Category: South East England

South East Eng­land

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”.

Radley Lakes saved

Fol­low­ing years of cam­paign­ing through legal chan­nels, and the squat­ting of a build­ing by the side of Thrupp Lake at the begin­ning of 2007, the Save Radley Lakes cam­paign is vic­to­ri­ous — hoorah! Use the search above for old sto­ries and pho­tos from the cam­paign — sto­ries about the recent vic­to­ry and future plans are below.

Thrupp Lake at sunsetFol­low­ing years of cam­paign­ing through legal chan­nels, and the squat­ting of a build­ing by the side of Thrupp Lake at the begin­ning of 2007, the Save Radley Lakes cam­paign is vic­to­ri­ous — hoorah! Use the search above for old sto­ries and pho­tos from the cam­paign — sto­ries about the recent vic­to­ry and future plans are below.

End of an Era

Yes­ter­day’s (17.12.08) announce­ment by RWE Npow­er brought to an end a 41 month cam­paign to save the last remain­ing Radley Lakes, Thrupp and Bull­field Lakes, from destruc­tion by being filled with waste pul­verised fuel ash (PFA) from the Did­cot A Pow­er Sta­tion.

It also brings to an end 23 years of fill­ing of old grav­el pits in Radley with pow­er sta­tion ash, which began in 1985, when the Pow­er Sta­tion was run by the nation­alised Cen­tral Elec­tric­i­ty Gen­er­at­ing Board and when the envi­ron­ment fig­ured less high­ly in pop­u­lar con­cerns. The choice back then was between land­fill with gen­er­al waste, com­mer­cial exploita­tion, or ash. Local peo­ple vot­ed for the ash, which is prob­a­bly what they would have got any­way.

The ash had been pumped into the grav­el pits as a slur­ry via an under­ground pipeline. Many grav­el pits were filled in this way over the inter­ven­ing years and peo­ple did not seem to mind, though eye­brows were being increas­ing­ly raised, and there were objec­tions to the fill­ing of Lakes H and I, which had become a spec­tac­u­lar haven for wild­fowl. In 2005, RWE npow­er sought per­mis­sion to fill the the two remain­ing grav­el pits. These were the old­est exca­va­tions, which had, over the half cen­tu­ry or so of their exis­tence, become restored into beau­ti­ful lakes and had been giv­en names by local peo­ple.

How the Lakes Were Saved (in a nut­shell)

The small­er Bull­field Lake was res­cued from this fate fol­low­ing protests back in 2005, but the much larg­er and more impor­tant Thrupp Lake has remained under threat ever since, as plan­ning, legal and oth­er bat­tles raged around it. As a last resort, local peo­ple even applied to have the area turned into a Town Green. This too failed, but it remains the sub­ject of a Judi­cial Review, which was due to be heard in the High Court in Feb­ru­ary 2009. In Feb­ru­ary 2007, hav­ing got all nec­es­sary plan­ning per­mis­sions and removed the pro­tes­tors who’d occu­pied the lake­side build­ing, npow­er went ahead with clear­ance work on the site, and many trees were destroyed. Work then had to stop until the Autumn, because of nest­ing birds. After car­ry­ing out some pre­lim­i­nary work in Octo­ber 2007, npow­er sud­den­ly ceased their activ­i­ties on the site.

Then, in Feb­ru­ary 2008, events took an unex­pect­ed turn: npow­er announced an inter­im reprieve for Thrupp Lake. A lit­tle lat­er, Waste Recy­cling Group (WRG) open­ly came for­ward with a pro­pos­al that would save Thrupp Lake for ever. It has tak­en until now to bring this to fruition. Plan­ning per­mis­sion was need­ed, tech­ni­cal prob­lems had to be resolved, a com­mer­cial agree­ment had to be reached; then there was the ques­tion of what to do with Thrupp Lake. Many del­i­cate nego­ti­a­tions, it seemed, were going on in the back­ground, cul­mi­nat­ing in yes­ter­day’s momen­tous announce­ment.

Tri­umph at Last!

To mark the occa­sion, the Pow­er Sta­tion oper­a­tors invit­ed press and pub­lic into the grounds of San­dles, the house on the shore Thrupp Lake. There, Mr John Rain­ford, the Pow­er Sta­tion man­ag­er, announced that, because the pow­er sta­tion had found bet­ter and more sus­tain­able ways of dis­pos­ing of its ash, there would be no need to destroy Thrupp Lake, not now, not ever. He made it clear that RWE npow­er was offer­ing The Lake to the local com­mu­ni­ty as a nature con­ser­va­tion area and that dis­cus­sions were under­way with the North­moor Trust to pro­vide for its man­age­ment. It was hoped that the house could be con­vert­ed into an edu­ca­tion­al cen­tre.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the com­mu­ni­ty, Jen­ny Standen, chair­man of Radley Parish Coun­cil, and Basil Crow­ley, chair­man of Save Radley Lakes, expressed their sat­is­fac­tion and delight, thank­ing npow­er for their mag­na­nim­i­ty and look­ing for­ward to work­ing with them in restor­ing the area to cre­ate some­thing to be real­ly proud of. Both expressed grat­i­tude to all the peo­ple who had sup­port­ed the cam­paign and whose sup­port and tire­less efforts had helped bring this about.

With the late Decem­ber after­noon sun­shine cast­ing long shad­ows across the ves­tiges of San­dles’ lawn, a jubi­lant par­ty atmos­phere pre­vailed. Cham­pagne flowed, hands were shak­en, cam­eras clicked and, in a touch of sur­re­al­i­ty, a man in a frog suit played a solo trom­bone fan­fare at the lake­side to her­ald the lake’s sal­va­tion.Radley Lakes saved trombone fanfare

Where the Ash Will Go

The ash that was to have gone into Thrupp Lake will now go to Waste Recy­cling Group’s Sut­ton Courte­nay land­fill site next to the pow­er sta­tion where it will be used for engi­neer­ing, cap­ping and land­scap­ing of the land­fill oper­a­tions. Sur­plus ash will be stock­piled in a planned new stor­age facil­i­ty, which received plan­ning per­mis­sion back in July, and will main­tain WRG’s essen­tial sup­ply of ash after 2015 when the pow­er sta­tion will have closed. Because the pow­er sta­tion and the waste site are imme­di­ate­ly adja­cent, the ash can be trans­port­ed direct­ly across the fence and put into the stock­pile, which is not far from the pow­er sta­tion bound­ary. At no time will this ash be trans­port­ed on pub­lic roads, which means there will be no adverse impact on the res­i­dents of Sut­ton Courte­nay. Indeed, it will remove the need to import over half a mil­lion tonnes of sub­sti­tute mate­ri­als after 2015, which would have had an impact!

http://www.saveradleylakes.org.uk/
http://www.radleyvillage.org.uk/news/News0009.htm

Titnore Woods battle goes on! Upcoming events & update

DETERMINED eco-pro­test­ers in Wor­thing are fac­ing up to the hard­est chal­lenge yet in their two and a half year occu­pa­tion of threat­ened wood­land.

