu­piers left for the own safe­ty rather than keep the doors secured.

A state­ment from the occu­piers said:

“We expect that this build­ing in the cen­tre of our city will remain emp­ty for an indef­i­nite amount of time, as has the pre­vi­ous social cen­tre site on Mill Road, owned by Tesco, and an increas­ing num­ber of prop­er­ties in the area. At the same time, artists, musi­cians, com­mu­ni­ty groups and local peo­ple strug­gle to find spaces to meet, socialise and put on events.

We believe that local com­mu­ni­ties, rather than wealthy inter­ests, should deter­mine what the build­ings and spaces in the local area are used for. We will be going ahead with the planned pub­lic meet­ing at 7.30 pm, in the street out­side the bin­go hall, where we will be dis­cussing the repres­sion we have faced, free spaces, and our plans for the future.”

cambridgefreespaces@listst.riseup.net
http://cambridgefreespaces.wordpress.com

—–

17.7.09
Cam­bridge BINGO! Social Cen­tre

Update on what’s going on at the occu­pied Bin­go Hall Social Cen­tre, Hob­son Street, Cam­bridge.

Cam­bridge Social Cen­tre opens in old Gala Bin­go Hall!

Mem­bers of the Cam­bridge Action Net­work have occu­pied the old Gala bin­go hall on Hob­son Street, behind Water­stones book shop. The cen­tre is now open to the pub­lic to use for events such as films, music, work­shops, art, dis­cus­sions and meet­ings. Every­one is wel­come (dur­ing rea­son­able wak­ing hours!)

We’re cur­rent­ly work­ing to clean the space up, make it nice, and get hold of fur­ni­ture, and we’d love you to join us. We organ­ise by con­sen­sus – no-one is in charge, and every­one involved has an equal say. This is every­one’s space – let’s make it bril­liant!

We’ve done this because we believe that local com­mu­ni­ties should have con­trol of local spaces, and be able to use them for what­ev­er they see fit. Emp­ty, unused build­ings are a dis­grace in a soci­ety where get­ting access to space is so dif­fi­cult. A direct exam­ple of this is in Mill Road, where a live­ly social cen­tre was closed by Tesco last year, leav­ing an emp­ty build­ing ever since.

There will be an offi­cial open­ing event on Sat­ur­day 18th July at 7.30 pm, where you are invit­ed to come along, enjoy the new social cen­tre, and see how you can use the space and get involved.

There will be a open mic event in the evening show­cas­ing local acts. Bring your own refresh­ments. Come on down!

Want to put on events or get involved? Get in touch in per­son or:

phone: 01223 356630

web: www.cambridgefreespaces.wordpress.com

email: cambridgefreespaces@lists.riseup.net

UPCOMING EVENTS from 17th JULY 2009:

Dai­ly (most days): 5.30pm POLITICAL DISCUSSION TIME — top­ics are decid­ed dai­ly by those present with some radical/social/political issues sug­gest­ed in the diary already.

Dai­ly (most days): 7:30pm PUBLIC MEETING — to dis­cuss the space/use of the space/arising issues

Fri­day, 17th July – after the pub­lic meet­ing – OPEN JAMMING SESSION

Sat­ur­day, 18th July – after the pub­lic meet­ing – OPEN POETRY & ACCOUSTIC MUSIC/LIVE BANDS (dona­tions at the door for cli­mate camp)

AND MUCH MORE COMING SOON…

New Cambridge Social Centre Opened

Occu­py Cam­bridge is proud to announce the open­ing of the new cam­bridge social cen­tre.

Occu­py Cam­bridge, a (rather bril­liant) group of squat­ters, anar­chists, rev­o­lu­tion­ists, land rights types and gen­er­al social mis­fits, last night “reclaimed” the dis­used bin­go hall on hob­son street .

The build­ing will now be used as a social cen­tre of some kind, although this is very much a blank can­vas.

Occu­py Cam­bridge is proud to announce the open­ing of the new cam­bridge social cen­tre.

Occu­py Cam­bridge, a (rather bril­liant) group of squat­ters, anar­chists, rev­o­lu­tion­ists, land rights types and gen­er­al social mis­fits, last night “reclaimed” the dis­used bin­go hall on hob­son street .

The build­ing will now be used as a social cen­tre of some kind, although this is very much a blank can­vas.

It a large space and is kit­ted out well for film show­ings.

The build­ing is the old bin­go hall on hob­son street cam­bridge.
Come down and vis­it.

any ques­tions con­tact us on 07779051894
—
There was a cin­e­ma on the site of the old Gala Bin­go Hall on Hob­son Street from 1921 called The Cen­tral Cinema(it was rebuilt in 1930 to give the cur­rent build­ing prob­a­bly after a fire). The first talkie in Cam­bridge was screened at The Cen­tral Cin­e­ma in 1929 and that talkie was “The Broad­way Melody”
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/3656/2200/1600/talkie.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broadway_Melody .
By 1972 (this date is dis­put­ed), the then Odeon, was shut down and con­vert­ed into a bin­go hall.