Trees drawingDETERMINED eco-pro­test­ers in Wor­thing are fac­ing up to the hard­est chal­lenge yet in their two and a half year occu­pa­tion of threat­ened wood­land.

The freez­ing tem­per­a­tures and stormy con­di­tions mean life is cur­rent­ly no pic­nic for the hardy pro­test­ers camped out in Tit­nore Woods, West Dur­ring­ton, in a last-ditch bid to try and stop a new hous­ing estate and Tesco mega­s­tore from being built over green fields and ancient wood­land.

And grate­ful local sup­port­ers are organ­is­ing a pre-Christ­mas stall in the town cen­tre to bring fes­tive cheer to the tree-house dwellers, who moved onto the site back in May 2006.

They will be col­lect­ing pro­vi­sions for the pro­test­ers under the title “A Ham­per for a Camper” at Hold­er’s Cor­ner, Mon­tague Street, Wor­thing, on Sat­ur­day Decem­ber 20, from 11am.

It wasn’t an easy option when the team of eco-heroes sneaked onto the threat­ened ancient wood­land off Tit­nore Lane at the crack of dawn on a May bank hol­i­day and start­ed build­ing their tree homes before any­one knew what was hap­pen­ing.

Most peo­ple assumed they’d be kicked off again straight away, but the days turned to weeks turned to months turned to years and they’re still there!

The final plan­ning appli­ca­tion isn’t even through yet — they had to rethink part of it — and you can still object, writ­ing to the Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil plan­ning depart­ment at Port­land House, Rich­mond Road, Wor­thing and quot­ing WB/04/00040/OUT.

But, sad­ly, Wor­thing cam­paign­ers against the devel­op­ment have already dis­cov­ered through years of cam­paign­ing, let­ter-writ­ing, peti­tion-rais­ing and large, peace­ful, demon­stra­tions that mon­ey and pow­er don’t lis­ten to the lit­tle peo­ple who know the dif­fer­ence between right and wrong.

We live in a world where even if police com­mit mur­der or theft they can get com­plete­ly off the hook.

We live in a world where politi­cians can lie through their teeth, start wars that kill hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple, and get away with it. We live in a world that is being choked to death by the blind greed of cap­i­tal­ism and yet we are told there is no oth­er option.

The Tit­nore campers are part of that big­ger pic­ture — they have the guts to phys­i­cal­ly put them­selves on the line and say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

Please sup­port them in any way you can — food, sup­plies, a friend­ly vis­it.

There are tough times ahead and we all need to be there for each oth­er.

* 1990s road pro­test­er Jim Hin­dle will be giv­ing a talk at 8pm on Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 29 upstairs at The Rest in Bath Place, Wor­thing. All wel­come.

Climate Rush at Heathrow 12th January

On Mon­day 12th Jan­u­ary 2009 at 7pm the Cli­mate Rush will hit Heathrow. We will arrive in Edwar­dian dress (under a big coat!) with ham­pers of food to have our ‘Din­ner at Domes­tic Depar­tures’. This will be an action against the con­struc­tion of the third run­way and the unsus­tain­able use of short-haul, nation­al flights.

Climate Rush at HeathrowOn Mon­day 12th Jan­u­ary 2009 at 7pm the Cli­mate Rush will hit Heathrow. We will arrive in Edwar­dian dress (under a big coat!) with ham­pers of food to have our ‘Din­ner at Domes­tic Depar­tures’. This will be an action against the con­struc­tion of the third run­way and the unsus­tain­able use of short-haul, nation­al flights. It will take place on the day that the MPs return from their win­ter hol­i­day.

When the string quar­tet plays its first note we will reveal our dress and share our food. Ours will be the first peace­ful sit-in of the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment. Hun­dreds will join us and togeth­er we will make his­to­ry. We have wait­ed too long and been mis­led too many times. It is time for us to take con­trol and to lead social change.

After a huge­ly suc­cess­ful storm­ing of Par­lia­ment, The Cli­mate Rush is back in town!

Any day now the gov­ern­ment will announce its plans to expand Heathrow and no amount of march­ing or let­ter-writ­ing will make them stop. Sip­son Vil­lage will be demol­ished. Mil­lions of Lon­don­ers will find them­selves under new flight-paths. The UK will con­tin­ue to lag behind the rest of Europe and the world as it miss­es cli­mate tar­get after cli­mate tar­get.

It is time to take our future into our own hands. It is time to take action.

You and all of your friends, net­works and neigh­bours are cor­dial­ly invit­ed to our ‘Din­ner at Domes­tic Depar­tures’, 7pm on Mon­day 12th Jan­u­ary at Heathrow Air­port Ter­mi­nal One. Join ‘The Cli­mate Rush’, ‘Cli­mate Action Now’, ‘The Wom­en’s Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work’ and Car­o­line Lucas MEP as we cel­e­brate the UK pub­lic’s com­mit­ment to beat­ing cli­mate change.

www.climaterush.co.uk

Plane Stupid protest shuts Stansted Airport

8.12.2008
Over fifty young pro­test­ers from the cli­mate action group Plane Stu­pid have this morn­ing shut down Stanst­ed Air­port by camp­ing on the run­way and sur­round­ing them­selves with for­ti­fied secu­ri­ty fenc­ing.

Stansted runway protest8.12.2008
Over fifty young pro­test­ers from the cli­mate action group Plane Stu­pid have this morn­ing shut down Stanst­ed Air­port by camp­ing on the run­way and sur­round­ing them­selves with for­ti­fied secu­ri­ty fenc­ing.

The peace­ful protest began at 3.15am this morn­ing (Mon­day) whilst the run­way was tem­porar­i­ly closed for main­te­nance work. Plane Stu­pid aims to pre­vent the sched­uled reopen­ing of the run­way at 5am. The group intends to main­tain its block­ade for as long as pos­si­ble, pre­vent­ing the release of thou­sands of tonnes of green­house gas emis­sions into the atmos­phere.

10:20am update: The Press Asso­ci­a­tion reports that 57 peo­ple have been arrest­ed, and 56 Ryanair flights can­celled.

8:10am update: At least 39 peo­ple have been arrest­ed and the run­way
re-opened. BAA are claim­ing that 21 flights have been can­celled. Every
minute the air­port emits around 4 tonnes of CO2.

6:00am update: BAA have con­firmed that the first flights out of the air­port have been delayed. The aver­age flight out of Stanst­ed has a cli­mate impact equiv­a­lent to 41.58 tonnes of CO2.

One young woman, Lily, aged 21 said:

“We’re here because our par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion has failed us and its now down to young peo­ple to stop cli­mate change by what­ev­er peace­ful means we have left. We’re afraid of what the police might do to us, we’re afraid of going to jail but noth­ing scares us as much as the threat of run­away cli­mate change. We’ve thought through the con­se­quences of what we’re doing here but we’re deter­mined to stop as many tonnes of CO2 as we can.”

The young cam­paign­ers have raised a ban­ner read­ing ‘CLIMATE EMERGENCY’. Wear­ing high vis­i­bil­i­ty vests which have the mes­sage “Please DO some­thing” print­ed on them, they chose this day for the peace­ful tres­pass as they knew the run­way was closed for main­te­nance works and no flights were due to take off or land for two hours after they arrived.

Tilly, 21, said:

“We all grew up lis­ten­ing to Blair and Brown talk­ing about the urgent need to slash emis­sions, but noth­ing ever hap­pened. Even now politi­cians from our par­ents’ gen­er­a­tion are in Poland hold­ing talks about talks, but still nobody’s actu­al­ly doing any­thing. The sci­en­tists tell us we’ve got about sev­en years to make emis­sions peak then drop, and if we fail it will be the peo­ple on this run­way, and our chil­dren, who’ll live with the con­se­quences. That’s why I’m doing this.”

The cam­paign­ers chose to close Stanst­ed after the gov­ern­ment approved the expan­sion of capac­i­ty at the air­port by ten mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year. Avi­a­tion is Britain’s fastest grow­ing source of emis­sions, already amount­ing to at least 13% of our coun­try’s cli­mate impact. With plans for new run­ways across the UK, includ­ing at Heathrow and Stanst­ed, experts from the Tyn­dall Cen­tre for cli­mate research say Labour’s avi­a­tion pol­i­cy alone will scup­per any chance the UK has of hit­ting its cli­mate tar­gets.

Daniel, 24, said:

“We ful­ly appre­ci­ate the scale of what we’ve done here today and we know many peo­ple will strug­gle to under­stand why we’ve done it, but the Arc­tic ice cap is dis­ap­pear­ing, the seas are ris­ing and our last chance to save our future is van­ish­ing. With peo­ple tak­ing more flights in Britain than any­where else on earth, we have a unique respon­si­bil­i­ty to tack­le emis­sions from fly­ing.”

Intruder enters E.ON power station and switches off 2% of UK supplies

Police have begun an inves­ti­ga­tion after pro­test­ers broke into one of Britain’s biggest pow­er sta­tions last week [28th Novem­ber 2008] and cut almost 2 per cent of the country’s elec­tric­i­ty sup­plies.

Police have begun an inves­ti­ga­tion after pro­test­ers broke into one of Britain’s biggest pow­er sta­tions last week [28th Novem­ber 2008] and cut almost 2 per cent of the country’s elec­tric­i­ty sup­plies.

Up to 500 megawatts of gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty was lost from the nation­al net­work for about four hours after the inci­dent at Kingsnorth coal and oil-fired pow­er sta­tion in Kent, The Times has learnt. An intrud­er scaled an elec­tric fence, entered a secure area and switched off one of four tur­bines sup­ply­ing Lon­don and the South East.

E.ON, the Ger­man pow­er group that oper­ates the plant, is under­stood to sus­pect that some of its own staff or con­tract­ed employ­ees were involved in the inci­dent last Fri­day night.

Accord­ing to fig­ures from Nation­al Grid, total UK elec­tric­i­ty demand at the time was about 33,000 megawatts – mean­ing that 500 megawatts rep­re­sent­ed more than 1.5 per cent of the total, enough to pow­er a city the size of Bris­tol.

The pro­test­ers, who have not been caught despite much of the episode being caught on CCTV, climbed an elec­tric secu­ri­ty fence that was not work­ing at the time. Hav­ing switched off Unit Two, they left through an entrance that only employ­ees would have been famil­iar with. They also man­aged to go through a com­plex pro­ce­dure at a con­trol pan­el inside one of the tur­bine halls to turn the machin­ery off.

Kent police are involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. E.ON has ordered an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, and is exam­in­ing its own secu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures.

E.ON has become a key tar­get for cli­mate change pro­test­ers because Kingsnorth has been ear­marked for con­struc­tion of Britain’s first new coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in decades. The plant, which has a total gen­er­at­ing capac­i­ty of 1,960 megawatts, mak­ing it one of Britain’s biggest pow­er sta­tions, is to be retired from ser­vice soon and E.ON wants to build a £2 bil­lion coal replace­ment, which envi­ron­men­tal­ists say would lock in the emis­sion of many mil­lions of tonnes of green­house gas­es for decades to come.

Protest mes­sages were also left strewn across the tur­bine hall dur­ing the inci­dent.

An E.ON spokesman con­firmed that an inci­dent had tak­en place in which the site was entered ille­gal­ly and equip­ment was tam­pered with. “While we are respect­ful of people’s right to peace­ful and law­ful protest, this was clear­ly nei­ther of those and could have had very seri­ous impli­ca­tions, not least because of the poten­tial for seri­ous injury or worse. Thank­ful­ly, our site team respond­ed very quick­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly to ensure that the sit­u­a­tion was brought under con­trol.

“We have launched an inves­ti­ga­tion and are work­ing close­ly with the police on their inquiries. Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion remains oper­a­tional.”

E.ON has defend­ed its plans for a coal-fired plant at Kingsnorth by say­ing that it would be fit­ted with equip­ment designed to strip out car­bon diox­ide for safe stor­age.

So-called car­bon cap­ture and stor­age (CCS) remains an exper­i­men­tal tech­nol­o­gy that has not yet been demon­strat­ed on a com­mer­cial scale any­where in the world.