Protest against climate change denier Nigel Lawson on Friday!

Here is the text of a leaflet to be hand­ed out at the venue, St John’s Chapel, St John’s Road. Meet there at 5.30pm (talk starts 6pm).

CLIMATE change is today pret­ty much uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised to be very real and to be very dan­ger­ous.

Here is the text of a leaflet to be hand­ed out at the venue, St John’s Chapel, St John’s Road. Meet there at 5.30pm (talk starts 6pm).

CLIMATE change is today pret­ty much uni­ver­sal­ly recog­nised to be very real and to be very dan­ger­ous.
There are still a few organ­i­sa­tions that are hold­ing out against this incon­ve­nient truth in dif­fer­ent ways. Exxon­Mo­bil, the world’s largest oil com­pa­ny, is con­tin­u­ing to fund researchers who cast doubt on glob­al warm­ing, despite pub­lic promis­es to cut sup­port for cli­mate-change scep­tics, report­ed The Dai­ly Tele­graph on July 2.
The British police also con­tin­ue to treat demand­ing action on cli­mate change as a crime, bru­tal­ly attack­ing pro­test­ers when­ev­er they get the chance, such as at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion last sum­mer and the City of Lon­don in April this year.
Lin­ing up beside these forces is Nigel Law­son, invit­ed by Chich­ester Fes­tiv­i­ties to put across the views expressed in his book An Appeal to Rea­son: A Cool Look at Glob­al Warm­ing.
So why has a for­mer finan­cial jour­nal­ist and Chan­cel­lor wad­ed into this rather spe­cial­ist field of debate?
As Gra­ham Stew­ard not­ed in The Spec­ta­tor: “Would we take seri­ous­ly an appraisal of his time as Chan­cel­lor of Exche­quer writ­ten by some­one whose only exper­tise was in oceanog­ra­phy?”
Oth­ers found Lawson’s argu­ments less than con­vinc­ing.
Robert Wat­son, the for­mer head of the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change and now chief sci­en­tist to the Depart­ment for the Envi­ron­ment, Food and Rur­al Affairs, accused Law­son of selec­tive quo­ta­tion and not under­stand­ing “the cur­rent sci­en­tif­ic and eco­nom­ic debate”. He also wrote in a let­ter to The Tele­graph: “Lord Lawson’s per­spec­tive that the UK and Europe are over-react­ing to the threat of human-induced cli­mate change is sub­stan­tial­ly wrong and ignores a sig­nif­i­cant body of sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic evi­dence.”
Robin McK­ie in The Guardian wrote of Lawson’s book: “Although it claims to demol­ish the cause of glob­al warm­ing, it sim­ply piles up sci­en­tif­ic howlers… What real­ly grates is Lawson’s con­vic­tion that most of the world’s cli­ma­tol­o­gists, mete­o­rol­o­gists, atmos­pher­ic physi­cists, Arc­tic experts, and biol­o­gists, as well as sev­er­al Nobel Prize win­ners, are all stu­pid, mis­guid­ed and wrong in think­ing man-made glob­al warm­ing is real…
“It is breath­tak­ing arro­gance, to say the least, although Law­son is not alone in dis­play­ing it… These Grumpy Old Deniers feel their lifestyles are threat­ened by gree­nies and so reject the entire con­cept of glob­al warm­ing. ‘With the col­lapse of Marx­ism, those who dis­like cap­i­tal­ism have been oblig­ed to find a new creed,’ says Law­son.’ For many of them, green is the new red.’ In short, glob­al warm­ing is a com­mie plot.”
It is clear that Lawson’s posi­tion on cli­mate change is polit­i­cal rather than sci­en­tif­ic in ori­gin. His posi­tion is that he accepts the IPC­C’s con­clu­sion that we can expect to see a warm­ing of between 3.2ºF (1.8ºC) and 7.2ºF (4ºC) by the end of this cen­tu­ry. But he argues that this would not nec­es­sar­i­ly be the dis­as­ter requir­ing an imme­di­ate cut in car­bon emis­sions — just the mes­sage that the Big Busi­ness pol­luters want to hear!
This con­nec­tion is hard­ly a sur­prise com­ing from Law­son. He was a key pro­po­nent of the Thatch­er Gov­ern­men­t’s pri­va­ti­za­tion pol­i­cy. Dur­ing his tenure at the Depart­ment of Ener­gy he set the course for the lat­er pri­va­ti­za­tions of the gas and elec­tric­i­ty indus­tries and on his return to the Trea­sury he worked close­ly with the Depart­ment of Trade and Indus­try in pri­va­tiz­ing British Air­ways, British Tele­com, and British Gas.
He also has a back­ground in pro­pa­gan­da, hav­ing penned a 1972 report on Sub­ver­sion in British Indus­try for the right-wing Insti­tute for the Study of Con­flict. He has attend­ed Bilder­berg con­fer­ences along­side lead­ing bankers and oth­er rulers of the cap­i­tal­ist world and is a non-exec­u­tive direc­tor of N M Roth­schild & Sons as well as chair­man of the Cen­tral Euro­pean Trust which boasts of co-man­ag­ing “the largest pri­vate equi­ty fund in Cen­tral Europe” and chair­man of Oxford Invest­ment Part­ners, which pro­pos­es a “mul­ti-asset, uncon­strained, invest­ment approach.”
Law­son and the world he rep­re­sents object to any chal­lenge to the pow­er of high finance and the unsus­tain­able greed of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism – his motives in launch­ing his cru­sade on cli­mate change are dubi­ous to say the least.
This is a man with an agen­da and you can be sure that the inter­ests of the envi­ron­ment and human­i­ty do not fea­ture on it.