– from The Times news­pa­per.

– or the below from BBC News; pick & mix the facts you pre­fer:

Intrud­er shuts down pow­er tur­bine

A tur­bine at a pow­er sta­tion in Kent where cli­mate change cam­paign­ers have been hold­ing a series of protests was shut down by an intrud­er.

Ener­gy com­pa­ny E.On said it believed who­ev­er shut down the tur­bine must have had spe­cial­ist knowl­edge to car­ry out the “poten­tial­ly dead­ly” sab­o­tage.

The shut-down hap­pened on the night of 28 Novem­ber dur­ing two days of action by the Camp for Cli­mate Action group.

How­ev­er, no organ­i­sa­tion or indi­vid­ual has claimed it turned off the tur­bine.

“We don’t know whether it was a pro­test­er or not,” said E.On spokesman Jonathan Smith.

“But they gained access to the site, tam­pered with a pret­ty spe­cif­ic board and man­aged to turn off unit two.

“It is com­plete­ly unac­cept­able. If you ignore the fact they have bro­ken into our site, what they were doing was poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous, poten­tial­ly dead­ly even.”

Tar­get­ed offices

He said engi­neers locat­ed the prob­lem quick­ly and turned the tur­bine back on.

Cus­tomers were not affect­ed by the shut­down because the short­fall was made up by oth­er sup­pli­ers to the Nation­al Grid.

Dur­ing the two days of action, Camp for Cli­mate Action pro­test­ers tar­get­ed E.ON offices in Lon­don and across Eng­land.

It fol­lowed a week-long Cli­mate Camp near Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion on the Hoo penin­su­lar in August.

The cur­rent Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion is due to close in 2015 and E.ON wants to replace it with two new coal units, which it claims will be 20% clean­er.

Mr Smith said police were inves­ti­gat­ing the shut­down.

He said Kingsnorth was prob­a­bly the most secure coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the UK.

“Secu­ri­ty at Kingsnorth is extreme­ly high,” he said.

“We are look­ing at secu­ri­ty and work­ing with police to make sure this can’t hap­pen again.”

– from The Guardian news­pa­per:

“It was extreme­ly odd indeed, quite creepy. We have nev­er known any­thing like this at all, but it shows that if peo­ple want to do some­thing bad­ly enough they will find a way,” said Emi­ly High­more, a spokes­woman for E.On.

Yes­ter­day the full sto­ry emerged of what hap­pened. “It was about 10pm, very dark indeed,” said High­more. “It looks from the CCTV like he came in via a very remote part of the site by the sea wall and got over the dou­ble lay­er of fences.”

The intrud­er then crossed a car park and walked to an unlocked door. But instead of going to the pow­er sta­tion’s main con­trol room, where about eight peo­ple would have been work­ing, he head­ed for its main tur­bine hall, where no one would have been work­ing at that time.

With­in min­utes, says E.On, “he had tam­pered with some equip­ment” — believed to be a com­put­er at a con­trol pan­el — “and tripped unit 2, one of the sta­tion’s giant 500MW tur­bines”.

“This caused the unit to go offline,” she added. “It was run­ning at full 500MW load and the noise it would have made as it shut itself down is just incred­i­ble. CCTV shows that he then just walked out, and went back over the fence.

“It could be that no one has tak­en respon­si­bil­i­ty because they were so fright­ened by the noise it would have made. It’s prob­a­bly tak­en them a week just to get over the shock.”

“He left a ban­ner but it was a real DIY job. It was real­ly scrap­py. This was an old bed­sheet with writ­ing done out of gaffer tape. It was very crude,” said High­more

“Peo­ple at the sta­tion are gob­s­macked,” she added. “This is a dif­fer­ent league to pro­test­ers chain­ing them­selves to equip­ment. It’s some­one treat­ing a pow­er sta­tion as an adven­ture play­ground. You have to be trained to work here. Peo­ple do not just wan­der about on their own. He could have killed him­self. We do not have a prob­lem with pub­lic protest but this was reck­less. Who­ev­er it was has crossed a line they should not have gone over. Pow­er sta­tions are dan­ger­ous places.”

(full arti­cle)

protests against the roll-out of the ID card scheme & database

Against the impo­si­tion of ID cards on Non-EU stu­dents and mar­riage visa hold­ers.

Fingerprinted barbed wire fence graphicAgainst the impo­si­tion of ID cards on Non-EU stu­dents and mar­riage visa hold­ers.

This is not the first time for­eign nation­als or migrants have been used as guinea pigs to test a law or tech­nol­o­gy. Exam­ples include the Asy­lum Reg­is­tra­tion Cards (ARC), which is a sim­i­lar card that asy­lum seek­ers have been required to car­ry since 2002. Once migrants have been used as a ‘road test’ for the wide­ly opposed ID scheme, the gov­ern­ment will start on the rest of us. From 2010 on, the gov­ern­ment pre­dicts that one mil­lion cards will be hand­ed out every year.

For more back­ground infor­ma­tion on how this ‘drip drip’ approach to impos­ing bio­met­ric ID cards relates to migra­tion man­age­ment and the Home Office’s points sys­tem read:

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=3147
http://nobordersmanchester.blogspot.com/2008/11/defy-id-cards-no-one-is-illegal.html

==========
No No No ID cardsNewcastle ID cards protest
27th Novem­ber 2008
This evening approx­i­mate­ly 13 activists from No Bor­ders North East hand­ed out 200 anti-ID card leaflets to shop­pers in Cen­tral New­cas­tle. Ban­ners and plac­ards were also held, and a very pos­i­tive response was giv­en from the pub­lic.

Tues­day saw the intro­duc­tion of Iden­ti­ty Cards for non-EU cit­i­zens. No Bor­ders views this as yet anoth­er attempt to vic­tim­ize an often voice­less group, and so has orches­trat­ed a series of protests this week through­out the coun­try.

http://www.noborders.org.uk

.….

This morn­ing, dur­ing the peak rush hour time of 7.30 — 9.00 am, 4 activists from No Bor­ders North East per­formed an anti‑i.d card ban­ner drop from a bridge over one of the city’s busiest inner motor­ways. The largest ban­ner read “No To ID Cards, Free­dom For All!” and was accom­pa­nied by a small­er No Bor­ders ban­ner.

The reac­tion from the dri­vers below was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive, with many honk­ing horns, wav­ing and giv­ing thumbs up.

Today sees the start of the ID card scheme, with non-EU cit­i­zens apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage, being made to car­ry a card and have their details put on the Gov­ern­men­t’s data­base. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. Under a cloud of anti-immi­gra­tion hys­te­ria the gov­ern­ment is increas­ing it’s social con­trol and attempt­ing to ush­er in unprece­dent­ed pow­ers of sur­veil­lance over the whole pop­u­la­tion.

The police came along while we were doing it, but did­nt seem to have any prob­lem with it. Inter­est­ing­ly how­ev­er, they said that an anar­chist sym­bol can be deemed offen­sive and thus remov­able under a pub­lic order act (?!). We told them that our No Bor­ders ban­ner with a large anar­chist sym­bol was­n’t in fact anar­chist relat­ed, and they believed us for some rea­son.… 😉
—

York­shire Activists block­ade Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre

1.12.2008
At 8am this morn­ing a group of York­shire activists block­ad­ed the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Inter­ro­ga­tion Cen­tre at Vul­can House using bicy­cle locks and super­glue to attach them­selves to both entrances. The group are there in response to the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for non-EU peo­ple on stu­dent or mar­riage visas. They are dis­play­ing two ban­ners, one reads “My iden­ti­ty is not your prop­er­ty” and the oth­er “Noth­ing to hide? Every­thing to fear! Defy ID!”

Some appli­cants have been turned away by the Bor­der Agency staff but many were sup­port­ive of the actions the group has tak­en. Speak­ing to a block­ad­er, one appli­cant said that by intro­duc­ing com­pul­so­ry ID cards, the gov­ern­ment have shown that “they just want to con­trol peo­ple”. Bor­der Agency staff have called the police to remove the pro­test­ers but at the time of send­ing (10:30am) the pro­test­ers are still in place.

An activist from Brad­ford (who is cur­rent­ly super­glued to two oth­ers in front of the main entrance) said “The gov­ern­ment are try­ing to intro­duce ID cards through the back door, tar­get­ing some of the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in the coun­try.” A Sheffield activist added “If we want to save the peo­ple of Great Britain from ID cards, we must act now!”

Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion has meant that, since 25^th Novem­ber, for­eign spous­es and non-EU stu­dents who apply for, or renew, visas will be forced to attend an inter­ro­ga­tion and be issued with an ID card that will hold their name, pho­to­graph, nation­al­i­ty and immi­gra­tion sta­tus, along with a bio­met­ric chip that will hold their fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal image. The details will be held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base. Delays meant that the Sheffield Bor­der Agency Cen­tre only began inter­ro­ga­tions from today (1^st Decem­ber).

Update — 11 activists were arrest­ed (sig­nif­i­cant­ly more than were thought to be locked on) after hold­ing the block­ade for more than three hours. All released with with ver­bal cau­tions.

—
Lunar House ID poster
Iden­ti­ty Cards Protest, Lunar House, Croy­don

26.11.2008
On the cor­ner of George Street in Croy­don, Lon­don, a Novem­ber sun was warm­ing the shop­pers and office work­ers on their lunch breaks, but a few hun­dred metres north on Welles­ley Road a bit­ing Siber­ian wind seared the demon­stra­tors out­side Lunar House. It seemed appro­pri­ate that such a freez­ing blast should sur­round the UK head­quar­ters of the Bor­der and Immi­gra­tion Agency and indeed be gen­er­at­ed by its twen­ty sto­ries of the grim ear­ly 1970s office com­plex. After all its rai­son d’être is to give would-be immi­grants and asy­lum seeks an extreme­ly cold recep­tion.

Its bleak anonymi­ty is also a warn­ing of things to come for all of us in a Brave New Britain of state sur­veil­lance and con­trol whose infra­struc­ture is increas­ing­ly with us through secu­ri­ty cam­eras, the inter­cep­tion mobile phone sig­nals and elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and the planned intro­duc­tion of uni­ver­sal ID cards.

The pick­et, called by Lon­don NoBor­ders http://london.noborders.org.uk and NO2ID http://www.no2id.net/, marked the start of Bio­met­ric ID cards, which are being issued from today, 25 Novem­ber 2008, to all non-EU stu­dents and spous­es apply­ing for, or renew­ing visas for study or mar­riage. The cards will have a pho­to­graph with name, date of birth, nation­al­i­ty, immi­gra­tion sta­tus and bio­met­ric details, includ­ing fin­ger­prints and dig­i­tal facial image will be stored on a chip on the card as well as being held indef­i­nite­ly on the UK Iden­ti­ty Ser­vice data­base.

Soon all for­eign nation­als in the UK will be required to have these cards, which will be rolled out to oth­er groups includ­ing stu­dents who want a stu­dent loan by 2010. And from 2011 you will need to get one – and have your details on that data­base — if you want to renew or get a pass­port.

What wor­ries many of us is not just the use to which our own gov­ern­ment and secu­ri­ty ser­vices might make of such data – link­ing to face recog­ni­tion soft­ware work­ing on images from secu­ri­ty cam­eras and mobile phone data would enable our every move to be tracked – but the cer­tain­ty that it will get into oth­er hands – such as those of our US friends in the CIA, as well as crim­i­nal and com­mer­cial organ­i­sa­tions who will have their own ideas about how such all-per­va­sive data might be used.

Among those at today’s demon­stra­tion was David Mery http://gizmonaut.net/bits/suspect.html a man who has achieved a small per­son­al vic­to­ry against the jug­ger­naut data­base state.

Mery was stopped by police enter­ing South­wark tube sta­tion on 28 July for being “calm on arrival, almost too calm” and hav­ing a lar­gish ruck­sack and a strong French accent. It was three weeks after the Lon­don bomb­ing – and — per­haps luck­i­ly for him, six days after the shoot­ing of Jean Charles de Menezes. This time at least the police didn’t shoot first and ask ques­tions lat­er, but his treat­ment in the months and years fol­low­ing the event can most favourably be described as Kafkaesque. He final­ly (or at least prob­a­bly) suc­ceed­ed in hav­ing both his fin­ger­prints and DNA record removed from the police data­bas­es, but it took over two years of fight­ing. His blog http://gizmonaut.net/ and arti­cles are essen­tial read­ing for any­one who won­ders why civ­il lib­er­ties are impor­tant.

—

Leeds NO2ID have burnt a mock ID card in protest at the intro­duc­tion of the ID card scheme for for­eign nation­als

Video — video/quicktime 13M

Around 20 activists braved the freez­ing tem­per­a­tures and rain to gath­er in Leeds last night on the eve of the intro­duc­tion of ID cards for for­eign nation­als.