Use­ful links:
www.transitionchichester.org
www.climatecamp.org.uk
www.earthfirst.org.uk
www.greenpeace.org.uk
www.greenpartywestsussex.co.uk
www.schnews.org.uk
www.indymedia.org.uk
www.resurgence.org
www.eco-action.org/porkbolter

Anti-airport bomb hoaxer jailed

6th July 2009
An anti-air­port pro­test­er who sent a series of bomb hoax­es and threats to Gatwick Air­port in West Sus­sex over five-years has been jailed.

Gary Collins, from Craw­ley, took direct action against air­craft noise after suf­fer­ing from noise dis­tur­bance as a young child, Lewes Crown Court heard.

6th July 2009
An anti-air­port pro­test­er who sent a series of bomb hoax­es and threats to Gatwick Air­port in West Sus­sex over five-years has been jailed.

Gary Collins, from Craw­ley, took direct action against air­craft noise after suf­fer­ing from noise dis­tur­bance as a young child, Lewes Crown Court heard.

He admit­ted 34 counts of com­mu­ni­cat­ing false infor­ma­tion and three counts of send­ing hoax nox­ious sub­stances.

The 57-year-old was jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Judge Michael Law­son QC told Collins he remained a dan­ger, and said: “Air­ports are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to that sort of attack because they are respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of thou­sands of peo­ple at any one time.

“There­fore, mem­bers of the staff, the police and oth­er enforce­ment agen­cies are respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing every one of those warn­ings.”

He added: “You, in your inter­view with the pro­ba­tion ser­vice, indi­cat­ed that it was delib­er­ate and that you were not sor­ry for what you had done.

“You were sor­ry that you got caught and that if you could do it again with­out being caught, you would.”

The court heard his cam­paign was car­ried out dur­ing the Lon­don ter­ror attacks in 2005, dur­ing height­ened secu­ri­ty at air­ports in 2006, and the attack at Glas­gow Air­port in 2007.

Pros­e­cut­ing, Dale Sul­li­van said his let­ters and pack­ages were sent marked as anthrax or bio­log­i­cal mate­r­i­al.

Oth­ers stat­ed there were bombs in air­craft toi­lets or build­ings.

‘Air­port fix­a­tion’

Mr Sul­li­van said: “The impact on [air­port oper­a­tor] BAA was a seri­ous one as they were not threats they could sim­ply brush off.”

Defence coun­sel Andrew Stephens said Collins had lit­tle to do with his fam­i­ly and had only ever had spo­radic peri­ods of employ­ment.

He said: “He fix­at­ed upon Gatwick Air­port. He suf­fers from noise, noise at Gatwick in par­tic­u­lar became too much for him to bear.

“He should have sought oth­er avenues, like peti­tion­ing his MP. He chose to take a direct stance.

“Although an extreme­ly long-stand­ing cam­paign, it was a naive and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed cam­paign.”

He added: “This is a 57-year-old man who has led a dif­fi­cult life, a life which from the very out­set has gone against him.”

After the hear­ing, Det Sgt Steve Lux­ford said the term reflect­ed “the sever­i­ty and poten­tial impact this had on the air­port”.

He said the threats con­tin­ued dur­ing a time of sig­nif­i­cant ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty.

“This was a long-run­ning cam­paign by an indi­vid­ual against the run­ning of Gatwick Air­port with an inten­tion to dis­rupt and ter­rorise peo­ple,” he added.