The protest was made my burn­ing a mock ID card in pub­lic.

The Protest passed off peace­ful­ly with­out the pres­ence of West York­shire Police.

—

Liv­er­pool anti-ID pick­et: No One Is Ille­gal

20 stu­dents and No Bor­der­s/an­ti-ID cam­paign­ers from Man­ches­ter made their way to Liv­er­pool on 25th Novem­ber, the day that the gov­ern­ment intro­duced ID cards for non-EU nation­als liv­ing in the UK. There they joined a group of 30 Mersey­side activists out­side Reliance House to protest at the intro­duc­tion of com­pul­so­ry ID cards for inter­na­tion­al stu­dents and non-EU spous­es on that day.

Reliance House is where inter­view­ing, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing will take place from 4th Decem­ber before being issued with a bio­met­ric ID card. It is also Liverpool’s report­ing cen­tre where those seek­ing asy­lum have to ‘sign in’ on a reg­u­lar basis while their claims are being processed. If their claims fail they can be held, with­out pri­or notice, in the immi­gra­tion deten­tion facil­i­ty in the same build­ing for up to 7 days.

It is thus imper­a­tive to make the con­nec­tion between ID cards and the assault on the rights of non-EU nation­als want­i­ng to live, work and study in the UK. Peo­ple from Man­ches­ter No Bor­ders had brought along plac­ards and ban­ners pro­claim­ing that “no one is ille­gal”. Where the state rein­forces the divi­sion between legal and ‘ille­gal’ peo­ple our sol­i­dar­i­ty must extend to those most affect­ed by the scheme.

Some men­tion in the news:
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2008/11/25/protests-in-city-over-id-cards-100252–22330184/
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/news/display.var.2470740.0.Protests_as_first_ID_card_scheme_launched_in_Britain.php
http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2008/11/26/protesters-say-no-to-introduction-of-id-cards-for-foreign-students-64375–22341365/

(Dur­ing the pick­et of Reliance House, some first con­tact was made with indi­vid­ual No Bor­der activists from Liv­er­pool, Mersey­side and North Wales. If you are from this region and want to get active in a No Bor­ders group, please email us, so we can get you in touch)

manchesternoborders@riseup.net
http://www.manchesternoborders.org.uk

—
Cardiff No ID protest
Over 60 peo­ple attend­ed our protest against the intro­duc­tion of Bio­met­ric ID Cards for non-EU stu­dents and spous­es on Tues­day. The demon­stra­tion was held for a cou­ple of hours at mid­day out­side the Cardiff office of the UK Bor­der Agency at 31–33 New­port Road. Peo­ple the gov­ern­ment is forc­ing to car­ry ID cards will have to attend this cen­tre for inter­ro­ga­tion, pho­tograph­ing and fin­ger­print­ing.

We dis­played ban­ners, held plac­ards, waved giant mock ID cards and dis­trib­uted 600 copies of this leaflet — the reac­tion from passers by was com­plete­ly sup­port­ive. Many peo­ple used their lunch­break to join the protest for a short while before return­ing to work or study. This protest was part of a nation­wide day of action out­side UKBA cen­tres by No Bor­ders Net­work who, along with Defy ID, NO2ID and oth­er groups, held protests in Croy­don, Liv­er­pool, Glas­gow, Soli­hull, and New­cas­tle. Though many of these protests around the coun­try got into local news­pa­pers, Welsh media cov­er­age has been min­i­mal.

This protest appears to be just the start of resis­tance to ID Cards, the British Air­line Pilots’ Asso­ci­a­tion (BALPA) has threat­ened indus­tri­al action if the gov­ern­ment goes ahead with it’s plan to impose ID cards on air­port work­ers next year. Tens of thou­sands of peo­ple have signed up to NO2ID’s pledge not to reg­is­ter for a card, even if that means going to prison. No Bor­ders South Wales will be protest­ing out­side the Bor­der agency again, on Wednes­day 10th Decem­ber when the Cardiff office will start to reg­is­ter peo­ple, join us if you can.

“These new ID cards are not only a repres­sive mea­sure against non-EU stu­dents and spous­es, they are the first shot in an attack against everyone’s lib­er­ty. In tar­get­ing a large­ly voice­less migrant group, who have the least chance to com­plain and the most to lose, the gov­ern­ment is fol­low­ing a famil­iar path of repres­sive regimes through­out his­to­ry. Immi­gra­tion law already gives the Home Office pow­ers it would like to exert over every­body. By resist­ing the repres­sion of migrants, we defend the free­dom of every­one!“

For links to leaflet, video and oth­er stuff, see http://noborderswales.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/cardiff-protest-against-id-cards/
—

Soli­hull protest against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards on migrants

26.11.2008
Yes­ter­day Nobor­ders Birm­ing­ham protest­ed against the impo­si­tion of bio­met­ric ID cards at the UK Bor­der Agency Office in Soli­hull. They were met by a puz­zling dis­pro­por­tion­ate police response at Domin­ion Court, 41 Sta­tion Road, Soli­hull — around 12 police offi­cers, includ­ing 3 police vans and an evi­dence gath­er­er. This may have some­thing to do with the polic­ing of a pre­vi­ous protest around the cor­ner at Sand­ford House, the home office report­ing cen­tre, where hun­dreds of Con­golese demon­stra­tors fac­ing mass depor­ta­tion occu­pied the main road http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/04/368076.html

A ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘Free­dom of Move­ment for All’ was held by the entrance of the UK Bor­ders Agency Office. The police offered to ‘facil­i­tate’ our protest by a seem­ing­ly polite offer to arrange for a met­al bar­ri­er to hang our ban­ner from. How­ev­er, we realised that the six foot high hedge in front of the build­ing would make our protest invis­i­ble to almost every­one, so instead we hung our ban­ner by the main road and dis­trib­uted around 600 leaflets to some very inter­est­ed mem­bers of the pub­lic.

Fol­low­ing a con­cerned report from a ded­i­cat­ed com­mu­ni­ty police offi­cer ear­li­er in the day, two equal­ly com­mit­ted coun­cil work­ers from the envi­ron­men­tal and health depart­ment at Soli­hull Coun­cil turned up in their lunch hour to ensure that the lit­er­a­ture being dis­trib­uted was of a polit­i­cal, rather than com­mer­cial, nature and thus would not run afoul of local bye-laws on littering/flyering (no one seemed quite sure). This fol­lows sev­er­al oth­er inci­dents known to us in cen­tral Birm­ing­ham where coun­cil offi­cials have attempt­ed to apply sim­i­lar bye-laws (with accom­pa­ny­ing threats of fines and court appear­ances) to dis­suade peo­ple from hand­ing out polit­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. It has been not­ed before that the par­lia­men­tary leg­is­la­tion which serves as the basis of these bye-laws specif­i­cal­ly exempt­ed mate­ri­als of a polit­i­cal nature. The coun­cil work­ers also showed some inter­est in the ban­ner, rais­ing con­cern over the man­ner of its attach­ment to some local shrubs and some­thing else about pri­vate prop­er­ty, but in the end they seemed to decide that nei­ther the pub­lic nor the shrubs were at any risk (poten­tial, real, or oth­er­wise) and returned to what remained of their lunch hour.

Two stu­dents from Pak­istan informed us that they had to book an appoint­ment to begin the bio­met­ric ID card process and they could­n’t return home until this had been com­plet­ed. They claimed today they were told by staff that they would be required to give blood sam­ples and have iris scans for their bio­met­ric cards so if they com­mit­ted any ‘crimes’ in the UK they could be iden­ti­fied imme­di­ate­ly. It appears that the pri­vate com­pa­ny con­tract­ed to the tune of £5.6 bil­lion, and entrust­ed with sen­si­tive bio­met­ric data, are already doing their best to impress upon appli­cants that ID cards will be effec­tive at ‘fight­ing crime’. Lib­er­ty, the civ­il lib­er­ties and human rights organ­i­sa­tion, have already expressed con­cern about the Government’s abil­i­ty to safe­guard individual’s inti­mate details on the Nation­al Iden­ti­ty Reg­is­ter after Gov­ern­ment depart­ments last year lost 30 mil­lion pieces of per­son­al data, includ­ing those of 25 mil­lion child ben­e­fit claimants. ‘We have ID cards in our coun­try but they aren’t bio­met­ric’ said one of the stu­dents. ‘It feels very dis­crim­i­na­to­ry that we are being tar­get­ed first. Why aren’t they pro­cess­ing UK nation­als first?’ The inter­na­tion­al stu­dents also point­ed out that this was cost­ing them a great deal of mon­ey. Not only did they have to pay exor­bi­tant fees for their cours­es but on top of that they have to pay £300 for their visas and now they have to pay for their bio­met­ric ID cards and they are only per­mit­ted to work 20 hours a week. They also added that these mea­sures would serve to put over­seas stu­dents off study­ing here cit­ing Aus­tralia as a more wel­com­ing alter­na­tive.

The use of for­eign nation­als as guinea pigs for the more wide­spread intro­duc­tion of ID cards is a strat­e­gy to run a test­bed for the tech­nol­o­gy on peo­ple with­out a voice. It has become appar­ent that the gov­ern­ment is like­ly to pick off cer­tain sec­tions of the com­mu­ni­ty in Britain one at a time. This divide and rule strat­e­gy has been used through­out his­to­ry, most notably by the Nazi regime in Ger­many.

When the British gov­ern­ment came for the migrants,
I remained silent;
I was not a migrant.

When they came for the air­line work­ers,
I remained silent;
I was not an air­line work­er.

When they came for the con­victs,
I did not speak out;
I was not a con­vict.

When they came for the health work­ers,
I did not speak out;
I was not a health work­er.

When they came for the stu­dents,
I did not speak out;
I was not a stu­dent.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

nobor­ders-brum @ riseup.net

—

ID demo
http://glasgowanarchists.wordpress.com/

—

Also in the news:

ID ‘read­ing’ machines on Cana­da and Mex­i­co bor­ders
‘Smart’ CCTV in Portsmouth

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

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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/

—-
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

—-
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

—-
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

—-
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”

TopShop SwapShop (London), Buy Nothing Day action (+ Steal Something Day) + Leeds + Liverpool + Bristol

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!

TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

Ladies and Gen­tle­men we are proud to announce the restyling fash­ion mash-up event of the year!
Top Shop Swap Shop buy nothing day flier
TOPSHOP SWAPSHOP
2pm Sat 29th Novem­ber – Top­shop Oxford Street
Cred­it Crunch!

In the light of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cri­sis and the out­rage over the sweat­shop con­di­tions that most high street brands make their clothes in, the swap­shop is your chance to re-vamp your wardrobe with a free con­science! Leap­ing away from the drudgery of big cor­po­rate fash­ion with it’s dodgy busi­ness prac­tices and spend spend spend atti­tude, the Top­shop swap­shop takes fash­ion back to it’s roots.

Sim­ply turn up at TOPSHOP on Oxford Street wear­ing an out­fit you wish to upgrade, then on the stroke of 2, mar­vel as hun­dreds of fash­ion moguls offer to trade your clothes with you.

Fan­cy that girls jumper? Why not offer to swap your belt for it?
That boy’s hat is to die for, how about a trade for your jeans?
Nice skirt, fan­cy trad­ing my t‑shirt for it?

After a hec­tic re-work­ing of your look you can then walk proud­ly back onto the streets of Lon­don town with a new wardrobe and not hav­ing spent a sin­gle pen­ny.

You can buy lots of clothes but you can’t buy style.

Please spread far and wide…

DISCLAIMER:

The above event is in no way sup­port­ed or con­doned by Top­Shop. Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to any brand liv­ing or dead is mere­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

http://www.spacehijackers.org

============

Steal Something Day
Steal Some­thing Day, a shame­less 24-hour steal­ing spree! a cri­tique of BND and call to action, recy­cled from pre­vi­ous years for your enter­tain­ment

============

Buy Noth­ing Day Leeds

In Brig­gate this Sat­ur­day (29th of Nov) there will be a Buy Noth­ing extrav­a­gan­za. We will have Christ­mas car­ols telling peo­ple of the woes of shop­ping, there will be hot tea and cof­fee to help ex-shop­pers read­just to there new found hap­pi­ness, and ideas of presents that do not involve con­sumerism. From
11am — till dark we will be ask­ing peo­ple to ques­tion con­sumerism and join us in buy­ing noth­ing!

Last year was a major suc­cess and BND strikes again. Please bake cakes, bring food and any­thing you would like to give away. There will be a free shop, music and tables. Bring any­thing down to join in the par­ty!
Leeds BND

============

Liv­er­pool
Buy Nothing Day (Liverpool) flier
next to nowhere is proud to present an oppor­tu­ni­ty for all the liv­er­pool activists to join togeth­er in a spir­it of togeth­er­ness, open­ness & com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

i guess we can all agree that over-con­sump­tion is a very bad thing & i reck­on that most of us see cap­i­tal­ism as the root of the sick­ness that is infest­ing our soci­ety. yes?
any­one a racist? no? oh my, we seem to have some­thing in com­mon after all!

well, on sat­ur­day 29th novem­ber it’s time to put your mutu­al aid where your mouth is.

at 11am maybe meet & greet nick grif­fin (bnp) who could be plea­sur­ing our city with his pres­ence in his bid to become mep for the north west of eng­land. he’s called for the par­ty faith­ful to gath­er in protest at thear­rest of sev­er­al mem­bers last week. are we real­ly going to let this hap­pen?
meet at the top of church street at 10am.

after­wards, from 12pm, the social cen­tre shall be trans­formed into an oasis of anti-cap­i­tal­ism.

we’ll have:
a fab­u­lous free-shop full of qual­i­ty free good­ies,
free tea n’ cof­fee,
veg­an cafe (dona­tions only),
open mic, film, per­for­mance, spo­ken word…

now, i know that some peo­ple are a bit scared of actu­al­ly get­ting involved in next to nowhere, prefer­ing to dis­cuss the short­com­ings of the book­ing pol­i­cy from a safe dis­tance. just to be clear, and restate the bot­tom line of next to nowhere from its con­sti­tu­tion — every­one is wel­come to get involved at the social cen­tre pro­vid­ed that they are will­ing to work in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way through con­sen­sus.

‘actions speak loud­er than words’ — please can peo­ple work togeth­er in mutu­al sup­port to help make this world a bet­ter place and take on the evils which are fuck­ing up our world or say noth­ing and stop this on-going crit­i­cism from the side­lines, whilst doing noth­ing at nowhere.

who knows, the open-mic forum could even pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to express their feel­ings about the social cen­tre, in a non-hier­ar­chi­cal way of course!
or, we could just have a good old-fash­ioned knees up…

togeth­er, let’s start to dance on the graves of mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tions!

feistyfingers[at]yahoo.co.uk
http://www.liverpoolsocialcentre.org

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Buy Noth­ing Day 2008 — Freeshop in Broad­mead, Bris­tol

Free shop, live music, cir­cus skills and face paint­ing? UWE stu­dents from the Peo­ple and Plan­et soci­ety are going to be tak­ing part in a ‘buy noth­ing day’ and will be run­ning a free shop on Sat­ur­day, bright­en­ing up the cold, grey, win­try streets of Bris­tol city cen­tre.

To recap­ture some of that lost Christ­mas Spir­it (the giv­ing that is, not the spend­ing!) we’ll be giv­ing away clothes, bric-a-brac and plen­ty more lit­tle gems for you to get your mitts on as well as bring­ing a lit­tle sun­shine to the often not-so-hap­py shop­pers of Bris­tol. If you have any­thing you want to get rid of, bring it along!

We’re look­ing for vol­un­teers to help inform and enter­tain (musi­cians, cir­cus enter­tain­ers, etc) so if your game bring your uni­cy­cle down and get involved! It kicks off at 11am and will be run­ning till 4pm, so Pop down to our mar­quee in-between the Gal­leries and Cabot Cir­cus (Just down from Ann Sum­mers!).

For more info e‑mail Lisa at lisatozer@hotmail.com

I’ll see you there!

A report from the No Borders network gathering

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

A report from No Bor­ders gath­er­ing in New­cas­tle

On 9 & 10 Novem­ber a gath­er­ing of No Bor­ders activists was held in New­cas­tle with groups and indi­vid­u­als from Brighton, Bris­tol, South Wales, Lon­don, Oxford, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, New­cas­tle, Edin­burgh and Glas­gow tak­ing part. Alto­geth­er, about 50–60 peo­ple attend­ed.

Sat­ur­day began with report backs from local groups, giv­ing us an impres­sion of the activ­i­ty of the No Bor­ders net­work. Oppo­si­tion against ID cards and the IOM, and actions against depor­ta­tion air­lines and immi­gra­tion snatch squads, are as much part of the No Bor­ders agen­da as is sol­i­dar­i­ty with detainees, depor­tees and migrant work­ers. It was obvi­ous that the vol­ume and vari­ety of actions is one of the strengths of the net­work which has helped it to con­tin­ue to devel­op and grow with­out los­ing momen­tum.

The inter­na­tion­al dimen­sion of the net­work was stressed when peo­ple told of large-scale block­ades of a deten­tion cen­tre in Bel­gium, of Ham­burg air­port to stop depor­ta­tions, and of the attempt to dis­man­tle a deten­tion cen­tre in Den­mark. Peo­ple felt it is increas­ing­ly impor­tant to con­tin­ue devel­op­ing info and action-shar­ing net­works with peo­ple across Europe and else­where. UK No Bor­ders activists are mak­ing con­nec­tions with cam­paign­ers in North­ern France to high­light the sit­u­a­tion of hun­dreds of refugees trapped in Calais.

Dis­cus­sions also devel­oped around the idea of orga­niz­ing a big­ger No Bor­ders event in the future that would include actions and info-shar­ing.

On Sun­day, the need to devel­op No Bor­ders pol­i­tics was stressed in a dis­cus­sion on ‘who are our allies’. At a local lev­el, whilst work­ing on some issues in coali­tion with groups and organ­i­sa­tions that dif­fer in char­ac­ter, No Bor­ders has a firm­ly anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an stance. Over all, the net­work reit­er­at­ed its explic­it anti-cap­i­tal­ist and anti-author­i­tar­i­an posi­tion, and a group formed to work on pub­lic­i­ty that offers an eas­i­ly acces­si­ble guide to No Bor­ders pol­i­tics. This could take the form of writ­ten pub­li­ca­tions and media projects such as the devel­op­ment of a film.

All in all, shar­ing infor­ma­tion and sto­ries was an inspir­ing expe­ri­ence and by strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and net­work-wide tac­tics, peo­ple across the UK will con­tin­ue to devel­op their ideas and inspire each oth­er to take action against bor­ders and to pro­mote free­dom of move­ment for all.

The next gath­er­ing is pro­posed for February/March 2009 in Bris­tol
www.noborders.org.uk